I am finishing my first year of PhD, and I don't have a specific project.
When I had my interview everything seems wonderful, the professor and my direct supervisor (postdoc) where very nice, they had a project for me and everything seemed to be great. The postdoc which directly supervises me was finishing up a manuscript when I arrived and she told me that I could help her to finish it, like that I would have second author paper and I would learn a lot of stuffs for my future PhD project closely related to hers. So, I accepted, I was like that (doing what she needs me to do) for 8 months. The strange point is that I never could have my own samples, I always need her to find where she was keeping them because they were very precious, etc. The good thing is that I learned a lot of techniques, and the paper is still under revision, but it will get published at some point. The bad point is that she kept saying me during this 8 months that she was working and thinking on a project for me but actually she was just doing her project. So, I started asking directly to my professor, he told me that the postdoc should have everything ready (cell lines, cell culturing, etc, and that he had the money to support the project), but actually we do not have a proper cell culture room (no UV light, only 1 incubator where they grow mouse, insect and human cells), but we had the samples. So, I decided to write a professor next to us who is doing cell culturing to set a collaboration and could use his space, he agreed and everything worked fine. So we thaw the cells that this postdoc told me they would be perfect and straight forward and it turns to be crappy. So what should I do now? I don't have project after almost 1 year PhD and I have my committe meeting in 1-2months. What should I do/say to them?
