A brief report on my year at the Georgia Institute of Technology

For my Atlantis scholarship I wrote a short resume on my two semesters at Georgia Tech:

In the fall semester 2010 and the spring semester 2011, I had the opportunity to study at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. This time abroad has changed my life personally as well as academically in so many different ways that I will focus on the most important experiences in the following. For more impressions I encourage you to read more in my blog.

Academically Georgia Tech was a challenge in several ways. This was best expressed in a saying about studying at Georgia Tech that I found in the Technique, the official college newspaper: “Sleep, social life, good grades – choose two”. I chose to drop sleep. The workload of homeworks, midterm exams, projects and final exams exceed anything I had known from TUM. This high volume of work has its origin in the different notion of studying in America. The believe is that studying has to be an active experience, that is the students have to apply as much as possible of what they heard in class in order to thoroughly learn it. I agree with this attitude because I can truly say that I took away a lot from the lectures at Georgia Tech. Furthermore, tackling the challenge that the large amount of work presented has made me a more effective worker.

But of course I also lived. Georgia Tech is a campus university, which means you have a lot of clubs and events that present a welcome change to pure studying every once in a while. I had a lot of fun getting know people from all over the world, like India, China or Latin America, who broadened my understanding of their cultures by first hand descriptions and stories. During the school holidays I traveled through the eastern part of America to experience the land and the people of the United States and to see big cities like New York or Chicago. Those amazing trips have left me with a totally different sense for distance and size as well as a deeper understanding of the American culture.

I feel fortunate that I got the chance to experience all this and I am very grateful for the support of the Atlantis Program, the TUMExchange Program, the Fulbright Program, the Max Weber Program and the Heinrich and Lotte Mühlfenzl Foundation, as well as for the help of all the people on my way. It was a incredible experience and I encourage everybody who has the opportunity to go for it!