now here's a pickle

So, I seem to get in this rut of making life just ridiculously difficult on myself. Before Thanksgiving, the next three years seemed so simple; finish the second year of medical school, go out to rotations, and graduate. Now, I've gone and screwed things up.

So during Thanksgiving Break, a mass e-mail went out to our class regarding a new pre-doctorate fellowship program that would focus on medical education. It is a new fellowship program with four open slots. Normally, this wouldn't be any big deal, but here's the rub. When you participate in the fellowship program, you are guaranteed that you will do your clinical rotations at your first choice. In addition, you are given a pretty good stipend for the year you are committed to the fellowship. Finally, you are given a tuition waiver for the fourth year of school.

Initially, that sounds great, right? Additional experience and you wind up getting paid about $43,000 including the tuition waiver. I thought it would be a no-brainer, too. However, out of all the reasons to go, I'm still held back by my almost primal need to be done and graduated. I've waited so long to get into medical school that I'm already two years behind all my friends from undergrad. That and I've been so hungry to get back into the wards and clinics that its nearly driven me insane. If I took the fellowship, I'd pretty much be volunteering to submit myself to another year away from patients. Not to mention that one of the major draws of getting out into the wards is to work with the people that roughed the first two years of medical school with me. I mean, that's half the fun, right? Make great friends and future colleagues so you can kick back on the weekends, talk shop, reminisce about how awful that biochemsitry test was and smile with the gratification of knowing that we helped each other through it. Is that something that I will be able to do with this new class? Is it even possible that I can make the same bonds with a class that seems so distant from ours?

So there is the pickle I'm in... the best part of this all is that I have to make this decision in the next 72 hours. Awesome.

"Again we fail to make amends
And wend our way between intents
And looking back, not moving on
Oh but something's always wrong."