I am just started into my second year of my PhD. My first year consisted of a lot of reading, practicing sampling methods, optimizing protocols and planning future experiments. I passed my review to officially become a PhD candidate last September. I have now optimized large parts of my assay and have refined my sampling technique, but have not generated any usable data as yet. Therefore, I then sent some optimized samples to be analyzed in a lab overseas, and through a couple of small complications, it has taken a long time for the results to be returned to me. I am quite frustrated as I have now been out of the lab for almost 2 months, whilst waiting for my results to come back. In the meantime, I have written up a draft of my introduction/lit review chapter, which my supervisor has reviewed, and started writing up my chapter on the samples that are being analyzed.

I had a meeting with my supervisors before Christmas, and they were happy with my progress, but I am worried that if my sample results come back and the data is unusable, or of poor quality, that I will just have wasted a couple of months. If that does happen I feel it will be hard to motivate myself to go through the process again! I come in to the office each day and read papers, refine my first chapter etc, but because i'm not in the lab I feel that colleagues think that i'm being lazy. I am not - I am just waiting for results that will hopefully contribute to my thesis!

I would greatly appreciate any advice that people on this forum could offer.

Thank you

This is pretty normal, so don't worry. Even if the data is unusable, you haven't wasted your time - you've been writing your thesis! That's what you're here to do!

If your supervisors are happy, that's enough really. You could ask them whether there is anything else you can be doing in the meantime though, and ask them what they think will happen if the data isn't what you want.

Many people spend years refining things and then get no results, then they try something else and hey presto! That's what research is about.