Decisions, Decisions

The plethora of interviews was over early on this week, and the various interviewers have had the opportunity to judge me. Now it's my turn, and I am stuck.

There were four offers, two of which need not be discussed. Of the remaining two, one was expected. The other one was a pleasant surprise.

In no particular order:

First: certified analytical lab
The company is, in part, an analytical lab that sells its services to customers in particular industries (e.g. testing environmental samples for compliance). This is the job where I said the interview went fairly well until I said I probably wanted to go to grad school. There are several things I like about this position: relatively close to home (so I can mooch off of my parents), plenty of gadgetry (ooh, HPLC*), and I'll get to see how a certified lab (which has a certain glamourousness to it) operates. Also, it's very much relevant to half of my major. However, I won't be allowed to use all the instruments (reasonable, but aww, it'd be cool to run the ICP-MS!), and this job will probably get repetitive after awhile. Also the company is hiring two students, and I have no clue who the other person is. Might be awkward. And then there's LIMS. Grr, LIMS. Especially when it's buggy, which it invariably is.

Second: applied research
The company is in the energy industry and has one major product. The position involves researching on the properties of the product and optimizing it for various applications of interest. The interview for this position went quite well overall. Since this company is relatively small and new, even I as a student should be able to get quite involved. Also, this being a research position, it should be less routine than the usual analytical work. That said, this job is a little far, making living arrangements difficult. Also, it is more "engineering" than "chemistry" (of any subdiscipline), and I don't know how much chemistry will I actually learn on the job; it'll look out of place on the resume as well. Not sure about how many toys do I get to play with, either. The most unfortunate part is that the interviewers don't know how an XRF works, and that makes me very sad.

Now...pick one.

There are other decisions to make as well, but those are minor for the most part. For example, hmm, what should I make for supper next week?

As a random aside, I need to be reminded to make a post on representations of groups so that I can mentally clarify to myself what the professor was talking about today.

[Edited]
Parents: "Take the one closer to home!" Me: *meep.*
And as one of my acquaintances have dryly pointed out, my parents are so going to kill me if I don't pick the one closer to home. But then again...

*It's probably easy to tell that I am somewhat enamoured with chromatography of various forms. It's one of the most important analytical techniques in current use, and I am not familiar with it. The novelty will wear off if I spend some time using the instrument on a regular basis, which I might or not depending on which job I pick.