Mgr. Petra Ivenz

When I was in my last year of high school, it was time for me to decide on a university. I knew that I wanted to study English language but I wasn’t exactly sure about the best study programme. When I was little I wanted to be a teacher, but later when I turned 18 and had to finally decide about what to do, I didn’t want to be a teacher anymore so I choose to study English language and Culture.

To be honest, I didn’t know what to expect when I saw the subjects which will be covered during the first 3 years of study. After the first lecture I had even considered quitting. I am glad I didn’t quit because I consider my time there to be the best time of my life.

I found my favourite subjects soon – including phonetics, multicultural studies, histories of England and USA and the translating seminar. I have always been fond of travelling, so I found multicultural studies to be my cup of tea – we covered the cultural traditions, characteristic behaviors, interesting facts, and social behaviors of the different nations. I’ve also been a big fan of English history, so I enjoyed this subject very much as well. American studies were also very enlightening, but because I have never been a big fan of America in general I was quite sceptical about this subject at first. However, the seminars were presented in an interesting and fun way, and it soon became one of my favourite subjects as well.

For the bachelor thesis I choose a theme which was from the English Victorian Era and that was actually a pleasure to write because I was interested in that theme and I learnt a lot along the way.

During the master’s studies, my favourite subjects included the American and British literature, sociolinguistics or lexicology. Still I wasn’t a big fan of America, and therefore I was very pleasantly surprised when I very much liked some of the American classic works.

For the master’s thesis, I choose a field from sociolinguistics. This time my work also included research. I had troubles when I was about to start work on this but once I started I actually quite enjoyed working on this thesis as well.

With both of my theses I participated in ŠVOC (student’s thesis competition). This experience was also quite challenging and fun at the same time. I enjoyed listening to my classmates presentations and also enjoyed my presentation time, when I tried to let my classmates and the jury know what I was working on for the past few weeks.

Furthermore, the faculty organised events for Halloween and St. Patrick’s day every year and every year I participated in a way. During the master’s studies I helped organise the celebrations as well which was also quite an experience. It helped me to find some skills I didn’t even know I had – specifically organising and bossing people around 🙂

The best part about the school was that I got to know many new people with similar (and very different) interests who later became friends. These friends will stay with me my whole life even if we are apart for months; you just know they are there.

I also got to know some native English speakers along the way. This helped me as well to overcome my fear of talking to native English speakers.

I didn’t know what I wanted to do after I finished the studies, but that’s the good part about studying a language, that you can choose what you want to do after. My boyfriend got a job in Germany and we moved there a week after we had our state exams. I applied for some jobs which didn’t require German language, and I got a job in the world’s biggest seller of musical instruments where I currently work as a Customer Care Agent. I work in an international environment with people from all over the world, and I make use of my knowledge which I gained during the studies at the university every single day.