Hi,

New to this forum here.

I recently switched from Master's to PhD by doing my candidacy exam 16 months into my Master's. Now I regret it so much since that means all my Master's work counts towards my PhD degree and if I fail my defense I'll be s.o.l. and end up with no Master's or PhD. I'm scared.
This racked with the fact that I was on academic probation before with a shitty undergrad marks. I screwed up badly in second year when I had health issues (polycystic cysts and a depressing scare after thinking it was cancer) and no matter how hard I worked in third and fourth year it didn't make up for it. I was thankful my supervisor accepted me but I feel like I've completely let her down with my mediocre work. Everytime I send in a manuscript it's riddled with mistakes and changes and now it's even gotten rejected after all that work and she expressed disappointment in me in wasting her time.
It also doesn't help that someone in my department, who I turned down to help her with her experiments because I was busy, have been spreading gossip and rumours that I'm a liar and a cheat and I'm lazy and stupid (in regards to my probation). It has affected my relationships with my peers and with even the office staff acting coldly. I once answered the phone call from the office staff and they in turn said "they want to talk to someone else who knows what they're doing"! It hurt a lot.
Recently I was even turned down for a second year lab teaching assistant (TA) position even though they did not have enough graduate students for TAs. The professor in charge of that would prefer undergrad TAs than me, stating that I'm best at 1st year labs..
I can't handle the gossip, rumours and letting down my supervisor. It's just worrying and killing me.
What should I even do?