Uni 4

Wednesday was a very special day in my uni life. I decided to mark my 22nd birthday by submitting my final essay for the year! This means that I have now finished the second level of German and only have one year of German to go before I start my Spanish adventure! Level 2 German has been a blast, and I have grown so much as a person on the module!

This year has been fun despite my illness at the start of the year and the loss of a childhood friend in January. I got to work with a great tutor I met at last year’s German Conversation Day. I have really enjoyed working with Kim. It is pretty weird because she is, in many ways, quite similar to me. We are both from Scotland with dark curls and a love for swimming and the German language. On top of this, we have a similar sense of humour, which has made me feel comfortable in the module! This has encouraged me to put in 100% effort. Last year, I didn’t attend any of my German lectures or participate in forum discussions because I felt uncomfortable with my tutor. Yet, this year, I have been the loudest on the tutor group forum and have not scored below 82% in any assignment. I have gone to almost all of my lectures, including one on a lady called Elisabeth Graul, who was a prisoner in East Germany… this was not even part of my module; I just went because Kim was hosting it . It seemed interesting… this kind of led me down my own wee reading tangent on East Germany which has been really fun !

The one thing that I wasn’t really looking forward to this year was the compulsory online “Residential School” that I had to do in March. Since registering for the module, I had been a bit nervous and reluctant to do it because the thought of spending 3 days on video calls for 4-5 hours with someone who wasn’t even my own tutor seemed a bit overwhelming ! However, to my relief, I was assigned to Lilian who, if you have read my last article Day School 2- Conversation Day, you will remember as the smiley Austrian ! Having her for this intense weekend made it seem like less of an impossible task and even quite enjoyable ! It was still very tiring and so intense that I actually have no recollection of any dinner that my mum made me that weekend ! But I was able to participate in it without any major problems ! At the end of my last day, I actually had to send an email to Sylvia, apologising for being so dramatic about it !

This year I have had a whole team of great women behind me ! First of all, as well as the lovely Kim as my tutor, me and Sylvia have just grown closer and closer ! When I get a grade for an assignment, she is the first person I tell ! Also, I have invented a kind of pet name for her which I call her pretty much all the time (except in front of the bosses) and when she sees me in real life, she can’t help but hug and kiss me like crazy ! Next, I now have a proper older sister in  Chloe! I am not the most graceful of eaters and this usually makes me a bit self conscious. However, when I eat with Chloe, I don’t feel even slightly insecure, the woman just takes me as I am ! At my birthday party on Sunday, she even got my eating equipment out for me so I could have my cake in the most dignified way possible ! None of my friends have helped me in this way before ! Also, She always makes me feel like the most beautiful girl in the world at all times and so I try to repay her by helping her with her German ! Finally my student mentor from last year, Aoife, has kept in touch ! Although her language-learning journey is going in a different direction from mine, she was a massive help when I lost my friend and we still keep each other entertained with pony videos. These women have become like family to me and there have been a few issues this year that I don’t know if I would have made it through if I didn’t have them !

I have mixed feelings about my next module. on one hand I am very much looking forward to Advanced German because I have felt a little bit bored in recent tutorials because I have basically mastered everything and so I haven’t been learning anything from them ! Also I’m going to be working with Lilian next year and although she will never be Kim, she seems like a really kind lady and she is from Vienna so I am going to have the advantage of a native speaker. On the other hand this is going to be my last year of studying my Geistmuttersprache (spiritual mother tongue) and I get through German work really quickly, so although I am going to still have Sylvia who I can speak to in German, by this time next year, this lovely era of studying German is going to have come to an end ! Although I know that Sylvia will keep my German oiled, I’m worried about forgetting my award-winning German that I have worked so hard on over the past 5 years !

Before I start the last chapter of my German adventure however, my summer revision is looking quite exciting ! I am going back to Jena to do the same course I did last year ! It’s going to be so good to be immersed in the language like that again ! Also, Jena is a very cute little city so I’m looking forward to seeing the views again. The only thing I am not so crazy about is the crazy population of wasps that reside in the city ! Last year I was really harassed by them ! On top of my Jena trip, Sylvia is talking about maybe meeting me for a drink at some point in the holidays and doing a really chilled German conversation session with me. I think that this is a very kind offer so if we find a date when we are both free, I would like to take her up on it !

On Tuesday morning I told my granny that in hindsight I was actually glad that I didn’t get into Edinburgh University ! Yes, Edinburgh may be a really prestigious uni, but I love my OU family and I don’t think that I would have people like that at EU. Also the OU are very good at adjusting stuff for my needs so that I can be the absolute linguistic unicorn that I am ! I know that I was technically rejected because I don’t have any English qualifications, but part of me thinks that my rejection from Edinburgh University was actually the universe sending me here ! For the first time in my life, I feel like I belong!