Argumentative

               Education is very important in our life. It serves as a basic foundation for our life and helps us to know the things we need in our jobs and our daily lives, It also provide us with the hard skills we need in our job like how to calculate something or how to do something and also the soft skills like communication skills that are essential in our daily lives. With good education, it will be easier for us to get a good job and of course that means a good salary as well. Imagine if we never got education in our life, forget thinking about getting a good job, it will be very difficult for us to fulfill our daily needs and to keep up with the advancement of technology especially when we live in a big city like Bandung or Jakarta. Everyone knows the importance of education but nowadays education in Indonesia only focus on getting a good score in a subject but sometimes forget about teaching the soft skills. Moreover, whether or not a student graduates from the high school is very much determined by 3-days national exam and many teachers often just teach the subjects to make the students get good marks but do not know what the benefit of the lesson for the students.

               Getting a good score for a school subject, can prove that someone understands the material taught, but it is useless without a good character or the lack of soft skills. The curriculum in Indonesia is focused on a quantitative parameter which is someone’s score. Meanwhile, the qualitative parameters such as teamwork or communication skill are often being forgotten. The unbalanced skills can affect our life in the future. For instance, students who graduate from a university often have very good understanding about a subject they learnt, but sometimes lacks the ability to communicate it to other people or cannot work in a team. It happens because since high school, they are accustomed to study hard by themselves in order to get a good score but seldom work together in a team. But in real life, the soft skill is much more important to have than just getting a good score in a school.

               Some people think that having a 3-days national exam is great because it could standardize the education in Indonesia, thus it is easier to tell which student is better than the others by looking at the exam score. However the exam still has many flaws, the 3-days national exam is like telling someone that the exam is everything, and the 3-years study in a school means nothing, because we could only study 3 days before the exam and still graduate from high school even if we are often absent from school. According to a survey conducted by Djemari Mardapi and Badrun Kartowargiranonal in 2009 (taken from octoferiana.blogspot.com) about 41% of the junior high students feel very tired because they have to study more for the national exam, even though they have studied the materials for 3 years. There are about 66% of the teacher said the same thing and about 53% of the high school teacher said that their students become stress because of the national exam. The stress comes from the lack of self-confidence when the students face the national exam. Not yet ready for it, the pressure of the 3-days exam will determine their fate in high school, and they may also think that if they bad score in the exam they cannot enter a good university. These are a few example of the many reasons that make the students stress in facing the national exam.

               Many students do not know the function of the subject they learnt in school for their life. This cannot be blamed entirely to the students, because sometimes even the teacher who teaches a subject does not really know the benefit of the lesson they taught for the students and only focused on how to make the students get a good score. Many teacher neglect to tell the importance of studying a subject before teaching it to the students. This makes the mindset of the student put on ‘how can I get a good score?’ instead of ‘what can I take from this lesson for my life’. This kind of mindset often also makes the student ends up memorizing the materials for the exam then forget it after the exam rather than trying to understand the essence of the subject and find a way to implement it in their daily lives.

               Education is not only about getting a good grade in an exam but, it is about how we can implement the knowledge for the better of the society. Therefore understanding a subject and getting a good score but no real action means nothing. We, the university students have to start from ourselves to change the mindset of only getting a good score become how to be useful for the society as well as improving our soft skill. It is because in the future, the one that will decide the fate of Indonesia are us, whether it will become better or worse.

Sources

Feriana, Okto. 2013. Menuju perubahan melalui matematika ICT. http://oktoferiana.blogspot.com/2013/10/dampak-ujian-nasional-terhadap.html

How to Choose a Major

After graduating from high school, many people prefer to continue their study in a university rather than to search for a job. While some of them have decided which major to choose, there are still many people who are still confused or haven’t decided which major they would take for continuing their study in the college. Deciding which major we choose is a very important thing to do when we want to continue our study in a college, because it will affect our life as a college student as well as our future. Many people are having difficulties in choosing what major to take, in fact deciding which major to take can be done by two simple steps.

               The first and the most important step is find and determine your passion. It can be done by asking other people, conduct personality test, and many other methods. In choosing a major, it will be better if the major is the same or at least connected with our passion. We have to know what we are interested in, because when we are interested in something, we usually will be pleased to learn about it. Knowing our passion is the most important thing to do when we want to choose our major, and even if we only have very little knowledge in that area, it is not a big problem. Because we will try to improve our knowledge. Avoid choosing a major what we have a little interest in. Sometimes parents want their child to choose a certain major just for prestige even though the child doesn’t like it. The best solution is try to talk to the parents and explain to them about it. If we choose a major that we have little or no interest of it, it will be difficult for us to learn

               Next, when choosing our major, think about the future. Job opportunities is one of the thing that we must consider. Try to visualize what the world will be like when we graduate from college and try to get job, whether there will be many job opportunities or not. After we graduate from college we will have to work to feed our family, so when there is big probability that it is difficult to find the job, try to find another major which has better job opportunities in the future. Beside job opportunities, think about what we can do in the future that makes human’s life better with our knowledge. This can motivates us when we feel bored.

               As passion and the future is a very important thing to consider when we choose our major, by considering our passion and the future, we will have less problem than when we choose our major without thinking about it. By choosing a major that matches our passion, it helps us to deal with any problem whenever they come in our way.

Paragraph Development Pattern - Cause and Effect

“The Boy Who Lived”, a nickname that was given to Harry Potter who survived after meeting Voldemort – the dark lord – while the other who met him but refused to join him, ended up dead, whether he/she is an adult or a child, man or woman. Harry was still a baby when he met Voldemort for the first time and had no memories of it, but because of that, everybody in the magic world knew Harry Potter and thought that he was the chosen one who would bring a new era of magic and expect great accomplishment from him. Unaware of the fact, Harry lived the life of a normal boy until he was invited to study in Hogwarts – the school of magic. While studying there, Harry eventually met again with Voldemort and he had to fight him to prevent Voldemort to control the whole world and bring the era of darkness.

Villain

Villain, usually refer to the bad guy who appeared in films, movies, books, games, and other fiction works, is a character who usually commits bad things or harms the other characters in the story. Usually, villains are the antagonist character, but sometimes, the protagonist can be a villain too. A villain is the one who often moves the plot in a story.

According to thewritepractice.com, villain can be categorized into two types, the old-fashioned villain and the anti-villain. An old-fashioned villain is usually portrayed negatively since the beginning of the story without any clear reasons and cause, such as the evil witch in a fairy tale, the mad scientist, or the other similar character who have no good quality and get no sympathies from the readers / viewers.  On the other hands, an anti-villain, can be called “heroic bad guys” is a protagonist that has a heroic goals, but using evil ways to achieve that goals. Different from old-fashioned villain, anti-villain usually has a clear reason for doing what they did, and sometimes can get sympathy from the reader / viewer.

               For example, Yagami Light from an anime (Japanese cartoon) titled Death Note can be categorized as an anti-villain. Light is a protagonist in the story and an extraordinary high school students-later a college student-who has a very outstanding achievement, placing first in national university exam, has good athletic skills, is also attractive. He also has a good personality and can understand the pain of others even though he has somewhat twisted face. One day, he found a “Death Note”, a book that could kill anyone whose name written in it. Since he got the book, his personality become twisted, he could kill people mercilessly without any sense of regret. Because he think that the world now is full of criminals and evil doers, those who commit crimes but cannot be justified by the law. Also he planned to create a new utopia where he himself is the god of that world.

              A character from another anime that similar to Light is Lelouch from the anime Code Geass. Same as Light, Lelouch has outstanding ability, a high school genius. Good looking, great at predicting things, however he has standard athletic capability. In the story, he lives in Area 11 (formerly known as Japan) that is under control of Brittanian. Lelouch is actually the son of Brittanian king, but he despise his father and wanted to destroy brittanian. In both stories, Light and Lelouch got a special power. While Light got “Death Note”, a book that can kill people whose name written in it, Lelouch got a power called “Geass”, which can control other people if they sees Lelouch’s eyes. Both Light and Lelouch use their power for their own purpose, but there is a significant difference between the two of them. Lelouch still has some sense, he still can feel remorse from killing people and manipulating them; on the other hand, Light became ‘emotionless’ after he got the Death Note, thought that he could manage alone without any help from anyone.

               Going back to Light’s case, the anime narrates what could happen to a person if they suddenly got a power to decide the moment a person will die. In Light’s case, it is the “Death Note”. Light is tempted by the book’s power and started using the book to kill criminals whom, according to him, are not worth living anymore, which escalates him to kill innocent people too. All in order to keep his identity a secret.

After doing what he did for about six years, the criminal rate of the people did decrease, but, it all happened because of the fear of death in people mind. Light’s identity as the killer or known as “Kira” (taken from Japanese pronunciation of the word ‘Killer’) in the anime still hidden until almost the last episode while he keep on killing people who are not worth living according to him. He even managed to enter the police Special Force and to try to discover Kira’s identity when he himself is “Kira”, thus securing his identity and can get police database for criminal who goes free unpunished, and kill them if he think they are not worth living in this world anymore

               From Light’s case above, almost everyone agree, though the goal seems somewhat great, the method of achieving it is clearly wrong. In spite of that, most of the viewers of the anime said that they “root for light”. Because deep in our hearts, we tend to agree with Light’s opinion, that this world now is becoming worse. But maybe because we lack the method to express our opinion we cannot do anything but complaining about what happened. So what will we do if we have some kind of power to realize our ideal? Will we ever be like him?

"No Matter How Gifted You Are, You Alone Cannot Change The World" - L, from Death Note

Dream Job

In this world, there are many kinds of dreams, each person have their own unique dream which is different from each other. Now, here is my dream, in my friend’s point of view.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Toyan’s Dream Jobs and The Details Surrounding It

Fairuz Astra Pratama -16514108-

Achmad Ariyanto Hariman -usually called as Toyan, for some reason- is one of my friends and colleagues in my Academic Writing Class at ITB. This week- at the time of writing- we become partners in doing an assignment. Basically, we are told to write about each other's dream job. So, during the interview last week, here is what I found about Toyan’s dream job.

Toyan said that when he grows into a smart, independent, and trustworthy man, he wants to be an inventor. Specifically, those who develop and/or work on Virtual Reality (VR) Technology. VR -according to Wikipedia- is a kind of very immersive multimedia, a very sophisticated computer simulated environment with which a person may experience a seemingly real sensory feedback from an also seemingly real imagined or real environment.

VR has a wide range of uses, from military training, driving test, into video games. Currently, in general, VR is only able to give optic and auditory feedback. In the future though, Toyan believed that VR will be able to receive and deliver feedback from all five senses.

Later that day, when I asked him about what inspire him to chase this dreams, he gave me three very simple, clear, as I had expected.

When he a child, he was influenced by Anime -a Japanese cartoon- titled SAO. SAO (Sword Arts Online) is an Anime themed around VR-MMORPG or –in a more general term- an Online VR Game. When Toyan watch this movie/ TV series/ Cartoon, as if with a lot of people, he thought to himself, “This is kind of extremely cool; I should develop Virtual Realty game.”

Later, when he grew into a teenager, he was also influenced by a Video Game, namely “.hack//G.U.” .hack//G.U. –according to Wikipedia- is a PS2 game series with a very complex setting and storyline; involving “Insanely Popular Addictive MMORPG”, “Self-Aware AI”, “The Fall of The Internet”, “World’s Data Corruption” and Japan. Hopefully, none of this will be in Toyan’s to do list in the future.

In addition, he also said that he likes to “Play with cables and electricity,” from back then until now. Basically, he lives closely to a Computer and/or Laptop...

      Finally, I asked Toyan about what he would do in the near future to achieve this goal. He said that he will do as what the majority of ITB’s SEEI students will do; Finish his study here with a great mark, continue his study abroad, and work for an International Company such as GOOGLE and Microsoft..,

      That was basically Toyan’s dream jobs, a rather uninspiring yet hard to reach one, if I may say so myself. There are a lot of people with dreams resembling this in SEEI ITB. This means he has a lot of competition ahead of him. I wish the very best for him, may his wish come true.

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“Dreams do not come true because of someone telling you to. You have to make your own dreams come true”, Mashiro from the anime – Japanese cartoon – Bakuman.

     

Introduction

Assalamu'alaikum Wr. Wb.

Hello everyone, nice to meet you, my name is Achmad Ariyanto Hariman but my friends usually call me Toyan. Now i am studying at School of Electric Engineering and Informatic in ITB. In the future, I want to be an engineer and invent a new technology.
I hope my study at SEEI ITB can help me to reach my dream and I also hope this blog can be useful for everyone

Thank You
Wassalamu'alaikum Wr. Wb.