Sophie Gastinger, aged 17, from Aachen, intends to take her high school exams next year. She was one of the advisory board members who contributed to this issue and would like to encourage girls in particular to form their own opinion of electrical engineering.
| Sarah Kastner/VDEI seemed to be good at math and physics in seventh grade – but was I really? The grades on my report card were certainly good. But I wasn’t convinced that I could really do it: perhaps I just got the grades because I was considered a good student anyway and participated diligently in class?
It’s really quite difficult to judge for yourself if you have a special talent for a particular subject. Many parents can’t do that either, especially when it comes to technical subjects – they can’t have a knowledge of everything.
But there are people who know school students well and should actually be able to tell when someone is really talented in a subject like computer science, physics or math: the teachers. No one can assess our abilities as well as they can.
I was so unsure that I chose Spanish instead of MPI (math, physics, computer science) to begin with. But shortly afterwards, I had the luck of getting a physics teacher who realized how good I really was at his course. And he told me that too. He encouraged me and also persuaded me to take part in VDE’s INVENT a CHIP microchip competition. Today, physics is not only my best subject, but also my favorite.
It’s just not right that scientific and technical talents – especially girls – end up sticking to foreign languages, for which they may not even have a particular gift, just because that’s considered to be easier. It shouldn’t be a matter of luck whether someone ends up taking an advanced physics course if he or she is quite capable of doing it.
School is the ideal time to try things out. But teachers need to help this happen by making school students aware that there are workshops, vacation camps and competitions that are fun and usually cost nothing. Or they can offer something similar at school themselves in the form of a club or project.
Teachers need to pay attention to who is talented in which subject and then provide targeted support. This should be just as much a part of the job as following the curriculum in their teaching.
I’m planning to study a technical subject, though I’m not yet sure whether it will be electrical engineering, physics or mechatronics. But whatever I decide to do, I’m glad that someone made me realize it’s the thing for me – and that I am perfectly capable of it!
