Hi everyone,

Apologies for a bit of a depressing thread that I'm sure has come up time and time again - I think I just need to vent or maybe have a friendly kick up the bum! :)

I'm about to start my third year (science PhD) and the last couple of weeks my motivation is through the floor! Things had been going relatively well, my experiments hadn't been working too well but my supervisor and I had come up with ways to write it all into my thesis anyway, so I was feeling much happier about everything. But more recently, I've had problems with contaminated cell lines which delay me by a couple of weeks each time it happens, and it just feels like the next year will fly by, my funding will run out and I'll have nothing to show for my three years in the lab. A few other things have happened too, e.g. meetings with rude colleagues who were delighted to hear my experiments were failing and saying things like 'oh will you finish on time?' with a massive grin on their face! Anyway... I just feel like I'm at the end of my tether, but I'm aware that hiding at home instead of going into the lab is getting me nowhere, and I definitely don't want to quit. I just want to feel a bit more positive so that I can get back to being (or trying to be!) productive.

I've tried talking things over with my partner but he doesn't have much time to talk with his long work hours, and my family are less than understanding of the whole thing. If I complain about a bad day, they tell me to quit and get a 'real job' - not helpful! What's more is that this is making me anxious all the time, I'm even having weird nightmares most nights and wake up feeling really panicky!

Anyway, sorry again for a long ranting post - thanks for reading, and any thoughts would be great!

Tulip

Sorry that things seems like they haven't been going so well. I assume you have a plan/timeline? You say there have been issues, what do you need to achieve in your experiements before you can write up, are you looking for a specific result before you can conclude your experiements? You can't just keep going and going experimenting as you will never get finished. I think you need to talk to your supervisor again and come to an agreement of a cut off point for experimentation and what you hope to have achieved by then.

You've agreed how to write this up with your supervisor so that is good. Negative results aren't always bad, it's the way you right it up, you started with such and such a hypothesis but so and so was actually true, etc etc. If you don't prove your initial hypothesis a PhD can still be awarded if what you found along the way (negative or positive) or a new method you have used, contributes novel knowledge in your field. I suggest looking at your methodology and data, see what's new and tailor your thesis to that.

I understand some scientific PhDs require less word count than say humanities so you might not need to start writing straight away.

You've come this far, I'm sure you can finish, just set a deadline and work towards an end point otherwise you will feel like it's infinite! Good luck x

.

Hi wowzers, thanks very much for your reply!

I had a chat with my supervisor and I'm feeling happier that the experiments won't go on forever and there are certain things I'm trying to prove (or disprove if that turns out to be the case!), so hopefully I can wrap up the experiments without them dragging on forever. I also took a short break recently so I've come back to work with a sense of perspective (I was feeling pretty emotional at the time of this post a couple of months back!).

I appreciate you taking the time to reply - although it took me a while to reply to this, it was so helpful to have a calm logical response at the time and it really helped me get my head around everything that was going on. How are things going with your PhD? Am I right in thinking you started relatively recently? Hope everything is going well! x