Dream Finally Came True. Part 2.

Overall, I really like studying at TU Darmstadt. It is a nice experience of how the learning process could be different.

The university itself is really modern, and has its campuses all over the town. I have my lectures only at the campus in the city center. It is really conveniently situated. I am totally glad that it takes me only 20 minutes to get to the university from my dorm. You can use a tram, walk or even borrow a bicycle, which is the most amusing way of getting to the university.

There are lectures available in both German and English languages. However, the choice of lectures in English is much narrower than in German. I have my lectures in the German language for two main reasons: firstly, I could not find the lectures I wanted in English, secondly, I wanted to have more practice in German, to improve my language level listening to native speakers.

At first, it was rather complicated to pick up what they were talking about. I really had to pay maximum attention to every word. The lecturers speak fluently. Besides, listening is not the only problem. It is also required to read some extra literature on some topics. If you want to acquire a good understanding of something, it is better to look it up in the original language. It is also possible to see some information in Russian, but many concepts are hard to translate without losing some sense. However, after some time I got the hang of it. Now the German language is not a problem. It was just a matter of getting used to. Currently I feel quite confident about lectures and literature in German language.

The semesters are actually much shorter than in Russia. Nevertheless, they truly make up for it. The amount of information one has to memorize is impressive. Some of the subjects like math have two lectures per week. To keep up, it is important to revise the lecture materials at home a lot. That actually requires a lot of self-control, discipline.

I find it convenient, that all the lectures are uploaded to the Internet. This makes revising stuff a lot easier. Besides, there are also the whole scripts with discipline contents available. In the future, I assume, it might also turn out to be helpful for the exam preparation. Furthermore, the answers with detailed solutions to each home exercise are also uploaded after the deadline. That means that you can see where you have made some mistakes and clarify problematic moments. However, such a practice makes it impossible to hand in the home exercise after the deadline. Sometimes it might be a problem, though the advantages of such an approach clearly outweigh its disadvantages.

It seems to me at the moment that I have tackled major difficulties with studying at the university of Darmstadt. I feel quite confident already about most of the things. However, it is obviously more complicated here for me, than at ITMO, considering all the differences between universities and still existing language barrier.