A PhD Examined: Social Life

How I Handled Social Life as a Grad Student

9 min readOct 27, 2024

As I have mentioned several times in past articles, I think that social life is very important and is sadly neglected by many grad students because they prefer to put all their energy into work. This article will go into why this is not a good idea and detail my experience as an introvert trying to make friends during my PhD program.

There are many benefits to having a healthy balance between research work and social life. The biggest one of these is that you need an emotional support system to get you through the rough-and-tumble daily life in grad school. By its nature, research work is a bumpy ride; there are good days and bad days. You need to have people who can see you through the bad days and share in the good ones. This counts double if you’re an international student. You’ll need people to help you deal with being away from family and friends who live in a different country.

There are other, less obvious benefits too. Social life can offer distraction from research and schoolwork when you need it. In my experience, sometimes leaving a tough problem behind for a while and doing something else can spur your creativity and lead you to approach the problem with fresh eyes when you return to it. As long as your social life is not letting you fall behind on work, a little distraction can be beneficial.

I also found it’s important to have diverse sources for my self-esteem beside work. One such great source is friends. Having solid and close relationships with your peers is a great way to bolster your self image regardless of whether your work is going well.

Finally, one good reason not to neglect social life as a grad student is that it gets harder to make friends as a working professional. There are fewer chances to meet like-minded people and it takes a more concerted effort to make friends of the ones you do meet, since regular interactions with them are not guaranteed.

Now I’ll talk about the different opportunities grad school afforded me to make friends and the benefits I found in each kind of friendship.

The Research Lab

The most obvious place for me to find friends at first was my research lab. It consisted of a group of people who knew my schedule and had very similar concerns to mine. Many of them even worked on problems very similar to my work, so we needed to have a lot of conversations. Regular interactions with my lab mates were a given, since we met at least once a week to discuss our progress.

I managed to make several close friendships with my lab mates, many of which continue to this day. What made these bonds particularly strong is the shared hardship of research work. As I detailed in a different article, I was fortunate to have a benign lab culture where I could trust most of my fellow students. I think this is key and one shouldn’t rush into these friendships and let them develop at a natural pace.

The obvious benefits of befriending people from my research lab was that they were the ones who knew the most what I was going through. The flip side of that, though, is that they weren’t always be able to offer their support if they were going through the same thing themselves. Another caveat to keep in mind is that one needs to find common grounds with one’s lab mates that are not related to work. In my experience, if you only talk about work every time you get together, it’s unlikely you’ll develop a very close friendship.

Classes

Another big group of social contacts I could turn to friends was my classmates. This is another group where regular interaction was guaranteed for at least a semester. It was also easy to bond with people taking the same class over working on tough homework problems or studying in groups. The first friend I made during my PhD program was my lab mate. He had also just joined the PhD program and we met regularly to discuss lab assignments and thus became friends.

Making friends among my classmates didn’t require the same level of care as I exercised with my lab mates. There simply wasn’t that much conflict of interest or chance of them playing research lab politics with me. The tricky part was that, understandably, many of them simply didn’t want to hang out outside class hours. It was slightly harder for me to find common ground with them. It was hard because we were from different PhD programs, focusing on different research, on different schedules. On the other hand, when I managed to find that common ground, it was easier to make friends with them.

One of the biggest benefits of having even casual friendships among my classmates was that they made the difficult classes more bearable. It was comforting to see that I wasn’t alone in struggling with a difficult class or that others worried about that upcoming test as well, etc… It was also useful and enriching to be exposed to people outside my research lab who had very different research interests and educational backgrounds.

Everywhere Else

It was even more enriching to make friends from outside my department, outside the College of Engineering, and even people who weren’t attending the University at all. This kind of friendship came later for me as I started attending local groups. Friendships with people outside my regular social groups came with completely different perspectives on life and work and were a refreshing change of pace and a glimpse of what life beyond grad school was like.

The flip side is that these relationships were more challenging in the sense that regular interaction didn’t happen unless I proactively planned for it (or had other people plan regular meetups). A more conscious effort on my part was required to maintain contact and keep these relationships going.

The best benefit these friends had was that they could provide good support when I was struggling with work/study issues. They may not necessarily have understood these issues fully, but they had the benefit of distance from them. They could offer a fresh outsider’s unbiased perspective on my problems. I also knew that my venting to them about such issues wasn’t as much of a burden to them as it would have been to my lab mates who were struggling with the same things.

Beyond these benefits, “outsider” friends were nice contacts to have in my network for all sorts of purposes. I could ask for life advice, get recommendations for places or services around town, or even get job recommendations. Please note the lack of personal anecdotes here, as these friendships came later to me when I was more well established in the program, but I recognize these benefits nonetheless.

My Experience as a Single Student

For the better part of my PhD program, I was single. This undoubtedly affected my experience, and I’ll try to unpack that here.

For a while, even with all the friendships I had made, I felt lonely and searched for a romantic partner. Eventually I learned that obsessing too much over this was counterproductive. It only served to increase my feelings of loneliness and frustration and wasn’t leading me anywhere. When I recognized this, I shifted my focus onto the good parts of being single.

I learned to enjoy my own company and discovered many interesting things about myself.
I picked up hobbies and got better at them.
I could focus on my work and hobbies and on improving myself without worrying about maintaining a romantic relationship as well.

I eventually came to the conclusion that it’s best to run in multiple social circles, where I was more likely to meet with people who shared my interests. I went to Meetup groups, I tried attending some extracurricular clubs at the University, and went to several social events thrown by different student groups. I also found that it was good to make friends among both single people and people who were in relationships. They each had a different perspective to offer on relationships and each was helpful.

Having romantic relationships can be a very important aspect of life, and one that it might be important for you to cultivate. However, indulging in one or many such relationships during your grad program also carries the danger of distracting from your work and may even cause your program to take longer. Depending on how important it is to you, giving your love life the appropriate level of focus and no more should be the best way to go.

Married Students

I didn’t get married until a few years after I finished my program, so none of this is based on my own experience but mostly on the experiences of my friends who were married at the time. If you are married and/or have children, these are some of the things you might consider as you bring your spouse and/or children along:

The university may offer a lot of useful resources such as child care or after-school activities for children, or family-oriented social events, etc…
The town itself may also have such activities, especially around the holidays. Local parks are often venues for family events. Consider following your town’s social media feeds to keep up with this.
When looking for housing, some apartment complexes/neighborhoods prefer to rent to families. These tend to be quieter environments and you’re likely to meet other families who have children similar in age to yours.
If you can afford it, consider renting a house instead of an apartment. This makes things easier, especially if you have a bigger family.
When you’re on a grad student salary, you are typically considered a low-income individual and might qualify for some government assistance programs if you have children. Ask about any such resources in your state. Raising children on a grad student’s salary is not easy, and you’ll need all the help you can get.
Be aware that spouses of international students are not allowed to work. Your spouse should know that they won’t have an opportunity to work for several years until you obtain your permanent residence. A good social outlet is, again, programs organized by the university or the town for the spouses of academics/grad students.

Concluding Thoughts

Social life is a very important aspect of your well-being and it shouldn’t take second place to your schoolwork. Paying it enough attention, and no more, has helped me maintain my sanity and emotional health, while also adding a lot more joy and satisfaction to my daily life that continues to this day. I highly encourage you to cultivate meaningful relationships among different groups during your program and invest time in making these relationships flourish.