Christmas in Student Paradise – report from 9.12.2008
The jingle of fire trucks can be heard on the Eichplatz square. Not the real, gigantic trucks (although they were also on time to the grand opening of the Christmas market and could be seen all at once among the crowd, due to a false alarm that went off during the renovation process taking place at the adjacent town hall). Rather the small trucks. The ones with bells, which drive in circles and play songs like Oh Christmas Tree or Jingle Bells, bringing joy to the hearts of children. It’s the time of the year for Christmas markets and mulled wine. The time when Jena feels especially cozy and you run into students and professors in Jena’s parlor room, the market place, in equal measure. But speaking of the hearts of children: you get the feeling here in Jena that the whole world is pregnant. In any case, it’s just swarming with round bellies here. Of course, covered with warm winter sweaters at this time of year. What makes us especially happy: not only is the Made in Jena project still valid (which is lovely in its own right), but we are also working on preserving the sustainability of the project. Our students must have an affinity for children, considering how quickly we have already given out more than 80 of our welcome packets to the little ones. We’ve also opened our new flexible day care, so that Jena’s Uni-kids can quickly and easily be “parked” for a few hours when Papa needs to do a little bit of research in the library. At the same time, a new internet site is in the works for family issues at the University. It will soon be a thing of the past that students need to search long and hard for a place to warm a baby bottle, or for an experienced person to talk to about maternity leave.
And what else is new?
Everything is very peaceful at the moment, now that we are quickly approaching the winter holidays. The winter semester is nearly half over, and all of the disoriented first semester students have indeed found their place on campus. By November at the latest, the new students have gained a few standard insights, which will stay with them throughout their studies:
Not everything that sounds interesting actually is.
Fewer course hours per week are also acceptable.
After three or four weeks, there are suddenly enough chairs in the classroom for everyone.
E
verything will work itself out.
Friedolin made us all hold our breath at the start of the semester, when the confirmation process malfunctioned for course registration during a weekend in October. The malfunction created quite a commotion and posed many questions for us (all of which appear now to have been answered). And of course, the critics with their endless supplies of energy cried out for us to return to our old administrative stone and chisel system. On the other hand, we are starting to hear the voices of more and more students who find Friedolin useful. Us residents of student paradise believe that no paradise is complete without modern technology, and we wish the chastised Friedolin work group further nerves of steel.
Oh yeah, by the way, the first semester students. We had feared that the population in student paradise would decline and we unfolded all kinds of advertising campaigns as a precaution. We were - among other things - in transit in the West German Federal States, in order to clarify what we all know already in Jena and all East Germany. Namely that Jena is beautiful and that you can study well here. And we had lots of success! Among the students who started their studies in winter 2008/2009, we had 30% more young people from West Germany, above all we gained students from Franconia. We are so excited about the new students! I hope they had a good start in their course of studies. Let us know how you like it here with us. The first respondent will personally get a paradise surprise from me.
All that’s left now is for me to wish you all a wonderful holiday. Remember, it’s the time of year for making wish lists! Let me hear from you. Tell me what we still have to do in order to make our student paradise even better. The man dressed in the red suit and hat only works in December. On the other hand, we are here for you during the entire year. In this sense, I wish you season’s greetings
Eva Schmitt-Rodermund
