Coming to a new place and meeting a lot of new people naturally includes introducing
oneself for quite a number of times. But as Fyodor Dostoyevsky lets his narrator in the Letters
from the Underworld say: “By the way, what is it that all respectable men talk about most
readily? Answer – about themselves. So I too will talk about myself.”1 So I will join in and as
I have done for a hundred times this past week I will happily introduce myself another time,
this time in writing and in essay style.
My name is Matthias Haufe and I am from Erlangen, a beautiful town in the northern part
of Bavaria, Germany. The surrounding region is known as Frankonia, which I mention,
because quite a few people there pride themselves as being Frankonians rather than
Bavarians. There I spent the past thirteen years of my life, going to school, doing my civil
service and later attending university. Before that I had lived in a small German village for six
years and in Tokyo, Japan for four years. So if one takes all the aforementioned numbers they
amount to 23, which is also my age. Having mentioned university, the question immediately
arising is of course that of what I study. I major in English and Religion and minor in History
and before I came here I had just finished the fifth semester of my studies. The goal of my
studies is to become a teacher in a German “Gymnasium“, which roughly corresponds to an
American high school.
So much about my identity. “But how does it come that you are in Kalamazoo now? Why
Kalamazoo?“ is probably the question that would arise next. Right on the very first day of my
studies in Germany all the language students were highly recommended by the professors to
spend at least some time abroad, with the aim to gain experience in the language they learn
and also to get to know the culture of that country. I considered that a good idea and formed
the plan in my head to study abroad for a year after my intermediate exam, especially as I feltKalamazoo College now.
Being a German studying English to become a teacher my first and foremost goal for this
coming year is of course to improve my English and get to know the country and the culture
where this language is spoken. That means I am curious to see how Americans live, how they
spend their time and what they think about political, historical, religious and social issues.
Getting to know the culture also includes visiting different places that might be especially
interesting for their historic meaning, for the importance they have for America today and
their influence on it or just for the beauty of their landscape. Besides that, I am planning to
learn at least some Spanish, a language that seems to be gaining quite some influence in the
United States at the moment, judging from what I have seen and heard in the short time I have
been staying in this country.
In addition to these rather America related issues, I would like to gain knowledge in some
more general fields of learning. By attending some of the religion classes and hopefully
reading some books on my own, I want to get an idea of the historical development and the
present situation of American theology. For my minor history I hope to get an overview over
some periods of European history and broaden my knowledge about American history, as an
overview is exactly what I need but a thing much more difficult to attain at a German
university than at Kalamazoo College, as it seems to me. Additionally, I hope to find the time
to attend a physical education class or two and maybe get to know new sports like raquetball
or ultimate frisbee.
Of course, there will be a lot of things that I will learn that I probably never expected to find
in this place. Being together with the other international students for only one week, already
taught me more about other countries and nationalities than I had learnt for the past two years
or so. And this was a thing I did not necessarily expect at a college in a rather small city in the
Midwest. Thus I am open for all the things that I might have to learn here - things that I
maybe never even thought of getting to know before - even if they do not correspond at all to
what I had in mind to learn and achieve when coming here.