I feel like I have the exact same conversation on every first date, and every time I approach a woman now. I'm especially because most of these women are from campus, I feel like one of the first things I think to ask is about their majors, and then we talk about why we picked them. I rattle off the same introductory list of facts about myself when asked. I ask them about their interests. I'm getting very bored of it.

The last date I had felt boring to me, because it felt like a million dates I've had before. And each cold approach feels stale, too.

My favourite conversations tend to be about things that interest me, like topics in philosophy (especially philosophy of mind and philosophy of science), physics and astronomy, politics, sociology, biology, and linguistics, but not everybody has interests that are so academic. It's hard for me to find another "mode" of conversation, especially when I'm talking to people who aren't university girls, or are the kind of people not that interested in education itself and just look at it as a stepping stone to a career.

How do you have more varied conversations, so you don't feel like you're having the same discussion over and over again? I want to make it a goal to get into a conversation without asking somebody about their studies once or talking about my studies once, but that stuff just seems so basic to the "what I do" aspect of my life right now that I don't know what other "getting-to-know-you" topics I'd bring up in those beginning parts of the conversation.