Quote From lostinoz:
Lilobeep, thanks for yor encouraging post. I am wondering after you told your supervisor that you are considering quitting, did he/she changed how he/she acted towards you? Was it a "huge deal", or was it forgotten soon enough?
I had told my supervisor I would take a little time to think about it, when I made my decision to stay I just told her and things got back to the way they were before. It wasn't that big of a deal once I said I was staying. When I was writing up my thesis she did said that she knows how tough it is at the write up stage for the student so I'm sure our supervisors know we arent the only students who have thought about quitting, they probably did when they were students, they may even have thought about it at times as supervisors. My other supervisor has always been critical of my work, more destructive than constructive, and this had dented my confidence and therefore was probably a factor in my disliking of my PhD. Even though I didn't like his way of pointing out mistakes I look back now and realise I learnt alot from him, so i'm grateful for that. I doubt very much he expected me to finish at all never mind on time :-)
Things will get back to normal soon for you i'm sure :-)
One thing that helped me get back on track in my work was that instead of looking at the PhD as a whole(ie getting overwhelmed) I concentrated on small pieces at a time and it soon built up. But finish your PhD because you want to, not because your supervisor says that you quitting will replect badly on him. ;-)