Germany: Quentin Schultz (An Impactful Moment)

Hallo zusammen! Having spent well over half a year in Freiburg now, I’ve done many things between academics and extracurriculars — and hopefully more extracurriculars as time goes on! I’ve had a great time already and still feel like I’m only getting started. Part of that is because I am.

I’m still in the process of learning a lesson the hard way. That lesson: put yourself out there. When my family visited over spring break, I felt less ashamed of my German ability than almost any time with native speakers before. I had gotten it in my head that my German should be perfect, or at least good enough not to mark me as a non-native speaker — a ridiculous goal. I’ve been rather untalkative in classes as a result, and haven’t done as much as I could have.

That directly reflected in my mental health. Something that I wasn’t aware enough of before leaving for my year-long study abroad program is the amount of stress that builds up just by being here. It’s not always possible to see close friends & family, and the lack of connections can be hard to deal with. Sure, I was spending time with the other people in my program, but I wasn’t going out of my way to say “yes” to activities nearly as often as I should’ve been. I didn’t make a lot of other friends through classes either, so my support network was rather sparse.

When my mental health was then tested by an 8-page literature research paper fully in German (as a STEM double major, not exactly a normal experience), I fell apart. What I think was two to three weeks of work took six to complete — the most challenging six weeks I’ve had so far, and something I only got through with a lot of time spent re-centering myself by taking walks and a lot of time needing to be pushed along.

I got through it, but it could’ve gone so much better if I had a similar support network here as I do in the States. So go and build your network: do things you wouldn’t normally do, say yes when you’re invited somewhere, and don’t be embarrassed to be imperfect — only through mistakes do we learn. It’s hard to take a lesson to heart just by reading it, but I hope it helps you learn it when it comes time to do so the hard way.

Quentin Schultz

Hometown: Mukwonago, Wisconsin

Major: Physics; Computer Science

Program: Academic Year in Freiburg (AYF)

My primary goal during AYF is to improve my fluency in German as much as possible. I’m most looking forward to the Schwarzwald (the Black Forest) to be completely honest, but I’m very exited to be there and will find plenty of things to enjoy.