A day in the life of a geography student
This article was originally published in German. The English version is an automatic translation and may contain errors. The German original is authoritative.
Tuesday, 7:30 a.m. – the alarm goes off.
Settlement Geography, the only lecture that starts as early as 8:15 a.m. The geographers experience positively genuine luxury: all other introductory events don't start until 10:15 a.m., and actually nobody has university on Friday either.
Arrived in the lecture hall – perhaps with one or two delays – we first discuss our Urban Trail . There we work independently each week on small assignments about urban planning questions such as: At which places do we feel unsafe in Würzburg? What can be changed about that? Which places do we see as devaluation or revaluation in our district?
Well, in any case it's clear to everyone what our favourite place in Würzburg is: the Mensa. That's where we're heading now.
But oh no it's raining! – A sentence no geographer would ever say.
The rain is great for observing the fluvial processes learnt in geomorphology in practice: surface runoff – hillslope runoff – groundwater runoff. Learnt something again.
With the Mate in hand then quickly melt some rocks. Analysis of Geomaterials – that's what probably every layperson imagines a "GeOloGy" degree to be. Fitting to that the lecture Endogenous Dynamics, in which exciting childhood questions are finally answered:
How does a volcano form?
Why are there crystals, and why do some stones sparkle more than others?
How old is the Earth? Can we say that so precisely?
After all that input, rest for a bit in the Stone Block, aka the Geo building. That's where we have our Student Subject Initiative office, which is perfect for a quick nap in between – or for hyping each other up for the next field trip. Because every geographer is fundamentally also just a person who likes to travel. Great that this is basically factored directly into our module plan through our fieldwork and excursions.
4:00 p.m.: Remote Sensing Tutorial.
Considered boring by some, the PASSION for others.
Definition (Warning: exam-relevant): Determination of information about distant objects without coming into contact with them.
Concretely: evaluating satellite or drone data and making statements about, for example, the vitality of German forests. -> pretty cool
And then it's already 6:00 p.m., and you haven't even thought about whether you should now specialise in physical geography or human geography. Best to postpone the decision and wind down the evening with a bit of GeoGuessr and flag quiz.
We're geographers after all 😉
You can find more information about the Geography Student Subject Initiative on Instagram [@geographie_uniwue].