“Study, I’m breaking up with you!”

April 15, 2015

Deciding on a field of study is not easy. Another difficulty is abandoning a course of study you have started and going your own way. It's not always the lack of success that plays a role, but also gut feeling and the question of your own vision.

Johannes: A bit more experimental

Johannes Küpper studies human biology at the University of Greifswald - and does so successfully. After completing his bachelor's degree in 2012, he spent a year abroad in Sweden. Now he is doing everything he can to pass his master's degree and Johannes is already dreaming of a doctorate. However, many people he meets wonder why he studied law and only switched to science a year later. For Johannes this is logical: “My interest in medicine was still very vague back then. When I saw that there were restricted admissions at the university, I initially decided on an unrestricted subject.” In addition to business administration, these were law. The Magdeburg native found good friends in the world of paragraphs and legal texts, but he was increasingly tormented by the question of whether it might not be more correct to do something medical. This was counteracted by ambition and pride to simply complete my studies and become a lawyer. Nevertheless, he followed his curiosity: he exchanged ideas with fellow students at the medical faculty, attended a dissection course and studied anatomy. Johannes struggled with himself for a long time before the actual decision was made. However, family and friends encouraged him to do what he liked. Today, Johannes explains with great enthusiasm what makes human biology special: “The doctor is basically a user. He works with the knowledge of what is there to heal people and extend their lives. The human biologist, on the other hand, is someone who researches new knowledge. I want to discover something new in independent science that will then be published and perhaps taken up by medicine at some point.” Johannes gained his first experience in research in Stockholm. As a popular example, he cites the vaccine against cervical cancer, which was developed by Nobel Prize winner Harald zur Hausen. Such success is often preceded by many years of research work. But that doesn't deter Johannes: problem solving is his thing.

Debora: One size smaller

Debora Grund knows that a change of course can be motivated less by the subject than by the general conditions. The insurance specialist studied business education for a semester at the University of Hamburg and wanted to become a vocational school teacher. “After just three weeks, my rose-colored glasses fell off,” she says. She complains about the overcrowded lecture halls, the inaccessibility of the professors and the solitary behavior among fellow students. She underestimated the huge campus with 45,000 students. Since business education was a “cross-sectional subject” and there was no faculty of its own, Debora sat in the lectures of many other target groups: computer scientists, mathematicians, lawyers and business graduates. “I felt completely alone and would have liked more support,” she says. She found it difficult to read the scripts and teach herself the material. In addition, she regularly commuted between Hamburg and Lübeck – because of her family and her boyfriend. The situation was exhausting her: “In the end, I couldn’t sleep properly anymore.” She gave up her studies and got a tip from a friend to take a look around the Lübeck University of Applied Sciences campus. Although no business education was offered there, there was at least business administration with a focus on health economics. The change was uncomplicated: she was credited with one semester and within a few weeks she was able to transfer to the current semester. She immediately felt happier at the technical college. “We are well prepared for the exams here and the lecture halls are much smaller. It’s very familiar, like a school class,” she explains happily. She has now completed her bachelor's degree, works in the office of the equal opportunities officer and is also studying for her master's degree.

Ben Paul: A number freer

Ben Paul studied law at the Bucerius Law School in Hamburg - and dropped out after just one year. “I realized that I was in danger of burning out, and for me that’s not really the point of studying,” he explains. This idea first occurred to him in Nicaragua, a country in Central America. Ben completed voluntary service there, for which he took a leave of absence from the university. Ben considers himself to be a lateral thinker: “Most lawyers are a special kind of person – and I am simply too creative and free-thinking to become a good lawyer. I want to create and be my own boss and not spend all day poring over files and leafing through thick legal texts.” However, it was difficult for him to actually put the decision into practice. He argued for a long time and weighed things up. The network at the private university was very good and he was able to do an internship in the legal department at Audi. But in the end he trusted his gut feeling. What did his family say about this? “My dad made it clear to me that he would no longer support me. My mom was crying and was really worried.” Today Ben lives in an eight square meter room in Berlin and has learned to look after himself. What's more, he has his own vision of how young people can get to know themselves and only receive the knowledge that is important for their own personal path. With his blog “Anti-Uni” he regularly makes his ideas and experiences transparent. In some media he is considered “Germany’s most famous college dropout”. But that's not what matters to him. He doesn't just want to babble, but pursues a clear goal: "I want to provide young people with methods with which they can find out what they really want." This should be possible in the future via online courses. At the same time, he dreams of founding “mini universities” in which students learn independently, support each other and thus follow their own educational path.