The most wonderful student letters

Happy New Year everyone! I would like to share the most wonderful Christmas present Katharina and I received: A box full of letters from students who express their appreciation for our teaching.

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In the letters, they share mind-blowing academic revelations and deeply personal insights they had in our seminars (and also funny memes they have created for us). <3

The kindness and love in these letters was absolutely overwhelming and Katharina and I cried many a tear reading through them. (happytears)

What students especially value are two things: One, our rigorously ideology-critical thinking and our – sometimes painfully – truthful way of speaking has opened ways for them to be more self-confidently critical of the world around them and shown them the existential significance of the humanities.

Two, seeing and hearing me address issues of self-care and mental health in my seminars, sharing my own vulnerability in the spirit of destigmatizing mental health struggles, meant feeling seen and accepted with their own vulnerabilities and enabled them to accept and care for themselves better.

The letters emphasize what a difference we have made to our students’ lives, which is humbling and infinitely rewarding. Katharina’s and my contracts at Bielefeld University ran out in May 2020 and because of the pandemic we never got to say proper goodbyes to the people who are most important to us, which was painful and sad. This is the most wonderful way of reconnecting.

Thank you to Lea and Sophia for organizing this and to all the letter writers – Anna-Lena, Lisa, Mina, Benni, Jenny, Kallin, Sophia, Lea. Your words mean the world to us! :)