Week 1 Reflection

     This week is the first week of my master degree study in UIN Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta. Starting this week, I will be spending my weekend by going to campus for studying. Hopefully I can learn many things even though I only come to class once a week for each course. Here I take English Language Teaching as my major. I took the same major as my bachelor degree program. Although it is the same program, of course there are many new things around. Well, now I am surrounded by all new friends. Most of them used to be UIN Syarif Hidayatullah students. At first I felt a bit intimidated by this situation. It felt like I am a stranger who came into a group’s base. Besides new friends, certainly the lecturers are new for me (actually there is one of them whom I am familiar with. He used to be my lecturer). I have also a new campus here. I still need to get used to the system (especially the flow o information or announcement) of this campus. Last but not least, I have got a bunch of new spirit to study. It is the spirit of master degree student. This feeling is not like what I felt when I started my undergraduate education. It feels different. Now I am more aware about my study. I do really care what I am doing during my learning journey of this program. I take it to not waste my time, energy or money, and to not merely have fun. I am here to be a learner ho learns more and more. 

     On this reflection I would like to share whatever I have in mind about two first days of my study. This writing is not intentionally written to any specific task or assignment. It is as my effort to practice my writing skill. I need to practice organizing my ideas on writing well. I will try it out by writing down my thoughts by the day, Friday and Saturday.

     Alright, let’s start with Day 1, Friday. As I told you before that this is my new campus so I am not really familiar with the location of classrooms. It took me a few minutes to find where my class is. Even I went to faculty office to ask and make it sure. Actually the class is scheduled to start at 1.30 p.m. No wonder that there was no one in class because I came at 1 p.m. It was too early. It was like a shame for me. To be honest, before I thought the class started at 1 p.m. I didn’t read the schedule carefully.

     After waiting for a few minutes in class with some friends, an old man was coming into the classroom. There he is the lecturer of the first course of the day. You know what? He did everything very slowly in moving his body, giving questions and responding to students’ opinion. It took so long for only getting to know each other session. It was more than 30 minutes. I was feeling he was slowing down the air flow in class. As usual, the lecture introduced the course at this first meeting. However, I got annoyed in the middle of the class. It was because he told a quite long story (more or less 15 minutes) which had no relation with the course. It was such a waste. By the way, this course name is Issues of TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) in Indonesia. The lecturer said that attendance of this class was crucial. It was because he is the only one resource of the course and there was not any reference or other resources outside. I was surprised anyway (really? Is he the only one?). The test is going to be given referring to whatever he says during class. There is no book recommended. Well, I am not sure that there I no other people or institution talks about this issue. I think there must be other references around, at least the books which talk about more or less the same thing to enrich and develop students understanding. I need to try finding it out though. Alright, I have one more thing. He was alone coming to this class. Actually he is going to do this course with his partner. He said may be his partner would come next week. Both of them are going to take turn week by week.

     The second course of Day 1 is Qualitative Research (QR). I came late to the class because I went out for praying. That is why I missed the part when the lecturer introduced himself. Once I came in, he was giving some questions for students to think about. The questions were what students’ think this course is about, what the goals of the course are, how students will go through the course and what students’ expectations are after taking this course. Well, those are like guiding questions for introducing the course. I looked around the class, particularly at all friends’ facial expression. Personally I like his idea to ask questions to start the class. It is like to have students’ engagement. However, it looked like no one concerned about the lecturer’s questions. May be the questions were not clearly stated so they got lost. I also tried to get the point of the lecturer’s questions and to guess what kind of answers he expected from us. I am not sure that the lecturer had developed well the questions before. As a result, students could not get clearly what the lecturer’s question was. For me it showed he didn’t really prepare for the class, or it might be just the way he is. No matter which one it is, in my opinion, a teacher or lecturer must get ready for the class, at least by having preparation before. After having discussion about the course, the lecturer explained more clearly about it. About the course, he told us to get familiar with research, especially QR. To conduct a QR, someone has to be ready getting along with people (let’s say key informants) and listening to what they are telling. Well, I am interested to do a research anyway. I got some ideas coming to my mind. At the end I got a bad impression of him because he finished the class before the time was up. It was not what supposedly happened.

     Alright, that is the end of Day 1.  Now let’s move on to Day 2, Saturday. There were two courses on Day 1, and three courses on Day 2. By the way, I made Day 1 for my observation step. Especially it was to observe all friends in class before getting along with them. I stayed in my circle. But then, I can start making friends on Day 2. It was time to break up the circle and get out of it.

     The first course of Day 2 is taught by a lecturer of mine when I was studied in Sampoerna School of Education (SSE) taking my bachelor degree. Here he is teaching Teaching English for Academic Purpose (TEAP). The lecturer presented the course module clearly. It was great. Everything was clearly explained, even on some details like the course itself, materials and assessments. Then there was a session for us, students, to discuss in pair, then in group and a representative shared discussion points of ideas in class. In general, this course is going to talk about some skills which expectedly achieved by students in teaching English for undergraduate students. There will be microteaching and presentations of EAP teaching techniques as parts of the course assessments. I enjoyed the class. 

     The next course of the day is Advanced English Language Study (AELS or AE). It is delivered by the same lecture as TEAP course. This course talks more about writing and speaking skills of students. I am going to have a project to write a paper with 2500 words length and to present the writing in a classroom conference. In TEAP course, I study how to teach EAP for my future students, but in this course I am studying the EAP for myself as a student. The course module presented in class was developed by UIN Syarif Hidayatullah in 2010. It is not updated. I am not sure whether it is still compatible with current academic year. I found some things on module to be clarified and explained more anyway.  I asked, but no answer. The class was over an hour earlier than time on the schedule. It might be because it was an introduction class, and not for the following classes. 

     The last course of the day was Second Language Acquisition (SLA). I had this course before in SSE. The course module was introduced briefly by the lecturer. Next, we had asking and answering session to discuss about the topic. It was quite interactive discussion. I learn a lot of things. In this course, I need to read a lot and observe the issues of SLA around.

     Those all are the stories of my first two days. This initial experience flashes me back to my learning journey when I was in SSE. I become more grateful to have experience studying in SSE. It is the best education ever. The lecturers always come and well-prepared for the class. All course assessments are clearly described. However, it may not be my reason to not do my best on my study. Please wish me luck and pray for me in my study. Thank you.

Student Orientation: It Boosts My Spirit for The Next Journey

Two days ago, on Friday August 28th, 2015, I attended an orientation for new students. This orientation is different from other orientations that I already experienced before. It is an orientation for master degree students or you can say graduate students. It was just simple but very meaningful. It told us what it means by being a graduate student. It also went straight to the important points how to finish this study well and on time.
'To be a human is to learn'
That was the last words said by one of the speakers, Mr. Muhammad Ali. He is a great man and the real scholars. He has been writing many journals which published in national and in international as well. I was surprised to know that he is teaching in America. Really want to be like him!
Let's talk more about his quote written above. He really emphasized that graduate students live in a scientific culture. What does it mean by 'Scientific culture'? Living in a scientific culture demands thinking scientifically, not only rely on prediction or assumption. Besides the students are also expected to be curious by asking 'Why' to any phenomenons happening surrounding.
When someone, a graduate student, is curious of something and has a question come out on his mind, it should be followed by checking its evidences. It is to prove whether it is right or wrong. While finding out the evidences, it is important to keep in mind that it has to be done objectively. Don't put personal views which might cause it to be subjective. In doing this process, the person must think rationally, not relies on myth. Any interesting to discuss about must be able to be measured. How can we discuss and talk about an issue if it can be measured clearly.
After all, Mr. Muhammad Ali hared his experience in writing journal articles. It starts with some steps to conduct a research and parts of writing a journal article. At last he gave some tips to publish journal articles in national and international publications.
Unfortunately, I'm so sorry I didn't take notes of it. The committee told us that they would share his presentation.
Well, the big thing that I learn is that doing a research then writing its finding on a journal articles not have to perfect. It's the other way. By writing it out and sharing it to public, many people will read and give feedbacks, so we can learn from that.
Well, that's all. Please wish me luck and all the best for my learning journey. Thanks

Smiles and spirits from me

Tentang Menulis

Masih saja aku mengalami kesulitan ketika menulis. Aku malu pada diriku sendiri ketika beberapa waktu yang lalu aku diminta untuk menuliskan hal sederhana tentang pengalaman dan perjalanan masa kuliyahku di Sampoerna School of Education (SSE).

Tulisanku tidak fokus.
Tulisanku tidak apa adanya.
Tulisanku terlalu dibuat-buat dan mendayu-dayu.

Aku mencoba untuk merevisi tulisanku setelah mendapatkan beberapa tanggapan dari kakak kelas dan temanku yang diberikan kepercayaan untuk menjadi editor. Mereka memang hebat. Komentar dan panduannya sangat menuntun. Tapi tetap saja, hasil revisiku tidak lebih baik. Malah lebih buruk.

Aku minta maaf karena tidak bisa berkontribusi dalam pembukuan kenangan luar biasa di kampus almamater. Bukan karena aku tidak mau. Tapi karena memang aku terbatas dalam menulis. Aku tidak sehebat kalian yang berhasil menuangkan pikiran kedalam kata, kalimat dan paragraf.

Berikan aku waktu untuk berlatih.