Technick für die Menschen

If we let things terrify us,
life will not be worth living.
LUCIUS ANNAEUS SENECA, Epistles

In Germany the most of university careers programs are spelling with the initials or short names: BWL (Business), VWL (agribusiness), Jura (Law, from Juris in latin), etc. The programs at the TUHH are called not very different, exempi gratia, CIS (Communication and Information). My Master program in the TUHH was the IPM. In fact, a new guy like me should understand the university slangs: "ICS" or "IPM", etc.

The beginning of the Master was very exciting, incluiding the inaugural speech of the President of the TUHH (Photo above).

The real trouble was a sane or classical interaction with the others classmates in the same program: guys from others exotic countries like Singapure, Indonesia, China, Mexico, Pakistan, Colombia, Eritrea and Ghana (in the other Photo, with Prof.Dr.Feldmann, the Head of the IPM programm).

The treat between us was really poor, limited to say "Hello", and some of them trying to act as a Europeans. For me it was a very big trouble, because without a human interaction was not possible to build any work or study team with that people. A worse point, some of them were also, members of the NIT (North Institute of Technology). For that, was possible to see two different groups in class: the non-NIT and the "cream".

La cosa mas dificil, fué tratar de cordializar con los asiáticos y con algunos latinos, pues todos pasan a formar parte de un subgrupo de pseudo-europeos. Esto fué para mi un choque brutal, un balde de agua fría para con mis classmates... Es increible que fué mas sencillo trabajar con un ingeniero italiano (estudiante Erasmus) o un estudiante aleman, que con uno de estos aspirantes made-in-asia

I worked and make friendship very good with a guy from Peru: a mechanical engineer with some experience in the automotive branch (bei VW). He move 3 months later to the NRW Tech.University of Aachen (the 2nd best in Germany) to make a Master in Automotive Engineering. I think he take the best decision, because that University is extremely good.

The most liked lecture was the "Product Planning and Development", with Prof.Dr. Herstatt and Prof. Feldmann. In the Photo, the Workshop with the Chief Engineer from Hako GmbH.

The semester was really hard for me, and after getting all the examinations results, i decided to return home and abandon the Master: but changes happened on the way to home...

Hugo

Woher kommen Sie?

Spanisch: De donde viene Usted?
English: Where did you come from?

Soon i detected that foreigner technical students, more than the few badly educated local-people, forget the use of cortesy with classmates. I still have big troubleswith it

I think if you are in a Classroom with other 20 students, at least you could interact with your neighbors, more than "Hello"... i discover that, when people have no soft-skills at all, the only thing they will ask to you is "Woher-kommen-Sie?".

Esto tambien significa "tu no sabes de este tema, y no tengo que hablar contigo al respecto".

Habiendo tantas cosas para empezar una conversación,
este tonto(a), solo sabe preguntar eso (?)

¡ Que Bolas!

Pacience, peace-in-soul... but with consequences. From that moment the word "stupid" is no more in the air, a relative concept: is someone with name and face.

Soft-skills are more or less, the 50% of the successfull in live, in career, or even, in business. Normally intelligent people have different rules to handle with assholes:

"Ich weiß, wo ich herkomme und deswegen
weiß ich auch, wo ich hingehöre"

(Gerard Schroeder, in a Speech to Worker´s Union in Hannover 2005)