u/casmolyyy

Hi everyone,

I’m trying to make this as short as possible. I’m a 30-year-old PhD student in Microbiology (f), currently entering my 5th year. Based in Spain. I’m writing this because I’ve hit a wall and I honestly don't know how much longer I can keep going.

I started my PhD with a 4-year fellowship awarded to two PIs from different research groups for a collaborative project. They never got along. They decided I would work 2 years for one and 2 years for the other, and I had no idea what I was getting into.

After one year with zero results, Supervisor 1 told Supervisor 2 that it would be better if I stayed with him exclusively so I could actually make progress, compensating Supervisor 2 financially through some shady under-the-table deal. I cut ties with Supervisor 2, and a postdoc from the lab joined as my co-supervisor.

A few months later, Supervisor 1 moved his lab to France (he is still my main director), leaving me physically in Spain with my co-supervisor in a 'borrowed' lab. Eventually, my co-supervisor landed a position to start her own group at another university, and I phisically moved with her. However, my grant didn't allow changing institutions, which means I've spent half of my PhD working illegally at a different university without health insurance or coverage.

Regarding results, neither of my supervisors even knew what that 'collaborative project' I was hired for was actually about, and they provided (almost) zero guidance. I work on something completely outside their expertise (as with my fellowship I was supposed to work on a special different project), so I’ve had to figure everything out on my own by reading literature. I have one 'big' omics experiment that I can analyze—which took me 2+ years of troubleshooting just to set up—but everything else failed; I have very few results, and they are all negative. My primary supervisor is so absent that one day he literally told me: "I'm sorry, I can't help you with your topic", and walked away.

On top of that, the postdoc who became my co-supervisor has been on sick and maternity leave since April. That means I've been completely alone in the lab for 4 months, with no postdoc peers or anyone else to guide me. Almost no meetings, no guidance, and not a single chat on a paper that was read in common in these full 4 years.

Now I’m approaching the end of my fellowship and I’m supposed to stay 1 year more enrolled in the PhD program. I will be working while collecting unemployment benefits for a few more months, until I can start a 6-month contract extension that my co-supervisor offered me. The problem is that I'm still missing experiments that keep failing, and what I currently have as results lack cohesion and consist mostly of negative results. To defend my thesis, I need at least one submitted publication, but I feel so far away from achieving that.

Deep down, I sometimes worry this is sort of my fault—that I just haven't worked hard enough because I lost all my motivation. I just don't think I have it in me to push myself to the limit to finish in the little time I have left, and I am 100% sure that I want to pivot away from academia anyway.

At the same time, I struggle with the thought of throwing 4 years of my life away, and I tell myself it is only one more year and the worst has passed. I also feel like having the PhD could still hold real value in industry. Plus, I feel conflicted because my co-supervisor, despite being negligent at times, has always been kind to me and genuinely tried her best after Supervisor 1 abandoned us. I’m also terrified of "starting from scratch" at 30+.

I wonder if I should give it one last push to finally get my PhD, or if, on the other hand, it’s just not worth my time and mental health anymore. I’d like to learn more about omics analysis and data science, and I plan to sudy something during the next academic year.

I’d love to hear your thoughts or perspectives on this.