Vacation Moments

Time goes by, and here I am, at the very moment when I even now miss the moments already. A classroom consists of 16 passionate people, gathering twice in a month every weekend, to enjoy what other people may think as merely studying while we agree to name it as "Vacation".

Recalling the time when I considered whether or not I would enroll my name to the program, and it just feels like yesterday I propose to my husband to let me continue the study. Not for the title behind my name, not for a piece of paper called Master Degree Certificate, but to kill my longing of the moments which generally experienced by those who have accomplished their degree. I missed studying at class, I missed having the deadlines, I missed the 'aha' moments, and so on!

And now that yesterday the classroom vacation has done, I am a hundred percent sure one day I will really miss those moments. It was (and is, because I am still having some deadlines to go haha) very exhausting. Yet it gives me so much fun! Not to mention another funnier activity like hanging out with some friends outside the classroom, especially when we were gathering for having dinner together, sharing stories, laughing for so many things, aih now I miss those stuffs already!

If only the moments are in form of people, I am gonna tell them, "I miss you already". Maybe one day along the days I will spend after finishing all these things, I am gonna hope the moments to open my door and say, "Did you miss me?"

A Road to Thesis

Time flies. And we're now heading to the almost end of semester 3. It indicates a lot of things:

1. We will be no longer having togetherness at class, a thing which I think I will absolutely miss a lot! 

2. No more lecturing, which means no more deadlines of assignments from the so-called wonderful vacation.

3. Getting closer to the graduation day, yeay!

To reach point 3 is not as easy as it sounds. How closer we get to the day, all depends on us, the vacationers. Our lecturers keep motivating and urging us to accomplish the thesis. The sooner the better. We are supposed to decide our very own deadline, because thesis is beyond the other assignments. It is gonna be the final one! We determine the level of the priority, in which list we put the thesis among our activities.

Alhamdulillah I have done 2 steps of A Road to Thesis. Step 1 was accomplished together with my fellows vacationers, a colloquium of the proposal abstract soon after we had two conferences: MICELT and iCLS in Malaysia and ELTeaM 2nd in Pontianak. Step 2 has been completed on Friday, December 19, 2014. I had my seminar for my proposal: A Study of How Students Utilized Weblogs in Developing Writing Skill.

Having had the seminar of my research proposal, I feel like to share some tips which I think will help us when writing the proposal, also the thesis.

1. Make sure the topic we choose for the proposal is the topic that we really understand what it's all about. For this point, no one can help us but we ourselves. Read, and read, and read a lot is the only key to gain this one. 

2. You got number 1 done? Great! Mastering it means that we love it too. Wise people say: do the things you love, and if you can't, then love the things you do. My experience was, I selected "Weblog" as the topic of the proposal since the beginning of the semester simply because I love blogging. 

3. Uniqueness of your study. Yes, do state this point in the proposal. Write it in the introduction part. 

4. Rename all of your journal articles files in your laptop folder with the title or if it is possible, with the author's name of the article. Also do the same to the ebook. Put them in one special folder so it will be easier for us to find them we we need them. It often happens that after we download an article from a journal, we name the file randomly. Better for us to name it with the full title of the journal article, so when we need to show it to the verification team of our thesis later, we will find it easily.

In the seminar, one of my supervisors said that I must put the page whether my quotation is direct or indirect. I use EndNote Program for doing the bibliography in my research proposal. It does help me a lot. So when I came back to revise the proposal, I only need to search the keyword from the books or journal articles I quote by using the name of the authors in EndNote, finding the files in the folder, and looking at the page I quoted.

4. Highlight the sentences we quote since the beginning we plan to quote the sentences. This point is related to number 3. Doing this will help us before the thesis examination when the thesis verification team in the faculty request us to show the part of the books or articles we quote. If we quote it from hard copy, also do the highlight, plus make sure to fold the page of which the sentences we quote.

5. Prepare your best. As Benjamin Franklin said, by failing to prepare you are preparing to fail. Getting closer to the seminar day, you will experience the days of hustle and bustle. Avoid your mind from being overloaded by preparing all the stuffs, even the little tiny stuff like snack preparation thing and so on. If it is impossible to do things by yourselves, request your friends to help. 

6. Do not hesitate to ask. Should there be any difficulties, confusion, unclear information, just ask people you may get the answers from. Holding too much prestige will not help us deal with many things hehehe ^.^v

Okay, for this very moment, I think those 6 points are okay. I welcome you to share your experience along writing the proposal so others may get the benefits from your experience too :D

All right, then. Let's keep on writing. Even if it is necessary, do what Christina Katz said: "Write and write and write until the words just flow and you no longer think about what you are doing because you lose self-consciousness". 

See you at Exam Room!

Gen Y Observation

It's very interesting to read Pak Aspiandi's report of the Gen Y Observation in the area where he teaches. Then it triggers me to also report the observation I did to some students who regularly utilize the technology provided by my husband's cyber cafe. 

Instead of observing in a classroom, why did I do the observation in cyber cafe? The main reason is because recently I don't have any class like almost all my friends do. Aha yes, I am a full-time S2Vacation student haha :P Anyway, I also chose to observe in cyber cafe because I believe that this place is representative and has what Reily (2012) categorizes as Generation Y. Every day, there are at least 5 to 6 students browse and play online games in my husband cyber cafe. Then I become more convinced to observe them.

Actually I have already observed the Gen Y who utilize the technology in the cyber cafe even since before I took the vacation class. Many interesting phenomena happened when I sat and observed what they did. Mainly, they are really noisy talking with their neighbor-friend, discussing about the strategy of the online games they were doing. However, I list this kind of behavior as 'team-oriented'. When playing the games, they thought they must cooperate to reach the mission of the games. Although they actually can coordinated online with their friends, they prefer to do it directly when they can see their 'partner in crime' face to face.

Besides playing online games, other kind of students who use the service of the cyber cafe also utilize the internet to browse some articles in order to fulfill their school assignment. Sometimes, they do not do the task on their own in front of the computer in the cyber cafe cubicle. They prefer to request to the operator to find articles related to the assignment and copy-paste them to Microsoft Word to then be printed and written their name in the cover as if they write the article.. I categorize this habit as a dishonest behavior.  

Another behavior which was captured on my observation is wasteful. I don't know whether this judgement is an objective or subjective one, but in my opinion, students today are too loyal with their parents' money. They easily bought the online games voucher or bought a new device such as smartphone (I know this because they show it off to their friends in the cyber cafe). Or is it kind of trend among the Gen Y to always be update for having the latest gadget? If it is, then I am not a full-time Gen Y :P

Last but not least, the students whom I observed are really easily grumpy every time the electricity was off or the internet connection was lagging when they were still doing the browsing or playing online games. Most of them behaved impatiently waiting to utilize the internet again. It seemed that they are "mati gaya" without the internet connection hehehe.

However, besides those bad sides of behavior, the students also are technology enthusiasts, creative, and smarter. Those who play online games know more vocabulary than their friends who do not, or their friends who play online games but the language used in the games is Bahasa Indonesia. It proved that actually the internet, i.e online games, also can be a good media for the students to learn English.

I hope my observation will give a contribution even if it's just a little :)