I am currently a 3rd year biochemistry PhD student. There are a lot of things that have not been working out lately (for the past few months) and I have been contemplating leaving grad school. First, I thought I would have some freedom as far as the direction of my thesis but my advisor more or less directed me to a topic and didn't let me decide. The work I am doing currently involves computational work, which I did not have significant experience with prior to grad school and was hoping to do more experimental work. I am doing some experimental work too, but much of my work involves simulations. Not only that, but when I try to figure out the coding to do what I want to do I often feel lost. I just feel so incompetent with what I am doing right now, and for that reason I am losing the motivation for completing the project. With the results I do have, the simulations clearly deviate from the experimental data and I tried submitting a paper, but it was rejected. I am just tired of not making progress and it is just leaving me frustrated day in and day out. Part of me wants to try and finish this because I have come so far and never was a quitter, but part of me thinks that life is too short to be doing something that is making me miserable.