I’m a 3rd year astrophysics PhD student in the US (passed my candidacy exam, failed my research proposal for reasons I'll explain later). I’ve always loved astro and wanted to do something in theoretical stellar astrophysics after working on projects during undergrad. The very idea of it got me through undergrad. However, the specific research niche I am interested in is not done by many faculty in the USA (mostly in Europe). At the time as a senior undergrad, I was not comfortable with applying for Europe PhDs (nor could I, they mostly require MS) so I applied to US schools and chose the school that had a breadth of astronomy research. No one at the school does theoretical stellar astrophysics, but I attended, primarily because if I didn't like the research with one professor, at least I had the most alternatives there.

I am 18 months working with this one new assistant professor who does star formation observation research. She is very nice, patient and supportive but even now as someone who just passed candidacy, I just don’t find anything interesting in what I’m studying. It’s extremely disheartening and I have no intrinsic motivation/drive to read the literature in my field or to jump into my data sometimes. I tried to be professional and would treat it like a full time job, but it doesn’t even pay enough for me to care like I should and the literature reading/troubleshooting with issues in my data is demanding and requires longer work hours compared to a regular 9-5 industry job. I find myself having more fun building up my coding skills and exploring other interests, but I rarely feel passionate about my subfield or talking with faculty/fellow grad students about the subfield. I feel like everyone else in the program cares about their subject and I just do not. At this point, I am determined to move into industry after my PhD (data science, but I am also open to SWE or quant depending on how easy/hard it is to land these jobs) and I told my advisor. Should I just slog through the next couple years and find my motivation from somewhere else (i.e. a motivation that is different from passion, if that's possible) while learning DS skills in parallel or start my PhD over at another school that may actually do research I like?