In principle, online university is terrible, there is no longer any doubt about that in the fourth Corona semester.

No friends, no parties, no liveliness.

The romantic tale of student life as a state of enlightening alertness of the youthful spirit somewhere in nights spent sleeping is now really just a tale.

Instead, tiredness and sluggishness are the order of the day, both physically and mentally.

And that with the same pressure to perform.

This is precisely why the question "How are you?" has become a fixed ritual in many seminars, to which lecturers give space either at the beginning or at the end of the course;

Depending on the commitment of the lecturers, either per semester or, to be on the safe side, per session.

"You might think it's none of the professors' business," says Swetlana Melnichuk.

She is in her mid-20s and is studying at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich (LMU).

"On the other hand, it's their business, so they kind of understand what we're going through and how difficult it is for us."

One of Svetlana's professors also asked about the well-being of the students.

"And then, of course, we poured out our hearts." Above all, students who were new to the city or even to the country opened up.

Many would have expressed thoughts like: "Now I'm sitting here alone in my room without friends and can't get to know anyone," reports Svetlana.

Far away from the parents, professors are sometimes the only reference persons.

Julia Brailovskaia also experienced this.

She is a lecturer at the Chair for Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy at the Ruhr University Bochum and also researches the topic of media use.

"Students write to me a lot more, call me a lot more," says Brailovskaia.

"And sometimes it's just about me telling them: You can do it." The inhibition threshold is apparently lower for many online.

In the past, Brailovskaia's students would never have dared to come to her office in person so often.

In principle, online university is still terrible, but under certain circumstances it can create intimate situations that would never have happened in person.

But how is it that we suddenly confide in people we hardly know?

Less formal, less reserved

For Brailovskaia, this is a logical consequence in times of contact restrictions and the like. "Humans are social beings, and we are programmed to interact with others." human nature.

"People want social interaction, they want to present themselves, and if that doesn't happen in the offline world, you compensate for it in the online world." That's evident on social media anyway.

And now also in the zoom seminar.

If the need to communicate can no longer be met privately, it will shift to the place where studying - whether the students wanted it or not - had to continue to take place throughout the pandemic.

"The fact that we're doing Zoom sessions from home blurs the lines between private and non-private," says Brailovskaia.

"I'm no longer at the university or at home, I'm at the university from home." This sometimes provides deeper insights into the lives of lecturers and students than there would have been before Corona.

And it changes behavior in the seminar.