Overwhelmed and feeling alone
I’m a second-year PhD student in biological sciences in Germany. I moved here from India last year, partly because it felt safer for me as a lesbian and I wanted to build a life where I could just exist without hiding. My move was also very sudden, my contract ended in August in India and I had to join my PhD lab in October. I decided to join my current lab also because I wanted to get out of my previous lab and from the homophobic environment. My residence permit in Germany relies on my job visa.
My PhD has been going downhill for months. The project I joined was built on results that turned out to be not reproducible, and my lab doesn’t actually have the expertise to do the work the project requires. My supervisor is basically absent. She doesn’t know the project in detail, can’t articulate the long-term goal, and communicates in a very unclear way. She is never constructive only critical. I have to make my own direction for a project and I self-doubt a lot, which makes it harder.
On top of that, my girlfriend lives in Belgium. We’ve been together for a year and 5 months, and being apart is getting harder, especially after spending two weeks together recently. I’m deeply unhappy where I am. I am unsure how to proceed. Is it okay to quit my PhD, if I am offered a job someplace else (even if the chances of that are very low).