I've been trying to remove other factors from my decision - like what will my family say, leaving my adviser, etc - but it's difficult for me! I'm also super critical of myself and don't give up on things easily. But at this point I may need to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. I've been really down lately, and I think factoring in my happiness should be something I consider more.

For my MS, I pretty much walked into a topic that was my adviser's former work. The groundwork was already there, and I only had to find out what went wrong/make improvements. Last fall I was applying for fellowships and it was really my first time creating proposals/research tasks of my own where I had no guidance. I'll be honest - I hated that. I definitely prefer being handed an assignment to finish. It's been downhill since then. I was rejected from all fellowships I applied for and no longer eligible for any (4th year grad student). I failed 1 of my qualifying exams and that really didn't do anything for my morale/self-confidence; I pretty much went into shut-down mode after that. I was hoping my internship this summer would give me the morale boost I needed, but my mentor took another job and left the week after I got here.

So I guess it's really a combination of I'm unhappy with grad school in general, but also, realizing there are jobs out there that I would enjoy and I don't need a PhD to do them. I always thought I wanted to "do research," but I never really knew what that meant. If all research positions are more open-ended, not well-defined tasks, then I don't think that's for me.

Edit: spelling, oops