I am a second year graduate student in physical chemistry. I worked really hard in the past year and nothing has come out from my research and now I have no motivation to work at all. I am in a really big lab and even though my PI is really nice, he doesn't have much time for his students. So most of the time students work on their own. I have been struggling a lot with my research. I have no idea what I am doing. I try to read papers and think of ideas to do a research project but since I don't have much background in independent research, I have no clue about how I should approach a problem. I talked with a couple of post-docs to get some idea on how I can solve the research problem that I am working on, they give me some suggestions but I just don't know how to implement them. They use a lot of technical terms and ask me to use methods that I have never heard of. I try to read up on them, look through programs and their user manuals and try to do it but it doesn't work out. Since I don't have much technical training even though I understand the concept, I just can't execute it.
Most of the graduate students in my lab already did a masters prior to coming here or had extensive research experience as an undergrad in top notch school and are very comfortable with research. I went to a small school without much research opportunities so I am very unfamiliar with the tools used in my research. So I am really struggling because of lack of proper technical and research background. I have been reading a lot of books and papers in the past year which has helped me strengthen my background in the subject matter but when it comes to progressing with my project it hasn't been of much help. Since all other graduate students are so comfortable with research, I feel so ashamed to be the only one who is not doing well and I don't even feel like trying anymore. Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can do better with my research?