Alex is abroad in Munich, Germany, until August 2009.

According to the Princeton Review’s interviews of our fellow Wildcats, an average NU student “is an excellent student who works hard and has a leadership position in at least two clubs, plus an on-campus job.” Say what you will about college ranking services and their analysis of college campuses, I think that is a pretty accurate statement. At NU, I too fell prey to the pre-professional, over-achieving, “work hard, play hard” mentality, mainly because it was in perfect alignment with my track record in high school. I rarely skipped class (except when Sheridan looked like an arctic tundra and I had class in Tech), turned everything in on time, had my hands in more clubs than should have been feasible and never dropped a class…until yesterday.

Since last Monday, I have been on an academic roller coaster: walking confidently into a classroom full of 25 year-old German grad students, then immediately slipping back down into the valley of intimidation when asked to sign up for a research presentation and working my way back up to an almost-as-good-as-original level of confidence again by talking to my American friends. Despite the frantic nature of the last weeks, I had been keeping up with my four university and two program courses, until one of the confidence rebuilding talks with some program friends. They were comparing first-weekend-of-homework horror stories, and I snidely contributed, “Well, I didn’t have any…” and my roller coaster car peaked and then succumbed to gravity. My stomach dropped. I had forgotten to look up the readings for my political philosophy course. OK, on a normal day at NU, this would have been no big thing. I could have gotten up early, skimmed the reading and scammed my way through class. Unfortunately, an entire book of Aristotle in German was looming over me, and my 10 a.m. discussion section was creeping around in the shadows.

I confessed my high academic sin to my friends, who quickly responded, “Just drop the class.” I hadn’t even considered it. I knew that I was giving myself a little wiggle room to test them out and see which would make the final cut, when I signed up for so many classes. But when the time came to actually get rid of one, the NU student in me shone through. It took two program friends, an email from my best friend and a late night Skype chat with my mom to convince me that I should just let this class go. Even after I had “officially” decided to drop the class, I woke up the next morning, without my alarm, with enough time left to get to the class and had to convince myself to go back to bed.

I’ve been so conditioned by my schooling to rise to the challenge, take as many difficult classes as I could and get thoroughly involved with extracurricular school activities. This is obviously not just the result of two short years at NU, or even my time in high school. Rather, it is a result of some hybrid mix of that and my competitive drive. This whole time I have been trying to fit my American schooling mentality into the German university system, and it took this class to shake me out of my irrationality. For the first time since middle school, I don’t feel the need to go above and beyond the call of academic duty. The point of studying in Germany is first and foremost to take classes, given, but I am also supposed to experience the culture, and that includes being more relaxed about schooling.

Classes here only meet about once per week (for humanities) and last only two hours. Clubs don’t court new members in any sort of fair — you have to go hunting for them yourself. And “partying” is considered a legitimate hobby. I recognize that I could not have gotten to Germany or won my scholarship without my previous academic record and attitude; And I still sometimes miss having back-to-back meetings in Norbucks, running to grab curly fries in between and knowing all of the third floor Norris regulars. But, I have been diligently perfecting the art of not being involved. I must say that it is almost as rewarding. I spend time chatting with my neighbors and friends while cooking in the kitchen, smoking hookah on my porch or watching a soccer game at the local bar. I meet just as many people, and get to hear a lot of amazing life stories.

Coming here was a lifestyle adjustment, and I am sure that coming back to NU will be as well. For now I am going to enjoy my laidback education and make sure to soak up as much German culture as possible. It makes sense now that there is no Princeton Reviewprofile for LMU.

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