Changing my future fellowship in mid-residency

[thelogicalsong]

Hi,

I am a PGY2 in peds. I built my whole profile so far to go into a competitive peds fellowship (making connections within the department, tons of research, electives, everyone in my program knows I am going into that fellowship).

For very personal reasons I may need to change my desired fellowship into another one that is way less competitive but completely different from my desired one. I am worried that there is no time to build a profile for the new fellowship, although it is actually not competitive at all. I am even more worried how I can explain that drastic change in my career path during interviews with new fellowship people, and how my application fits my desired fellowship very strongly but has nothing to do with the new one.

I still want to go into my desired one, but again, for very personal reasons I might be forced to go into a different path.

Also, for those who have been in my situation and practicing now, was there any time in your life where you said to yourself: I wish if just sicked with what I wanted to do?

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[FrkyBgStok]

It is going to be hard to help because of the vague manner in which you are describing things. It isn’t uncommon for people to change their minds so you could just play that card. “I thought I wanted to do this but the more I did that, the more I loved it.” Probably would work well.

That being said, now that I have decided on which fellowship I want to apply to this fall, every other specialty seems miserable in comparison. There is an obvious bias but if my wife was trying to sway me to something I don’t want to do, I’m not sure I would be too happy about it. But not sure about your situation.

 

[Stitch]

I wouldn't worry about this. People do it all the time. The main thing is to articulate your reasons for your interest in whatever fellowship you choose.