Paula Germayer is 19 and graduated from high school last year. Since then, she has been spending time with part-time jobs, traveling and doing volunteer work. Now she wants to start studying social work. But because of the pandemic, everything will be different for her, as for hundreds of thousands of other students, this semester. This is her diary.
Thursday, September 17th: Into the unknown
This waiting is exhausting. If it were a normal year, I would have received answers from the universities as early as the end of August, asking whether I had an acceptance or a rejection. But because the Abitur was taken much later this year due to Corona, it takes a few weeks longer. I don’t know what to expect: Am I going to Würzburg or Augsburg to study social work? I already have an acceptance for Würzburg, but I’m still waiting for an answer from Augsburg. I think it could be nice in both cities. But I want to have a choice and not have to worry later. The corona numbers are low at the moment, it will hopefully be a halfway normal semester.
At the moment I still live with my parents near the German-Austrian border in the south of Bavaria. It takes just five hours to get to Augsburg and Würzburg by train from here. The Corona period therefore has one advantage: WG castings now take place quite often via Skype and telephone. At least I save myself the whole driving.
The casting for a flat share in Augsburg with a guy and a girl only lasted ten minutes, it wasn’t what I had imagined. We had a nice chat, but I don’t know if it would have been perfect. A Würzburg flat share, in which three other girls live, was all the better. They were all really nice, we talked forever. I very much hope that you will agree. I don’t yet know how the seminars and lectures will take place. I don’t want to worry too much about the uncertainties.
Monday, October 12th: The move
The girls from the Würzburger WG have agreed! I was really happy about that, the three of them seem very personable. This week I’m finally moving the furniture into my new flat share. Last week I went to visit my new roommates. We cooked and spent our first evening together. We kept our distance, of course. But my! We’ll live together then, so we’ll get closer at some point anyway. A few days ago I finally wrote off Augsburg, where I was only on the waiting list. I wanted to choose a city. And I don’t know any people in either city so far, so I opted for the nicer flat share.
In the event of a lockdown, it is more comfortable to live with others. A 6-person flat share lives in the apartment on the floor above. They also make a nice impression. I can’t even imagine living alone, right now.
When I think about the first semester, I feel insecure. The first week is supposed to take place at the university, I’m looking forward to it. But after that there are attendance appointments only twice a month. That’s sad; I and my fellow students will miss the experience with the people that you normally have at the beginning of your studies. It will be very different from normal times. Everyone is sitting in front of their laptop. How are you supposed to make friends and network with each other? As I have heard, there will only be small groups in our class that last until the end of the semester. I very much hope that I will get along with people.
Thursday, October 22nd: Broken WiFi
When I noticed a few days ago that the WiFi in my room was crazy, I thought to myself: “Oh dear, I have no idea how to manage a semester like this if the internet doesn’t even work at home.” My roommates helped me, and together we bought a WiFi amplifier and laid a LAN cable for security. I hope it works out soon.
So far I haven’t made any contact with my future fellow students. I haven’t found any groups on Facebook in which my degree program can exchange ideas, and I don’t know how else to network with them either. After all, I now have a student ID, and my flat share is really great. We drink tea together, cook together, and every now and then friends of my roommates visit. So I never feel alone here.
On one of our first evenings in a shared apartment, we briefly forgot about the pandemic. We thought about what our housewarming party might look like. We had tons of ideas for mottos and games. But of course nothing will come of it. Unfortunately, the corona numbers are now rising again. Würzburg was briefly a hotspot. It’s already heavy: You are not allowed to go to college before the first-year week, the cafeterias are closed, there are no posters anywhere announcing first-year parties. And it doesn’t look like the numbers will be going down anytime soon.
Wednesday 4th November: The first week
I’m doing really well now. Our first week started rather strangely on Monday. We met outside on campus, and when I got there, most of the people in my small group of 20 people were already standing there. But they kept a great distance from one another. Almost no one talked. He was in a strange mood. Nobody seemed to really know how to approach the other. How about when you have a mask on and have to keep a distance of 1.5 meters?
Our mentor then went with us to the seminar room and we played games to get to know each other. Fortunately, that quickly eased the mood. And you could see that people don’t study social work without a reason. Actually, a city rally was planned for the first day, so you could have gotten to know the area and the other people. But because of the lockdown, it was canceled. Now we’re going to do “online speed dating” via Zoom instead. I think I’ll take part, even if it sounds strange at first. But at least everyone is in the same situation and sits in front of the laptop in their shared room with a beer or wine. Maybe it’ll be fun anyway.
Such ideas are nice, but of course I think it’s a shame that the semester can’t be normal. Almost all events will take place online until at least the end of November. It’s a different matter whether four of you meet in a café and simply invite people over to your home – or whether you can only do it with your roommates.
In my flat share we do game evenings, cook and order a box of vegetables home for a week. Thats fun. In the first few days I met a very nice fellow student. She lives alone in an apartment because she couldn’t find a flat share at such short notice. I invited her so she wouldn’t feel so lonely. I feel like she built that up. This week the studies are finally getting going.
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