psych9

Hello dear Grad Cafe members. I have been lurking here time to time since last year, so now it's time to post. Ok so... I am about the finish my first year as an MSc student in Psychology (with a Cognitive Science emphasis). I was very excited and motivated at the beginning but now, after my experiment didn't work out at all, I feel like my research is useless. I have been thinking about ways to improve my research and conduct another experiment but whatever I come up with does not make me happy. And the worst is that I don't think it is going to work. I think the idea was flawed from the beginning. My advisor thinks that it's not important if I don't get a significant result in the end but that I should at least try.. Now, it's difficult to gather motivation for something you don't really believe in. I have to write my proposal in two weeks and I'm so stressed out, I can't sleep. I changed my design for the 6th time just today and I still foresee so many problems with it. I started to wonder if there is a point of writing a thesis if it's likely not going to work anyways. If I cannot demonstrate some sort of effect, I will never make a publication out of it. I am going to leave with the MSc and go job hunting in the industry (research related). I am not considering to do PhD but I would still like that option to be out there. I am working as an RA this summer on another project and I do have research experience I acquired while conducting my own research. I am funded enough to cover my tuition (barely) but anything else, I'm paying from my savings. I am an international student so I'm not working elsewhere. I have 3 more semesters left to complete the program (including next summer). So... I'm now considering to switch to a non-thesis option, turning my project into a "Major Project" and leave by the end of fall but I'm scared of the implications of this for the future. Will employers value a non-thesis MSc especially in a research-related field? If I want to go for a PhD later, am I going to have a hard time because I don't have a thesis? Should I just suck it up and keep working on the thesis anyways? Please can somebody give me some insight? Thanks.