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I am doing my master's thesis in Physics and I am stuck already for a quite bit. What I mean by "stuck" is that I am trying to implement something completely new to the analysis of my working group and I have put REALLY MUCH effort into it and now once this thing is finally implemented, the results I get do not seem reasonable. I do understand that communication in research is very important and I do communicate with my supervisors, however they do not seem to have answers and I am in an infinite loop of suggestions what I can do to improve this - without any improvement. What stresses me the most is that I was planning to ask my professor to continue with PhD in his working group, however now I do not feel "worthy" anymore. I feel like I failed his expectations and honestly, not only his, in the first place - I failed my own expectations. I know that it may sound like I judge myself too harsh, however I am stuck with this problem already for 3 months and it transformed into literally infinite loop of trials to find what's wrong and "neverfinding" answer. I wanted to share this failure of mine and hear some suggestions from you (maybe from someone who has gone through something similar) on how to overcome self-judgement and stress. Days can pass with me looking at the screen and my code, with trying million options and going through one failure after another.. It starts to hurt me and I am scared..

somerandomguest
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    Studying is easy. Research is hard. You just made the transition. Check with your supervisors what your options are in case the direction does not work out. This is not a PhD, so there is no expectation of novelty, and a negative result may be acceptable if you demonstrate that your methodology was solid. If it were a PhD, I would set myself a limited time window and, if it is not solved by then, cut my losses. Also, can you create contact with experts in the method? – Captain Emacs Sep 09 '21 at 22:50
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    I don't see a question we can answer. – Terry Loring Sep 09 '21 at 22:59
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    Please clarify your specific problem or provide additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it's hard to tell exactly what you're asking. – Community Sep 09 '21 at 23:08
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    Is the problem in the implementation just having a bug, or in the algorithm you have implemented just being unsuitable to the problem? – Wolfgang Bangerth Sep 09 '21 at 23:21
  • Related, possibly helpful: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30995/what-to-do-when-you-spend-several-months-working-on-an-idea-that-fails-in-a-mast/31082#31082 – Ethan Bolker Sep 09 '21 at 23:53
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    3 months is very little, at least in math (I do not know about physics) and at least for a hard problem. Several years would be normal. Try looking at the problem differently, – markvs Sep 10 '21 at 00:03
  • Thank you for your response. I thought my question was obvious and I did not explicitly ask it here. I am interested in your suggestions, how to deal with the stress caused by the reasons I have mentioned in my original post. I have also to mention, that I would evaluate myself as a strong person, I usually face the difficulties bravely and work on solutions, however now it gets tougher, since my power of will seems to be fading away.. – somerandomguest Sep 10 '21 at 11:17
  • Does this answer your question? How should I deal with becoming discouraged as a graduate student? – astronat supports the strike Sep 10 '21 at 11:23
  • You should google impostor syndrome. These feelings that you are not "worthy" are very common. (You are worthy, your advisor is doubtless very experienced, knows what they are doing and would not have chosen you as their student if they didn't think you were "good enough".) I don't have a cure, but knowing that many (most?) researchers feel the same may help. Keep going! – astronat supports the strike Sep 10 '21 at 11:25
  • Thank you @astronat ! I will google about that syndrome and hope I will find ways to deal with it. – somerandomguest Sep 10 '21 at 15:30
  • @WolfgangBangerth , the problem is that neither me nor my supervisors know the cause of the problem and we have to investigate this together (they or me suggest different things and I implement them), and this is fine, this is how the research works, I understand, but I am stuck for a long time, which maybe does not seem a long time in general, but as a master's student, I am pretty much limited in time.. – somerandomguest Sep 10 '21 at 15:39

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