ENB Soft Skill Seminars

Every year, the Elite Network of Bavaria offers several soft skill seminar weekends with various seminars to practise important skills needed in academic and professional life. These take place at different places within Bavaria. The offer is extremely broad and contains among others seminars on academic writing and presenting in English, on personality development (e.g. increasing self-confidence and reducing stress and pressure during studies), and further also seminars on how to successfully pass job interviews and how to become a good team leader. Small group sizes as well as a well-balanced mixture of theory and practice are aspects the participants of the seminars definitely benefit from. They are usually provided with a lot of material to use after the seminar, so that one can individually continue to work on the topics the seminars focused on individually and to practise and improve continuously.
The longer seminar weekends (duration up to four days) are mostly located in Beilngries in the idyllic Altmühltal and usually contain an excursion to a climbing garden or canoeing on a nearby river (Altmühl).
Next to the seminar schedule, there is also time to get to know other members of the Elite Network of Bavaria. For example it is common that the participants and lecturers organise an evening programme together (for instance singing around a campfire, playing games or powerpoint caraoke, or just gathering at the bar and chatting). By the way: the seminar weekends are really famous for their delicious and huge amount of food.
The seminars weekends are announced several weeks in advance in the intranet of the Elite Network of Bavaria, where one also has to register for the seminars. Travel costs are covered by the elite graduate programme (if you plan to go, it is helpful if you contact the spoke persons Christoph Strunk at the University of Regensburg or Kristina Giesel at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg in advance). The cost of the seminar, accomodation and food is covered by the elite network (up to a small fee which you have to pay yourself).
From my perspective, each seminar I’ve attended so far has helped me a lot to develop my personality as well as to improve key skills in the academic world like giving a presentation (from creating good slides to being aware of voice and body language). You also get the opportunity there to get to know other members and alumni of the Elite Network from all over Bavaria, some of whom you will certainly meet again at other events of the ENB. Each individual seminar I attended was a fantastic experience, so I would recommend every member of the elite graduate programme to take the opportunity to participate in some of the seminars!

Max Joseph Fahn