Hands-on experience

What does Jill-Yen Mao like best about her course in Education? She does not take long to answer. “It is very hands-on!” In what way? For instance in the subject Applied Tasks in Adult Education, which Jill-Yen is taking at the moment. In this course, it is not a question of students giving one paper after the other, in which all the fields of work are presented. No. “We have visited all sorts of organisations, where Education graduates might find employment, from the Aids Advisory Service to the Chamber of Commerce and Industry to the Human Resources department of an international company,” says Jill-Yen.

And next semester her timetable will include classes in Service Learning. Service Learning means that students take on tasks in social organisations and at the same time in the classroom they are taught what they need to know to do these tasks well.

Education is a wide field: General Education, Elementary Education, Youth Education, Adult Education are the main areas students can choose from. The wide range of subjects offered at the University of Würzburg means that Education can be combined with any number of second subjects. Jill-Yen wanted to do Economics first, but now thinks that Public Law is probably a better alternative for her intended career in human resources.

Pleasant to study here

And what is the atmosphere like in her subject area? “The students know each other. That makes it very pleasant to study here,” says Jill-Yen. “The academic staff tend to be quite young on average. They were students themselves not so long ago so that means they are well aware of our concerns”, she says.

Parties and karaoke

She also likes the campus where she attends most of her classes: “Here everything is close together, the uni, the library, the cafeteria and the park.” When there are parties there, like the Night of Lights in the summer, Jill-Yen enjoys it as least as much as her favourite hobby: karaoke in a Würzburg bar.