The fear of being boring seems pretty common; I was talking to one of my friends who is in grad school for chemistry in Japan, and we were discussing the difficulty of meeting people outside our given departments. Not just for fun, but for the sake of diversity in conversation topics.
Since lab is such a large component of the doctoral program, it's impossible not to think about it even when I'm not there. And since a large part of research seems to be troubleshooting, conversations with other students center around what could be done to fix things, or getting advice with dealing with advisor expectations, etc. I think for the past two weeks that I've been out of classes, most of my in-lab conversations circle around "where do we keep the pipette tips?" or "my Western Blot flunked. What now?"
Last term I took a seminar-based class called "Teaching in the Sciences," and as a so-called "midterm project" we were supposed to put together a powerpoint presentation on something not science-related. (gasp)
The instant the professor gave us that stipulation, we all panicked a little, as if saying "but I don't know anything outside of science! I don't even remember what hobbies I have besides from PCRing and pipetting!"
I guess my non-lab related work is cut out for me this summer.
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