PLADDFEDER - Fachschaft Maschinenbau

32 PLADDFEDER WS 09/10
as getting to know the German students who
offered to work as tutors for the groups. Unfortunately,
some of the things that our tutors
had to help us with seemed like rather inefficient
bureaucratic steps, which I hear Germans
often commenting on as well. For example,
I got a lot of unplanned exercise by making
trips between offices of the Studentenwerk,
Akademisches Auslandsamt, the Anmeldeamt,
and I don’t even remember what else, to
make payments, collect signatures, etc. Most
of the offices also had rather limited opening
hours compared to what I am used to. Later
in the semester, the process for registering for
exams was even more complicated and time
consuming. I certainly hope more of these
steps will move onto the internet in the future!
Cockpit of an Lufthansa airplane in the hangars
of Frankfurt Aiport
One surprising difference at the start of
the semester was that we are not required to
register for classes in advance. In the U.S.,
students must use an online tool to request
and then select what courses they will take
in the semester, and after a certain date, you
are obligated to continue participation. Most
classes will have every seat full upon the start
of the lectures. There is also a strict system
of “prerequisites,” meaning that a student will
only be allowed to participate in a course if
they have prepared by taking the required lower-level
courses. Here at TUD, I was free to
visit professors and simply discuss whether I
had the proper background knowledge to participate,
which gave me more freedom as an
exchange student without any prior credits in
German university classes.
The biggest difference and challenge for me
studying at TUD is that the entire grade for a
class is based upon the final exam. At home,
grades are made up of projects, homework,
quizzes, and mid-term tests given throughout
the course of the semester, with the final exam
accounting for 25-40% of the grade for most
classes. The pressure to do well on the final
exams here will be high, and I am still nervous
about whether I have been learning the
material well enough throughout the semester.
On the one hand, I like distributing my
grade over multiple assignments and getting
feedback and grades from professors throughout
the course of the semester. However, I
also know that the German system does force
students to thoroughly learn all of the course