Personnel Challenge Posted on July 7, 2008 Managing a lab offers teamwork and leadership experience in a fun way, says Howard J. Aizenstein (bio).

Even though temperamentally I'm somewhat shy and do enjoy working alone, I also very much enjoy working with people. And it's part of the tension of who I am. I did my PhD in computer science, which in some ways is a very solitary field, but then chose to be a psychiatrist, which is a very interactive field with people and very people-oriented.

And I love collaborating and working with people while I also like working alone and so one of the surprises to me in my career has been that I enjoy managing a lab. I enjoy having people working with me; I enjoy having an administrator come in and check in with how things are going and the personnel management issues, having graduate students. I find that fun even though there are challenges sometimes.

We had one graduate student we had to let go. And in many ways that was a very difficult situation, but it was an interesting challenge, and as a psychiatrist and being trained as a psychiatrist, doing the personnel management aspect of the academic career is a fun part of the job as well. You get to be a good team leader and to learn that.

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