My key experience was at the very beginning.
There was a conference that was hosted
at the Department and that some of our professors had organised.
We helped, and made coffee, and then sat down
and listened to the talks.
I think that was when
for me linguistics shifted from something that I wanted to study
to something that I knew I wanted to do and
I suddenly saw myself as one of these people who stand there and give the presentations
and talk about their work.
I think that's a key experience because that really shaped
how my plans developed for the rest
of my life or for what I want to do with it now.
It helped me see that I was in the right place
and that I was doing something that I was really passionate about
and that the study of linguistics to my mind is
a bottomless pit in the best way.
You think you could do this for a decade
and you would still not be done. There would still be somehting else to look at.
Some phenomenon and some theory that no one
has thought of yet, or no one has discovered yet.
I really think that this is
my key experience.
For me the key experience was
at some point during the second semester, I think,
when I found out that
theoretical linguistics is not all that exists
in the world of linguistics, that there are also
institutes that do practical experiments
in the lab and that psycholinguistics is a thing.
I think it was when I read a paper,
in a seminar, about an experiment,
a behavioural study.
That was the point when I realised:
"Ok, that's the thing that I want to do",
 and when I started applying
to jobs at the Max-Planck-Institute,
which is also in Leipzig.
I decided "Ok, that's what I want to do,
that's what I'm passionate about. I want to create
studies and do experiments in the lab.
That's where I want to go."
