Such an Expensive Dream!

I do remember, when I was child, that my parents, other families, teacher in school, asked me about my dream, exactly my brilliant and beautiful dream. I easily mentioned that a doctor was what I wanted to be. My friends did the same, and many others wanted to be a pilot, a president, and a banker. There were a few friends who had no dream, but soon their parent and teacher urged them to think about even built a dream. These all convinced me that dreaming was very important thing in life, although I thought that the dream I mentioned was only for pleasure and I did not think how to make it happened.

Upon enrolling junior senior high school, I began to rationally make my exact dream relied on my passion. I began to believe that dreaming would help me to go reaching my bright future. Dreaming would stimulate me to study hard, qualify myself, and not to give up. Dream would actually guide me to be one I wanted and give me good chances to be able to contribute widely to my society. Yes, I also believed that a success of someone was measured by his contribution.

Since then I had been attended many forums of motivation training dealing with the way to be good and brilliant young people who would catch many dream steps in their life. Most of trained motivate us the participants to build a dream and then make it happened. They said that “dream is free”, or “have a dream”. It was right once they said that dream was free. Everyone did not need much money to dream. It was really free so that no reason could be told to ignore dreaming.

Being a university student in a big city like Surabaya, where everything was measured by amount of money, I then realized that dreaming was not as free as catching it. I was busy to work and collect a lot of money to survive in the city. I could not rely on my parents who had told me that they had no money to fulfill my need. In this condition, I hardly thought about my dream which I built carefully before. My problem of leaving cost pulled me to focus on how to survive more than beautifying dream. The wise word “dream is free” did not influence me at that time.

Graduated from the university last two years, I wished that the difficult condition would be gone. But, the fact showed an opposition. The life went harder and harder. I had to fight for take my dream soon while I was fighting for surviving. The certificate of my bachelor degree did not help much. As I want to be a lecturer of a university, I intended to continue my study to master degree, knowing that an admitted lecturer was who had finished his master degree. Nothing could be changed in that. I was still optimistic, that I would pursue graduate study of mine while applying scholarship. Then a new challenge came to me, when I realized that many scholarships were competitive enough and asked for not easy requirements. I then began to say this in my heart: 

be careful to dream, because it is very expensive, once problem has come to you, the dream goes surely leaving you!

There was my friend who looked difficult to get any scholarship he had applied for. He wanted to study abroad, notably in English-speaking country, but his English skill was very poor as he told me. He should give “big sacrifices” to his dream, such as money, time, mind, and energy. One thing very hard was that he joined real test of English proficiency until four times to get sufficient score. For each test he should pay IDR 2,7000,000,00. What a price! I believed tan I was able to give most of my time, mind and energy to my dream, but a money?

My friend’s experience described how catching dream was very difficult and expensive. Because he had obeyed the rule and paid the price, he got his dream and he is now studying in New York, United States of America. Meanwhile, I am now giving my time, mind and energy to my dream more than money, hoping that they will be my big sacrifice instead of the money.

And you, what do you do to make your dream happened? One thing you must know: if you are not totally fighting for your dream, then it will kill you!

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”.

I Do What Must I Do Now

[self-reflection on midnight]

I honestly do not know if this effort will work on not. It is only one thing I know: Allah respects all people’s struggles, small or big depending on the pressure. Therefore, I do what I must do now, without thinking about failure. After all is well, then I deliver it to my Almighty Allah.

I also do not know how much time I need to pursue all of these. I do what I must do with hoping the best. I know that failure will be come on day, but of course I do not perceive dependent of something unknowing yet like that. Whatever that is, the right one is that I have to end this as soon as possible.

I do want to give great thing for life so that I seek a moment given by life to me. It is clear that I must look for, not only wait for and see.

Allah, I do what I must do now. I do believe in You and all of your promises for everyone grappling with his dream. So, it is not a problem to consider if I take my turn later. But, whatever your decision is, ‘You know the best’.

Sense of Guilty; Mendidik ‘Orang Nakal’

Dalam sebuah organisasi, bagaimanapun kapasitasnya, apakah itu organisasi relawan, ekstra kampus, warung makan, atau perusahaan, ada satu kata kunci yang terkenal belakangan ini yang disebut dengan passion. Apakah passion itu?

Pernahkah Anda melihat orang-orang yang malas-malasan dalam bekerja, baik itu mengerjakan pekerjaan rumah, atau tugas organisasi, dan kenyataan banyaknya para karyawan 'nakal' di sebuah perusahaan, pegawai negeri sipil yang ngelencer saat jam kerja? Itu merupakan suatu fenomena kerja yang tidak memiliki sentuhan dingin dari apa yang saya sebut tadi dengan passion. Ya, passion itu adalah semangat, tntuk bekerja dalam hal apapun, baik itu berupah maupun tidak.

Passion memberikan kenyamanan dan kenikmatan pada seseorang dalam bekerja. Passion mengajarkan seseorang mengerti apa yang seharusnya dikerjakan, signifikansinya, dan mengerti tentang siapa yang akan senang ketika kita mengerjakan suatu pekerjaan dengan baik, dan sebaliknya. Passion adalah kekuatan yang profit dalam suksesi program-program kerja sebuah organisasi. Tanpanya, organisasi akan mandeg, kehilangan taring, dan tidak bisa memberikan kontibusi apapun baik bagi pelaku organisasi itu sendiri maupun orang lain secara luas.