My University Life Story; Junior Year

Junior Year

A year of excitement, a year of new hope, a year when I thought everything will go as beautiful as those movie scenes. 

The first year came as happy as it should be. A high school graduated girl was finally entering an institution where she wanted to be, with the major she wanted to pursue. No more forcing, no more coming to school only for obligations. No more. It now all was about her and her passion.

Entering university won’t be easy for me, I knew it, we knew it. I remember there was this promise between me and my sister when we both promised that these 4 university years, we won’t be allowed to “have fun” and “enjoy life” not yet. These 4 years will be the time when we focus on building our education as our capital to pursue a better life. These will be the moment when we will start building our life out of nothing, using nothing that we had. Yes, we did have nothing.

Let me start with a bitter story. I started the journey by only having IDR 15,000 – 20,000 per day, which was only enough for the transportation every day. Well, you can try to convert it to USD and you can see how small it is :) PLUS I had to go to campus from our place took 2 hours one way, MINIMUM without the traffic jam. It means, every time I got classes that start at 7:30 I had to start going out from home the latest 5:30 (mostly I went from 5). But it was okay, no pain, no gain.

The first year didn’t go as I expected. As a person who got into a university through scholarship, I expected to have side jobs during university which can help my daily expenses. But it didn’t turn out easy. OH, let me tell you the worse story *or better, I don't know. 

So long story short, I got 4 scholarship offers at my last year of high school. Two of them offered full tuition fee. Those two were from Universitas Paramadina, and Universitas Bakrie. The one from Paramadina was so promising, they will cover 100% of my tuition fee, monthly allowance fee, a place to live nearby the university, books allowance, and a welcome fee. Meanwhile in Universitas Bakrie, I will only get my tuition fee 100% covered, that's all. But guess what? I chose Universitas Bakrie!! *and I'm so glad that I did. With that, I got nothing to help me with daily campus expenses, so that I promised my family that by semester 3, I will be able to get a part time job to feed myself. 

But life didn't go as planned most of the time for me. Having no experience *except a bit of teaching English debating during high school*, it was really hard for me to find a side job *which most that I found are the ones taking my school time. I remember a desperate me, even went to be that “Sales Promotion Girl” during Ramadan, only to raise some money to buy a proper shoes to wear to university 😊 and thank God that I graduated with a bit of accounting skill, I can have an opportunity to work part-time as a junior accountant in a small company. Nothing much was special during the first year. I joined the English debating club again, to fulfill my “passion hunger”. Nothing much, just a girl trying to work harder and make herself proud. 

Now comes to another part of life. Love life.

It was exciting for me knowing that finally I won't be any longer trapped in an institution with 99% of female *which I was, during high school*. Don’t even mention my junior high school times, when I was a total nerd and introvert person whom only had a few friends I talk to every day.

It was exciting in the first year, not because I can hunt, but because I was finally able to wonder how I would be to interact more with cross-gender, which something I never knew how.

It was hard knowing I never had the “male figure” in my life, EVER. No father, no brother. It was hard because I didn’t even know how to act. Back then in high school, I even used to be afraid with any male older than me. I will get shaky, scared, and don’t know what to do in anytime there was a male person around or nearby. Long story short, I was lucky that it ran a bit well.

With a huge excitement, my first year was filled with good love stories, let say. I was happy, and that was all I know.

Well, the next years, I found out the happiness was only metaphoric.