My question might be a bit naive or even silly so please held your laughter my dear fellows ;).

Well, as the title goes, just wonder how you guys manage to socialize, make friends or even meet your bf/gf/soulmate/life partner/whatever during the journey of PhD...

I am currently pursuing my PhD oversea in Australia and I study biology btw (in case we share similar research interests for collaborations LOL - my most common topic for social nowadays haha).

So yeh, I just find it really hard to get connected with others, meet with new people, make new friends, hangout, have fun whatever, during the time, other than seeing mostly the same people within my own lab or the same building.

Maybe spending quite a lot of time on research is one reason, and probably the way a researcher/PhD usually think or speak might be slightly different from others (at least for me maybe personally) might be another ? and the oversea background etc. might make it even worse.

Worse still, like biology experiments, you need to look after your cells, your mice whatever etc., and each experiment usually take ages and you could hardly plan or schedule everything perfectly (like we (including my supervisor) sometime do big mouse experiment and would end up midnight).

So anyway, the conclusion is, seems like it's very difficult to get into any kind of relationships, either a romantic one or just a pretty casual one lol.

Yeh, so like some other posts also complain about the loneliness during PhD, I might be just a bit concerned about the feeling of isolation, or like the fact that I talk even more with my mice than to any human beings LOL.

Thus, just wonder how you guys go through it or are there any resolutions or suggestions ?

Thanks ;)