EIt's 8:30 a.m. I'm sitting at my desk in front of my laptop with puffy eyes and already sipping my second coffee. But neither I nor my brain want to wake up this morning. I've been sitting like this for almost twenty minutes now, in full sleeping gear, staring intently at my PC screen and reading every line of the open PDF document three times without understanding anything. I curse myself for not starting the seminar exercises sooner. 30 pages on the topic of types of word formation – conversion, derivation, composition – a Monday really couldn't start any worse.
What I forgot in my sleepy state is actually obvious: I simply didn't have time to finish my university tasks earlier. Since the seminar last week, I have worked four days, written a text for a newspaper and babysat on Saturday. With the free time I had left, I sat in crowded lecture halls or stuffy seminar rooms and tried to complete as many of the seminar tasks as possible at some point before or during my working hours.
At the end of my student career, I have to sum up that the student life that I dreamed of as a first-year student five years ago has not quite become a reality for me. Back then, I believed that I could sit with fellow students in university cafes for hours and philosophize about life, explore the city's clubs every day during the week and go for brunch on Thursday mornings after lectures. But all of this, I painfully realize that Monday morning, I somehow missed.
The best or most stressful years?
I could now blame this fact on my age. A student in her mid-twenties, at the end of her master's degree, has a different rhythm and different priorities than the nineteen-year-old freshman I once was. However, I also have to admit to myself that even at the beginning of my studies, my life was somewhere between stressful exam phases, changing part-time jobs and deadlines. At university, I excelled with almost noticeable absences from lectures and, after my job, I cram for the next exams on my own.
In the evenings I tried to relieve my stress by cycling or simply slept – so big party nights were rare. My fellow students mostly felt the same way. They too were caught in this stress whirlpool and some of them still are today, in their master's studies or their jobs.
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