Two roads diverged in a wood... and does it even matter which one I took?

One thing I definitely never thought or said before my PhD (which I often think and voice to others now) is that there have been so many seemingly big decisions in my life which now seem like they didn’t matter that much. And it’s not that my life wouldn’t look different now if I had chosen the other path–it’s that I would have eventually made it back to the path I did end up choosing if the other path hadn’t fulfilled me.

The most clear example of this for me is choosing to pursue a PhD. At the time, it felt like this huge, life-altering crossroad. I knew I wanted to go to grad school, but of my five applications, I only applied to one PhD program¹. Once I had heard back and realized I had a couple of options, I spent so much time thinking about what would be best for me and my future. And I really didn’t know. There’s so much you don’t know about grad school, especially PhD programs, before you get there. I eventually made my decision, largely based advice along the lines of, “If you think you’ll ever want to do a PhD, you should do it now, because it’ll only get harder to go back and do later.”

Shortly afterwards, I heard back from a firm focused on sustainable investing that I had applied to for an internship. They told me that while all the intern positions had been filled, they’d like to talk with me about a full time analyst position. That was the first time I thought, ‘Oh. Maybe I could’ve done something else instead. It could have been interesting.’

I’ve thought that kind of thing a lot since I started grad school. I genuinely think that there were some jobs I would’ve been happy working straight out of undergrad (this is not something I thought while in undergrad). And if they hadn’t been satisfying enough for me, I would’ve made my way back to grad school with some years of industry experience under my belt, something that I constantly feel like would be useful to have right now.

My point is that, similarly to my view on soul mates, I no longer think there is just one way to do things that will lead me to happiness. I guess if I make a bad decision and end up hating the path I chose, I’ll have to suffer through that until I can get out of it and start doing something else. But believing that in most situations I can handle the suffering and can eventually move onto something better makes any decision I make less scary. Right now, I’m thinking about doing an internship during my PhD. The thought of getting behind and of not focusing enough on my PhD work scares me a little and makes me question my fitness for being a PhD student–why should I be in a PhD program if I want to do things other than my research? Shouldn’t I be spending my PhD trying to get as many papers published as possible? [I realize these thoughts sound ridiculous and I disagree with them as I write them, but these are the stupid things that eat away at me.] But at the same time, as I’ve conveyed here, the thought that if the internship ends up sucking and puts me behind a little, I think it’ll be ok. First of all, I have an amazing advisor who I know will support me through whatever I decide. So even if the internship derails my plans for publishing 3+ papers in my exactly-five-year PhD, I’ll still graduate at some point, and that’s really what matters now.

This may have made me sound insufferable, and I feel like I got a little off topic there at the end, but I hope the message is clear. We can’t do a perfect life cycle assessment of our choices before we make them, and I don’t think we need to; either path can lead to happiness, even if that just means taking one path is an indirect route to the other.