Hi everyone, sorry if this isnt the right space for this kind of post, I just needed a space to vent.

I'm part way through the 3rd year of my PhD in the UK. I have 14 months until I need to submit my thesis or the funding runs out, and my supervisor wants me to stop development and start writing 6 months before the end, so that leaves me 8 months of development left.

So far, I haven't managed to publish anything or even approach something worth publishing. I've spent the last year and a bit trying to get my first contribution to work (I'm in an engineering discipline) and there are still major problems. I came to PhD straight from BEng, and I've found all along the way that I don't have the same skills as my peers and I'm struggling to get things to work that should be trivial. My supervisor wants me to submit to a very good conference by early Feb next year, and I'm scrambling to generate some usable data in time, but right now we haven't got anything worth submitting. Everything magically working in time to get data and write the paper seems doubtful.

Its 3:30 AM here right now and I can't sleep, I'm completely overwhelmed by stress and dread. I feel doomed, like there's no hope for me to graduate with a PhD. I can't miss this deadline, I can't face another delay. There isn't enough time to make this thing work and I just feel so trapped. I'd be really grateful for advice from anyone that's been in a similar position.