Confused and curious

I was figuring out how to fill out the basic paperwork for the NIH-NRSA fellowship application yesterday, and somehow found myself wondering whether my previous advisor at a different university had accepted new grad students. I think I was prompted by the fact that I was first introduced to the idea of applying for the fellowship while I was at that university.

I looked up the website for the lab and found a link to the lab team. As expected, the group of people was rather large and there was my former advisor looking cheerful and pleased with himself. I really did enjoy working with him and I would have stayed if not for an acerbic relationship with the only other grad student in the lab. We came in together and she expressed self-entitlement and created a sense of competition where none was necessary.

Anyhoo, I searched the whole picture and could not find her face. Curious, I figured she was missing that day. So I looked up the link to current grad students in the lab and found that her name was missing there, too. How strange! I haven't been gone long. She couldn't possibly have graduated so soon! It's only been three years since we started and the typical duration is five/six years for a Ph.D. in that department.

So now I'm wildly curious about what happened to her. Did she switch labs? Did she quit? Did she get a Master's and leave? Did she transfer to a different university? Ugh! Now I feel like if I had just held on long enough and stuck it through (though believe me, it was a living hell) that maybe I would have outlasted her and had the lab to myself. Oh! How I hate second-guessing myself and my decisions. Quitting that program was undeniably the hardest decision I ever made. And she made motions of desiring to quit because the circumstances under which we ended up there were not pleasing to her. But, I figured she would never quit.

So then I entertained thoughts of doing a postdoc there, but such is not possible. I've switched fields. Do I actually miss it there? Am I at all displeased about being here? (Recently, yes, but I think that's entirely due to the recent break-up. And perhaps the workload.)

I'm second-guessing myself again. I would not have been successful or happy there, and the past is gone. But, I wonder, what if she had never been there to begin with? Would I be on my way to a Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience by now?