A bite of life in university
I am reading a book titled "Dean's list of highly successful college students by John B Brader" in a section of American Corner of ITB Central Library. I feel like a bolt of lightning has just put me into the face of reality. Reality of life I have spent so much effort avoiding. This is my mental process, It's the window to my contemplative self where I truly tried to be really honest.
I am going to use the outline of the book i mentioned earlier as my structure.
the first thing the book mentioned was about the context of how special occasion it is for anyone to be able to spend their time in an university. A short time if I may add, which add urgency to answer to the question of "Why I am here in university?". I am going to write about 4 things; mainly what do I feel about my college in section I, My personal struggle defining my position in college, What being in college means in section III, and lastly Perspective to conclude the article.
I. Great Learning Ambiance.
I, for one, felt that i am truly lucky to be accepted to Institut Teknologi Bandung that famous for having competitive admission requirement. The campus environment is very suitable for learning, competitive students, brilliant professors, strong campus culture. This campus is a melting pot of rich personalities, almost everyday, i have been wasting my chance to meet extraordinary people by keeping my introverted shells.
II. Contemplation of my position as university student.
Normally, it is just natural for you to wonder and tried to answer. What does it mean to get accepted to university.
For me, as i grow older, it is obvious that this is part of my transition to be an adults. I am very much expected to be independent by the time my 4-year-of-college contract between me and my parents is over. I am not quite sure if I can finish college on time, but I feel if I would not able to finish college on time, I must pay my tuition from my own pocket. Something I dont have capability right now.
III. My Sophomore Year
My Freshmen year is over, without any remark on my blog. I feel that I am at my best when I am able to convey my stream of thought through writing. In order to compensate my freshmen year which has gone without manifesting itself in a form of my writing, I would like to share my remaining time as sophomore in ITB.
I got accepted to Engineering Management major. Do I feel proud to be admitted in my major? I did not think of it as a pride contest, but i do feel extremely lucky because I found many subject in my curriculum as truly applicative and interesting.
One of the most important decision in college - and perhaps life, is choosing the right major. That one decision though, is part of the bigger and often recurring theme of finding your right fit in life.
Where should you go? What can you learn? What should you do? These are choices that should be answered exclusively by you. These sequence of decision is your DNA that set you apart from everyone else.
My course into university was initially started partly out of peer pressure, partly of the prestige of the college, and partly because of my boring high school's crush story. My decision was the manifestation of my bold tendency to explore and go where I have never been. It has not always sweet, there are times where my experimentation lead me to heartbreak, and error.
I also learned that mistakes are not always preventable. We all make mistakes, and we are strongest when we acknowledge them and forgive ourselves so that we can move on better.
I feel that I am privileged enough to experience college where knowledge is offered like food on a buffet. place, where I would, I could glutton and indulge myself among books in campus's library. Hopefully I can list my goals and ideals and then learn to commit myself to live my college live to the fullest.
First Ideals...
#1 College is an utopia where I should focus on the learning process, not just grades.
Grades are important but it's not everlasting. Grades are also crucial because it serves as a crude measure to how much commitment you had invested to your learning process.
But there are bigger themes in college that matter more to me, that is the question whether I have become a learned person, whether I have learned to value my education I now own, whether I have learned what I want, and how prepared I am to move on to my adults life.
Those are gigantic question I am having a hard time to realize its significance. I feel that at the end of the day, my decision to go to college, is part of my conscious effort to shape my identity.
I do not want to be judged based on grades alone, I take pride about my ability to make humane connection with my friends. I do not appreciate if people merely have preconceived ideas about other people even before they really know the person. Although, judgment is also a reality I can not avoid.
I think, I am uncomfortable with the fact people are having a hard time understanding me now, because apparently my academics is not bright. In the beginning, I intentionally did not want to show too much effort on learning, because I did not like the judgment of being treated as a high achiever. Somehow, I got trapped in the process. I notice it is also unhealthy that I now trapped in my self-created maze.
So, to clarify my first ideals, I want to say that I feel that I need to have the right attitude about my role as university student. meaning that I need to improve my personality and habits.
Grades is one factor that matter, but I feel I need to strive for a bigger ideals. That my time here should be allocated and prioritized to learning process. I want my self to be enriched by immersing myself in the ups and down of my own learning process. I also want to be able to enrich other people by facilitating them to do the same.
Think about WHY are you in college, and you'll realize the grading is ridiculously shallow. College life loses it value as precious period of personal and intellectual development when it becomes so utilitarian (read: grade oriented/ merely other life's achievements). There are physicist who truly loves physics, and they respect the fields, and appreciate the subjects. We want to learn how we enjoy, true, and committed to what we love doing, we are not people who are willing to lick some asses just to get an A. Grades should not be treated to validate self worth!
1.1. University is a platform where we learn a miniature of life. Where we challenge, define, and express commitment to our life directions, values, and assumptions.
I'd like to look backward from the future to put my college experience in perspective, if tomorrow would be the last day I will be in college...what would I have remembered of my time in college.. what would I feel my biggest achievement was.. what kind of friends would be on my side at my graduation.. graduation and commencement is a tradition that appreciate the whole journey of every faculty member in getting their title and degrees. On that day, every students is successful. it may take different path for them to get there, but now they are united by rituals, celebrations, and uniform.
I would wear "Love You MOM and DAD!" board, I would scream out loud! I would be proud of my self.
but in order to share the joyous moment, I would need to feel that I have been successful-- That is, in my own definition of success, I have GROWN, i have CHALLENGED myself, I would be able to appreciate the world's complexity anew, and I am eager, and equipped to learn much much more in the years ahead as I learned tools and skills of learning during my college years-- That is successful.
I want to remember me giving my best effort despite all odds. -to prove character.
I want to make sure if I did not success the only reason why that happened is because i have tried my best everything else but it did not worked.
"real world operates according to a different sensibility. In the real world, the path to success is often twisted path of dead ends and detours that leads to the most creative exploration, the deepest learning, and thus to real success--success to both in the traditional sense and in the sense of meaningful personal development."
as Winston Churchill said. "Success is the ability to go from failure with no loss of enthusiasm."
Failure is not simply a failure and success is not simply a success, For most of us, the moment of success and failure represent significant, deeply felt, ongoing challenge, whether related to grades, personal advancement, or financial status. In every downturn, we challenge and reexamine our most basic assumptions of ourselves, and the world. including assumption about what it means to succeed and what it means to fail.
The list of things to be seriously challenged and answered goes on and on, what it means to learn, what it means to have ambitions, what it means to have integrity, what it means to love, what it means to forgive, what it means to suffer, what it means to be independent, what it means to grow, what it means to live.
It is a moment where we are given a chance to plan our life directions, values, ethics, and the essentials meaning of one's endeavors. it is a moment for me to express my commitment to the values I hold dear in life.
1.2 University is about defining our place in a real world.
finding out my niche, is ultimately an effort to be fulfilled. A question how can I be fulfilled is one of the most important question in life. At the end of the day, we do not listen to other in order for us to feel happy, but we must find find happiness in what we decide doing. we must find happiness in what we are.
At the end of the day, we do not delegate our responsibility to other, instead we are fully accountable and liable to every life decision that we take.
university is the best way to learn that essence, we often fall victim to consider that we may never be happy because of A, B, C to Zs. We cant be fulfilled because of our own made up reasons.
if you feel you're going to highly selected spot in university just to feel inferior, that other people have better grades, seems to have better life, you're missing THE WHOLE POINTS, we are not in university just to be looser with no confidence, even if you're at the bottom of your class, it doesn't mean you're stupid! of course you have things to fix but you must take in on your own pace. we are here to appreciate exactly the difference on how people can attain the happiness and success in a truly diverse manner.
essentially, the barrier to happiness is not because the happiness is not available. that moment of joy is usually the free and intangible feeling, the reason why we see it distant, the reason why we dont see as if we're living our life, is because we choose to deal with the artificial.
It is not about where your college is located, it is not about whether you go to Ivy Leagues, it is not about where you were from, or what your background is, or what your life is like.
it is not about listing your accomplishment, because you'll soon question until when do I care to add list to my CV, why do I do it for?
Until when you're going to keep trying until finally you feel satisfied? happy? fulfilled?
It is about how you approach things that matter to you, how you approach college education that matters to you, not about comparing how other life is, but how you realize the uniqueness of your own DNAs, Identity, Knowledge, Emotions, Personality and how it come into play in a world full of challenges and opportunities. it is about realizing how you living your short live!
It is about earning trust, and loosing it, build an integrity, and having it destroyed. To encounter the love of your life, and have your heart broken. Until finally you managed to see clearly things that actually really matters to you and you only. Till finally, you can see your position in this world.
1.3 University is a chance to be a learned individuals.
The thing about college, you don't have teachers, there are only lectures who probably have full time professionals life outside their lecture jobs, some even become lecture out of passion to learn or love to the subject they teach. therefore, knowledge and education in university is not something you simply receive here. You may or you may not. Education is something you claim ownerships to.
The proper understanding as necessary from making the shift to making passive note taking, or "receiving" knowledge to actively "claiming" your education by engaging and participate in the learning process, interaction to your tutor, spending research hours with your friends, late night conversation of the now-happening occurrences, long talks with librarians, seeking opportunity to have a talk to lecture during office hours, serving as laboratory assistants, and from expecting to be advised from one authoritative advisor to seeking dialogue with a web of advisors who will suggest an array of options.
Allow yourself, to take pleasure to what you love doing, being an open minded and claim your education by following your aspiration not a prescribed path dictated by others, recognize your own talents on your own terms and definitions.
Seek help is an important factor in an active learning, your energy should be spent entirely in the process of claiming your worth of education.
and also it is imperative to have your own definition of education. It is okay to differ in defining education because people have their own different needs and levels of maturity, but whatever your phase in college, you must step back and be thoughtful about what education means to you.
Also, our decision of learning come with an opportunity cost. there are chance we give up when we do something so we better are sure that we have given careful thought to what we want to know and what we think we should learn.
in order to be enlightened we must be brave to confront our ignorance, and learn our way to fix it. what do you think you ought to understand? there are curriculum that will take you to an educated place, but you can draw your map yourself, too. that map need to be wide and exploratory, and need to cover territories you did not know existed before.
your learning need to help you understand the world you know and exposes you to the world you don't know. it will prepare you to be a learned individual. Someone who has sophistication and an appetite for many things-- an appreciation to the subtle, the beautiful, the complexity, the details, the exquisite, and the unexpected.
going for college for credentials is a gross underestimate of college values. College need to be a place that make you realize, and help you set in the path of becoming sophisticated, curious, and learned individuals.
IV. Putting in Perspective
Treating your university as a merit based on your grades alone can obscure higher values of education, exploration, experimentation, and learning grounded in curiosity. Instead, let's ponder on what it means to be learned, to obtained education as a result of curiosity rather than grades alone. Instead, elevate the goal of your learning and understand your grades in perspective, so you will be motivated to find answer to a difficult questions, what are the underpinning of our system of values, how do dictators achieve and retain powers, what is the appeal of a Brahms symphony, what lesson can we learn from knowledge we have?
learn and love your process of learning.
grades should be the product of our passion for learning not the other way around.
at the end, after you finish with your graduation walks, you will carry with you a rich intellectual legacy that is far more enduring than a good looking transcript. You will be learned.
I am going to use the outline of the book i mentioned earlier as my structure.
the first thing the book mentioned was about the context of how special occasion it is for anyone to be able to spend their time in an university. A short time if I may add, which add urgency to answer to the question of "Why I am here in university?". I am going to write about 4 things; mainly what do I feel about my college in section I, My personal struggle defining my position in college, What being in college means in section III, and lastly Perspective to conclude the article.
I. Great Learning Ambiance.
I, for one, felt that i am truly lucky to be accepted to Institut Teknologi Bandung that famous for having competitive admission requirement. The campus environment is very suitable for learning, competitive students, brilliant professors, strong campus culture. This campus is a melting pot of rich personalities, almost everyday, i have been wasting my chance to meet extraordinary people by keeping my introverted shells.
II. Contemplation of my position as university student.
Normally, it is just natural for you to wonder and tried to answer. What does it mean to get accepted to university.
For me, as i grow older, it is obvious that this is part of my transition to be an adults. I am very much expected to be independent by the time my 4-year-of-college contract between me and my parents is over. I am not quite sure if I can finish college on time, but I feel if I would not able to finish college on time, I must pay my tuition from my own pocket. Something I dont have capability right now.
III. My Sophomore Year
My Freshmen year is over, without any remark on my blog. I feel that I am at my best when I am able to convey my stream of thought through writing. In order to compensate my freshmen year which has gone without manifesting itself in a form of my writing, I would like to share my remaining time as sophomore in ITB.
I got accepted to Engineering Management major. Do I feel proud to be admitted in my major? I did not think of it as a pride contest, but i do feel extremely lucky because I found many subject in my curriculum as truly applicative and interesting.
One of the most important decision in college - and perhaps life, is choosing the right major. That one decision though, is part of the bigger and often recurring theme of finding your right fit in life.
Where should you go? What can you learn? What should you do? These are choices that should be answered exclusively by you. These sequence of decision is your DNA that set you apart from everyone else.
My course into university was initially started partly out of peer pressure, partly of the prestige of the college, and partly because of my boring high school's crush story. My decision was the manifestation of my bold tendency to explore and go where I have never been. It has not always sweet, there are times where my experimentation lead me to heartbreak, and error.
I also learned that mistakes are not always preventable. We all make mistakes, and we are strongest when we acknowledge them and forgive ourselves so that we can move on better.
I feel that I am privileged enough to experience college where knowledge is offered like food on a buffet. place, where I would, I could glutton and indulge myself among books in campus's library. Hopefully I can list my goals and ideals and then learn to commit myself to live my college live to the fullest.
First Ideals...
#1 College is an utopia where I should focus on the learning process, not just grades.
Grades are important but it's not everlasting. Grades are also crucial because it serves as a crude measure to how much commitment you had invested to your learning process.
But there are bigger themes in college that matter more to me, that is the question whether I have become a learned person, whether I have learned to value my education I now own, whether I have learned what I want, and how prepared I am to move on to my adults life.
Those are gigantic question I am having a hard time to realize its significance. I feel that at the end of the day, my decision to go to college, is part of my conscious effort to shape my identity.
I do not want to be judged based on grades alone, I take pride about my ability to make humane connection with my friends. I do not appreciate if people merely have preconceived ideas about other people even before they really know the person. Although, judgment is also a reality I can not avoid.
I think, I am uncomfortable with the fact people are having a hard time understanding me now, because apparently my academics is not bright. In the beginning, I intentionally did not want to show too much effort on learning, because I did not like the judgment of being treated as a high achiever. Somehow, I got trapped in the process. I notice it is also unhealthy that I now trapped in my self-created maze.
So, to clarify my first ideals, I want to say that I feel that I need to have the right attitude about my role as university student. meaning that I need to improve my personality and habits.
Grades is one factor that matter, but I feel I need to strive for a bigger ideals. That my time here should be allocated and prioritized to learning process. I want my self to be enriched by immersing myself in the ups and down of my own learning process. I also want to be able to enrich other people by facilitating them to do the same.
Think about WHY are you in college, and you'll realize the grading is ridiculously shallow. College life loses it value as precious period of personal and intellectual development when it becomes so utilitarian (read: grade oriented/ merely other life's achievements). There are physicist who truly loves physics, and they respect the fields, and appreciate the subjects. We want to learn how we enjoy, true, and committed to what we love doing, we are not people who are willing to lick some asses just to get an A. Grades should not be treated to validate self worth!
1.1. University is a platform where we learn a miniature of life. Where we challenge, define, and express commitment to our life directions, values, and assumptions.
I'd like to look backward from the future to put my college experience in perspective, if tomorrow would be the last day I will be in college...what would I have remembered of my time in college.. what would I feel my biggest achievement was.. what kind of friends would be on my side at my graduation.. graduation and commencement is a tradition that appreciate the whole journey of every faculty member in getting their title and degrees. On that day, every students is successful. it may take different path for them to get there, but now they are united by rituals, celebrations, and uniform.
I would wear "Love You MOM and DAD!" board, I would scream out loud! I would be proud of my self.
but in order to share the joyous moment, I would need to feel that I have been successful-- That is, in my own definition of success, I have GROWN, i have CHALLENGED myself, I would be able to appreciate the world's complexity anew, and I am eager, and equipped to learn much much more in the years ahead as I learned tools and skills of learning during my college years-- That is successful.
I want to remember me giving my best effort despite all odds. -to prove character.
I want to make sure if I did not success the only reason why that happened is because i have tried my best everything else but it did not worked.
"real world operates according to a different sensibility. In the real world, the path to success is often twisted path of dead ends and detours that leads to the most creative exploration, the deepest learning, and thus to real success--success to both in the traditional sense and in the sense of meaningful personal development."
as Winston Churchill said. "Success is the ability to go from failure with no loss of enthusiasm."
Failure is not simply a failure and success is not simply a success, For most of us, the moment of success and failure represent significant, deeply felt, ongoing challenge, whether related to grades, personal advancement, or financial status. In every downturn, we challenge and reexamine our most basic assumptions of ourselves, and the world. including assumption about what it means to succeed and what it means to fail.
The list of things to be seriously challenged and answered goes on and on, what it means to learn, what it means to have ambitions, what it means to have integrity, what it means to love, what it means to forgive, what it means to suffer, what it means to be independent, what it means to grow, what it means to live.
It is a moment where we are given a chance to plan our life directions, values, ethics, and the essentials meaning of one's endeavors. it is a moment for me to express my commitment to the values I hold dear in life.
1.2 University is about defining our place in a real world.
finding out my niche, is ultimately an effort to be fulfilled. A question how can I be fulfilled is one of the most important question in life. At the end of the day, we do not listen to other in order for us to feel happy, but we must find find happiness in what we decide doing. we must find happiness in what we are.
At the end of the day, we do not delegate our responsibility to other, instead we are fully accountable and liable to every life decision that we take.
university is the best way to learn that essence, we often fall victim to consider that we may never be happy because of A, B, C to Zs. We cant be fulfilled because of our own made up reasons.
if you feel you're going to highly selected spot in university just to feel inferior, that other people have better grades, seems to have better life, you're missing THE WHOLE POINTS, we are not in university just to be looser with no confidence, even if you're at the bottom of your class, it doesn't mean you're stupid! of course you have things to fix but you must take in on your own pace. we are here to appreciate exactly the difference on how people can attain the happiness and success in a truly diverse manner.
essentially, the barrier to happiness is not because the happiness is not available. that moment of joy is usually the free and intangible feeling, the reason why we see it distant, the reason why we dont see as if we're living our life, is because we choose to deal with the artificial.
It is not about where your college is located, it is not about whether you go to Ivy Leagues, it is not about where you were from, or what your background is, or what your life is like.
it is not about listing your accomplishment, because you'll soon question until when do I care to add list to my CV, why do I do it for?
Until when you're going to keep trying until finally you feel satisfied? happy? fulfilled?
It is about how you approach things that matter to you, how you approach college education that matters to you, not about comparing how other life is, but how you realize the uniqueness of your own DNAs, Identity, Knowledge, Emotions, Personality and how it come into play in a world full of challenges and opportunities. it is about realizing how you living your short live!
It is about earning trust, and loosing it, build an integrity, and having it destroyed. To encounter the love of your life, and have your heart broken. Until finally you managed to see clearly things that actually really matters to you and you only. Till finally, you can see your position in this world.
1.3 University is a chance to be a learned individuals.
The thing about college, you don't have teachers, there are only lectures who probably have full time professionals life outside their lecture jobs, some even become lecture out of passion to learn or love to the subject they teach. therefore, knowledge and education in university is not something you simply receive here. You may or you may not. Education is something you claim ownerships to.
The proper understanding as necessary from making the shift to making passive note taking, or "receiving" knowledge to actively "claiming" your education by engaging and participate in the learning process, interaction to your tutor, spending research hours with your friends, late night conversation of the now-happening occurrences, long talks with librarians, seeking opportunity to have a talk to lecture during office hours, serving as laboratory assistants, and from expecting to be advised from one authoritative advisor to seeking dialogue with a web of advisors who will suggest an array of options.
Allow yourself, to take pleasure to what you love doing, being an open minded and claim your education by following your aspiration not a prescribed path dictated by others, recognize your own talents on your own terms and definitions.
Seek help is an important factor in an active learning, your energy should be spent entirely in the process of claiming your worth of education.
and also it is imperative to have your own definition of education. It is okay to differ in defining education because people have their own different needs and levels of maturity, but whatever your phase in college, you must step back and be thoughtful about what education means to you.
Also, our decision of learning come with an opportunity cost. there are chance we give up when we do something so we better are sure that we have given careful thought to what we want to know and what we think we should learn.
in order to be enlightened we must be brave to confront our ignorance, and learn our way to fix it. what do you think you ought to understand? there are curriculum that will take you to an educated place, but you can draw your map yourself, too. that map need to be wide and exploratory, and need to cover territories you did not know existed before.
your learning need to help you understand the world you know and exposes you to the world you don't know. it will prepare you to be a learned individual. Someone who has sophistication and an appetite for many things-- an appreciation to the subtle, the beautiful, the complexity, the details, the exquisite, and the unexpected.
going for college for credentials is a gross underestimate of college values. College need to be a place that make you realize, and help you set in the path of becoming sophisticated, curious, and learned individuals.
IV. Putting in Perspective
Treating your university as a merit based on your grades alone can obscure higher values of education, exploration, experimentation, and learning grounded in curiosity. Instead, let's ponder on what it means to be learned, to obtained education as a result of curiosity rather than grades alone. Instead, elevate the goal of your learning and understand your grades in perspective, so you will be motivated to find answer to a difficult questions, what are the underpinning of our system of values, how do dictators achieve and retain powers, what is the appeal of a Brahms symphony, what lesson can we learn from knowledge we have?
learn and love your process of learning.
grades should be the product of our passion for learning not the other way around.
at the end, after you finish with your graduation walks, you will carry with you a rich intellectual legacy that is far more enduring than a good looking transcript. You will be learned.
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