A Story about A Good University Student

Let me tell you about Hikam, a twenty years old boy, coming from Pamekasan Madura, and the most outstanding student in his university, State Islamic University Sunan Ampel, Surabaya, as he was awarded in graduation day in last March. Frankly, he is physically good looking, socially contributing and spiritually balanced. One thing by which everyone can easily remember him is his custom to bring a book everywhere.

Hikam enrolled Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the university in 2010, majoring in Islamic History and Cultures. One reason why he chose this major was to deepen his knowledge on world’s Islamic history in general and Indonesian Islamic history in particular. Additionally, this choice could not be separated from his experience in studying Islamic matters in his boarding school. He had learned Arabic, Hadith and Qur’an sciences in the boarding school for 6 years.

Generally speaking, once he joined his classes in the first semester, he showed a good potential relating to the major. He had rich perspectives about Islamic history and seemingly had read many references dealing with it. His style of speaking was also brilliant enough. His speaking, idea and rationalization are very clear. It was no doubt when he finished his first semester with gaining Grade Point Average (GPA) 3.81.

Starting the second semester, Hikam had read books more than before. He began to read the “heavier books”. If in the first semester he had read many book subtitled “Introduction” such as Introduction of Qur’anic Studies, Introduction of Hadith Studies, Introduction of Philosophy,Introduction of Anthropology and others, then in the second semester he read general books of Islamic history recommended by his lecturers, such as History of The Arabs, History of Islamic Societies, Sejarah Islam Indonesia I-II, Historiografi Islam Indonesia, Nusa Jawa Silang Budaya, Jaringan Ulama Timur Tengah dan Kepulauan Nusantara, and many others. This condition continued until he ended his fourth semester with sweet GPA 3.9. Such a great achievement!

Hikam projected to explore more about theories of history in fifth semester. He realized that everything he had read so far should be strengthened with the teak foundation of theories; the narrative readings he found could not show significantly their importance without knowing their background of theories from which the authors had elaborated their ideas. Therefore, in this semester (to seventh semester) he paid attention more to studying theories. He did not again read narrative history per se, but began to elaborate the theory of sociology, anthropology, and philosophy, as far as they related to deepen his historical theories, such as total history of Annales School, cycle theory of Ibn Khaldun, historical materialism of Hegel, philosophy of history elabrated by Toynbee, and many others. In this semester, he also found a specification of study he wanted to devote and research academically as thesis. It was Sejarah Islam Indonesia.

One important thing that made Hikam very special was the fact that he was not only a diligent university student but also energetic university student activist. For your information, Hikam also joined a university student organization since the first semester of his study, and he involved totally in the organization named Islamic Association of University Students, chapter Faculty of Arts and Humanities, State Islamic University Sunan Ampel. His total involvement could be seen by the fact that he was elected as a chairman of the organization when he was in the fifth semester, then he got prestigious position as Head of Human Development Board of the organization branch Surabaya. By all of this, he was actually great in both academic and organization activities while many other students failed to balance the two.

While Hikam believed that a good academic record was pivotal to reach his dream, he also knew hat focusing only on beautifying academic record was not good for university student, who was allegedly as agent of change and agent of social control. Being such agent differentiated university student to senior high school student. University student, according to Hikam, could not only study and read many books, but also had to contribute to the society; university student had not to think about himself.

To make a massive and systematic contribution, he for sure felt difficult to be just alone. He thought that he had to collaborate with other energetic young people, broaden networking, and keep experiencing in community service, all of which could be only found from joining university student organization. The strong ties between good academic record and many organizational experiences, as Hikam believed, would determine so-called strong personality.

Hikam graduated from the university and locked his GPA at 3.9. Now he is preparing for pursuing his master degree. As one who wants to be “academic worker” (lecturer), He will broaden his research of study in the major of history. His motto is “work hard, be disciplined, and pray”.