Summer holidays as a nerd

… that’s usually the first question I get asked when I tell someone what I got up to during the summer holidays.
Yes, I know. Other people go to the seaside, lounge by the pool or spend what feels like half the day on their mobile. I preferred to get stuck into everything from chemistry to biology and physics, and I also went to the maths camp run by the University of Augsburg. That might not exactly sound like a typical summer holiday for a 16-year-old. But for me, they were some really cool weeks!
Of course, I enjoy getting to grips with chemistry, physics and maths. I like it when I’ve no idea how to tackle a problem at first and then eventually work out how it works. Or when something I hadn’t expected suddenly happens during an experiment. But for me, the best thing about holidays like this is experiencing it all together with others and getting to know people who enjoy the same things as I do.

I noticed this particularly at maths camp. There, you don’t have to explain why you’re voluntarily tackling difficult problems. Most of the time, a ‘cluster of people’ forms at some point and everyone tries to solve the puzzle. Nowhere else do you find people with whom you can just casually list the decimal places of pi. That might sound boring now, but if you’ve never experienced it yourself, you simply can’t imagine it.
And of course, a camp like this isn’t just about maths. Between tasks, we chat, laugh and get up to all sorts of nonsense. You get to know people you click with straight away, and suddenly the day’s over again. In the afternoons, there are so-called ‘Fraktivitäten’ – that is, leisure ACTIVITIES. It can really be anything!
For example, fighting with fabric swords, soldering or throwing things (you stand on the football pitch and throw things about … a chair got stuck in a bush), and so on. Of course, you can also carry on doing maths, dancing, playing games, singing, playing an instrument and so on!

It’s lovely to sit together in the evening, even though you really ought to have been asleep ages ago to be fit and ready for the next morning. You could, of course, head off for the ‘bedtime story’. But if you’re laughing about something with the others or still want to solve a problem, you don’t necessarily think about going to bed. Moments like that often stay in your memory longer than the actual tasks.
There was loads to discover at the Chemistry and Physics Olympiads. Sure, sometimes I had to really push myself – some problems can drive you to despair. But it’s also exciting to find out how something works. And when the moment finally comes when everything clicks into place, it’s a brilliant feeling. It doesn’t really matter whether you’ve just solved a complicated physics problem or observed something unexpected during an experiment. The main thing is that you’ve discovered something that was previously a mystery.