Growth Spurt

Munich Maymester 2013 is more than a chronology of 21 students' two-week sojourn onto unfamiliar terrain.  As study abroad trips go, Germany is hardly the deepest, darkest recess of the globe. 

The terra incognita explored by these USC journalism school students is one of boundaries, relationships and self-recognition.  When we boarded our first-leg flight, some were already seasoned travelers, some were on their first European trip and some were holding their first passports.

You will read in their blog about friendships formed in two weeks of togetherness--think hostels instead of comforts of home--fun and, yes, beer.  Too much beer?  We were, after all, in Bavaria, and even my German forebears were brewers.  As Bill Clinton said of his own study abroad exploration, none of our young adults broke any of the laws of the country we were in.

Did we scale any heights?  We did get to the Alpine castle of Neuschwanstein, King Ludwig's bank-breaking self-indulgence.  It's the model of Disney's fairy tale castles.  Make of that what you will.

More importantly, we explored some depths--the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau in the Munich suburbs and remnants of the odious Berlin Wall that once symbolized the Cold War.  People died by the hundreds at the Wall, by the thousands in Dachau's ovens and by the millions in Germany's troubled past.  While ours was a practical course about producing multimedia reports, we infused history for context and understanding.

On the day we departed for Germany, New York Times columnist Frank Bruni wrote of "America the Clueless," a nation supremely misinformed. In spite of a surfeit of information--blog, anyone?--we ingest more empty calories of opinion than factual protein.

Two-wheel tour of Berlin.  Old East German TV tower in background.

In Munich, our students and German journalism students discussed the challenge of turning information into knowledge. Americans particularly, our students acknowledged, tend to be less conversant with history, geography and languages.  The Germans said they are less adept at the social media that explode from new communications technologies.  No deficit for our side on that score.  Our students were far better connected than I was on the trip.

   

A photo opportunity every place you look.
This is by Alpsee.

 The Munich Maymester has been on our spring calendar since 2007.  Instructor Scott Farrand has led six of the trips.  My wife, Susanne Schafer, and I met as foreign correspondents in Germany and brought along some personal and historical context.  One of my German relatives was interviewed for the students' story about German breads.

The course tests students' skills in unfamiliar settings.  They work in teams that mix journalism, public relations, advertising and visual communications majors.  They originate, research and report in projects about themes unfamiliar to Americans or in significant contrast to American practices.

They discovered that bike lanes in Germany are busy places not meant for pedestrians.  They became Bayern Muenchen fans as the local fussbal team clinched the European championship.  They were already Beyonce fans.  But who knew Beyonce would be performing in Munich while we were there?  The students did and shared the experience with tens of thousands of German fans.  They looked at BMW marketing techniques and the latest BMW models.  Ok, we all checked out the latest “bimmer” models.  South Carolina has a vested interest in BMW’s global success.

  Yes, mom, we ate our vegetables.  

You can find so much more in this blog.  As a blog, it is a collection of impressions spanning the students' experiences--some analytical, some whimsical, some impetuous, and some unedited.

                   Germany is not as formal as you might think. 

So, we have all had a growth spurt.  Try traveling with a group of college students some time.  We teach them, and they teach us.

Charles Bierbauer