 My name is Jamie Spitzer. I'm a fourth-year resident and a graduate of this medical school. There are so many things that I love about this program, but what it comes down to is the people, the community, and the training opportunities. We talk a lot about mentorship, but this program has taught me what true mentors are. My mentors inspire me, they challenge me, they empower me, they encourage me academically, clinically, and personally. They've taught me about the psychiatrist that I want to be, and they model this. I hope to be the passionate educator, the thoughtful advocate, the recovery-oriented doctor, and the collaborative team member they each exemplify. The community and the culture of the department reflects these same values and thoughtful support. This is part of why I love my work, but the other part is the work. I love the work. I love the patients. There are so many rotations that I could go on and on about. I come home every week saying, this is my favorite rotation, but a few weeks later, I have a new favorite rotation. This is what makes this program so unique, how many diverse clinical opportunities we have. We really get to rotate everywhere. We rotate at state hospitals. We rotate at a standalone psychiatric hospital. We rotate at a community hospital, an academic hospital, and the VA. On my inpatient rotations at each of these places, I came home week after week gushing about something new I hadn't seen before. At the different state hospitals, I got to learn about CBT for psychosis, see the profound effects of clozapine, and learn about catatonia from an expert in the field. At the community hospital, I got to really practice recovery-oriented care, working with occupational therapy in groups, leading community meetings, and attending family meetings. In the academic institution, I had the honor of serving patients in pregnancy, people that had survived nearly lethal suicide attempts, they wouldn't have survived without shock trauma, and critically ill patients. Oh, and I got to do ECT. This is just a small glimpse into all of the different opportunities we get at these diverse clinical settings. As a fourth-year resident now, looking back, I can see all of the different experiences I gained at each of these sites, and I can appreciate looking forward what I want in my future career. There's so much more that I could say about this program, but the truth is I love the people, I love the patients, and I've learned more than I ever thought possible. Most importantly, I'm becoming the kind of psychiatrist I always hope to be. My name is Julie Fields. My pronouns are she and her. I am a PGY4 in the psychiatry residency program here at Maryland, and I'm originally from South Carolina, and I graduated from Hopkins School of Medicine. There are really a lot of things that I like about this program, but we only have three minutes, so I'm just going to keep it to the things that mattered the most to me, and that would include a supportive environment for residents, dedication to resident teaching, and also community psychiatry. So I think here at Maryland, we do a really good job of attracting well-rounded residents that are both clinically brilliant, but also really personable and friendly, which goes a really long way to creating a supportive environment amongst you and your colleagues. I think we also have really great impressive faculty that are there to educate you, to push you, to help you grow, and who are obviously very, very dedicated to resident education. Because of that, I have found informal mentorship in many places and during many rotations that I think have really shaped my experience here. We also have dedicated teaching time. We have, on Thursdays, we have didactics. You don't have any clinical responsibilities during this time, so that means your only job is really to learn during that time, which is not true of every program. We also have a really supportive call system. As a second year, you are never alone on call. There's always someone in house overnight, which goes a long way to fostering a more supportive environment. That means as a second year, you always have someone there to run things by, and as a third and fourth year, you can continue to hone your skills as a teacher, as a supervisor, and as a supporter, which I think is really important for professional development. The last thing that was really a draw for me was community psychiatry. I just finished my third year. I worked in one of our community psychiatry clinics, took care of patients with personality, mood, and trauma disorders, and patients with serious mental illness. That has really been one of the biggest highlights for me in this program. We take care of marginalized patients in Baltimore, and oftentimes our patients need a lot of resources. Luckily, the community psychiatry division is one that has plenty of those. We have intensive case management. We have psychiatric rehabilitation programming. When you become a fourth year, then you can rotate in some of our other sites. You can rotate and raise, which is our first episode clinic. You can also rotate in our PACT program, or our community treatment program. You can rotate at healthcare for the homeless. There are just a number of really wonderful sites. There are faculty that have been in this division for decades. They've dedicated their life to this type of work, and those are really the best people to learn from. If you are looking for a supportive environment, you're looking for dedication to resident teaching, you're looking for community psychiatry, then this is the place to be, and we would love to have you. Hi, I'm Brendan Buie. I'm one of the third year psychiatry residents. I am what some would affectionately call a lifer, meaning I did my undergraduate and then medical school and then residency all within the University of Maryland system. You'll see a lot of faculty members kind of having that title too. One of the main reasons why I decided to stay at Maryland was the opportunity to train at Shepherd Pratt, which is one of the top ranked psychiatric hospitals in the nation. It functions as a standalone psych hospital, and as such, you actually get some pretty cool experiences and rotation sites. Some of the specialized units that are there include the trauma disorders unit, which actually admits patients both nationally and internationally. There's an eating disorders unit, adult and child, that I got to rotate through, and there's a unique unit called the retreat, which is a self-pay unlocked unit, and it has really intensive psychotherapy services, both group and individual, and it also incorporates some integrative modalities like acupuncture, yoga, and equine therapy, and that's something I'm really looking forward to getting to rotate through in my fourth year. Earlier on, we get to train in the psychotic disorders unit and in the co-occurring disorders unit, and what I really loved about it was being able to follow patients as they left the unit and then step down to the day hospital, which I thought was a great learning experience, and if neuropsychiatry is something you're interested in, we all get to rotate through the neuropsych clinic as a first-year resident while we're off-service on neurology, and if that's something you want to pursue, then you can also rotate through the electives, the neuropsych electives, and there is an adult and a child unit that you can do. And this year, as I'm rotating into my outpatient training, I had the opportunity to do what's called a split year, meaning I spend half of my time at the downtown community psych clinic and the other half of my time up at Shepherd Pratt. And the Shepherd Pratt model is actually set up like a private practice model, which really gave me an eye-opening experience in terms of how to schedule my own patients, how to bill, and how to create contingency plans if a patient isn't doing very well. And between the two sites, I have an incredible diversity in patients from the underserved minorities down in West Baltimore to the more affluent members of the Baltimore County area. I have some pretty incredible psychotherapy supervisors, some of whom are psychodynamically oriented, some of whom are fully trained psychoanalysts. And since this is an area of psychiatry, I really want to pursue further. My faculty advisor, who is an analyst, is actually encouraging me a lot to pursue the psychoanalytic fellowship program at the nearby Washington Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis. And that's actually something that I'm able to do while I'm still in residency training. Overall, I think I couldn't have asked for a better diversity and breadth in opportunity. And even at this stage in training, I feel I'm really prepared and I'm really excited to see where my career takes me down the road. So good luck to everyone on your search. I know that this year is going to be unlike any other year anyone would have experienced or anticipated. And I hope to see you around the halls of Maryland and Shepard Pratt sometime soon.