Studies | Dominik Mayer – Products, Asia, Productivity

50 Minutes

The freshmen wrote their mechanics exam this morning, so there’s only information technology left. My last one for the time being is flight mechanics which will start in 50 minutes. Wish me luck.

(It’s time that it ends, my script starts to fall apart.)

The Date and the Bike

The lecture Produktentwicklung und Konstruktion (PuK), product development and construction design) teaches how to generate various ideas for technical products.

How would you close a pitted, almond-filled date? I used, amongst others, excess pressure while the proposed solutions contained throwing it on the ground as well as shooting two balls at it.

Today’s exam was trickier, it was about a highly realistic bicycle trainer which permitted tilting and could simulate inclines.

Photos and Libraries

I should be in Cham by now as taking pictures for the family album is more important than two exams next week… Anyway, I’ll head for the University Library first, the TribüHne second and finally the State Library. I can still drive home when it closes at midnight. Positive side-effect: There won’t be any trucks on the roads.

Halftime

Today was the third intermediate exam, Materials Science. There are only two left. Keep up, you’ll make it!

Awaiting Chinese Books

I finally decided to get the books of the New Approaches To Learning Chinese series: Intensive Spoken Chinese, The Most Common Chinese Radicals and Rapid Literacy in Chinese. The reviews are quite promising and the method convinced me. As the books are already sent, I hope they’ll arrive tomorrow.

Second Legal State Examination

According to an article on the German news site Spiegel Online, the Second Legal State Examination is one of the hardest exams worldwide:

Denn das zweite juristische Staatsexamen gilt als eine der schwierigsten Prüfungen der Welt. Gut jeder fünfte Referendar scheitert im ersten Anlauf.

The Second Legal State Examination is reckoned one of the most difficult exams worldwide. Almost every fifth trainee fails at the first attempt.

Every fifth, ok, so 80 percent pass. I think many candidates here would be highly pleased with that quota.

Chinese Textbooks

The Chinese course I attended last year used the book Chinesisch für Deutsche (Chinese for Germans). The problem is that it doesn’t contain information on how to write Chinese characters at all. You have to figure it out by yourself. And the first dialogs are about mother, father, cat, dog and the fact that some students learn while others have a break. Not the kind of vocabulary that I suppose is most needed during the first days in Shanghai.

So I think about getting a new book. ChinesePod is going to cover Integrated Chinese throughout the next semester. I also read about the New Practical Chinese Reader which is prefered by some reviewers. How on earth should I know which one is better?

Silence

I’m almost the only one not studying abroad (yet) or doing an internship there but I’m the only one keeping the others posted about what’s going on, or at least I’m trying to. And what’s coming back? Some news from Stockholm and Cambridge, hardly any from Gran Canaria and none from the States.

Bad Day

A burglar stole things from a friend, I got the results of an exam that were not as desired, what’s coming next?

First Intermediate Exams

Today is the first day of intermediate exams for the freshmen. They have to pass five exams now, starting with Technical Electricity, and another six next year.

Good luck to all of you!

Freshmen Plans

After one and a half hours of discussing whether it’s possible to do something tomorrow evening we finally agreed to meet at the library. After it closes at 20:00 h we have at most two hours until they need to continue studying. I think that’ll suffice for a warm meal. Don’t know if another friend will come along. They said she resolved to learn eleven hours tomorrow.

Freshmen

The intermediate exams in engineering are tough, no question, but that doesn’t mean you have to learn 24/7. This year’s freshmen are overdoing it a little bit. How could we succeed without brooding over our books all day long? Didn’t we manage to have at least some evenings were we sat together talking?