I am so in love with flight of the conchords!! so glad its not just me slowly failing my phd because i can't stop watching the clips on you tube. (ps, best song has to be "if you're into it.")

hi everyone. i just want to say a big thank you to you guys for all the replies. just taking a break from another hopeless day of data collection and as awful as it may sound, it does make me feel better knowing others do feel the same way. i was worrying i really was losing it for a while, but i now know these feelings are part of the typical process making me feel more hopeful that it can get better! so thank you everyone!

"why on earth did you go ahead with such an obvious flaw?" and my only answer is that i don't have time to change it.) not to mention my constant anxiety over the other phd students and how they are so much better than me, my ever-decreasing confidence meaning im finding it harder to talk to anyone else even in a social setting (christmas party season not making this any easier making me feel less and less liked in this department by anyone), my fears i choose the wrong supervisor and she doesnt really know what she's doing and so forth. i know i sound like such a misery guts and there are some parts to phd life i like. im just finding it so hard to remember any of them at the moment. so, 2 questions to this post really. (1) does anyone else recognise these feelings as ones they too are going through or went through before (ie, is this the traditional 2nd year slump?) and (2) any advise on how to get through it? thank you!

hello all! if anyones free could use a quick bit of advice. i think i have officially hit my 2nd year slump. i kept reading about it over the past few months on this forum about how somewhere midway through your phd, it will suddenly all come to a halt and feel so desperate and hopeless. its been building up for a few weeks now, but i have reached the point where i literally drag myself from bed in the morning and drive in fantasizing about all the alternative lives i wish i was leading. Nothing really dramatic or horrible has brought about this despair. i just can't stop thinking about how crap every study ive done to date has been, and how the next study just is never going to work and the waves of abuse ill get from other academics when it doesnt work.(short version is, this next study will have one big methodological flaw. if i get the results i need then it wont matter, but if i dont get the expected results, everyone will simply say ......(continued below)