Struggled my way through 2 years of a CS masters, debilitating insomnia. I’ve been so slowly reimplementing and then trying to improve on a paper since November for my thesis. My code is terrible. I couldn’t get it done in time for graduation so decided to try to finish over the summer but my results are increasingly contradictory.

Recently my prof found and sent me the code the original researchers published a long time ago. I thought I searched for it but I guess I didn’t. Ran it, and it instantly was apparent that I was misreading a central point of the paper and none of my work is valid anymore. And I don’t know how else I could move forward with it.

I’m done. I’m not smart enough to do this. My boyfriend is a PhD and he agrees. I thought you know, this is harder than most people with my sleep issues, but now I see that smart people just don’t have these issues or get stopped by them.

But what do I do now? If I withdraw what should I do? I have no hobbies or skills. I’m so embarrassed. I guess I could take classes in the fall but I don’t really want anyone to know that I ever did this. I don’t want it on my resume. I want to disappear. I’m a 26 year old woman with destroyed confidence and nothing to show for my life.

EDIT thank you all for the incredibly kind words. My advisor feels there’s a way through. I want to make it work. Sorry to add to the avalanche of negative posts on the sub, hopefully I can add a nice one at the end of this.