What is university for you?

What do you see when you think of university? Do you see a "catch-all for a bunch of pseudo-elitist street vagrants" – Fuck the uni, NMZS, Antilopengang – ? Simply your apprenticeship place? A platform to put yourself on display? A cruel institution that comes after you with exams, attestations, essays, seminar papers, doctoral theses or whatever title a test might hide under? A place where you can prove yourself, to really show the others – whoever they are – what you're made of? A place where you have to prove yourself because Mum has been going on about your hidden high ability since you were two? Is studying for you a necessary life phase before finally the golden age of self-earned money arrives? Or the best time of your life, before unfortunately work has to begin at some point, because you can't search for the next coffee machine on campus grounds forever?

And what do parents or society ideally expect from us?

Society frequently propagates the ideal image of the student who a) is very good at university, but not because they're a swot, but because they find everything so interesting, b) still finds time to go drinking with friends, because that's what you do at that age, c) gets involved somewhere, preferably in the social sector and d) is always in a good mood.
But how realistic is this image actually?
For me it's contradictory that excellent performance at university is expected, but at the same time it shouldn't become the centre of your life. But what happens when university does become the centre of your life? Your mates, who you go drinking with, quickly become mere window dressing, you don't have time for anything more. Pure friendships of convenience arise, which exist during university time, but not afterwards – because hey, that time is over then, mate. Everything ends at some point, university was the relevant thing, not us, you saw it that way too. Getting involved somewhere is done for your personal CV, but not because you're really interested in the little polar bears in the Arctic. A hollow world emerges that revolves around your own show. No, I've never had problems at university, I can do all of it because I'm so clever, not because I'm writing my papers until two in the morning. I'm cool. If you define yourself by your own success, you also define the world around you by it – who here also has a scholarship / degree / whatever? If you can't do anything, you're nothing. This performance mentality can spill over into the private sphere, to the point where even hobbies are viewed under the success aspect. It would be weird to just do something for fun.
But why should you let yourself be led astray by success expectations that some kind of outside world places on us? Why should you be dazzled by university medals like degrees? Of course small stars in your CV are important if you want to reach certain positions. But they don't transform you into a better person.
The time of studying is the dawn of a free, self-determined life and not there to squeeze yourself into a corset of ambition or expectations. Of course we go to university to learn for our future career. But why should we in our early twenties still make our self-worth dependent on grades, on numbers on a piece of paper, which often don't reflect our true level of knowledge anyway, if we're honest? Why should we start living according to a role, instead of doing what we think is right? Whether we happen to fulfil a role in the process is irrelevant.

Why should we maintain hollow, worthless pseudo-friendships with our fellow students because we see everything as temporary? Why not seek out the pleasant company of friends instead of looking for a drinking entourage? Why not live it up? In principle you can do almost anything now. How "good" you are at it doesn't matter at first, as long as you're having fun. Why should you rigidly stick to the worldview conveyed by your parents without questioning it? Why should you succumb to the delusion that you always have to function? We're experiencing a brief time of maximum freedom right now, before a stressful working world catches up with us. We're no longer accountable to anyone now, except ourselves. Why shouldn't we just be ourselves instead of supporting a performance-oriented worldview in which the unsuccessful are branded as failures? Or try to squeeze ourselves into a role?
Show for others or the start of your own life – what role studying plays for you is up to you.

Irmgard Stark