They're scouring the Internet for news of old boyfriends, researching dire diseases they're sure they're dying of, sweating out their latest hormonal surges, cleaning their closets.
The ex-boyfriend had researched her address and later told her, from a newly created email account, that she should make it harder to find her address if she didn't want it to happen.
On a summer day a few years ago, a recent college graduate named Emily Oster was talking to her boyfriend about the research that was, and wasn't, being done on the spread of AIDS.
Per the Associated Press: "A neuroscientist who studied the effects of drugs on the brain is dead of an apparent overdose and her live-in boyfriend, who did similar research, is facing drug charges, Baltimore police said Tuesday".
"I think that planning before I get engaged is just practical," said Ms. Royce, who did not have a boyfriend when she began her research.
Ecologist Kevin McLean planned to go to great heights to propose to his longtime boyfriend, Dan Aeschliman, while on a research trip in Panama.
And it's even more touching because we learn that Terry has been doing research on pregnancy, just so he can be a better boyfriend.
She had majored in psychology and won a research fellowship at Berkeley, though she gave it up when her boyfriend felt overshadowed.
She said that she thought about her research non-stop, even "when I am on a date with my boyfriend".
Her ex-boyfriend, Daniel, is a whiny, ineffectual P.R. flack for the Jenssen-Meyer Center, which conducts biochemical crop research.
But so much research now goes into the yarns and micro-stitches that what once used to be called the "boyfriend" sweater has become ultrasophisticated.
