Hello, in the end I've decided to end a situation that was getting worse every day. It was clear to me that the divergencies between me and my supervisor were too deep to be reconciled. In retrospect, I believe that a better communication and organization would have allowed me to complete my PhD, although the fact that I got nothing but misadvices that sent me on the wrong track for months, received little to no training on research methodology and had a seriously flawed project makes me feel less like a failure. It has been a long and challenging march, and it would have only gotten worse. The good news is that I'm not leaving Science altogether: I'll continue to do research elsewhere, where I'll have a chance to learn a lot, from people that are passionate about what they're doing, and possibly in a couple of years from now I'll go back to grad school. Thank you all for your support, and good luck for your careers

Hello pm133, definitely. I'm learning a lot of stuff on the fly, or asking for advice from more experienced researchers. Science itself is not the difficult part, it's more the utter lack of resources that hinders progress, and the uncaring attitude of my PI who never asks for them (e.g. access to equipment). One thing is getting frustrated because the experiments don't work, an other is getting stopped because you don't have access to a basic technique and you have to figure out a way around. To me my PhD projects starts looking more like one that would look nice in a science fair and not in a doctoral dissertation

Dear Tru and Ephiny, thank you for your support and suggestions, I'll arrange a meeting as soon as possible with my supervisor and my research coordinator, where I'll present a clearly defined plan of action, including needed resources and timeline from now till my graduation and pin them down to it.
I wish you both a bright career and future.

Dear Tru, thank you for your reply. The internship I was planning to apply for was actually in a research center where they are doing something closely related to my PhD, so I hoped to learn the "tools of the trade" there and then apply them to my project. Much of my complaining is due to the fact that my supervisor is not just unsupportive from an intellectual point of view, but also never asks for access to equipment or external support (despite having promised to do so), thus delaying research for months. I do not believe that this is a normal situation, nor one where one can expect to achieve good results and be productive.

Hello fellow PhD students, I would like to receive your opinion about the situation I've found myself into. I' ve just completed the second of a 3/4 years long PhD (STEM field) and I'm about to quit. This experience has been a nightmare since the beginning: my advisor assigned me a project he knows absolutely nothing about and that after a few months of study I realized was intrinsically flawed and could have never worked. From that moment onward I have taken all of the decisions regarding my PhD, starting to work on a loosely linked variant and a series of side projects with the hope of making something work. My advisor has been unhelpful at best, never giving me feedback on a paper I sent him that was crucial for our work, almost never helping me to access the facilities or instrumentation we needed and often belitting me in front of others and in general not caring, but he keeps asking to "chunk out papers", despite the fact that there is no cleary defined research path, I'm well out of my background (it's more about chemistry, while I am a physicist) and he is not providing any useful suggestions. Recently I have begun to avoid him entirely, since i believe he is more of a burden than an help and actively sought the help of more competent researchers. After two years there are basically no result to show and when I complained with my co-supervisor (who is also his boss) and expressed my interest in taking an internship but I' ve been told to quit (complaining is really a bad idea in academia). I know I've suffered from depression and in the last months have been rather unproductive and procastinated a lot, and I keep telling me that I could have done better by working harder or communicating more effectively but honestly I was lost. Has any of you experienced a similar situation? Do you believe that this is a toxic advisor and that quitting is actually a good idea? Thank you in advance.