Culture German lecture hall. Photo by Sophie SchrĂśter.
Small Courses and Big Campuses A comparison of American and German student life By Janna Wolf Imagine you are sitting in a lecture hall, bigger than any you have ever seen before. Around you are no less than 800 other students. The professor is standing in front, talking into his microphone, indicating at some points on the big screen in the middle of the lecture hall. Nobody seems to be listening. Imagine three girls in front of you eating salads while they plan their next weekend trips on their laptops. Some guys have beers they brought from the cafeteria sitting in front of them. They do not even try to be discreet when opening the bottles and toasting to the beginning of the semester. A group of 10 people arrive 20 minutes late. Another group leaves after an hour. All the while, the professor does not pay any attention and just goes on with his lecture. If you can visualize all this, you’ll have a pretty good picture of what a regular course at a German university looks like, so you can probably imagine how astonished I was when I first entered an American lecture hall. I am an exchange student from Germany staying in Long Beach for two semesters. Originally I studied in Stuttgart, in the south of Germany. In the first weeks of the semester I not only recognized many differences between studying in Germany and the United States, but got to know a whole new study experience. First of all, there is the university itself. Most of you probably do not notice, but the Long Beach campus is huge and beautiful–especially compared to most of the campuses in Germany. You will not find any rolled turfs and fountains there. To be Here is some hard news for the honest, a thing like a campus does not really exist either. Usually the sports fans among you: There university buildings are more or less are no competitive university spread over the city. Sometimes you sports in Germany. have to drive through the whole town to get to your next class and there
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