reviewing my first academic year
Since my new academic year (2022/23) just started off a week ago, I decided to review what happened in the last one, especially because it's been my first year at university - and what a tough one!
Honestly, I didn't really plan to attend university already in 2021/22, but I'll now tell you the story of how I turned out to proudly write this post as a second-year maths student at ETH:
It was a sunny day in June... - no, let's stay a bit more serious - Somewhen in June I received my letter of acceptance from ETH, but that actually has been one year early.
A year too early? How comes? Here's the explanation: As an Austrian citizen I have to do military or civil service and as most of my peers I was convinced to doing so right after school. But since ETH has a somewhat strange entrance procedure where one in advance doesn't know whether one's going to be eligible for the upcoming academic year or only for the one after (depending on whether one has to take the entrance exam or not), I already applied - just in case. And, honestly, maybe an unconscious part of myself already had something in mind when applying to ETH that early, but when I received the letter of acceptance it finally has been completely clear to me: I wanted to try both at the same time.
Of course, this entailed quite some difficulties, like asking for a free day from the military already in an early stage of my service and also later on for the days when the exams took place (probably some of the most unpleasant situations in my life), not being able to attend any lectures or exercise classes since I haven't been to Zurich for a single day during the semester and furthermore, writing exams I haven't been and didn't feel prepared for as well as everyone else, let alone how I used to, especially because I haven't had the time to do a single exercise sheet apart from informatics which I decided to start with earliest because of my poor prior knowledge. In fact, in the end all my knowledge for the exams came from really well written scripts of my analysis and physics professors and the exercises in informatics. Apart from the yet named obstacles, I had to spend my evenings as well as my Christmas Holidays learning instead of at least occasionally hitting the slope, skiing (which has also been pretty annoying since that's what I've been used to at Christmas time).
However, in retroperspective it's been the absolutely right decision: even though they've been the worst exams I've ever taken concerning both my feelings and my grades, I made some really valuable experiences, am academically a year ahead of the other me who didn't take this chance and if I for a moment stop being too strict with myself, I have to admit that my grades turned out to not being bad when compared to others (although, of course, not what I've been used to from school).
Moving to Zurich at the beginning of the second semester again turned my world around by 180 degree. The difference between military and university are instantaneously noticed. What appeared funniest to me and actually the most significant change in attitude towards other people has been the fact that professors apologised when they finished one minute late compared to the military where it was common for a low-level soldier to wait even for hours.
Besides, adapting to a productive student life style, getting to know my colleagues and handling the administrative stuff I still had to do as a newbee in Zurich exhausted me more than the autumn semester did.
Maybe it did because I now had higher expectation, maybe because I compared myself to peers who were doing really well, or simply because I still lacked behind, since I e.g. didn't do any Linear Algebra in the first semester since there was going to be an exam covering the whole year's content in summer.
In conclusion, I guess, I studied hard throughout this academic year of 2021/22, gave the challenge of doing military service and studying a go and can finally close this strictly speaking first academic year for myself with patting myself softly on the back and telling myself how satisfied I am with my results of the second semester's exams.
I wish all of you who still have their first year in front of them a good start and a successful and in particular fulfilling and satisfying first year at university.