Just Do It!

Hi Everyone!

I'm writing this post while on my way to the airport. I'm going to Boston this morning. Yes, Spring Break has started wohoo! I'm excited lol. Btw what a productive way to fill my time lol. Let's see if I can finish it.

I think I want to share you about what I feel is important in pursuing a scholarship, studying in a foreign country, and in life in general maybe.

In my opinion, the just-do-it mindset (and I'm not endorsed by Nike lol). Maybe you'll say it's a cliche, easier to said than done, or BS. Well, I can say that my life is kinda changed because I'm applying this concept to my everyday life in the past 2 years.

Right after I got an email saying I'm an ALTERNATE candidate (meaning that I may or may not get the scholarship, depends on funding etc), I planned in how to prepare the essays to apply to universities and to study TOEFL and GRE. I had to make a ten-page essay. The last time I created a long academic paper was probably in 2013,  4 years before I got the scholarship. I never wanted to go to the U.S to continue my study and one of the reason is GRE. You could imagine that I had to deal with those two scary things, plus at that time I was adapting to my new job lol.

So I went to coffee shops almost every day, either to work on essays or study. On the weekends I worked until 3 AM. I spent so much time and money despite I might not get the scholarship. I thought that this was my best opportunity, thus I just gave my best effort. And you know what? My status changed to principal candidate after my TOEFL and GRE test. I felt so grateful, even though at that time my GRE test result was awful lol.

Fast forward to my life as a graduate student. Last semester I got an assignment to do a literature review. It was a nightmare for me. I never did anything like that before. I even did not know how to search for twenty studies that I needed in the databases. And I had one month to finish it. I was quite stressed.

Thus, to deal with this problem, I decided to change my daily habit. In addition to going to campus every day and stayed and worked there until 5, I slept at 9 and woke up at midnight. I worked on the lit review until 4 and went to sleep again and woke up again at around 6. I did this for a whole month. I never imagined I would go this far. I just wanted to do this assignment appropriately. I wanted to submit it knowing that I did my best and felt satisfied with my work. In the end, I got a perfect grade for this assignment. I was in delight. Not because of the perfect grade, but because it showed that my work was excellent despite it was something I never did before.

Thanks to that assignment, I keep the routine until now. I never feel sleep deprived, I still sleep 6 hours in total. I go to the gym almost every morning. And I can better manage my academic and personal life today. I can even enjoy spring break without really worried about my assignments.

So I hope you can see my point from my stories above. Faced by problems I never experienced before, I just did whatever I could to appropriately deal with them. Planning really helps I think. It eases my mind and reduces stress as I create a path that I should follow to successfully finish the jobs. I try not to overthink (many times I fail) and really just start to do things. So if you ever thought of doing big things but feel that it is too hard since... it's big, start small by just do whatever comes to your mind that will move you closer to your end goal. I hope this post can give insight to whoever read this :)

nb: I did not finish this post on my way to the airport, I finish it here in New York lol. Yeah, I'm still enjoying my spring break :p

Dear 2018

Thank you.

It has been a wonderful year. Obviously I encountered many many new experiences this year. The major thing happened to me were about me moving abroad, returned to school, made friend with the kitchen and all the utensils (that's unbelievable!). But I experienced so much more and it's amazing!

Let's talk about school first. I spent about four months studying. Days and nights, weekdays and weekends. Well I did refresh myself once in a while but I never been this studious before. It's all paid off, I got satisfying grades. I remember I was struggling. Working on one homework for hours stressed me out, writing assignment frightened me, and the literature review that I was afraid won't finish on time or fulfill the requirements... I passed them all. I felt relieved and grateful at the end of the semester, knowing I did a great job.

Moving here was not that hard. Florida has similar weather with Indonesia and everything is within walking distance so I could get what I need easily. I moved here with my Indonesian friend, she studied abroad before so that also helped me with the adaptation. I even met some other Indonesians living here. Language was a problem when it came to talking to English-speaking people though. I thought my language skill was enough but turned out talking to native was not that easy. I couldn't catch the words they said, I couldn't properly deliver the message I wanted to say, and couldn't say "can't" properly (I said "cannot" instead lol). However thanks to my friends at my campus I am getting better in that and feel more comfortable to speak even though I created mistake here and there. I have a few good friends. I'm glad that I can make friends with people outside of my country, that makes me enjoy Florida even more :)

Now let's get to the fun part: traveling! I didn't go too far this year, still in Florida. I went to Miami and Orlando. I went to Miami with my Indonesian friends who study at USF as well. We spent 5 days there and went to a lot of places. How did we get to those places? By renting a car and I drove them there. Yeaa I am proud of myself to be able to drive in the US lol. It's not a big thing but still I'm proud of it.  We went to Key West, the southernmost point of the US. I thought it would be an area with just beaches and that's it. I was wrong. It was wonderful. I'm glad we went there and explored the area. And we went to Miami beach and had a picnic there. My friends cooked Indonesian foods and they tasted sooooo gooood I am so thankful my vacation was complete lol.

After Miami, I went to Orlando. This time I went there and had a veeeeery good time with my Fulbright friends (plus one friend from my undergrad)! Funny thing was I didn't know half of them very well before but at the end we laughed and enjoyed the time together as if we were friends for years. Well I guess the Disney World and Universal Studio helped making us closer in a few days lol. AND I WENT TO WIZARDING WORLD OF HARRY POTTER AND EVERYTHING THERE MADE ME AS IF I AM LIVING IN THE HARRY POTTER WORLD :" everything else was super fun because I spent my time there with these guys :)

Oh well. Too many stories to tell. My last post was in early 2018 and now it's 2019. Time passes. I'm grateful for what happened to me in 2018. I'm looking forward to all the great experiences waiting for me this year. Hopefully everyone enjoyed their 2018 and excited for 2019!!! Happy new year everybody!!