I am a second year PhD student going into third year. I am from India and am getting my PhD from a university in the UK. The issue is that I am a biology major and have worked in various labs on biological techniques and I am extremely passionate about it.

But I started applying for PhD during COVID when the opportunities were extremely limited. I was accepted into the PhD program in analytical chemistry. The project required me to learn mass spectrometry and chromatography from scratch and channelize that knowledge into biomarkers discovery. This was extremely challenging for me and after two years I feel extremely disheartened. I don't perform very well on my profession vivas either, I am extremely unhappy doing it too. I recently spoke to my supervisor about it and they informed me that a way out would be getting an MPhil degree. So it would be a 2 year MPhil research degree with 6 months submission pending as I joined 6 months later in the start due to visa restrictions during COVID.

I have also come to the conclusion that I do want to get a PhD, but just not in analytical chemistry. I want to work in a biology lab. Will it be advisable at this stage to look for other PhD opportunities? I don't have any gap years, so my current career trajectory looks like: BSC MSC and MPhil.

Suggestions please?

If you know you have no interest in your current PhD, cut the torment and get out with a MPhil.understand though that if you are relying on a scholarship it will not be uneasy getting a second PHD scholarship from UK as an international student.

You could get a job on post study work visa in a lab of your interest then try to get a PhD at that lab.

Good luck