By usual reckonings Kierkegaard's undergraduate studies should have been over by the time he read his paper to the Student Union. Had he followed his eight-year older brother Peter Christian's example he would already have graduated in the summer of the previous year. Peter, now well established in Danish academic and theological circles, had, like Søren, taken his high school diploma at seventeen but then passed his theology finals less than four years later. With a reputation as one of the university's brightest graduates, Peter had then left in May 1828 for a study tour which included Berlin, Bonn, Göttingen, Utrecht, Leiden, and Louvain. In 1830 he was in Paris at the time of the July Revolution. Søren, apart from four visits to Berlin, a brief trip to his family roots in Jutland, and a day excursion to Sweden, was to spend his life entirely in and around Copenhagen. Peter was big and strong and hiked in northern Sweden; Søren was slight and stooped – he may have damaged his back in a fall at school. Peter's skills as a speaker had earned him in Germany the title of ‘devil debater from the North’ (Der Disputierteufel aus dem Norden). Søren spoke clearly but his voice did not carry, and his talk to the Union was the closest he came to conducting a debate in person.