After a long period of radio silence, this blog is back! Lots has changed since the last post in late February - I have seen exciting new places, traveled to exciting new cities, and met exciting new Germans.
What's less exciting is that I now work full-time, but that's just fine, since what I do is interesting. For the final months of my time here in Germany, I will be an intern at Kompakt Medien, a PR firm that works mainly with the German federal governmental ministries. So although I do not have an internship in Merkel's office, I still find myself working directly on political and social issues - just the way I like it.
One of the topics I have been most occupied with is education. Germany's education system is radically different from America's. When Germans kids are about middle school age, they are split off and sent down three separate tracts. Students in the highest tract complete the most rigorous high school curriculum and are permitted to go on and study at university. The middle tract's students undergo the 2nd-most intense academic curriculum and go into less academic, more professional trades like business and accounting.
The third, least rigorous tract involves the least time in the classroom. The students in this third tract often must choose a future career and complete an Ausbildung, or a dual training program consisting of part-time school and part-time work, when they are still high-school age. There are 330 different careers they can choose from, such as plumber to interior designer to glassblower to graphic designer to tugboat driver to street paver to baker to upholsterer to watch maker and everything in between. The point of this third tract is to get students who are not keen on university or spending too much time languishing in a classroom out into the field so they can gain real-world experience. Of course, it comes with the downside that they receive less traditional classroom instruction than their peers, and that they have to choose a career fairly early in their life. But the upside is that they are very well-trained and employable.
However, many Germans try to avoid this third tract and instead strive to do the highest tract - remember, the one that qualifies you to attend college later on? This is because university graduates, of course, wind up getting the highest-paying jobs, and everyone wants one of those. But there are only so many university spots available (especially since public universities are all free), and the world still needs plumbers and interior designers and glass blowers and graphic designers and tugboat drivers and street pavers and bakers and upholsterers and watch makers. The upper tract is getting overcrowded, and the third tract is not attracting enough students, a problem compounded by Germany's shrinking population. So, more German students need to choose to do an Ausbildung! At Kompakt Medien, I'm trying to help the Federal Ministry of Education and Research get the message out that an Ausbildung can pave the way to a successful and interesting career. So, if you're reading this, and you are a young German student uncertain about the future, I encourage you to do an Ausbildung!
Anyway, I have a life outside of my internship as well. I have been traveling to Poland, Amsterdam, and Rome as well as meeting with old American university friends. These pictures will all be up soon. In the meantime, here's a few random pictures from a few weeks ago.
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Amy is another participant
in the program. We’ve been friends since our days in Cologne, and she has now
moved from Frankfurt to Berlin to complete her internship. Welcome to Berlin,
Amy! What better way to welcome her other than stand in front of the famous Berlin Wall mural of a kiss between Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev
and East German General Secretary Erich Honecker?
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| Amy and I took a walk along the Spree River in the center of town. Here's Angela Merkel's office, the Chancellery |
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| And here, the German Parliament's home, called the Reichstagsgebäude |
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| A little later on, I competed in an ultimate frisbee tournament in Berlin. It was a lot of fun, and at the end of the competition, a German player named Lucas told me he liked my University of Southern California shirt and that we should exchange jerseys. Wow! A true intercultural exchange! I took him up on his offer, and he stopped by my internship office a few days later to give me his jersey from the 2012 World Cup of Ultimate, which Germany had won! I'm still excited about my newest favorite shirt |
That's it for now, but some really special pictures of Rome are right around the corner.