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Hi everybody! I'm here, I'm alive, and I'm well. Though there have been rumors going around in my immediate family, I didn't actually fall off the face of the earth! Look, here's a picture of me finally meeting my childhood hero, Avril Lavigne... Okay, maybe not quite. Regardless, I'm living and breathing, and the city of Berlin has still been way too cold for this time of year in my opinion, but it's beginning to come out of its winter hibernation. Soon, summer will be here... Or so they tell me.
The reason why I haven't been able to keep up with these blog posts nearly as much as I'd like to mostly has to do with the fact that at the very beginning of April, classes began at German universities. Until then, I'd been taking part (along with the other five Hampshire College students who are here) in four-hour daily classes at the BSI Language School in Berlin Neukölln, and had been participating in many weekly events put on by the Hampshire College Berlin Program. These weekly events included film screenings in our studio space every Tuesday evening (usually involving films having something to do with Berlin and/or Berlin's complicated history), theater plays, musical concerts, many different types of gallery openings, day-trips to places like Potsdam and Ravensbrück, and other such activities.
Not only did these Hampshire College Berlin Program activities continue as university classes began, and at full-blast might I add, but I also picked up an independent study on top of all of that (working with Daniel and Anna Schrade, the Hampshire advisors for the trip). Things have been busy, things have been stressful, but things have also been a ton of fun. I haven't talked about university at all in my prior blog posts, so in order to inform future perspective program participants as well as my friends and family, here is my experience with it thus far:
The main university in Berlin that Hampshire College is linked up with is called "Freie Universität" (or "Free University") and is a large university on the outskirts of the city in a place called Dahlem Dorf. Because there are no private universities in Germany (and all degrees can be earned for less that 300 Euros per year), FU (I know, an unfortunate abbreviation) feels very much like a big state school. For me, I would compare it to the University of New Hampshire or UMASS Amherst. It's been a bit difficult adjusting to becoming a number in a really large school, when I'm so used to being not only a name, but an entire person at Hampshire College. The classes at FU are much larger, and I found out when signing up for classes that there are basically no music classes (other than basic theory) offered.
Taking this into account, I looked outside of FU for classes that interested me and were more inside of my area of study. Though we are technically full-time students at FU, we were also (thankfully) encouraged by our advisors to look at Humboldt University (same size/feeling as FU, just in more interesting buildings that are inside of the city instead of outside of it), Berlin's Technical University, and elsewhere. I ended up finding a class at Humboldt that interested me, and after going to a bunch of classes and seeing what I thought I'd like, here was the schedule that I ended up with:
- "Film in der DDR / DEFA" - a film class based solely around watching lots of movies from the GDR (former East Germany). All in German. LOTS of work. (Freie University)
- "Deutschkurs" - a weekly German language class focusing on the history and culture of Berlin in the 1920's. (Freie University)
- "Hörstunde: Kammermusik: Von Händel bis Hendrix" - a listening hour (actually 3 hours) every week which focuses on the fluidity of the concept of chamber music. All in German. (Humboldt University)
- "Berlin Soundscapes" - an independent study involving doing research on the history of some of Berlin's train stations, collecting found sounds, composing music, and mashing them all together.
I'm happy with my schedule, and think that it's just the right amount of work for me. Some weeks, I have a ton of work, and on other weeks, my workload is relatively light. It lets me feel like I'm taking part in something academically stimulating while also giving me some time to still explore and enjoy the city. I would highly recommend keeping that element in mind when choosing your courses for the program.
Another thing that has been strange is getting all grades for the semester. I hadn't realized how used to receiving written evaluations I'd become, even though I do get letter grades for all of my Five College courses back home anyway. In Germany, instead of getting an A, B, C, D, or F, you get a 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 (respectively). BUT even though all of these things have felt a little strange, I'm managing and everything is going just fine.
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| Here's a photo that I took a few weeks ago of the outside of the main FU building as I was leaving my class for the afternoon. |
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| Here's a little guy doing yoga on top of a street sign near FU. |
I think that's all there really is to say about my experience in German universities. I've also been doing a lot of travelling when I'm not in class (and okay, sometimes when I'm SUPPOSED to be in class). I understand that that will make a much more exciting blog, which I promise to post soon. It's going to involve a LOT of photos, so it's taking a while to finish.
Thank you all for reading, and check back because I'll be posting a few more blog posts this weekend.
Liebe Grüße!
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p.s. If you're a perspective student for this program and have any questions, please don't hesitate to email me - my email address is in the right hand column of this page.
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