Life as a Postgrad Scholar

Hello from cold and rainy Hamburg! After four years at UPS, you’d think I’d be used to this kind of weather, but I’m a Californian at heart, and I’m always surprised by how soon I have to pack away the tank tops and hunker down for fall and winter.

I’ve been here in Germany for well over a month, but it doesn’t seem that long. I’m working this year as a teaching assistant at a Gymnasium, which is a fifth- through thirteenth-grade school for college-bound students. We’re in the middle of our fall break right now, and when we return I’ll be assigned a schedule of approximately 12 classes per week to work with. Up until now, I’ve just been sitting in on classes and helping out where I can. It’s been a big readjustment to go to a school with such a wide range of ages: I’ll walk by a group of cute little fifth-graders playing on the playground, and then go into a classroom with the equivalent of college freshmen.

I really like being around the students so far (though I’m sure they’ll get a lot more intimidating when I’m actually trying to lead a class); they have a lot of energy, but they’re very smart and funny. Their English is very good, and I’m thoroughly impressed by the standards to which they’re held. The ninth- and tenth-graders have their history and geography classes taught in English, and I sat with them one day while they were working on a reading about Otto von Bismarck and German politics following unification in 1871. Some of the students told me the text was way too hard, and I was inclined to agree; I was able to help them with most of the questions, but I certainly wouldn’t have been able to do the equivalent when I was in ninth grade. On the other hand, I asked to see the answers of two students who I thought had just given up on the assignment, and they showed me very thoughtful answers about alternative political compromises which Bismarck could have pursued. So I tip my hat to these kids!

It’s been odd adjusting to the fact that the students are taught British English. I can get used to the differences in spelling and vocabulary, but it’s weird to hear a classroom of British accents. A few of the students at the school have studied abroad or lived with their families in the U.S., and I find myself very grateful to familiar vowels and even slang. I’m very grateful to be from a state they’ve all heard of; one of the classes had been doing a unit on California, and had a handmade map up on the wall, so I could even show them my home county. Walking around town there’s obviously a lot of English and references to America – the result of living in such a big city, I suppose. I’ve seen more Yankees caps here than I do at home, and I almost stopped a German kid on the bus the other day to ask where he got his South Dakota sweatshirt!

Like I said, we’re currently on vacation at school, but the week before last I had the chance to accompany a group of students on a field trip to Vienna. (Boy, I lead a tough life, don’t I?) It was kind of a senior class trip, but each smaller advising section went on a separate trip – some groups were going to Spain, but my group of 17 students and two teachers had opted for Vienna. It was a ton of fun, and we had absolutely gorgeous weather. The students went off on their own a lot and really treated it as a vacation, and I got to play tourist and go to a bunch of different museums on my own (my favorite being the Kunst Haus Wien). We went to the opera one night (see photo below) to see “Eugene Onegin” by Tchaikovsky; I think one of the students, who is trilingual in German, Russian, and English, got a lot more out of it than I did, but I followed along with the German subtitles and enjoyed the music as best I could. We also got to tour the Hofburg palace and wander around the gardens at Schönbrunn, which is where you see me smiling about one of the coolest field trips I’ve ever been on!

That’s all the news from Deutschland from me; wishing everyone a pleasant October at UPS!

All the best,

Maddy