My two weeks in Germany are almost up, and I have to think back on what I’ve really done. In a lot of ways, it has felt like a vacation. I went to a museum, took a tour of the city of Munich, ate out almost every day, every meal, took a train to Salzburg exclusively to look at a castle and the Alps… But I’ve gained a lot more than any of that would let on.
Of course, I can’t ignore the benefit of having exposed myself to German life and culture and people, which I think is genuinely the primary reason one should go on a study abroad trip. Although for the life of me, I will never understand why nobody drinks water with ice in it here, or why anybody drinks carbonated water. I picked up a few words in German as well, although amazingly I encountered only maybe two people who didn’t speak English at all. Many were fluent to the point that I wouldn’t bat an eye if I met them in America. Gosh, we really need to invest more in public foreign language education…
We didn’t just visit vacation spots either, we also went on a tour of both a BMW facility and a Siemens factory. We saw the innovations BMW had in making their repair service more efficient, and that was incredible. I liked the Siemens tour even more, since we actually saw the trains in production. Giant cranes pulling the front ends of cars up to the body to be bolted in. (Not welded, only bolted! They do that because if the train is then in a low-speed collision, they can replace just the front instead of doing more expensive repairs.) I was really sad I couldn’t take pictures of that, but I suppose trade secrets should probably stay secret.
All of this without even mentioning the actual classes. All of our professors from the Munich University of Applied Sciences were great, extremely knowledgeable, and clearly very excited to be teaching a handful of students from across the Atlantic. Their lessons were fantastic, across the board. I can guarantee I won’t ever hear much again about how to spur innovation in companies or about ergonomics between man and machine in my regular mechanical engineering degree, unless I suppose I deliberately seek that out.
My head is telling me, “You didn’t learn anything, you didn’t have to take a single exam, or do any homework at all!” but I know that isn’t the case. Everything I’ve experienced here I will retain far longer than anything I ever crammed for a test. Regardless, I’ve got to grab some acetaminophen from the pharmacy now. I think my head hurts from thinking so much.
Swanson School of Engineering 