Life lessons from Leipzig: My experience as an exchange student
Where I thought I would come away with improved language skills, I have come away with a radical new understanding of how university life should be.
In contrast to my three best friends from my home university who were spending the year in Hong Kong, Shanghai or Cairo, I was remaining relatively cosily within my comfort zone as I prepared for my move to study in Leipzig – or so I thought. I knew that I had to practice my German, and that academically the year would pose a challenge, but I expected that culturally Leipzig would be relatively similar. To be honest, I was somewhat sceptical about whether I would really be able to experience such a different culture by moving to a city that was, still, a train journey away from home.
As a student of German and English Literature, the options for my exchange were all universities in Germany. Yet I had first heard about Leipzig at school, with its associations of peaceful revolution and political activism, and was drawn towards it. A superficial Google search revealed an esteemed university and a list of alumni that reads like a roll call of influential German personalities, among them Goethe, Merkel and Leibniz. The benefit of a city small and untouristy enough for me to have opportunities to speak German out and about was also compelling. Add to that a few persuasive words from my dad, a musician and Bach enthusiast, and I was in no doubts about where I wanted to spend my year.
After only a few weeks I was convinced that university in Germany was much more student-friendly than in Edinburgh. With classes where students interact, where putting your hand up and answering a question in a lecture is normal – where students raise objections when they don’t agree. Where the week is structured around doing work and then discussing it in class, where tutorials are offered if you don’t understand the work. I had been used to five 50-minute classes a week, with the rest of the time to work alone through reading academic articles. The change to an academic environment based around talking and explaining seemed revolutionary to me.
My home university had been relatively prescriptive about the courses I was to take: 15 credits per semester, at least 7 credits of which had to be from German language and Literature courses. What I was fascinated by was that Germanistik comprised both language and literature. I had long since disposed of studying any English Language at age 16, choosing only to study English Literature at A-Level and University. This is a path that is fairly common for students in England. I must admit, since studying Linguistics at Leipzig I have come to regret never having considered studying it earlier. After having struggled through two years of learning and relearning German grammar, Historical Linguistics suddenly made everything seem less arbitrary – there was now a reason as to why there are 9 different ways of forming plurals! It was also admittedly comforting for once to be surrounded by German native speakers also being baffled by the language.
There were a few small things about university life I found tricky: the unwieldy 90-minute classes, the total fight to the death of signing up for courses on the dot – and constantly forgetting I wasn’t supposed to refer to my tutors by their first name. But these were all small fry, compared to what I felt I gained in a wider perspective – it felt like I was finally experiencing what it was like to be a proper student. I also adore the knocking on tables at the end of the lecture. In the UK, clapping after a lecture only occurs if the lecturer is exceptionally good – which has led to more than a few awkward occasions.
If the approach to education seemed transformative, so too was the student life. The Mensa. Amongst my Erasmus friends the opinion is pretty much unanimous – the Mensa is one of the best things about the student life in Germany. A place with affordable dishes and above all a hive of activity, a sense of a shared mealtime. The student bars I feel similarly about: this is what enables student connection – places for students to be, where they can afford to be, where efforts are made to foster a sense of community. Regardless of whether you regularly visit these spaces or it’s not your scene – the point is that they are there.
My life outside of university, too, was filled with surprises. There were the general things that took me unawares: discovering I needed to buy both curtains and a WiFi router for my student accommodation, frequent public holidays where everything was shut, having to do every piece of paperwork manually. There were also things that posed a greater challenge than I had anticipated: the many hours spent at the Ausländerbehörde, the general struggles and accidental social mishaps that emerge when you can’t gauge tone or emotion as easily in a second language, or when you miss vital information. Yet rarely did I get a strong feeling of not being included (also needless to say, I was incredibly lucky that I could fall back on English). When it came to my personal experience, the claims of the city’s open and relaxed nature definitely held true.
In many ways, I wish that my year at Leipzig had been my first experience at university. It would have been nice to grow up in an educational environment and a city with a solid sense of community and support at its core, rather than (as my first year at Edinburgh felt) being pushed out of the nest straight into the cold adult world. But better late than never! And as my return to a Mensa-less Edinburgh moves ever closer, I’m confident I will be able to bring my newfound knowledge of student living back with me.
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