Katherine Wardle:  

My story? Busy, productive, enriched by good people, good work, fun activities, and some good luck thrown in: After leaving Norton for college, I've made my professional and personal life in NYS. I always wanted to be a psychologist (in fact I had taken my first psychology course at Wheaton while I was a senior at NHS), and I majored in psychology at Barnard College, Columbia University. I stayed at Columbia to receive two Masters Degrees and my Ph.D. with the help of a full National Institute of Mental Health Fellowship. While at Columbia I continued to play the trumpet--some of you might remember me with my horn. In fact, in those early days of women breaking glass ceilings, I was the first female member of the Columbia University Marching Band. My professional career took me initially upstate NY to the Lake George region, where I worked at first as a school psychologist and then as the only licensed psychologist in private practice in a 4 county area. I then moved down to the Albany/Saratoga Springs area where I accepted a tenure track psychology faculty appointment while I continued private practice. I also had a call-in radio show for psychological issues over a nine year period. I decided to not pursue that further, and became active in the state politics of psychology. I served as President of the Psychological Association of Northeastern NY and founding President of the Clinical Hypnosis Association of NE NY (a branch of the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis). After serving on many boards and doing much organizational work for psychology, I left most of that behind and have cultivated other interests while I continue to work in private practice. I also enjoy my profession photography work, and I travel extensively with my husband, Marvin. My fine art work had been shown in numerous galleries and you can check it out by googling Katherine Wardle photography. Some of you might remember that my Mother, Kathryn Fiske, worked in the school cafeteria. I shared her love of cooking, and received a culinary degree after all my other psychology graduate work. While continuing to do full-time private practice I started going to NYC one day a week to use my culinary background and worked as a pastry apprentice at the world famous 4-star Restaurant Daniel (owned by Daniel Boulud). I've helped the exciting pastry chef from there, Johnny Iuzzini, edit his first pastry cookbook and I competed in culinary competitions. That was an exhausting but fun time of life. I subsequently opened up a cooking school part-time in my home (Google "Cooking Therapy" and you will find my site) for avocational cooking experiences for folks. I joke that I am the only psychologist who can bill cooking classes under mental health insurance as appropriate. I particularly have enjoyed extensive training in chocolate work, and I fabricate my own molded chocolates with ganache fillings from my garden. My husband, Marvin Fine, retired from having been the Chair of a psychology department at the University of Kansas and now works in private practice with me in the Albany area. He commuted 15 years on a weekly basis from Kansas, and we continue to use wonderful air miles--in fact, I write now from St. Maarten on vacation. We imagine that we will continue to be in practice as psychologists forever--as self-employed individuals we can take the travel breaks we want or need as long ...Expand for more