I received an e-mail the other day that the company I applied for an internship at does not have any spots left until October this year [I had applied for the summer]. And they asked if I was interested in that. Which prompted me to look up semester times for the upcoming two semesters after I return to Heidelberg [the last two semesters I will be taking classes]. And I realized that they have changed the semester times.

A while back the university in Mannheim [Heidelberg's neighboring town] changed their semester times to coincide more with those of foreign universities [to avoid overlapping semesters to make exchanges easier]. The problem is that Heidelberg students can also take classes at Mannheim and vice versa, and with the semester times moved by about a month, this drastically shortened semester breaks which created a problem for both students taking classes at both universities and professors teaching at both universities.

Now, Heidelberg has adapted the semester times to match the ones of Mannheim, starting this upcoming fall. Classes start about two weeks earlier than usual, and end two weeks earlier than usual:
late October - late January [instead of mid-October to mid-February] for the winter semester and
late March - mid-July [instead of mid-April/late April - late July] for the summer semester.
Semester times have been moved by a month, the winter semester then goes September - February [instead of October - March] and the summer semester March - August [instead of April - September].

All in all, I do not really mind, it will hardly affect me [just for two more semesters, possibly a third if I still take classes while writing my MA thesis] and it will be nice to start the summer break earlier. Having classes throughout the end of July was always a pain, and this will help things a little. I would be bothered by having finals earlier in January [because I hate studying during Christmas break] but I will only have one more final [the rest of my classes, i.e. one or two more, require term papers to pass them] so it doesn’t really affect me either.

As for the internship, since this was my number one choice, as it is at a publisher’s and [a small bonus] it is paid [not very much but at least it would cover my expenses], I will write them back and ask if they still have spots for next summer, that is July - October 2009. I have almost three months [their internships are three months] of semester break, and since I would then not have any required classes left, only my thesis to write, I think it would not be a problem to return to Heidelberg a week later. I would also be able to start working on my thesis in Munich as the state library is excellent and probably better than my university’s library anyway. I really hope it works out.

My interview for another internship [for this summer] is on Wednesday. I haven’t heard back yet from the other two, but I hope I do. I really do want to do something productive this summer. And if I could secure an internship for next summer already, that would be awesome.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 26th, 2008 at 3:10 and is filed under School, Work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.