Correct. The idea of finishing in few months thrills me.

I agree it is not good for my mental health to completely cut down on social life but I can't manage PhD otherwise. My PhD needs a lot of constant focus and I can easily be distracted. Maybe it is weird but I become unmotivated when I socialise or party. Luckily I share my office with some other PhD students. This is the only thing that keep me sane. We get along very well and it is motivating to talk to them. But our interests are very different. They work 7 days a week 8 to 8! They barely do anything fun, drinking, eating out or travel. This way they motivate me to work more and then my social life is missing. So I occasionally hang with some non-students coz I share more interests with them but I see their fun and stress-free life full of travels and live activities, and feel miserable about PhD life. I feel like this PhD is not letting me live and I lived a life-less life. Being so far from family also makes things much worse. I'm just happy this will be over soon. But then my circle of friends as an academic will remain people who I don't share many interests with. I don't know sometimes I become too negative.

So I used to be a very social person but after 3 years of PhD I realised that I can't manage finishing my PhD if I don't reduce on my social life. So I started not attending parties, not to hang out with friends and being very comfortable with saying No. But now sometime I feel isolated. But still insist to be away from the social life coz I think at the end that's what would be better for me. How to do you guys think of managing PhD and social life?

I'm completing my PhD in Australia. It is a great country to live. New Zealand is similar but there are definitely more opportunity in Australia. To apply for top Australian universities search for "group of 8" that includes 8 best Aussie Unis. Also Australian unis usually accept TOEFL too. Good luck!

Hi every one. I'm new to this forum too.
I guess all people commented on this thread so far (excluding myself) are now dr. I'm writing here:

1. To introduce my self: I'm a last year PhD student studying math/computer science in Australia.

2. To start a blog: Apparently there is a stupid rule that does not let me start blog without having 5 posts. Right now I wanted to blog about my PhD to reduce my stress and and to organise my thoughts regarding to my Phd.

3. To see if some one in the similar situation as mine is looking for an accountability partner to check on each other's progress and to keep ourselves motivated.

Hi there,

I'm in my last year of PhD and my research is on the edge of math and computer science. Is anyone interested in exchanging goals and checking on each other on a daily/weekly basis?

Ok I may write a bit more coz I feel it helps. I have to prepare 3 talks for some international conferences in less than a 20 days now and haven't even started yet. Also I have to do some math and some programming stuffs and my supervisor is waiting for the results. The tasks are easy. I just can't start. It's been a week watching craps on youtube is my only job to do. I'm stressed and depressed.