Vorheriger Bericht
Viel arbeit
Well.. where should I begin?
If you only wanna see things I wrote about this Uni, skip the next paragraph...
I'm just gonna write down in English, just in case any international student come by. Who are you?... student? Great!. You heard some reputation of German engineering and u're researching about which Uni is the best in MechE? Great! Maybe you already spent weeks trying to find someone writing about their experiences in German universities and haven't found anything, or maybe you've found some. Congrats on that! What if you haven't? I'm gonna tell ya. I know there're only a tiny chunk of info available on the internet. It's kind of weird, right? Many people hear about low cost, but high quality, education in Germany and neighboring countries. They got hooked and dream about earning a world-renowned degree here. But when it comes to finding the info. Why is it so hard to find things you really wanna know - things like student experiences, teaching atmosphere, etc. That's what happened to me. Now I'm here...
First thing first, forget about those fun you used to have when you're in high school. Small classes, teacher shooting questions around, students competing each other to provide their thoughts on the topics, etc. You won't see it here. Day by day, class by class, people just come and go. 2 hrs lecture, been there for an hr, still don't get shit, only write down whatever on the black board. People walk out before lecture finish, people playing games on their laptop, people sitting down and sliding phone screen, people who have no idea wtf they're doing there everyday. That's what I see in everyday life here... every f***in' day.
Moving on a bit closer to the study. From previous paragraph I hope you already get the picture. Lectures are shitty time period of the day, designed carefully for you to get lost. They'll tell you what things are, how they are derived, but they don't tell you what are they being used for i.e. how to apply them. Imagine sitting for 2 hrs writing down pieces of scattered info. What happens at the end of each class? Exactly, you remember nothing , why?, because they aren't connected! They go from 1 to 2 to 3 and so on, but never mention how 5 is connected to 1 or how 1,2,3,4 and 5 are related. At the end of the day you'll just have to go home and start digging about which concepts are the most fundamental, which concepts should you start learning first. That takes hours, dude. Luckily, they have the Uebung and the Tutorium. They give you some problem sets with the solutions, which is good. But sometimes I don't understand why can't they just upload the pdf for us to study at home, then maybe change the 2 hrs of Uebung into another Tutorium, so that students have 2 time slots to visit during the week for asking questions and get help with problems that they can't solve. Tutors are great. They're so helpful! This is probably the best thing about the study here. They provide you hints and tips for solving problems. I'm glad that they don't give us the answers right away. Cuz that would ruin our learning process. Hmm... what else? Oh yeah, das Praktikum. This is where students have fun. They have access to the labs. Sometimes if they're lucky, they can touch the equipments, maybe play with them under supervision. But most of the time, well.... just staring in front of the mirrow, look in to the lab, and done, "internship" dismissed! Library? Well, here is ok I would say, though I would expect more english books, but no big deal, I'm fine with German books, even though they barely help. I often skim through other universities' library catalogs and found many books that aren't available here. That's kind of sad. I think you need to separate the R&D and the study apart. R&D in Paderborn and in the whole country is no doubt one of the, if not, the best in the world. But the study.... it sucks! I would call this place as a research institute rather than a university because university study should be fun. This one isn't.
As a summary, it's weird studying here, really really weird... I even read the reviews of this program before I came here and damn... I trusted the reviews and l had to live with it for 3 Semester. Now I'm at an FH in Munich and I'm so so happy about my life. I regain all the fun I lost in Paderborn and Germany becomes more interesting for me again. Yeah that's all. Peace out.
I'm just gonna write down in English, just in case any international student come by. Who are you?... student? Great!. You heard some reputation of German engineering and u're researching about which Uni is the best in MechE? Great! Maybe you already spent weeks trying to find someone writing about their experiences in German universities and haven't found anything, or maybe you've found some. Congrats on that! What if you haven't? I'm gonna tell ya. I know there're only a tiny chunk of info available on the internet. It's kind of weird, right? Many people hear about low cost, but high quality, education in Germany and neighboring countries. They got hooked and dream about earning a world-renowned degree here. But when it comes to finding the info. Why is it so hard to find things you really wanna know - things like student experiences, teaching atmosphere, etc. That's what happened to me. Now I'm here...
First thing first, forget about those fun you used to have when you're in high school. Small classes, teacher shooting questions around, students competing each other to provide their thoughts on the topics, etc. You won't see it here. Day by day, class by class, people just come and go. 2 hrs lecture, been there for an hr, still don't get shit, only write down whatever on the black board. People walk out before lecture finish, people playing games on their laptop, people sitting down and sliding phone screen, people who have no idea wtf they're doing there everyday. That's what I see in everyday life here... every f***in' day.
Moving on a bit closer to the study. From previous paragraph I hope you already get the picture. Lectures are shitty time period of the day, designed carefully for you to get lost. They'll tell you what things are, how they are derived, but they don't tell you what are they being used for i.e. how to apply them. Imagine sitting for 2 hrs writing down pieces of scattered info. What happens at the end of each class? Exactly, you remember nothing , why?, because they aren't connected! They go from 1 to 2 to 3 and so on, but never mention how 5 is connected to 1 or how 1,2,3,4 and 5 are related. At the end of the day you'll just have to go home and start digging about which concepts are the most fundamental, which concepts should you start learning first. That takes hours, dude. Luckily, they have the Uebung and the Tutorium. They give you some problem sets with the solutions, which is good. But sometimes I don't understand why can't they just upload the pdf for us to study at home, then maybe change the 2 hrs of Uebung into another Tutorium, so that students have 2 time slots to visit during the week for asking questions and get help with problems that they can't solve. Tutors are great. They're so helpful! This is probably the best thing about the study here. They provide you hints and tips for solving problems. I'm glad that they don't give us the answers right away. Cuz that would ruin our learning process. Hmm... what else? Oh yeah, das Praktikum. This is where students have fun. They have access to the labs. Sometimes if they're lucky, they can touch the equipments, maybe play with them under supervision. But most of the time, well.... just staring in front of the mirrow, look in to the lab, and done, "internship" dismissed! Library? Well, here is ok I would say, though I would expect more english books, but no big deal, I'm fine with German books, even though they barely help. I often skim through other universities' library catalogs and found many books that aren't available here. That's kind of sad. I think you need to separate the R&D and the study apart. R&D in Paderborn and in the whole country is no doubt one of the, if not, the best in the world. But the study.... it sucks! I would call this place as a research institute rather than a university because university study should be fun. This one isn't.
As a summary, it's weird studying here, really really weird... I even read the reviews of this program before I came here and damn... I trusted the reviews and l had to live with it for 3 Semester. Now I'm at an FH in Munich and I'm so so happy about my life. I regain all the fun I lost in Paderborn and Germany becomes more interesting for me again. Yeah that's all. Peace out.
- Relatively small number of students, great tutors
- Isn't friendly for solo students, sport courses are boring