The future chancellors and Nobel Prize winners - 5 years later

It was the 4th of July 2003, our personal independence day – graduation day at a high school in Aachen, not just any high school, the elitarian high school of Aachen, one member of the German cabinet had graduated from that school, one famous violinist and a poet as well. There we were – 80 graduates, 19 years old kids dressed in suits and evening dresses, playing punk songs while receiving our diplomas.

We were the elite of tomorrow, we were told in the festive speeches, we could be anything we wanted, if we just tried. And we felt greatness. We were smart, we thought we knew everything, we would never be more mature than that. The world had only been waiting for us to be freed from school.

In the year book it was written about each of us: “the most likely to become the German chancellor” “will win the Nobel prize in biology” “I want to change the world with my writings,” and we were on our way to do that.

Three months later, I found myself in the university cafeteria of the Humboldt University drinking coffee with people from the elitarian high school in Kaiserslautern, Bremen and Sprock-Hövel. They were as great as I was, 300 first year students all with the same goal of achieving fame and greatness.

On Christmas that year, I talked with my best friend from the high school days. She had always been the best in class and she studied medicine now. “It was hard to get used to the fact that you are just average,” she told me – exactly.

Today, exactly 5 years have passed since we were told that we were the stars of tomorrow. None of us has achieved that greatness so far. None of us has failed completely either, as far as I know. Some have finished their job training, have their first real job, car and two-room-flat. But most of us are still caught up in university, studying beyond the four and half years of regular time.

Maybe five years is not enough time to build up fame and greatness. But each of us had to learn a lesson – we were not the only ones out there, thousands as high school graduates in this were the same as we were, the world had not been waiting for us. Yes, we are average and the thing we would have never imagined is: we enjoy it!