Hi all I am new here, and sorry for such a long message, I deperately need help. I'm doing my PhD study in one of the top business schools in the UK, I'm in my year four and things are going really bad. My superviors have been taking turns to take on maternity leaves since my year one, I only got one supervior during year two, got a new one in year three. Lots of changesa because of that. My project scope changed as well because I couldn't guarantee organisaitonal access for data collection. As such, my methodology had to change from survey data collection to experiments. During my year three, it was agreed that I had to narrow down my research scope and use prolific & experiement data for my study in order to complete my phd. I got good gades in all the past annual assessments despites the changes. Yet I knew that I had to apply for one year extension durting my year three because of all the changes. Things suddenly got changed in my year four review a few months ago. I was told my project scope was not enough for a phd and that my data was mainly from prolific study that were not good enough. I failed in that assessment and was suggested to get a Mphil instead. However, the programme director would accept the one year extension application if I could finish my whole thesis's lit review, methodology, and one qualitative paper in three months. I did so a few days ago, on top of that, I integrated an additional dataset in my qualitative paper and also collected the data for my second paper already, I aim to finish the second paper in the coming 3 months. I will have another assessment meeting next week, and just had a catch up meeting with my superviors. From what they 'concluded', I made significant progress but they still didn't think the current scope and work are enough for a phd and that I may need to consider a Mphil. I was shocked. The scope was narrowed down as per the supervisors and panel mebers' suggestions because it was too complicated, and I met the requirement and showed significant progress. What is 'enough' and what is 'not enough' then? I'm lost and it hurts my soul to envision myself of not getting it. I decided to do a phd because the professors and superviosrs in my master uni used to tell me how much potential I have gotriing my first year of phd I also got a paper presentation award in a academic conference. All of a sudden, I was told I ha no potential and my project is NOT ENOUGH for a phd. I find it extremely unfair to me that my performance was almost 'framed' as per their will, especially the new supervisor assigned to me in my year three. What should I do? I'm so devastated currently.
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