Serving as trustee is the most demanding unpaid job most people ever accept, and almost nobody who accepts it understands what it requires. This article walks a trustee's actual year, from acceptance through the first inventory to the annual report, explaining what each of the core duties requires in practice rather than in the abstract. It works the duty of loyalty and the no-further-inquiry rule that makes a self-dealing transaction voidable without proof of harm, the duty of impartiality that pits income beneficiaries against remaindermen in every investment decision, the prudent investor rule that abolished the old list of permissible investments in favor of a portfolio standard with a default duty to diversify, and the duty to inform and report that generates more litigation than investment losses do. It then covers discretionary distributions and how a trustee decides, the principal and income allocations that determine who actually receives the money, delegation and the directed trust structures that redistribute responsibility, and the liability regime including surcharge, the limitations period that runs from an adequate report, and the exculpatory clauses that do less than trustees assume.