God Is Chill
To live up to my rediscovered campaign of unconditional openness, I of course don’t want to withhold how my first semester in the Interactive Media program at Augsburg University of Applied Sciences went. After all, we’ve just received the grades for our exams. And let’s put it this way: it went better than expected. Really.
It borders on an organizational miracle that I survived the scientific area so unscathed. Maybe the evening group prayers with my fellow students via one or two text messages actually did help after all. And that despite having learned that you should never demand anything from God, only ask politely. And also: if you only turn to God in a crisis but don’t think of him when things are going well, then he’s first busy forgiving you before he helps you. But apparently God is more laid-back than one might think. So, in that sense: thx. And: lots of love.
Of course, I didn’t miss out on a clichéd bit of fun: trying to crash the university’s online administration server with one reload after another until the grades finally became visible. But it didn’t work. Probably I should have reloaded not every five minutes, but every five seconds. Oh well—now I know for next time.
My lawyer, by the way, advises me to make it clear at this point that I will not attempt to crash the university’s server—or any other server, or anything else in this world—in any way whatsoever. Neither intentionally nor accidentally. These days, you can never be too careful. Many thanks to Mr. Goldberg of the law firm Goldberg and Partners. Props where props are due.
I’m quite satisfied with the results of my first semester, but I’m also aware that I’ll only manage the coming years if I cram the material into my head more consistently, more regularly, and with far more commitment. With the right mix of Anki, repetition, and the Pomodoro technique. At least those are the three strategies I plan to focus on. Probably. Maybe. Hopefully. What do I know about proper studying anyway.
I’ve also realized something else—something I hadn’t definitively decided at the beginning of my studies: which degree I want to pursue. Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science. We have to know by the third semester.
But if the computer science exam offers even a small glimpse of what’s still to come, then I will cling to the Bachelor of Arts with all my might. Because otherwise I might end up standing there empty-handed. After all, good and bad art can always somehow be argued for—but computer science is like a killer robot gone out of control. It knows no mercy, only zeros and ones. Pass or fail. Life or death. And I know which side I’d be on.
Apart from that, I can say that the Interactive Media program at Augsburg University of Applied Sciences is a lot of fun, very varied, and should be interesting for anyone who feels reasonably at home in both the artistic and the technical worlds.
A large part of the entertainment value also comes, of course, from the fellow students with whom you battle through lectures, practicals, and exams—but that’s probably the case in any degree program. And in that respect, I’ve been really lucky. Shout-outs to Group C, which a perhaps slightly too clever person rightly described as those who always sat in the back row at school.
Unfortunately, I can no longer claim to be a freshman. This very time-limited term, in combination with my not-quite-so-dewy person, had always caused wide eyes and the occasional stammer in people standing opposite me.
In any case, I’m curious to see what new adventures await us in the second semester, and I’ll be spending the next few weeks reviewing the fundamentals of programming so that I can also pass the postponed exam successfully. Hopefully. But at least I’m not the only one who hasn’t yet managed to get this topic behind them—for whatever reasons.
And with that, we close another chapter of my rediscovered campaign of unconditional openness. I hope you’ll join me again next time as the more or less exciting journey of Marcel Winatschek as a student continues.
Will he crash a certain server? Will he be the first person to be awarded a master’s degree in the second semester because he is finally recognized as the global genius he always claimed to be? So handsome, so smart, and yet so modest. Or will he be exmatriculated because the glass buildings of the university simply aren’t fireproof enough for him and his—let’s call them—accidents? Stay tuned; we’ll know more soon. Hooray.