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and I had clicked instantly. “What’s your biggest weakness as a therapist?” she’d asked.
    “I’m in a hurry for my patients to get better, and I go too fast,” I’d told her.
    “Are you working on that?” she replied, looking intensely into my eyes.
    “Yes,” I assured her, inspired by her earnestness and her gravity of tone.
    Dr. Goldberg invited me to come back the following month to meet Dr. Brent, who would after all be the person I reported to directly were I to match at Kings County. “It’s your choice,” she said. “It won’t impact your chances here either way.” I did not go back. The trip seemed too far. I didn’t think it mattered who the director of training was. Kings County’s internship had a good reputation around my graduate program,and that was enough for me. When Scott sent an e-mail in late May to invite me out to the hospital to meet him before my start date, I was more reluctant to say no, not wanting to offend him. But I was fact-checking at a magazine in Times Square in the weeks leading up to internship, and the hour-plus commute would have meant a good three hours away from the office, a hundred dollars out of my paycheck. About to embark on a year of low wages—Kings County called what it paid us a “stipend,” not even a salary—I pushed aside my sense that the trip might be a worthwhile investment.
    Scott asked for silence in the room, and the psychologists who lingered stopped their conversations so our director could say a few words. “On behalf of the staff of the Behavioral Health department, I want to welcome our new group of trainees to Kings County Hospital,” he said, raising his orange juice glass. “We are delighted to have you here. We know that while the year may be a challenging one, we also trust that its rewards will outweigh its difficulties.
    “We convened the staff here today because these are the people who will supervise and support you as the year goes on. I can almost guarantee that there is nothing you will experience on the job that someone in this room has not gone through, and they are available to you to lean on, if you should want that along the way. So, thank you all for coming this morning. Behavioral Health, please join me in welcoming this excellent group.” The people in the room raised their cups toward us in a friendly gesture, and a few people clapped. We smiled and nodded in response.

    When breakfast ended, Scott and Dr. Reemer, the child-track director of training, sat the ten of us down to tell us how ourfirst two weeks would go. We would fill out the tall stack of paperwork required by the hospital, we would meet with the head of each department in Behavioral Health to decide for certain which two elective rotations we wanted to choose (two were elective, and two—inpatient and psych ER—were mandatory), and we would attend a five-day hospital orientation, which Scott described as an incredible waste of a week but one that he had been unable to get us out of. Our training proper, it seemed, would not get under way for a full fourteen days, counting weekends and the Fourth of July. Once it did, our schedules would be packed, he told us, with more than we would be able to keep up with. Rotations in the mornings, and seminars, supervisions, and outpatients in the afternoons. We’d each see two outpatients and run at least one outpatient group, with forty-five minutes of supervision for every forty-five minutes of therapy. Seminars—on topics ranging from psychopharmacology to brief psychotherapy—would each last around ten weeks, with the exception of the neuropsychology and multicultural courses, which would run all year.
    “I also want to say a few words about the lawsuit,” Scott added. “You probably all saw the headlines in the spring. In response to the suit, the Justice Department will be arriving midwinter to do an investigation, and there will be some changes being made around here in preparation for that