A (late) Happy New Year!
Better late than never is the motto of this blog post. How comes? Well, after some relaxation days together with my family around Christmas and a visit to my friends back in Austria at Sylvester, the so-called learning phase begun for me, since I am having most of my exams between mid-January and mid-February (so, yes, I'm just in the middle of this year's winter examination phase).
However, since this is the first blog entry since New Year, I'd like to let 2022 pass revue. After finishing my military service in February 2022 and fortunately passing the winter exams (actually even with a more or less satisfying result), I finally really started off at ETH. The spring semester went by fairly fast and after a short summer break back at home, I started to extensively study for my exams in Linear Algebra, Analysis, Data structures and Algorithms and Fundamental Structures of Mathematics. During that time I got to know two of my best friends here in Zurich: Nessim and Benjamin (sadly both of them study physics ;)) who stayed on to be my best discussion partner ever and my run buddy since then.
The summer examination phase in August passed by and during a relaxed family trip to Mallorca I needed to figure out which courses to take for the upcoming winter semester of 2022. I ended up taking Algebra, Mass Theory, Numerical Mathematics and Complex Analysis (the obligatory subjects), aswell as Pluralist Philosophy in Mathematics, Theoretical Computer Science, English for Academic Purposes and a reading course in Number Theory supervised by Prof. Lorenz Halbeisen. But besides all the academical stuff, I got to say that this third semester has been the most pleasant one up to now for multiple reasons: First of all, I already knew the environement, the people and felt like I finally fully arrived here in Zurich. Secondly, some Viennese friends (Niki, Kilian and my sister Toni) joined ETH in mechanical engineering, biochemistry and architecture, respectively, and since we live next door to one another there we spent quite some time together. Thirdly, my parents decided to visit Zurich, encouraged me to invite some friends and brought everything I could imagine for us to have a great little party (I should mention, that I'm not that much of a party tiger and, hence, also do not enjoy organising parties too much, so I'm fairly hard to convince in this belonging). Last, but not least, what made my semester was that I finished most of what I wanted to and, therefore, went into my third examination phase more relaxed than I did in the previous ones.
After this rough overview over my year of 2022, I'd like to mention some of my personal take-aways from 2022:
The most impressive take-away has probably been that there are some decisions which have a very long-lasting impact on my life. Not only did this thought come to mind more intensely than ever before during the autumn semester since the curriculum of physicists and mathematicians splits after the first year of the Bachelor's program here at ETH, but also have I had some first-hand experience concerning this matter: looking back at my second semester (spring 2022) I have to admit that I struggled with holding up to the lectures simply because of my time at the military during the first semester. So the decision to do both military and starting my studies at ETH in autumn 2021 have had a huge impact also on the semester(s) which followed. Furthermore, to me it seems as if you're "on the wave", meaning you hold up to the lectures during the semester etc., life seems easier by far since the learning phase is going to be less stressful.
Secondly, at least for me one of the most annoying parts of specialisation seems to be that you cannot really talk to others about the things you're doing on a regular basis, either because they're not at all interested (which, sadly, quite often seems to be the case when starting to talk about mathematics) or because you do something somewhat similar every day (which to me seems to be the case with most jobs) or simply because there are (too) many prerequisits one should know about when talking about this topic and you yourself are not (yet) able to simplify it in a way understanable to everyone.
Thirdly, the more I try to do in my time, the more I realise that there really is too little time for doing everything interesting and sadly, I'm not (yet) able to accept that so I'm kind of trapped when I need to decide what to focus on because postponing a task doesn't feel too good either. Therefore, I'm quite relieved whenever there is something time consuming (but possibly also pleasant) taken away from my options. Funnily, this could also help me in some situations throughout the last year: when I was rejected (by so. or for sth.) I, of course, felt quite some inner pain, but also I knew I would not have the trouble of including whatever it was into my planning. This relief could most of the time mitigate the disappointment.
Closing this blog comment, I want to mention, that as you may have noticed, I changed to writing when I got something to say instead of on a weekly bases and will keep on doing so for the next semester. I hope y'all have had a good start into 2022 so far and wish you all the best for the rest of the year!