Joys of Academia Posted on March 19, 2007 Judy Garber (bio) talks about her childhood desire to become a psychologist, and the path that she has taken to get there.

Basically I've always known I wanted to be a psychologist since I was 10 years old, which is pretty unusual and mainly because I had role models in my life. So I went to undergraduate and took Intro Psych from day one and knew I was going to be a psychology major. And when I got done with that I went on to graduate school right away, but didn't particularly like where I was and ended up leaving.

So that's where I went off the path. Went to University of Pennsylvania and worked very closely with Marty Seligman, who was a great mentor, was there for about two-and-a-half years just doing research, and then went back to graduate school in Minnesota.

And stayed in Child Clinical, and always knew I wanted to study depression, and after that just, actually the only transition was thinking originally I was going to be a clinician and then as I spent time at University of Pennsylvania realized I really enjoyed research and really enjoyed basically being a student and always being a student, which is what the joys of academia are. So after I finished Minnesota, I took a long time through Minnesota because I had my son while I was a graduate student.

Then we went to my first job, which was at Vanderbilt, and I've been there ever since and the reason we ended up at Vanderbilt was because we're in a two professional relationship. My husband is Steve Hollon, who is a researcher in depression as well. And we've been there ever since.

And I had my child when I was just starting out as a junior faculty. He was a year and a half when I started, and it was challenging, but I had a very good spouse. So that helped.

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