Other organizational problems result by the prevailing conditions given in every day school life. During the working period on the Facharbeit students have to meet their supervising teacher several times to give a report about their work and discuss how to proceed further. But it is hard to find a date when both, teacher and student, have the needed time. That is why you get into a big pressure of time. This is unsatisfactory as well for the student as also for the supervising teacher. I myself had problems of this kind.

Additionally, the missing experience of teachers in guiding a Facharbeit results in many misunderstandings between teachers and students, and in ineffective work.

Sometimes the students have bad luck with their supervising teachers. At the very beginning some teachers say that they will guide a student’s work and afterwards they show no interest at all in this work, or they say that they have no time for the next few months to do anything to help the student, or they let the student work and do not even read during the working period the single text parts the student has written. This all happened to several friends of mine in my grade. In this point I was more lucky.

Successes and insights I won

In spite of all the difficulties I do not regret to have worked on a Facharbeit. Contrarily, I have won a lot of valuable insights. First, I have learnt a lot about a topic of my interest. Second, I performed a research work that requires another way of working, thinking, organizing and structuring as usual school work. Especially the kind of presentation and to work out a paper in scientific manner are valuable experiences far beyond of the skills usually learnt at school.

A special highlight was the participation at the competition “Jugend forscht” where I presented together with my sister Inge a part of my work. We received a lot of acknowledgements: the first price in the field of technique, the special price for environmental technique and the price for innovative work done by females. In the higher level we were proud to win a practicum at the department of inorganic chemistry at the university in Mainz.