If you don’t try you can’t succeed

Youth nowadays is harder than most people would expect. To be fair not as hard as it was hundreds of years ago or even in the beginning of the 20th century. But exactly that is part of the problem. I mean who really knows what it’s like to grow up with all this rapid development around you. All of a sudden, the 15-year-old kid has to help their parents with all kinds of technology related things as they “have known that all their life” whilst the older generations didn’t.

But that’s besides the point. What I really wanted to talk about here is another difficulty. Finding a Job. What? You may ask yourself. There are so many of them. And that’s the problem for the people of Gen-Z. In school you are taught in all kinds of subjects and then all of a sudden you are expected to know what you want to do with your life. How should you know?


Personally, I got very lucky being able to live in the USA for 4 years due to my dad’s job. It lead to me getting to know different cultures and also getting out of my small hometown Wedelheine which is close to Wolfsburg and Brunswig. Therefore, I was aware that I needed to really test what I wanted to do and already think about that prior to finishing school.


This and my interest for the ocean, my interest in science and my mom’s background having grown up in Kiel let me to the decision that I really wanted to take my chances during my grade 11 internship.
So, I took my chance. I applied at GEOMAR. And to my surprise they said yes.


So here I am sitting in a GEOMAR office after one and a half weeks of getting to know the work of a scientist. And I’m still interested. Obviously as an intern I didn’t do anything crazy and only got a very brief look into what the life of a scientist is like, but it was still a great time. The people are so open and showed interest in talking to me and getting to know me even though they knew I would be gone after two weeks. Furthermore, it’s incredible to me how so many people can work on the same topic and still all do something completely different. And they seem to always be informed on what the others are doing and how they are getting along. Everyone is always willing to help the others as well which I think really should be the case in any given field of work. But it isn’t, which makes it even nicer for me to see that in science that’s how people interact with each other. And it makes for a great work climate.


Seeing how my internship went so far, I didn’t regret my decision for a second even though I’m away from my friends for these two weeks. And yes of course it’s different. People here seem to have a completely different mindset than others I have met before that work in a more industrial field. But different isn’t worse. It’s better.


So, with all that being said I can really just recommend the field of science. And now mostly talking to the younger people if you have something you are interested in just try it. Worst thing that can happen is that you end up not liking it and then you at least know that it’s not for you. Which is good as well. And if it turns out to be something you enjoy like it did (was?) for me even better. You just need to be willing to get out of your comfort zone a little and go for it. Without somewhat high expectations of yourself you will never reach your fullest potential.

Tim Hartmann

2 thoughts on “If you don’t try you can’t succeed

  1. It was really lovely to work with you briefly Tim! All the best for your future career, whatever you choose 🙂

  2. Hi Tim, glad you enjoyed your stay at GEOMAR! Unfortunately we cannot find a place for all of the applicants for internships, but in the cases where we do succeed, ideally the experience should always be as positve as yours!

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