Seeking your advice -- I am at a vertex: which path do I choose?
Last year I hardly saw any of you. Grad school + running a team meant that I hardly slept and had almost nothing to say about life except hospitals and computing and whatever I know about biology. In three weeks school starts again. If I chose to go, it will only be worse. Much worse. The size of my team is rapidly doubling and I have more projects and grants then ever. How the hell can I be in class if I am the lead architect on a national project? I’m speaking at two conferences in the middle of the school semester. Actively hiring and training and setting up collaborations is not how one prepares for school.

Conversely, if I don’t go back this semester that pushes my PHD out another year. I need to explore the world beyond this city-- as awesome as boston is– I can't live here indefinitely. I can’t (won’t) leave until I am finished. The feeling of incompleteness haunts me, and I make a better jonny apple seed than gardener. I have started so many things and none of them are finished.

The middle path is to take a semester break and instead start the pharmacovigilance thesis project with my mentors. That would be top notch training and hopefully contribute to graduation. I recognize this is out of order but it fits my history. Could also reopen the genotyping work and try to find the common ground between genomics and public health and call it personalized medicine. I am hoping I could teach myself the methods on the fly enough to publish at least one more paper. I can return to school next semester when I train my team to run these projects without me.

I’m seriously at a vertex and I’m not sure what to do.
If you have any advice, please, I’m all ears.

--andy