DISCLAIMER : It took me a while to post this. This essay was purposedly made for my English Academic Writing class' final assignment. Everything I wrote on this essay is solely based on my personal experience and observation. I do not have any intention to offend or insult any party. So here's a roughly 2000 words description of being a TPB (freshman year) student in ITB from my point of view at that point of time (April 2014).
Millions of senior high school students throughout the world graduate every year. For most of them, finishing 12 years of school doesn’t mean the end of getting educated. The most common place to take further education after high school is university. Universities, including ITB, welcome new students every year to experience entering and studying in university. These new students, or usually called freshmen, bring their dreams and ambitions as they walk upon the campus gate for the first time. Being a student in university, especially in ITB, is totally different from being a high school student. In order to reach their ambitions, freshmen year students at ITB have to study intensively under a tight competitive atmosphere. This forced ambience to compete is uncommon among other universities in Indonesia. Hence, ITB has an exceptional way in making its students’ competitive instincts grow.
Unlike any other university, ITB freshmen not only have to study to get good GPA, but also to get into their desired majors. What does it mean by studying to get into desired major? There’s this system where all students are accepted in faculties at the beginning of the first semester and will be put into majors later at the end of the freshmen year. The purpose of this system is to let the freshmen really understand the details of each major, including the labs, excursions, and working fields, so that they can be sure of what they will be studying for the next three to five years. There are three seminar–like occasions to introduce every major of a faculty, along with the three sessions of major questionnaires held in October, February, and April. This is relatively a good system, that everyone can choose their desired major after knowing a lot of important details that may interest them.
However, nothing is perfect. This expected–to–be ideal system has lead into a problem where one major of each faculty is on a terribly high demand. Usually, the most favorite major can have applicants more than twice of its maximum capacity. To overcome this problem, ITB added more conditions for entering majors. Accepting students based on their interest was quiet effective for the first few years, but then, after it seems to be not enough, following the high demand on favorite majors, there has been other conditions applied. These conditions include major’s capacity and GPA, which becomes student’s GPA sorting. While most favorite majors mainly require above 3 GPAs, every student’s GPA will still be ranked from the highest to the lowest. Those who are able to rank above the major’s maximum capacity number can get into their desired major. But then, the problem does not stop here. What about the rest who rank below the maximum capacity number? They will be put into their second, third, or even fourth choices, which can be very disappointing. These students will have to accept that their hard work during freshmen year results in having to study things they don’t really want to. This is the main cause of competition. The thing is that no one wants to fail in something that can affect his/her life for years. Only those who can adapt faster from high school to campus life and work the hardest can make it. Although a lot of seniors claim that being a freshmen student is a nice experience that freshmen are not yet having big responsibilities on organizations and having their schedules well taken care of by the rector, it is no longer a rumour that in ITB, freshmen year is the most enjoyable, yet the most competitive stage of campus life.
This level of competition affects a lot to various aspects, including friendships inside the campus. For students in one faculty, friendship only occurs while having meal or going home together. Best friends like SpongeBob and Patrick is almost impossible to find. Deep inside every student’s mind, everyone is their competitors. Sharing, which is the most important part of friendship, is uncommon in ITB. For instance, sharing homework and assignments, or even just explaining the way to do those, is very unlikely to happen. Some may not mind working together, especially when it benefits them, but mostly, they want their works to be the best. Another example is that some students tend to feel hesitant when they’re asked to explain some lessons’ materials or ‘secret keys’ to the lessons’ concepts to their friends who want to get into same major. Furthermore, these competitive students rather study alone, as long and effective as possible. It is better to study without the knowledge of others, merely to be more focused and hopefully can be steps ahead of the others. These selfish ways of learning make the gap between straight-A students and below average ones even larger.
Going deeper into the friendships’ customs, there are a lot of pretences and deceptions done in order to get into desired major. Some may claim that they aren’t ready for the upcoming exams because they haven’t studied anything while actually they have. These lies are done possibly to make others feel lazy and delay to start studying, make them poorly thinking that they have ‘lazy friends’. Even more concerning, several students say that they are choosing major B, while they’re actually choosing major A so that people with the same choice will not be worried or feel hesitant in helping them on their study. This deception occurs quiet often, especially during the second semester, the time when topic of major choice somehow becomes a taboo thing to talk about. The most dangerous type of competitors is those who pretend on not knowing of any homework and upcoming quizzes. Simply, not telling others important information they already know. They usually pretend to be surprised to imply they are not prepared when a few nice people mention to others about homework and quizzes. Of course, after the surprised respond, they won’t panic to make it seem they are not planning to study or doing the homework. This pretence is again, done in hope that others will do be lazy and procrastinating, while on the other hand, they are already set. These kinds of friends are really not worth to trust and rely on.
After going through the effects of competition on friendships, there are still some aspects that get affected, such as their way in spending weekends and being in campus unit. Hanging out with friends or lying around in the bedroom all day long used to be everyone’s ideal weekend routine back in high school. However, for most ITB students, the only day offs of the week are typically used to do homework and assignments, because the weekdays are used for studying. This endless studying activity is expected to produce a good time management and study efficiency, which probably true for the first few months. Although it is great to take studying as first priority, balancing the time for relaxations and recreations is more important. Sooner or later, a non-stop studying can usually cause them sickness and stress. For these students, spending about 24 hours from 48 hours on Saturday and Sunday for long sleep and hanging out is form of wasting time. They neglect the fact that balanced time management can actually give mental long term benefits, which has caused them to have unhappy college life just to keep up the competition. Furthermore, freshmen year students usually stay on campus from 7 AM to 5 PM on weekdays just to attend classes and labs. This tiring routine will have to be continued by studying in the evening. A sufficient sleep is often taken for granted by replacing it with doing things like surfing on the internet or more studying. It is kind of concerning that for most ITB students, using night time for more studying and being on media social is more important than resting their bodies and minds. Why is appearing on social medial at night seem to be needed? It is just another deception, to make others think they’re just spending the night on the internet while actually they’re studying as well.
As these competition motives become more and more slyly, there are still some examples of how this competition affects students’ campus unit life. Students who don’t join any campus unit usually feel glad because they think they can study more often than those who join campus units. These students tend to be apathetic, go home right away after classes and start studying despite of any campus activities and issues. On the other hand, for those students who are part of campus units, not being apathetic does not mean less studying. If possible, they will study in between their unit activities, because they don’t want to be left behind by those who are not in units. These worries and prejudices are may not be spoken in the mouth, but these are the truth of every student’s thoughts.
Aside from all of the negative effects, being in a competition has its own sparks. No cheating on exams is one of them. A lot of studying make these students tend to do their best and do not trust in others. After spending a lot of time working for the exam, they believe that they will do better than others. Even if there’s this one hard question they cannot do, they tend to look at the other students’ expressions to make sure that they can’t do it as well. No cheating on exams is the best effect of these students’ competitive instincts as cheating can lead into corruption. Moreover, being used to be under competition is a great thing to develop, because most life problems come from the inability to handle competition. Although there will be winners and losers, this is not only about the results. There are more important values to be appreciated from competitions, such as how to work hard and move on after failures. Hence, being a competitive student will create a qualified, grown human being.
Out of all forms of competitions, such as being deceptive and miserly to other friends, neglecting the need of enough sleep, and judging others, it is very important to maintain a healthy competition to keep the slyness away. Competitions can be useful and rewarding as long as it’s a healthy one. After various levels of competitions explained earlier, it’s concluded that the life of being a student in ITB is very different from how fun and wild college life seems to be on the movies. However, ITB has some main points of this system, which can probably be translated into the importance of working hard, efficient, and smart. These three main purposes are essential to have for the life of tens of years ahead. As young adults, it’s not too late to start learning about life competitions, although it could strip the fun of freshmen year.