Capt_BlackAdder

Thanks for the replies. It seems like communication is the best route to finding a solution here.

Hello everyone, I was just hoping on getting input from other PhD students. I am a soon to be 3rd year engineering PhD student and I have passed my qualifying examinations. The problem I have at this moment is that I don't feel like I am doing any worthwhile research. Let me explain. Over the course of the past two years, my adviser has switched me between almost four projects. Needless to say, I am not an expert on any of the four topics because one does not become an expert in the course of four-five months. The topics are somewhat interrelated, but each of them can be categorized in a separate field of research. Currently, It does not seem like the thing I am working on is long term either. I have communicated this to my adviser, but he seems to ignore it and keep me busy with work. I should mention here that my advisor communicates very frequently with his students, that is he is not the type of adviser that asks what a student has done after a couple of weeks, he asks what a student has done after a couple of days. The second biggest problem is, as I mentioned, that I don't feel like I'm actually doing PhD level work. In the end, all my adviser asks of me is to run a million simulations and then derive conclusions from simulations. That's it. All of it is something "suggested" by simulations. There is no solid theoretical backing to any of the work I have done. Sure there are some equations involved here and there, but these are just about the setup of the problem, there is no theoretical analysis. I always hoped that ultimately, we will dig into the theory and understand why something happens in a certain way, but he is just satisfied by simulations. This is something I feel that an undergraduate can do. Let me try to explain what type of research I do with an analogy: Suppose my research group made a car, and let's assume that a BMW is the best possible car. So for my first test, I remove one tire from both cars and do a drag race. Then I remove the roof from both cars and do another drag race. This goes on till I have done about a million tests. Then I conclude that our car works better than the BMW when both have no roof. Stuff like that. I honestly do not feel like I have learned anything significantly, or grown mentally after working with my adviser. On paper, he looks absolutely brilliant, but working with him for two years has revealed to me that he has diversified his research interests to an area that he is not a 100% expert on, and now relies on simulations to make conclusions. Every other student in the group is ok with this because ultimately they will have a PhD, but I am least bit interested in a piece of paper and a title of Dr. before my name. I do not want to dedicate any more time of my life to running simulations because that is something I already know how to do and it is not an activity that I gain anything from. In short, I do not feel that the course of my research will result in me being an expert in anything. Honestly speaking, I am thinking of confronting my adviser about this, but this is not something easy to do. I am pretty sure he will drop the "what do you want to work on then?" question, to which I don't really have a solid answer. The fact that he himself is not an expert in this field makes me worried that I might pick something in which he cannot guide me at all, but even that is something I prefer to running mindless simulations. I am quite lost.