Lost in the crowd.

Pointless forms, absent teachers, complicated Prüfungsordnungen: Felix Ehring has participated in a North German Massenuni studied - and for years suffered from the chaotic administration. The only people who really helped him, were the secretaries. A billing.

 

It is the end of my studies, but solemn, the mood is not. I am in an office-interior of the seventies. One sees such furniture back more often on television, such as reports on the Schleyer kidnapping. Just as it looks at this university. The instrument for my graduation I get in duplicate over. A mistake, I know: "Your instrument is only printed incorrectly. The correct version has now been sent twice." Clearly, a mistake. Had I thought.

DPA
Campus (in Hamburg): The Massenuni defy the odds

Around five years, my studies at a North German "mass university" to complete. Mass instead of class. At that time, when the Millennium was young, I had me with a legal dodge a study ergaunert. Here I wanted to study, but the university took me around the 0.2 to Abinotenwert bad. So I worried when Asta a contradiction form and entered a second time to the gate formation.

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My motivation was not the excellent reputation of this university. Words like "excellence" were not even up in the vocabulary of the German educational policy vorgedrungen, Bologna was any city in Italy. My reason was another: Like so many I did not want to in the province and with the opposition won a first victory in the bureaucratic Mehrkampf. Coming adversity Massenuni should I just brave. The price I was willing to pay. And I paid him in installments.

Waiting is the maxim

The biggest hurdle of a university is its bureaucratic apparatus. Eventually it falls on the nose, this much is certain. Of the seven fellow students, I mentioned in the orientation unit met, I will soon no longer seen on the campus. There are hardly any studies have canceled because they were too difficult tray. Certainly, some just enough of the eternal chaos, which is as fast as normally found. In the mass we lost from sight. Where are you, early companions?

THE AUTHOR

Felix Ehring, 27, has history, politics and folklore studies. The university Tristesse, he survived and is currently volunteer at the development journal "world views".

I also made myself scarce. Borrow books, essays to write - a gift that was almost incidentally, between two barbecues in the park and two long-haul. But who counts the hours, which I on the floor of the Student spent, when I wanted to change my minor? Equally memorable are the office hours for teachers. Far too often I stood for hours before a closed office.

At the office, the faculty can be distinguished: The matter is simply not there. Care divide by a slip of paper with that Sprechstunde unfortunately must fail, because of illness, because of a mission, board meeting, minor test. Who needs reasons when he is a professor?

If the teacher's obligation to comply but, I waited in the hope of a brief audience. I sat in the dark for so long corridors on dirty floors around that I got scared, the asbestos could be slow in my back part diffuse. In those hours, I reminded me of the greeting words of the dean, the university must provide more than the bare knowledge of their disciplines. That did it: You taught me to be patient, frugal, equanimity.

In the course of cancer through the institutions

After all, there are secretaries who really touching care. Without them, I know as an ex-student of a Massenuni, nothing would work. Lecturers would verwohnten offices folders and literature buried and forgotten. Students would lose because they do not understand the content of the examination.

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But if even a clueless secretary, then it will be uncomfortable. I got the feeling when I registered for my final exam. But I did a marathon - with signatures of six investigators and two written commitments for evaluating my thesis. All this had added to the individual departments will be stamped. Why? So. To a document includes also a stamp.

They gave me all the notes that the language of proof, even my graduation certificate. Of course I would have to study without Abizeugnis can not start, would be proven without foreign language skills for graduate has been admitted. Presentation, signing, stamping - that will take. And my march through the institutions I made in July and August. Worse mistake: No holds then lecturer at the university. In September, but maybe not. Only in October found slowly again.

Honestly say, it was not all bad. Of course, there are lecturers who are also caring for their students and not just the next release. There are professional administrators and librarians. And since I had the privilege of free education had I practiced many times in humility.

Professor to travel, exam perdu

Has someone calculated that economic harm would be caused that senseless forms, stamps, signatures, the study time in the length of pull? With all the legitimate criticism of
Bachelor and master: the new degrees, the structure of the course and thus the study period only improve. Fixed deadlines for correcting exams and homework are a blessing!

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Yet the universities accommodate more inmates, which the security of their position are all too aware. Their behavior is paying students under increased pressure to perform is not reasonably. And, of course, to show good will apparently lone clerk. Lecturers hardly communicate with the management, they see as a necessary evil. The consequences of swim students.

After the final exam had written to me as quickly as possible the testimony will be issued. It took two months - the exam as its advice had vanished. Mysterious. It was the fault of the House post office, several controlled all the shelves and mailboxes, secretaries had cabinets and desks away. Then came the professor responsible for a longer trip back. One day later the documents suddenly appeared again.

In the weeks before the secretary comforted me moving: It was not so bad if the exam has disappeared. Because they copy all the exams before they fix it for the teachers to continue forward. It had proved itself.