Today, I had to make an important decision. I am studying Business Information Systems in the fifth semester, which basically is a combination of computer science and business administration. While this is certainly a field that I am interested in, university has always undercut my expectations. To be fair, I have also had a few very interesting lectures and projects, but overall, university teaches very little skills that are of practical use. To compensate that, there is a mandatory practical semester.
During this practical semester, I would be required to work at a company for a minimum of 8 hours a day over a period of 95 working days (~5 months). One thing that I always appreciated about university is having time for side projects during the semester. Since the end of last year, I have taught myself JavaScript and have been working full-time on the TravelFeed platform and pursued my studies on the side. Doing an internship would mean putting the development of TravelFeed on hold, since founding a company, developing a token economy and continuing development of our platform will occupy all of my time and is not possible to do as a side project. I have asked my university to credit building my own business as a practical semester, but today I got the following reply:
During the approval and final acceptance of your practical semester, we have to check and comply with formal conditions such as employment contract, training plan, weekly reports, working and attendance days and last but not least the certificate. Unfortunately, we cannot guarantee this in your desired case.
This is Germany after all and the university system is not known for flexibility, so this reply did not surprise me, especially since I had been told before that there is no history of cases like this having been approved. As a consequence, I have decided to put my studies on hold for the time being. When I am finished with my exams at the end of this month, I will be fully committed to TravelFeed for the next 7 months, then I will reevaluate.
I don't plan on settling down and applying for a job that would require me to have a bachelor's degree anytime soon, but it can't hurt to have a degree as a backup plan. I still have the intention to finish my studies eventually, but we are serious about TravelFeed and if TravelFeed becomes as successful as we believe it will, finishing my degree will have to wait.
