Student essay written in en (native language: German, CEFR level: B2, field of study: Sciences de l'education)


For the last year I was doing a European voluntary service (ESC) in
the FabLab of Fougres Agglomration, this volunteering had a big
impact on my choice of studies. The FabLab is a collaborative
Workshop focussed mainly on digital fabrication, the idea is that
people with different projects, knowledge and competencies come
together, help each other and learn from each other. There was for
example an elderly man, who is collecting agricultural utensils from
the 19th and 20th century, who came to repair an ancient buckwheat
mill. By helping him repairing this object, I could share my know-how
in 3D-modelling and he could share his knowledge about history,
agriculture and the region of Paris.



I immediately fell in love with this learning concept, to acknowledge
the fact that everybody has a different story, different knowledge,
different competencies, etc. In school I had a really hard time with
the idea that there would be only one "all-knowing" teacher
and 30 "not-knowing" students, who had to listen to him
talk. Furthermore I had a lot of experiences that led me to the
conclusion, that you can learn the most in a context of exchange and
that exchange is very important in probably every professional field.
Even in the domain of politics, personal exchange is highly important
because we're in a society, where more and more people stay with
people, that have a similar opinion as them. This can result in the
creation of a lot of different groups, that all think they're right
and everybody else is wrong. As in the field of education a more
interactive and communicative approach would be beneficial for our
democratic society.



During my volunteering I had the amazing experience to attend to
several seminars with other European volunteers in Paris, where the
main goal was also to exchange about our stories, cultures and more
or less similar experiences as volunteers. Personally, I can say that
I learned a lot more about the different cultures of Europe in this
kind of exchange in one week, than I learned in one semester of
European culture I had in geography class.



In conclusion, it was evident for me to study educational sciences,
after practising and experiencing this kind of education for one
year. To see how education can work as well, motivated me a lot to
learn more about how we learn, why, in what contexts, etc.