I am in my second year of my master's degree and am one month into the new term. Currently, I have drafted my entire thesis proposal at length, set up most of my experiment, obtained ethics approval and approval for testing. But I am at an impasse because the lab tech has left, and have relied on him for technical software programming. It has been months since I first contacted him about it, and he has always told me that he will get to it, but to no avail.
For reference, there is nobody else in my lab including my supervisor who is familiar with the exact technical programming needed to run the experiment. For me, I am not very experienced with coding but have gotten as far as I ever thought possible on my own. I have asked a few colleagues who are familiar with the software how to configure it. But they are unsure and the lab tech seemed to be the only person.
He is still available on a very limited basis for certain technical questions but seems unresponsive to me. My supervisor and others have thrown a lot at him and is more involved in their technical challenges. Personally, I find many of their questions easy to solve on their own. We have the knowledge to do this and it seems like a waste of limited resources.
I am very concerned about being able to actually complete my thesis on time due to a lack of support on this project and time constraints. The term will be over before you know it and at my institution testing can only be done in a limited time period. It has left me feeling lost and stuck grappling with the same challenge.
My supervisor says that I have taken a lot of initiative in my work and other projects I am on, and am quite advanced for my position. While that is encouraging, it is also makes me wonder if there is a hidden expectation to figure everything out on my own. If that were the case, it could take my entire semester just to figure out these technical configurations on my own and is a bad use of time. Also, I want to stress that this is not a small thing. I am usually very independent but there comes a point where assistance and support is needed from others in a lab, otherwise what is the point? And collaboration ceases to exist.
The last thing I will say is that in addition to the risk of not being able to complete my experiment, this is holding me back from other opportunities such as conferences, which I have had to turn down regretfully due to a lack of data. This is not the main issue but is a painful reminder of how behind I am.
I apologize for the long rant, but I am just not sure how to approach this. My worst fear is to have to take an extra year to complete, since I will not receive funding. I started this program well ahead of my cohort, but am left with a bitter taste in my mouth knowing those efforts seem to be going to waste. At this point, what is the best course of action for dealing with this issue to complete my experiment and thesis in time?
