so far, no, fortunately!

definitely try to take a trip to Sweden and practice the language with the natives! Ideally, you should make your stint at least a few weeks if not more.... if you're single, you could always try to find yourself a swedish partner...

I myself moved to a spanish speaking country a year ago to do my PhD without any prior knowledge of the language.... After a couple of months, I started getting a handle on spanish and now I'd say I'm pretty fluent (mind you, I make plenty of grammatical mistakes since my only formal training is a 2 month's beginner's course!!). My native tongue is french, which certainly has helped a lot!!

Good luck!!

we'll might get some newcomers next year. And there's lots of people from other departments I don't know very well...

hey badhaircut and juno! Thanks for the advice! Yeah, I definitely think cultivating friendships with the rest of people inside and outside our department is important. I don't know about "taming"them into being more approachable as I've been trying for months and lately, they made it pretty clear they don't like me. The topic ( their bad attitude) did surface with my director and once I made clear how I felt, his idea of solving the situation was to go and "scold" them - and mentioning to them what I had told him. Needless to say, this made things worse.

I'll manage, but not being able to benefit from direct help is slowing my progress.

Perhaps I should add these people are into their 2nd to 4th year and one is a young and fairly new researcher at the institute.

Hey there! Just wondering if bullying is a common occurence among students and how those of you who experienced it dealt with it? I'm a first year PhD student at a small lab. I get along great with most people except the few students in my field of study which is a real bummer as it foils most attempts for creative discussions, asking for advice (which I really need at this time), sharing papers, etc. This small clique of people has excluded from the start from any project meetings or brainstorming sessions they've had between them, field trips, etc. They also ignore most of my emails and act like I'm just thin air... Is it competition, do I need to prove myself to them before they acknowledge/respect me or are they just pure $%&$*? I'm not sure who else to turn to for help with regards to some of the technical stuff I need to do... Any advice? How should I handle them and the situation? Your input would really be appreciated!!! :)