Anyone been in a similar situation that can talk to me?

colm_gti

I'm in a bit of a strange situation and hoping someone that has been through a similar situation can offer some advice or is willing to chat on or off the public boards about their experience...

I started a 24 month research masters project in November 2010, a few months in I was provisionally offered a PhD based on passing a stage transfer. Shortly after questions arose as to whether it was worthwhile funding my project any further (inconclusive results to date).

Anyway, the transfer went ahead, and while a lot of questions were posed during the assessment that made me really think about whether this project had the legs for a PhD or not, I was passed, filled out the papers and carried on, motivated going into the 3rd year of my PhD. A few inconclusive experiments and the thoughts of all the questions asked during my transfer had me questioning whether or not I should have opted to leave with a MSc. I told the head of the cluster and though I think he knew I was just going through a bad patch that I would come out of, he told me how to go about writing to finish up.

A few weeks later things were looking up, but I notice I'm still listed as a MSc student on the college student services page, so I questioned my supervisor about this and was told that we need to meet to see whether it was worth progressing my project any further towards a PhD, though I thought this decision had already been made...and now I'm waiting for my second stage transfer to roll around. Apparently my previous one is now being counted as a DSP meeting...

My experimental work to date has still proven to be inconclusive, and I have yet to get any positive data. While this is pretty demoralizing in itself, it's not what has me most upset. It's the constant changing of minds, and the complete uncertainty that I'm faced with, with regard to the fate of my project. One week I'm leaving with a masters, the next there is loads of potential for a PhD, a constant cycle between the two. It's completely ruined my interest, not only in the project itself, but in continuing on with research. So much so that purely walking into the college each morning puts me in a bad mood.

I've now been offered a plethora of different avenues I could take to finish out a PhD over the course of the next 18-24 months, and while the security of money coming in for that time, and the qualification at the end seem attractive, the prospects of staying here for that time have me contemplating prying my eyeballs out of their sockets now to avoid it.

I'm not looking for sympathy, and I understand that PhD's are meant to be difficult, but are they meant to be this testing? I would just like to chat to someone that has been in a similar situation and see how they dealt with it. I've tried to talk to a few people in here, but as far as they're concerned a PhD and a life in acedemia is the be all and end all....I don't intend on progressing any further than a PhD (if I even progress that far in the first place), in fact it'd be nice to get away from science altogether...