Thanks for the reply Shinya. What worse is that I just found out there are some problems with the funding, I'm getting MUCH less than I expected and its not enough for me to live at all. I'm very stressed and i dont feel motivated to do anything. I m also not allowed to work outside my contract.

Thank you so much nmss123. I try to keep myself busy during the day and most of the evenings but once I'm all by myself, that lonely feeling just came back to me. I feel worse and worse everyday and I think I have to do something. Save up money and go self-funded if necessary.

The fears of being unemployed and having unstable income makes me very struggled about making this decision. I know I'm not happy here and I will be turning 30 very soon. I thought Ive made a big step of my life and now I just wish I never had this scholarship so I dont need to choose.......

Thank you so much for all the messages. I think the only thing I can do right now is to look for other funded PhD, but I know the chances are very low since its highly competitive and I don't have a very strong academic background. I have told myself that I would give it one year and I will really try to adapt myself into the life here. But I keep hearing all the other foreigners saying after a few years of trying they still got very few friends and feeling regret about wasting their time here in this country. I know everyone's experience is different and I probably shouldn't let them affect my decisions. But I can't help but thinking what if the same thing will happen to me......

I have thought about this and I love traveling. But the only reason that I feel hesitated about it is because the transportation here is insanely expensive and very slow. There is not much to see at the neighboring cities and if I wanna go abroad I have to take a flight from the capital city which will cost a fortune and almost 4 hours just to travel there. Usually going to a neighboring country for a weekend will cost at least a few hundreds euros on the transportation (budget flights, etc.) and sometimes I just feel like its not worth it. I wish I was in Germany...people here are much more reserved...



That is another problem I'm facing. The fundings I get here is quite good, but not good enough for me to have savings, due to the high living cost here. But leaving to another country means maybe I will have to do very low paid student jobs, and I will never have much money to live. I know I'm not happy at where I am, but I don't have the courage to leave yet.



This is exactly what is happening right now. I don't feel motivated to do anything. I tried to go out to meet people but whenever I go to a student bar, I can only see a bunch of undergrads. And locals only talk to people they know in the pub, if you start talking to them they will think you are very weird and suspicious. And also I cannot go home that often coz I'm from Asia. It will be a very long flight home and I cannot afford to do it very often.

I'm not completly enjoying it because I'm living in a city that I REALLY DONT LIKE. I actually just started my first year and I'm struggling about if i should quit.

I'm on my first year of my PhD in a northern european country. It's a fully funded 4-year PhD program, great funding, nice program, the working environment is very supportive and my supervisor has been very nice to me. The only problem I have is that I cannot stand where I live right now. I'm feeling very depressed and I just want to get out of this country. Its a very small city and basically nothing is going on here. Local people are very reserved and basically have no interests in getting to know you, and the expat community is very small. Every foreigner I met here just looking miserable and wanting to leave. I think I'm a very outgoing person, I have been living in other countries before and been making friends everywhere. But I find making friends here is extremely difficult and I'm about to give up. I feel like my social life is over.

Everybody has been telling me how lucky I am and that I should just suck it up and continue coz life ain't easy elsewhere either. I have been very depressed lately and I can barely get any sleep. I have had a few other offers before in other big cosmopolitan cities in Europe, but no fundings (humanity project). I have been thinking to start looking for other scholarship opportunities. Or if I can't find other fundings, should I quit this fully funded program to another self-funded one so I could live in a place that I like. People has also been telling me that being a self-funded phd student could also be very difficult. I'm trying to evaluate the situation but I really don't know what to do now.

I love doing my research. But at this stage of my life, I'm also really looking forward to settling down, having a family, some good friends around and a nice social life. I'm very much a city person and I feel like I just come to this place where I know I would want to leave.

Another reason I haven't quitted yet is because my parents were very proud of me in getting this scholarship. That just made me felt really guilty for not taking it.

Do you have any suggestions?

Thank you so much.