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High school graduate Julia Schäfer: "I have great concerns about how it will turn out"
Photo: Peter Jülich / DER SPIEGEL
Julia Schäfer has not only persevered so far, she has done everything with flying colors.
The 17-year-old high school graduate from the Hirschhorn community near Heidelberg has done her homework in the past few weeks, written exams and stared at the screen for hours.
She was able to maintain her average grade of 1.0.
About distance learning, she says: "It's super exhausting, sometimes I can no longer concentrate."
In twelve weeks she should actually do her Abitur, biology, social studies and English in writing, mathematics and German verbally.
"I hope so," says Schäfer.
"I have great concerns about how this will turn out." She does not know when the exam will actually take place, nor under what conditions.
For them, every decimal place is important.
She wants to study medicine in Munich, the places are hotly contested.
And yet the 17-year-old finds it difficult to »find the motivation to consistently learn under these conditions«.
In the spring, an estimated 400,000 young people get the Abitur or the technical college entrance qualification, as many a middle degree and almost 200,000 a secondary school certificate.
It is questionable whether work & travel, jobs as au pairs and similar activities, with which many high school graduates otherwise spend the year after their exams, will be possible this year.
This is why even more young people than usual flock directly to the universities.
The competition for coveted study places then intensifies there.
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