Thoughts of switching advisors...again!

[Gradoom]

Dear all,

thanks for reading. To clarify - I have not switched advsiors - but I have thought about it before.

I spent my last tow years getting my MS, in a advisor-advisee relationship that was far from ideal.

My advisor (OA) was almost to retire, had a big name but only a post doc, me and two other MS students. Once he did not answer my emails for 60 days. Fortunately I was externally funded. I seriously considered switching advisors,

or maybe even departments after the first year, but program director and other professors (let s call him OP) talked me into staying.

In retroperspective I do not think they should have, this is now time I could have already invested into my PhD studies.

During my MS degree I applied for grad school again, all in all very stressy when writing a thesis. I never really had the time to speak to all prospective advisors in a depth I really wanted too. Also I am international, that certainly adds to the pressure.

I agreed to work with my new advisor (NA), who is a little bit outside my field but still in reach research wise, after he agreed on me being coadviced by professor OP I wanted to work with, too. I am working projects for both, but my new advisor wants me to do things far from my focus, absolutely outside my field of interest and expertise. He knows my background and knows that I love to look at the fundamental physics of a problem but wants me to be really transitional/application based - in an extend that fundamental are not covered at all anymore. I really wonder why he picked me and his other students tell me the horror stories (he likes to micro manage).

Now I am sitting here, unable to focus on my work, because it is for sure not the thing I want to do the next 4 years and ever after. Have you ever been in a similar situation, and how did you get out. It seems as I too picky or bad in choosing my advisors (even though I had not much say in the choice of my first OA). Any good ways to get out without too big waves?