I have heard that only (only?) 17 per cent of us students of English actually finish their studies with a degree. Now you should think that is a low number, but I, who now belong to these distinguished (?) 17 per cent, think it is still surprisingly high. And I have to say, I feel rather proud to have made it, after all I went through, I consider it to be some sort of an achievement in itself to belong to this elite 17 of hundred.
 

What I really want to get at is that I can fully understand the 73 per cent who give up their studies of English at Cologne University at some stage. I can particularly understand those who give it up just before their exams when they realise that everybody at the Seminar seems to have a high interest in them not registering for the finals. I haven’t figured out what that interest may be. It could be that you’re still too young to do it, be it semesterwise or agewise. As happened to me with one Prof. (not this particular Seminar, just to be fair): ”Oh, you want to take part in this highly interesting and exceeding Hauptseminar. What semester are you in? Oh, only the 6th. Now, I have to tell you that we don’t have the best of experiences with students of such low semester numbers, would you mind waiting another year and try again?”.

Then again we assume that our exam willing student has already passed this hurdle of entering the appropriate number of Hauptseminars and that s/he is only concerned with all formalities formally necessary for the registration for the finals. Is there anybody out there who tells you where to start? Not really, but whom can you expect to understand both Magister and Lehramt ways to your degree. The respective examining authorities can be a good choice for the start, at least they can tell you how to theoretically approach the problem. Count yourself lucky if you’re going for Magister - mightn’t be the right choice to get yourself a job (the employers’ favourite question ”Now what exactly is a Magister???”) but if you’ve ever tried to figure the way to fill in the Lehramt form, there are chances that you decide it is Magister after all that you want. Funny that in the end the Prüfungsamt has the last word on your and your Prof.’s choice of special fields of study although they mightn’t have a clue to what English is all about.

Once defeated by the form for Lehramt, the Magister proceedings are only easier at first sight. Theoretically, after having thought about a topic for your thesis, you choose a professor to supervise it, then register at the Dekanat, receive the official topic for your thesis from your Prof. via the Dekanat, write it during the next 6 months and go for either the next round of the exams or the one after, with at least two month between handing in your thesis and writing your first final. Practically many don’t make it as far as finding a topic for their thesis because a) no Prof. wants to help them (ever heard of this brilliant argument that if you can’t even think of a topic for your thesis you might as well give up on your studies?) and b) many students don’t think they are able to find a topic in the first place because so far it all had been done for them in the Hauptseminars. Finding your own individual topic for even a seminar paper might be encouraged by a minority of lecturers but the easy way out is still to go for the suggestions made by the relevant lecturer.

Once inspiration has struck you, the next obstacle is right behind the next corner. Try and find a professor to supervise your thesis and you know what our university system is all about. Not that there is a lot to supervise. With only a handful of professors for masses of students one has given up to expect any supervision at all. But it is still the Prof. who has to hand in the topic to the Dekanat, call it an utter dependence, hazard or being in the hands of your Prof.. It is sad after all that on the one hand you have to do everything by yourself (don’t even dare to talk to a Prof. about your exams if you haven’t decided on a topic yet) and then you’re bound to be rejected because of obscure reasons. I had to try them all. The reasons for rejection vary, which is the only matter of interest in the whole affair, overall it is simply about frustration. You should think that if you have a brilliant idea for your thesis, you should be rather free in your choice of topic. After all it is your thesis and working 6 months intensely on something totally obscure to you is not exactly fun. But some Profs. think that you should only do a topic that originated in one of their Hauptseminars. This sort of narrows your choice slightly, to put it nicely. The specialisation of our Profs., especially in literature, is extreme and I find it an utter arrogance to pin you down on your Profs.’ preferences of such a kind. Also it is rather inadequate to expect you to have participated in one of the relevant Prof.’s seminars which runs down to having to think of your plans for your finals just after the Zwischenprüfung and to make sure to choose the right Prof. with regards to your thesis at a time when this is absolutely not the most urgent thing to think about. The alternative is to add another semester to your time of studies to meet the requirement and take part in a seminar of the particular Prof. so that afterwards you can have the honour to extend only your paper in this particular seminar which might not exactly be what you had planned to write about. Let alone possible dependence on BaföG or your parents who’ve already threatened you to cut the stream of money if you don’t finish ssoooonn, how can it be a requirement to write only on the handful of fields of study selected by your Prof. if there are about 4000 students of English around with naturally varying interests? Could it be that someone ignores the state of affairs here?

Other Profs. don’t require your participation in one of their seminars. They have other ways of making you go nuts. A very interesting version is to generally tell you off and ask you to find another topic because yours is absolute crap and Profs. are always right. Now, because nobody was willing to help me find a topic, it took me a full year (and remember, Profs. don’t like you to turn up at their office hours if you haven’t got a clue what you want to write about). Also, you have to start looking for the relevant criticism and literature well before registering because it does take long and sometimes you have to go to Britain to get the stuff. So once you have your topic, it is generally not a vague idea but you’ve already put a lot of thinking and work into it. To make the whole business even more ridiculous if it weren’t so damn serious is that the Prof. might give you his okay one week and tell you off with the same topic the next. Sure he doesn’t remember you, what do you expect? I played that game for a full six months and eventually gave up due to a nervous breakdown.

Luckily, some Profs. still have a heart. That is to say, they don’t bloody care and let you do what you think you must do. Don’t expect supervision, but after experiencing the kind of supervision you might have to cope with, this is heaven, bliss and a ton of chocolate (approximately the amount I digested during the last year).

Another step on the way to your degree is selecting your ”Teilgebiete” (and Profs. for the lucky ones who go for the Magister). Having heard the rumour that this is not only made extremely difficult by the Prüfungsamt but also by some obscure internal decisions, selecting your fields of study for the Lehramt should be the topic of a tutorial. I still don’t get the point of dividing literature into ”English literature before 1600”, ”English literature after 1600”, ”American literature” and ”non Anglo-American Literature”. The only clear and obvious Teilgebiet is “Theories and models”. Where does e. g. Scottish literature fit in? Not to speak of Irish literature. It is nice to accept American literature as a separate Teilgebiet in spite of being, especially in the 19th century, extremely influenced by British literature. But why does the same criterion of different country, different literature not apply to Scotland or Ireland? Were the Teilgebiet entitled ”British literature” I could still accept Scotland to be part of it, but still there is a problem with Ireland. At least three quarters of Ireland are not British (to say it with Beckett, ”au contraire”) and yet it is subsumed under ”English (!) literature”. Now you could say independence came late for Ireland but even so, Irish literature is far more distinct from British and especially English literature than American literature (all Americanists object now, but I think I have a point being heavily into American literature myself). After all until independence, there were still two languages with two literary traditions side by side which England cannot claim. Everything could be solved if Irish literature was subsumed under ”non Anglo-American literature” but because of the narrow-mindedness or ignorance (sorry to be so harsh, but this must be assumed) of the decision makers of our seminar (not the Prüfungsamt!) Irish literature does not feature at all (in other words, it does not exist and you simply cannot entitle your Teilgebiet with the adjective “Irish”) for your selection of the Teilgebiete.

Lucky you again who go for the Magister. Here it only depends on the Prof. you choose and his/her personal opinion what you can or cannot do. So check well in advance or you might start reading the wrong thing.

Choosing the Prof. who is to examine you is a great invention. In spite of my efforts, I still don’t know how to most intelligently choose the one or two Profs. you are allowed to choose for the Staatsexamen so as not to be badly surprised by the Prüfungsamt’s choice. Overall it is again a strange argument to say that your studies should be broad and therefore you should get a different Prof. in your exams than the one you wrote your papers for. It basically means that you have to study longer than necessary because you want to know the preferences of all of the Profs. you might be assigned to in your exams, their way of asking questions, their standpoints and criteria of assessment. And wasn’t there an effort to reduce the highest European time for obtaining a first degree? Dear Prüfungsamt, if you look at it from our perspective, doesn’t it sound very paradoxical that the safest way of not getting Prof. X in the finals (the only marks that count for any application in case you forgot) is to write all your papers during your studies in his/her seminars? There simply are differences between Profs., personal and others. Some people simply don’t get along with a particular Prof. and some Profs. do try to put you on a false track because they have extremely high scientific requirements which might be okay if you go for a university career but not if you try to teach kids ”how are you”. Also, being able to choose your Prof. for the finals would cut down their work load as well because they personally would sign the reading list and long discussions after the assignment of the Profs. to the student (or vice versa) over a reading list signed by somebody else could be eliminated.

Another problem is surely the length of your thesis. I see the point to put a limit to it. But making this limit of 50 or 60 pages for Lehramt or Magister respectively a gospel sounds ridiculous to me. Yes, there is the argument that preciseness is good for your thesis. But not all topics are the same and some simply need a longer treatment. At other universities, 100 to 150 pages are expected (in the same six months) so why not be more flexible here as well? I’m not asking for a 150 pages average thesis, just for a less strict limit. As long as someone aims at approximately 60 pages and doesn’t overdo the thesis and make it a dissertation that should be okay. I just find it terribly unnecessary to worry about length instead of contents. Also, there are so many ways in the times of word processing of fitting a page limit by varying the type or size of the script etc. that a page limit is useless anyway. If there must be a limit, a word limit would be much more sensible (by the way, this article has 2,665 words if you have to know).

Once you handed in your thesis, make sure to have enough time for the preparation of your exams. Two months is the official minimum for Magister, but it is illusionary to cope with the amount of primary and secondary literature you are expected to know in just two months. I had three months and nearly didn’t make it. There is a limit to how much you can swallow in one day, studying all night doesn’t help. With regard to exams I have to say that the Englische Seminar puts much more emphasis on the primary texts for literature than on particular knowledge of particular themes and aspects which gives room to a certain creativity in the actual exams. In other subjects you might have to read far more criticism and throw up opinions you’ve found in it.