"What might have been"

[gellert]

I have three offers for really prestigious post-bac fellowships and one grad offer from a tier 1 institution. I've already accepted one of the three fellowships/RAships and am EXTREMELY excited about it. (It's with the professor who is without a doubt the leading expert in my subfield, if not the top scientist in my field as a whole who is alive today.) It's a great opportunity and I couldn't be happier about it.

Until I got offered another fellowship. And now a third fellowship + lab managership at a top school, which promises first-author publications and authority to design and run my own experiments.

I'm not turning down the job I already accepted, as I think the connections I'll make there as well as the things I'll learn + the projects I'll have the chance to work on (as well as the fact that my PI has expressed interest in letting me be involved in project design and said Sie was "interested in my ideas" -- a serious compliment, coming from hir! and I am positive my career will blossom because of this job).

However.

I still can't escape that weird sense of "Well, what if I hadn't accepted it so soon? Would I have wanted to do X fellowship, or attend Y grad school?"

How do you deal with that sort of dissonance? Where even if you know you made the right choice, you can't help wondering about what might have been if you'd taken a different fork in those yellow woods?

[anthropologygeek]

I still wonder the what IRS with programs I turned down. Just must think you made the best decision but I don't know if the doubts will ever go away

[juilletmercredi]

It goes away after a while. Like you said, you will be working with the top scientist in your field, and that will no doubt blossom into other opportunities. I'm sure that you will have your pick of PhD programs if you choose to go that route, and then there's choosing postdoctoral programs...there are plenty of choices to be made and opportunities to be had. You always have to choose one, and there's always the chance that the other one would've been different in a good way. We always just have to choose what's best for us in the moment. As long as you are happy with your choice, just go ahead and let your mind wander without ruminating too much, and eventually those feelings will fade as you really dig into your program.

[contretemps]

Same sentiments. I accepted a PhD offer from JHU last month. Then I was awarded an Erasmus Mundus Masters scholarship (where I'll study in three different countries- France, Italy and Poland). It has always been my dream to go to Europe and I have a gut feeling that I'll be happier, there but logic says that I should do the PhD. Then again, I can't really decline JHU after accepting their offer; that would create a bad impression on me.