Hello all,

I'm not sure what to do anymore, every once in a while I feel okay but then I start to panic and stress especially when I come in contact with my PI.

To start off, I started a research based masters, being offered a specific project during the interview that aligned with my career goals.

At the beginning of the term, I was given a bit of work pertaining to another project. Little did I know that this would become my thesis (or in her words, one of the chapters) to which I have been working on to this day. This project is NOT what I was 'promised' nor does it align with my career prospects, yet it has become a core part of my thesis and I have to write the paper for it.

Now here comes the kicker (if it wasnt bad enough), this project is part of a previous PhDs student work which failed. There was an experimental design, measurements made and data collected over a few years, etc yet there were no 'significant' results. Now, my PI has thrown this project on me and is trying to frankenstein new hypotheses and objectives that does not entirely make sense while also expecting certain statistical results. What's even worse is that she barely follows along and even after having hour or two long meetings, she will forget what we discussed a week or two later and I have to explain ideas and methodology behind the project and in some cases, end up getting chastised for what SHE initially suggested. I have to badger her for meetings and even when I do get meetings, sometimes I'm astoundingly obviously brushed off within minutes of the meeting sometimes they end up an hour or two long. This has gone on for a year and I've had enough, but at the same time I'm so deep in I dont know what to do anymore.

It seems that she is not the most well versed in the material, specifically the statistics but also expects certain results and even after trying to clarify methods she will stubbornly pursue her line of thinking.

Tldr; I am a year into my masters, PI gave me a project different from what was initially suggested that is the remains of a failed experiment from a previous PhD students. The project does not align with my career goals (which is why I pursued a masters in the first case and explicitly told my PI). The projects hypothesis and objectives are scientifically poor and frankensteined together. She does not follow along and I have to consistently remind her of what is going. I'm constantly under stress and struggling and dont know what to do.