I was just wondering if anyone could give me some advice/share their experiences with me! I'm now half way through my PhD and so far I've not got any results. I only get to see my supervisor every two months and he never really gives me any advice, he just tells me that I should be the one coming up with the ideas. I never get any technical advice off him and the senior postdoc in our lab is no better, so I feel like I'm just going round in circles trying to get things to work and failing. I have written a project outline and my supervisor says it's fine, but I'm still feeling at a bit of a loss. I did feel like quitting before christmas but I persuaded myself to give it some more time, and most of the time I can stay positive, but I've just had another meeting with my supervisor which has left me feeling stupid and a failure. I love science and I don't really want to quit but I'm just not sure how long I can keep pretending that everything is ok.

Have you talked to your supervisor about how you feel? Is there any way you could talk to him? My supervisor is a bit like yours now, not setting me any concrete tasks or deadlines and just letting me go my own way with occassional suggestions/guidelines... it works fine for me because I'm a quite autonomous and individualistic person but I guess it won't work for everybody. Maybe if you explain to your supervisor that you would like him to modify his tactics slightly to give you more intense "support" he would agree to do it.

Anyway if you have already talked to your supervisor and nothing changed, or if he isn't too approachable, isn't there in your deparment a PhD coordinator, or a graduate studies director, or a lecturer/professor which coordinates the PhD program? You could talk to this person too.

have you an advisor or similar you can speak with?

Well, I'm pretty much on my own to figure out how things work. Perhaps due to my personality, I'm quite reluctant to talk to my supervisor or ask for help unless I couldn't solve the problem after trying all possible means.