Dear students,
I would like to take the opportunity to share some of my memories about my student days during my undergraduate and postgraduate studies.
For my Bachelor´s degree, I left Berlin for another city and a few friends helped me moving my belongings there. When they left, I stood on the street and felt completely alone although I had two neighbors in my student apartment. I literally locked myself in my room for the next few days and only left my room to go to the toilet or eat something (so strange, right?). This all radically changed when I attended the enrollment ceremony and met my classmates. From then on, I enjoyed my studies; what I remember most vividly is the fun we had together: how we met to party, to learn and discuss together or to play football. This was because at that university, we had a fixed schedule and thus I would always have classes with the same people. With one of my new friends, I developed a ritual: Every Saturday we would go to the supermarket and in the evenings we would cook together and then watch the weekly football summaries on TV.
The memories connected to the Master´s degree programme rather centred around the studies; I had no fixed schedule and therefore only a few friends or acquaintances. There were times when I struggled a lot because of all those (more or less useful) theories we came across in the seminars (I rather prefer a hands-on approach), and I asked myself whether I would be able to complete my studies at all. When I had these thoughts, it helped me to remind myself that I completed school and my Bachelor´s studies successfully and nobody could take that away from me no matter what.
On the other hand, I came to like writing term papers because I could choose the topics myself and I enjoyed questioning other people´s claims. When I was working hard and needed to distract myself, I would play football or badminton and run. Luckily, German universities offer loads of cheap or even free sports courses. That really freed my mind (it even does now), and I do recommend physical exercise to everyone.
Looking back at my student days, I consider my undergraduate time as a fun and worriless one, whereas my postgraduate studies were characterized by self-doubts at times but academic achievements, too. And though I had some difficult moments, I remember almost only the positive experiences, probably because they clearly outweigh the less positive ones, and I wish you the same.
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About Mr. Florian Tack
German lecturer at the Department of Linguistics and Modern Languages, joined WS college in 2018. He is interested in travelling, languages, hiking and sports. ). If you would like to know more about Florian, please visit http://ling.cuhk.edu.hk/p_florian.php.