I'm in a very similar situation. my area is also interdisciplinary, which initially sounded really exciting, but now I've come to realise it just means you're bouncing around different departments with no one supervisor who understands what my PhD is about. it's really getting me down, but because I've taken some breaks since my undergraduate degree plus some jobs abroad, I get comments from friends and family like "welcome to the real world of job stress" which is pretty patronising.

Hi everyone,

feeling pretty low at the moment. I feel like I'm not at all good at this and really unmotivated. I've had some issues with anxiety and depression this year which haven't helped, plus my supervisor is incredibly busy and not particularly knowledgable about the field my PhD is in (a lot of lab work/bioinformatics, and it's new stuff to me too) so it's all incredibly daunting

I had my transfer presentation/essay which I passed, but not very well. I got a lot of criticism from a secondary supervisor. She said my writing was poor, which another person agreed with. this took me by surprise because we hadn't been asked to submit any formal writing yet and I've never been told that. I don't get much support and get shunted around a fair bit, but maybe I need to be more resilient. at the moment I'm thinking of quitting, but part of me thinks maybe it's my mental state that's the problem and the situation won't improve when I leave. I just feel like I'm drowning a bit and don't have the passion for the work right now.