Following Opportunities
Posted on November 19, 2007
Sometimes pursuing your research interests means leaving one group for another, Terence A. Ketter (bio) notes.
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We had a fellow who was coming along nicely in our fellowship program. we were thinking, "Oh, this will be great, she is great to have around. And then one of our faculty in the major depressive disorder clinic went to industry for a couple years and so the dark side took this fellow from us. And it was a programmatic need of the department and we were thinking, "Well, she has some training in bipolar, does some unipolar, maybe do bipolar spectrum and things," and we never got her back.
She found something within unipolar disorder that was profoundly interesting to her and took off with that and ran with that. And as citizens of the university and meeting the programmatic needs of the university, and they really did need some help when this faculty member took off, it ended up being a sacrifice we made, losing that investment.
But for her, it ended up being a good thing. I think it probably would have been a good thing to stay with us, but she showed probably an important quality of somebody who does research. She showed a degree of flexibility of interest and following opportunities within a program. And so this probably has relevance, because no matter what you’re interested in, you may not have a good match with what your university has and what your interest is.
Viewing Preferences
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Excerpted from interview with researcher at the 2007 International Conference on Bipolar Disorder in Pittsburgh, PA.
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