I’ve always been a little indecisive…strike that, I can be a lot indecisive. I also worry about buyer’s remorse. I hate missed opportunities, and I don’t like that so many times in life, one choice is made to the exclusion of all others. So naturally, making my rank order list caused some consternation.
For weeks I felt confident in my choices. But then, as the deadline got closer, I started to ponder more. I thought about what it would be like to switch my first and second choices. What it would mean for my education, my life with my fiancé and our cat, and how our families would feel about it. I reconsidered the weather, since by chance my top two choices have wildly different weather patterns. I thought about the relative convenience of the distances between the hospital and clinic. I searched the internet for comparisons of costs of living in the two cities.
None of this information made the choice any easier. I like my top two residency choices for very different reasons. They have entirely different missions and cultures. The physician I would become through my training at one program is likely to be far cry from the physician I’d become at the other. Both programs could train me to be a great physician but they would shape my path in potentially inconvertible ways.
Then there is the chance that neither of my top choices actually like me (although I received a love letter from one) and I could match at a completely different program on my list. Match Day could be a total surprise after all this noodling back and forth between my top two choices. Who knows?
Ultimately, I decided to trust my weeks of thought and deliberation instead of swapping my top two choices in the final hours. We’ll see how it turns out on Match Day. No matter where I match, I’m sure it will be an adventure.
