BrightMelon

It is manageable and I do not get in this state anymore where I get paralyzed by it. Almost always my mood deteriorates when I need to take a decision, since this causes me a lot of stress. I cannot say if the field or the city would stress me. The mentor seems quite relaxed and easy going.

I met with the professor yesterday and a post-doc with which I will have the closest relationship. My impression was good, although they seemed very worried about the case I declined and they would need to find another candidate. Furthermore I asked two previous PhD students of theirs which are not at this university anymore and they both spoke in high regard for both the professor and the post-doc. I can also tell that their research is top. As mentioned in my post I would like to be able to work remotely in the future. Having a remote position is to me even more important compared to doing research (although a combination of those two would be ideal). I am worried about whether doing a PhD can prohibit me from achieving that, since I will be gaining a lot of research experience but I will lack programming experience (especially commercial programming experience). Am I overthinking it?

Because:

1)It would allow me to do research in a field that I find interesting.

2)It would allow me to build up my research skills, enabling me to later find a job that has this balance of research and coding which I mentioned in my post. As a note, I applied this year at 4 positions which had this balance and all of them rejected me. After asking what my main disadvantage with the chosen candidate was all of them told me that he/she had a PhD in the field.

3)I would be able to see what I am capable of in solving interesting problems and expanding human knowledge.

4)I believe in general, that pushing your self to the limits (even if you fail) teaches you more compared to a comfortable situation. By that I do not obviously mean that one should put oneself in every situation that stresses him/her, but rather that one should attempt things even if they are difficult.