Getting weak in the knees …

… at least a little bit, even if you are actually happy that it has finally arrived, the long-awaited invitation to the job interview. Who wants to know how to prepare well and successfully for the interview, should visit career:IMPULS, this week, Thursday, 11.03.2021, at 5:00 pm. Registrations directly by mail to info@career.uni-siegen.de

Usually not so critical: Many applicants are afraid of critical questions, but usually the counterpart is not so critical, after all, the written application has convinced.

Simply do it …

… that perhaps is the best recommendation to give, if one is dealing with the written application. But of course some background information is always helpful. So joining todays career:IMPULS “How to apply” is a good idea for everybody who wants to make his application more successful.

You’ve just …

… heard the last lecture. It’s 5 p.m., the online university day is over, you turn around, still on the desk chair. You spent the whole day in front of your screen, and now, from one moment to another, you’re at home. And that brings you back to questions, perhaps discussed in the morning at the breakfast table with parents or friends, and you wonder what you can do with all the academic stuff, later in your professional life. And of course you still have some applications waiting to be sent. The application for the internship, mandatory in the next semester for example, and for the job, of course, which you hope is to follow the study, seamlessly, if possible.

This is exactly the situation the career:IMPLUS seminars have been designed for. In the evening, when your university work has been done, one hour focusing on a topic from the area of application and career planning. Compact information, background knowledge and many opportunities to get involved, so that no question remains unanswered and the evening is relaxed and made well use of. The goal: You can plan your career path with a new perspective.

Changing perspectives: It doesn’t always have to be the desk when inspiration turns into action.

Emerging doubts …

… are not nice, of course. But if you look at them more closely, they are not such a bad way to start thinking about what you are doing right now and what you want to do in the future. To prevent your reflections from turning into musings, it is important to talk about them with others and to inform yourself. For this purpose, the central student advisory service is offering a digital theme day on Feb. 11, 2021. The Career Service will be there. The program can be found here: https://www.uni-siegen.de/zsb/psychologische/infoveranstaltung.html

Using creative methods: The snow on my small terrace as a whiteboard.

Outside I see the melting snow …

… and that makes me think of René Descartes and his „Discours de la méthode“, containing an autobiographic episode, where he describes how he, just passing through a small village near Ulm, prevented from continuing his journey by the unusually severe winter of 1619, found the leisure to contemplate his thoughts as he was enclosed all day alone in a small warm room.

Currently in the home office, browsing my home bookshelves, Descartes’ book fell into my hand and I got stuck on the little green volume, the bilingual edition of Felix Meiner Verlag.

Descartes contemplative time of leisure was the impetus for a text that, first published in 1637, has left its mark in the history of philosophy. Today, for me, in my profession as a counselor, it is an impulse to trust one’s own thinking, one’s own judgment, and to encourage the people I counsel to do the same.

Here are a few links as a suggestion to continue browsing and thinking about independent thinking and the impulses it can give one, for the diverse shaping of one’s own life path.
Text editions freely available on the net:

The French original: https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Discours_de_la_m%C3%A9thode/%C3%89dition_Adam_et_Tannery

A German translation: https://www.textlog.de/descartes-methode.html

And an English translation at gutenberg.org (only available if you don’t have a German IP): https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/59

And then tow interesting pages:
The transcript (in German) of a Deutschlandfunk radio broadcast: https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/descartes-und-der-schnee.700.de.html?dram:article_id=81434

And an article (in German) about a conference in Ulm: Artikel über eine Tagung in Ulm im Jahr 2019: https://www.uni-ulm.de/universitaet/hochschulkommunikation/presse-und-oeffentlichkeitsarbeit/unimagazin/online-ausgabe-uni-ulm-intern/uni-ulm-intern-nr-351-februar-2020/descartes/

He would regard himself as „cautiously optimistic“ …

… was a colleagues answer, to my question about his expectations for the coming 2021. The look of the little good-luck pigs on the office desk seem to say just that. The picture was taken before the Christmas lockdown at the Career Services office. The transparent bags were part of the package for employees, a small substitute for the Christmas party, combined with good wishes for a new year.

Once again surprising and always an inspiration …

… is the book store of Walther König in colognes Ehrenstraße. The Result of my last visit is a warm orange yellow book on my table. Perhaps it was the subtitle that finally made me take it home: „Lebenswege in eine Welt für sich“ (Life paths to a world of its own).

Life-paths are diverse, and making your way in the world of art, especially as a profession, rarely follow classical patterns or traditional tracks. Franz Schultheis, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of St. Gallen, has published this volume entitled „Kunst als Passion“ (Art as Passion), ISBN 978-3-96098-429-0, in which he has compiled around 200 interviews with people who talk about their way into the world of art, both professionally and as a private passion.

The publisher of this book is Walther König, the owner of the legendary art-book-store in colognes Ehrenstraße. Walther König was a guest at the career:FORUM of Siegens University in 2014. He knows everybody of importance in art and his ambition as a book dealer is to have every book about art available in his shop or make it available. The screen:BOOK, documenting his visit, is still online. Here the link: https://www.uni-siegen.de/cs/medien/screenbooks/screenbook_waltherkoenig.pdf

Maybe only a little later …

… we will be able to hold the opening party for our new offices. But of course we have already thought about what we will do for the physical well-being of our guests. Here a view into the soup pot.

For all of you who want to recook now, here are the ingredients at a glance:

Preparation: First of all celery, carrots, onions, leek and parsley. Then add a red bell pepper, an eggplant, a small kohlrabi, fennel and tomatoes. Clean and chop everything and, except for the parsley, sweat well in rapeseed oil. Fill up with 2 liters of boiling water. Add two chops, then the spices. We took marjoram, oregano, basil, coriander, salt, pepper, paprika hot and noble sweet and two fiery chilies. Cook for 45 minutes on a low flame. Add the finely chopped parsley 15 minutes before the end of the cooking time. Serve with rice or noodles. And then a good appetite.

Cooking recipes and career guides probably have in common that you actually can only really do something with them if you already have some experience.

Weekends reading recommendations

Goethe in Italy. In Europe a topos for generations, shaping the picture of traveling and finding one’s way in the world. A way of self discovery. Life-paths are diverse. For Goethe it was a very productive time. Still inspiring to read, especially today. The original German Text is found here.

As gutenberg.org is still not available with a German IP address, a quick research for a good, online available, English translation was not successful, but brought a link to a German classroom Edition with English introduction, published in 1909 in New York. It’s a scan of a copy form the University of California Libraries. You will find it here.

Until October 26, the Tiroler Landesmuseum was hosting an exhibition on Goethe’s journey and its impact. The title: „Goethe’s Italian Journey. A homage to a country that never existed“. Now the catalog is in the bookstores. It is on my table as a reading recommendation for the weekend. The Book is in German and Italian.

Somehow …

… I feel a bit like sitting in a train restaurant when I’m sitting at the small meeting table, which is now in my office on the side with the five windows. Today I brought a pasta dish for my lunch break, just like on the train, and even though the window next to me is a bit higher than the one on the train, you can imagine the landscape passing by while you eat.

I think I miss travelling and the direct exchange with colleagues at training courses and conferences and also simply changing places. When you help people to develop their perspective for the future, you need different perspectives yourself. In any case the new office is very inspiring for my work.