I'm thinking of emailing other universities and seeing if they have any funded projects available. I'm just not sure if this is the case of "the grass is greener" as in I might have even worse problem with new supervisor/place. Other disadvantage is that I have done some work here and would have to start all over again on some unrelated project.

Any advice please?

So I'm in my second year of part time study. My project here is still very vague and I feel like I have no direction. While I get along well with my supervisor, he is extremly busy and just doesn't have the time I need from him. He only cares about his own career, and my progress as a PhD student in terms of how it will affect his career. I mean, he wants me to complete it but he doesn't care if I do publications/conferences along the way or if I'm going to have any job prospects later on.

There are 5 students in our department and I'm the absolute worst out of them all. They all have at least one publication and/or conference appearance and some have been there shorter than me.

I also feel like most academics don't take me seriously as I'm the only girl in male dominated enviroment and I like to dress up/take care off my looks. So I feel like my proffesional capabilities are underestimated.

Oh mine has been to two located on two different continents in May alone. I have only been to ones that are within 100km radius of my city.

He does actually take papers as a priority.

Mine does too, just not my paper. He has million of higher profile papers to write/review. He is pretty influental in our department and is regarded as extremly succesfull (won awards for his work etc), while I am at the very bottom of the food chain.

Thanks Juno and others.

I'm so glad I found this forum and I will probably post regularly and annoy you all with my freakouts. Yes, submitting without my advisor and about a team of 20 (that have had contact with the data in even a small way) wouldn't go down well.

You don't need your supervisor in order to write a paper. Write one, get it looked at, send it off. A PhD requires you to be self-motivating and self-productive.

I do rely on my advisor too much I guess. I tend to wait for him to tell me what to do because I'm too insecure that I will do something wrong. Result of that is me taking tons of his time (meetings twice a week and I'm part time) but he doesn't seem too annoyed by this. He is getting busier though and I am on my own more which makes me uncomofortable.

I do have to do my thesis defence in few months (standard procedure here) so I guess I can wait till then and either pass or fail. Hopefully things will work out for the best.

Well, I'm naturally a worrier and can never tell when my fears are realistic. My "no publications" issue stems from asking a senior lecturer yesterday how do I know if I'm making enough progress? She told me "You measure your progress by how many publications you get".

My other problem is vague topic, but that is getting more clear and sorted out now.

I have so many worries about my PhD that it's not funny.
I'm a part time student 50% study load and am in my second year. I made almost no progress so far.

While I think that my primary advisor is nice, he just seems too distracted with his more important projects as he progresses up the career ladder. We were supposed to have the paper out at the beginning of the year, but it got postponed to the end of the year now. I'm thinking it will never happen. I have two other advisors but I find them useless and completly dissinterested.

I'm worried that I'm not good enough, my research topic is still very vague and even if I end up somehow getting the thesis together (big if) I might be completly unemployable with no publications.

Meanwhile, other first year students present at conferences and have few papers out already.

I have overheard my primary advisor describe me as a "strong student" which almost sounds fake to me as there is all evidence to the contrary.

Maybe I should just admit defeat and quit.