Good cop, bad cop

Before I left for Germany, somebody warned me that the professors would be distant and scary and never speak a word. I heard the story of Albert Einstein, who made a lifelong enemy of his one by addressing him as "Herr Weber" rather than "Herr Professor Weber". And to some extent it's true. But there's a hidden counterbalance, to which I shall pay tribute today:

every course comes equipped with a tutor.

And this is not the nonentity sort of tutor that I myself have been in Auckland, who from the grand heights of one-semester-further-along-the-mathematical-spectrum gets paid small wages to grade calculus exercises and deflect some of the silly questions away from the lecturers.

Nah, these are gold-hearted black-belted mathematical ninjas.In their other incarnation as students, they're usually occupied writing a thesis for their Diplom or Doktorat. They know their stuff, and they're beautiful, beautiful people. They call us "du" rather than "Sie". They organise field trips, they take whole classes out to end-of-semester afternoon teas. Their eyes fill with tears when there's something we don't understand.

(In case you ever read this, dear representation theory tutor, maybe I'll just mention that . . . well, the exam I wrote this morning . . . er . . . well, it'd benefit from your characteristic generosity.)