From October 2000 to March 2008 I studied Physics at the Humboldt University of Berlin. After defending my thesis I received a “Diploma of Physics”. Today that’s viewed equal to a masters degree. The bachelor and master program was not yet offered when I started to study.
Prerequesits
The German educational system requires you to have an “Abitur” to be eligble to study at a university. Usually this is obtained as a high school diploma after 13 years. In some states only 12 years are required, or a fast track option is available. My case in the early 90s was different, my grade level was the first to go from 12 to 13 years. While I like learning, these extra 3 years did not appear worthwhile, so I started my vocational training as a Kommunikationselektroniker Fachrichtung Telekommunikationstechnik at the Deutsche Telekom Potsdam in September 1992.
Fast forward to 2000. After working for 5 years at the Deutsche Telekom I want to study at a university. In August 2000 my Zivildienst at the Berliner Feuerwehr (Firefighters Berlin) finally starts. My goal over the next year is to use the free time to get my Abitur.
Challenging first semesters
Why is the derivative of simply - how would you know that? Well, if you skip 3 years of high school and calculus, you probably have no clue. Neither did I. The first 2 years was a catch up on all the topics that I missed. Which made me feel as if the others always would know more.
The cutoff line for most exams was 50%. Usually 30% of the students score below. Starting with more than 100 students this lead to an exponential decay in student numbers. Somehow I managed to always be slightly above the failing group.
Writing software
I had started writing software in Basic in the 80s. The early 90s I learned C for my Atari STFM 520. For Physics we learned Mathematica and . It was another good motivation to start with C and C++ again. I still have my first cpp program Integralberechnung.cc.
In 2006 I started to work on my diploma thesis. To visualize and manipulate our data I wrote a program in Java. I tried to follow the motto “Write once - run anywhere”. And it is true, to a degree. Now in 2026, 18 years later, it still functions and looks like intended. It’s named ar65view.