Letter 06-2007. German students.

14^th May 2007

Dear friends,

You do not need to study long in another country before you see how strange the students there are – or how strange the students in your own country are, dependent on who you ask. Here is a small presentation of the strange students of Norway or Germany.

In Norway, or at least at MF, my school, it is normal that the students come to the auditorium when the lecture starts. I have often been the first one if I have come 5 minutes before the lecutre. The students do not spend extra time in the classrooms. In Germany, or at least at the theological faculty (TF) in Leipzig, the students normally come early. I have experienced that the classroom is full if I come late; 5 minutes before the lectures starts.

In Norway it is normally much space in the auditoriums. The lecturers must often ask the students to come closer when they sit in the back of an almost empty room. There is a reason that German students stand waiting outside the door, to make sure they get a good seat 15 minutes before, when the last lecture ends: It will get full. There is one socalled auditorium (Hörsaal, without much elevation or amfi structure) here, which is not very big, and then classrooms, which are also not very big. Some lectures which have not got time in the auditorium, are so popular that two classrooms are needed. Then a door between the rooms is opened, and the lecturer stands in the opening, so that the students in both room can hear. I have also started to come early enough to the pastoral care lectures to get a seat so that I both see and hear the teacher.

Most classrooms and auditoriums in Norway, at least at MF, are quite sterile and boring. MF is a practical and clean building. TF in Leipzig has more style. Paintings in the ceiling, or other ornaments, make it nice even when having given up understanding what is being said.

Norwegian students are normally silent until they leave the classrom after the lecture. After the last lecture of the semester they usually clap. At the end of the first lecture I attended here in Leipzig, I wondered what the students were doing. They all hit the table with their fist. This happened again in the other lectures and seminars I attended, and I soon understood that it was the applause after the lecture. Also students reading their protocols from the last seminar, or giving a speech (Referat), get such an applause. Only if there is no table to hit, I have experienced that they clap their hands.

The lecturers must also have a comment. In Norway I am used to the lecturers keeping their attention to what they talk about. I will not say that the German do not. But one case gets attention from almost everybody; sneezing. When I came in the beginning of April, the pollen season had started, and I was not the only one sneezing several times during the day. A student at the neighbouring table whispering „Gesundheit“ I can understand, but when the lecturer in the middle of a sentence says „Gesundheit“ before he completes the sentence, I find that the distraction is greater than necessary.

I came here with the imagination that Norwegian students are a bit lazy, while German students are more diligent. I still have some of that impression. But some of the German students might see it differently. „You spend much time in the library,“ a fellow student commented a few days ago. She has not seen me in Norway, and I do not think I spend so much time in the library here. I get tired from reading German, and the library is hot, though I have now found out which rooms are most comfortable when the sun is shining. Perhaps Norwegian students are not so lazy after all, though I still feel bad that I do not manage to translate from Greek to German, and I still, after five weeks, often find it difficult to follow the lectures and to understand what I read without looking more in the dictionary than in the German text.

I got good feedback on my speech in the OT seminar, about Egyptian creation myths, almost two weeks ago. Today I gave a speech in the PT seminar, about the German Evangelical Service book (and I therefore had to prepare that rather than write this letter yesterday). I still can not liberate myself from the manuscript, but it seems that they understood that, and that they also found my comparisons with the Norwegian Service book interesting.

Diligent greetings from Hanne.