reflections | Edo Danilyan

I kept adding things

Thu, 03 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0200

In 2021, I had just started learning R, and coding still felt completely new to me. Most of the time, I was just trying to figure out how to clean a table, make a plot, or understand why my code suddenly stopped working. I spent hours searching for answers online, reading tutorials, copying bits of code, changing a few things, breaking them, and trying again. Little by little, some of it started to make sense. Somewhere along the way, I thought it would be nice to have my own place to keep all these things I was learning, so I could come back to them later.

I liked the idea of having an online archive that I could come back to later. My memory is not always great, so if I spent hours figuring something out, there was a good chance I would forget it a few months later. Writing it down seemed like a simple way to save myself from doing the same work again. And if I put it online, I could access it from anywhere. I also liked the idea that maybe someone else with the same problem could find it useful too.

That was how I ended up deciding to make a website, even though I knew almost nothing about how websites worked. At the time, I had heard words like HTML, CSS, domain, hosting, and server, but I did not understand how they were connected. GitHub was also still quite new to me. I started searching for different ways to build a website and found that I could use something like WordPress, build everything myself, or use an existing system that would give me some structure while still allowing me to work with code.

I wanted something in between. I wanted to be able to write normally, include R code and plots, and still have enough freedom to change things later when I understood more. While looking around, I also spent a lot of time visiting websites made by people from the R community. I remember looking at the websites of Hadley Wickham, Yihui Xie, Garrick Aden-Buie, and many others. Their sites felt like personal collections of things they had worked on over the years, with tutorials, projects, software, notes, talks, and small experiments all living in one place. I liked that idea, and somewhere along that search I found Hugo.

Hugo seemed suitable for what I had in mind. I could start with a theme, write pages in Markdown, include code, keep the files in GitHub, and slowly change the website as I learned more. At least that was how I understood it at the beginning. In practice, it took me around a month just to get everything running.

I spent many evenings reading documentation that I only partially understood, copying examples from other repositories, and trying to figure out which file controlled which part of the website. A lot of it was trial and error. I would change one line, refresh the browser, and sometimes the whole site would stop working. Then I would undo it, try something else, and break a different part instead.

Little by little, the structure started making sense. I learned how the Hugo folders worked, how Git and GitHub fit into the process, and how files sitting inside a repository could somehow become a website that anyone could visit. I bought a domain, connected it to the site, and eventually managed to put everything online using GitHub and Netlify. I was quite happy when edodanilyan.com finally worked, especially because the hosting itself cost me nothing.

After spending all that time building the website, I finally opened it and realised there was almost nothing there. I had been so busy figuring out how to make the website that I had barely thought about what I would put on it. I had only recently started learning R, I did not have many projects yet, and there was not much to show. So for a while, the website was mostly just an empty place except some lorem ipsum filler.

So I started with whatever I had. I added some story, then a small project, then another page. Later I added tutorials, figures, research related things, and pieces of code that I thought I might need again. Whenever I learned something useful, sometimes I turned it into a page. There was no clear plan for how the website should grow, and I think that made it easier. I could just add something whenever I felt it was worth keeping.

Over the years, my interests changed, and the website changed with them. When I learned more R, more R content appeared. When I started doing more research, research projects appeared. When I became more interested in data visualization, the website slowly filled with more plots, maps, and some other visual work. I kept exploring different things, and many of those experiments eventually found their way onto the site.

After a while, the website became messy. There were too many pages, too many sections, and too many things. Some parts made sense to me because I remembered why I had created them, but I started wondering whether anyone else could understand where to look. The colors did not always work together, some pages felt crowded, and sometimes I would open the homepage and feel that something was wrong without knowing exactly what the problem was.

Over time I started paying more attention to other websites. I noticed that some were easy and comfortable to read even when they had a lot of information, while others felt confusing even when they were quite simple. I became curious about what made the difference. That led me to read about things like layout, typography, spacing, visual hierarchy, UI, and UX, all things I had barely thought about when I first built the site.

Once I started noticing these things, I also started changing my own website more often. I tried different themes and colors, moved sections around, removed things, added them back, and rewrote the homepage more times than I can remember. I kept adjusting the navigation, the width of the pages, the way projects were shown, and all kinds of small details that I probably would not even have noticed a few years earlier.

Some changes worked well, while others looked good for a few months until I looked at them again and wondered what I had been thinking. Then I changed them again. I started enjoying this part of having my own website because I could keep experimenting with it. If I wanted to try something, I could try it. If it looked terrible, I could remove it. Every small problem gave me another reason to learn something.

After a few years, people also started finding the website. Every now and then, someone would send me a message saying that they had found one of my tutorials through Google or through a link somewhere. Some people told me that an explanation was easy to follow. Others said that my posts about learning R felt familiar to them and helped them when they were also starting.

I still remember some of those messages because they felt surprisingly personal. English is not my first language, and I know how tiring it can be to learn something technical while also trying to understand complicated English. Sometimes I have read an explanation several times and still felt that the explanation was harder than the thing being explained. Because of that, when someone tells me that something I wrote was easy to understand, I truly appreciate it a lot.

There is something heartwarming about knowing that I could spend an evening trying to solve a small problem in R, write down what I learned, and years later someone I have never met could find that page and use it to solve their own problem. I did not think much about that possibility when I started the website, so those messages still feel a little strange in a good way.

Other opportunities came from the website too. At one point, I worked on a company CSR project related to mangrove analysis. I also received some freelance data analytics work, and there were people who contacted me about research and paper collaborations after seeing things I had shared online. I find this part funny when I think back to 2021, because at the beginning I was struggling to understand how to put an R code block tp work on a webpage. A few years later, someone could visit that same website, look through my work and decide to contact me about a project.

There was never a clear plan connecting those things. I kept adding work that I cared about, and eventually the website became a place where people could see what I had been doing. That experience also changed how I thought about making the site easier to find. I eventually became curious about SEO, which was another topic I barely thought about before.

Initially SEO sounded like some strange internet marketing thing that had little to do with me. My view changed when I started receiving messages from people who had found my tutorials through search engines. If someone somewhere is searching for a problem that I have already written about, it makes sense to make that page easier for them to find. So I started learning a little about search engines, page titles, descriptions, site performance, links, and how pages are indexed.

More recently, the website has also become a place where I experiment with science communication and data visualization. I still enjoy analysing data, but I have become more interested in what happens after the analysis. I think more about how to show a result clearly, how to make someone curious about a dataset, and how to explain something complicated in a way that does not make people tired before they even reach the main point.

A lot of the things I enjoy working on now would have sounded quite far away from what I was doing in 2021. Learning R brought me into data analysis. Working with data made me more interested in visualization. Maintaining the website made me think about design. Writing tutorials made me think more carefully about explanation. Sharing projects made me think about how other people see and understand information. None of these steps were NEVER planned in advance, but each one somehow made the next one easier to discover.

When I started the website, I wanted an archive of the things I was learning. Five years later, I realised that the website itself had become part of that archive. Its history contains traces of me learning R, Git, Hugo, data analysis, research, visualization, design, writing, and many smaller things in between.

Recently, I saw a simple drawing that made me think about all of this. At the top was a long straight line with the sentence, “You can hold back forever because you’re unsure.” Under it were several uneven curves. One said, “or, you can give it a shot,” and the next one said, “and then give it another shot.”

I kept thinking about that drawing because it feels close to how the website grew. There were many moments when I did not know enough. I did not know much about coding when I started building the website. I knew little about writing when I started publishing tutorials. I knew almost nothing about design when I started changing the layout, and I was still learning data visualization when I started putting visual projects online.

There are still many things I do not know, and I think there always will be. If I had waited until I understood everything, the website would probably never have existed. Having something small that already existed made it easier to continue. I could make a page, see how it looked, change it, learn something from it, and come back again later. Sometimes the result was useful, sometimes it was messy, and sometimes I had to undo half of what I had done.

Five years later, I still work on the website in more or less the same way. I add something, notice a problem, change it, and then a few months later look at it again with a different idea. For a long time, I thought that at some point I would finally finish the website. These days, I do not think much about finishing it anymore. It has been changing for as long as I have been learning, and I think I am quite happy to let the two continue together.

Hey, thank you for reading this! See you on the next one!

Lakoni: on becoming and continuing to be

Fri, 05 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Recently, I found myself thinking about what I am going to do after my PhD. At first, I treated it as a practical problem to solve. Should I stay in academia? Should I move to industry? Should I remain abroad or eventually return home? These felt like sensible questions, the kind of questions people expect PhD students to ask as they get closer to the end of their studies.

But after sitting with those thoughts for a while, I realized that none of them were the real question. The reason I struggled to answer them was because I was trying to solve something deeper without naming it. What I was really asking was: who have I become all these years?

It is a surprisingly difficult question to answer. Six years ago does not sound like a long time, yet when I look back at the person I was then, he feels both familiar and distant. I still recognize him. I recognize his ambitions, his insecurities, and many of the things he cared about. Yet I also feel that if we sat across from each other today, we would spend hours trying to explain ourselves. Some dreams survived. Some quietly disappeared. Some values became stronger. Others turned out to matter less than I once thought.

What makes the question even stranger is that it eventually led me to another one. Not just who have I become, but who will I continue to be?

I think these are fundamentally different questions. The first looks backward and asks what life has done to us. The second looks forward and asks what we choose to carry with us. Perhaps this is why the end of a PhD feels unsettling. For years there is always another milestone waiting ahead. Another experiment, another presentation, another paper, another goal. There is a structure that quietly tells you what comes next. Then one day you realize the PhD is temporary, but the person emerging from it is not. The question is no longer what project you will work on next. The question becomes what kind of life will produce the person you want to become.

While thinking about all this, I remembered something my grandmother often says: “Lakoni, kita ini hidup memang menjadi pelakon.”

For most of my life, I understood it as encouragement to keep going, but recently it started to mean something else. There is a humility hidden inside that sentence. It does not tell us to control the story. It does not tell us to predict the future or solve every uncertainty before taking the next step. It simply reminds us that we are participants in a story that is always unfolding. The older I get, the more I appreciate the first word: lakoni. Not think about it endlessly. Not worry about it endlessly. Not predict every possible outcome.

Lakoni. Live it.

After all, when I look back at the past six years, I realize that I did not become who I am through planning alone. Most of the things that shaped me arrived unexpectedly: people, opportunities, disappointments, successes, failures, and countless small moments that seemed insignificant at the time. If someone had asked me six years ago where I would be today, I doubt I would have guessed correctly. The person writing these words is the result of living those years, there’s no way I could forecast them.

Maybe that is why the question of who I will become no longer feels as urgent as it once did. I still care about the future, and I still wonder what comes after the PhD, but I am becoming less convinced that life reveals itself through planning and more convinced that it reveals itself through participation. Some answers can only be understood in hindsight.

For now, perhaps it is enough to know which parts of myself I want to keep carrying forward. It is curiosity, the desire to learn, the desire to teach, the habit of asking questions that do not have immediate answers. The rest, as my grandmother would say, can be lived before it is understood.

Lakoni!

When your family’s survival is the reason you’re in science

Sun, 26 Oct 2025 09:47:21 +0700

I grew up in a place where dreams were not something people chased. They were something people learned to live without. My childhood was shaped by routines that revolved around staying afloat, keeping up in school, and helping my family manage whatever came next. Becoming a scientist was not even an idea. I didn’t have the space to imagine anything beyond the immediate demands of life.

My path into education began less with hope than with pressure. I stayed in school because leaving would have closed off the only narrow route upward my family could see. You didn’t think about what you wanted to become. You thought about what you needed to avoid.

In Indonesia, the gateway to this route is a brutal filter. The country’s top public universities which is the only ones that offer a genuine ladder out of poverty accept fewer than five percent of applicants for their most competitive programs. For the wealthy, a rejection is a detour, but for my family, it would have been a dead end.

But for students from my background, the academic hurdle was only half the battle. We faced a “double lock.” First, I had to score in the top percentile on the national exam to secure a seat. Second, I had to win the administrative war for funding. I relied on government aid schemes which are notoriously limited and bureaucratic. I had to prove my poverty with the same rigor that I proved my intellect. There was no safety net at all, if I missed the cutoff for the university, I couldn’t afford to go. If I got in but missed the scholarship quota, I couldn’t afford to stay. The pressure was not just to succeed, but to be perfect, because the system had no margin for my errors.

When I finally made it to university, it felt like entering a room where everyone else understood something I didn’t. People talked about interests they had cultivated for years, about academic ambitions and research passions. Their confidence came from a stability I had never known. I listened, but my mind drifted elsewhere, to the people at home who had given up far more than I liked to admit so that I could sit in those classrooms at all. With this, my education never felt like mine alone.

Coming from a family with no prior university graduates, earning a bachelor’s degree marked a turning point

Studying abroad reinforced this feeling rather than easing it. My first time living outside Indonesia was in Thailand during a student exchange. Everything was new, but responsibility traveled with me too. Later, in Poland for an Erasmus program, I divided my days between classes and remote jobs so I could send money home and help my family pay off debts. The experience was often portrayed as cultural enrichment, but for me it was practical, because I had to learn quickly, adapt fast, earn what I can, and just keep going. It taught me how to live with uncertainty, but it also made clear that distance does not dilute obligation.

By the time I moved to Vienna for my PhD, the rhythm of living between countries felt familiar, but the contrast between my background and the backgrounds of many around me was unavoidable. I met people who carried an ease that I couldn’t imitate, people who spoke about their research in a way that assumed a foundation of security, from emotional, financial, familial. I didn’t envy their confidence. I simply noticed the difference. They could experiment, switch directions, or fail without fearing the collapse of something larger. I had learned to move differently. My decisions were quieterand more deliberate because the cost of a wrong turn extended beyond my own life.

None of this appeared in the way academia talked about itself. The environment assumed an equal starting point, as if everyone arrived with the same freedom to dream. But many students carry histories that shape their presence in science long before any experiment or project begins. Some come from families that can absorb uncertainty. Others come from families that cannot.

Carrying responsibility across borders is not dramatic. It becomes part of the background of daily life. You wake up, go to the lab, write, run instruments, go home, and somewhere in the middle of all of it, you send a message back to your family asking if everything is alright, hoping the answer is uncomplicated. You measure progress in ways that don’t appear on CVs: stability at home, fewer debts, fewer emergencies.

Over time, I learned that the pressure I felt was not just weight. It also became a kind of clarity. My motivation didn’t come from childhood fascination or early scientific exposure. It came from wanting life to be different, of course not only for me, but for the people who had made each step possible. That kind of motivation is steady. It does not fluctuate when enthusiasm fades or when research becomes difficult.

It also made me sensitive to things others might overlook. I valued stability because I had rarely experienced it. I valued mentorship because I knew what it meant to move through education without guidance. I took opportunities seriously because nothing about my path had been guaranteed. And I paid attention to the quiet inequalities around me, inculding the differences in how students handled setbacks, the different ways people approached uncertainty, the unspoken advantages that some carried effortlessly. Note that these observations weren’t judgments, they were simply reminders of how varied the paths into science can be.

Many international students live with similar conditions. They study while supporting families, manage worries across time zones, and carry responsibilities that remain invisible in academic settings. They do their work alongside everything else, without expecting the environment around them to understand. Their stories rarely make it into the ways universities describe opportunity, merit, or ambition. I often think about what dreams mean now. Not the large, dramatic kind, but the smaller ones which is stability, time, the feeling of being able to choose rather than react.

I am still learning how to imagine a future that belongs to me rather than to obligation. But I also know that I would not be here without the people who pushed and hoped and sacrificed long before I had the language for any of this. Their efforts travel with me into every laboratory, meeting, and classroom. That weight shaped the way I entered science. It still shapes how I move through it. Acknowledging it does not make my work less scientific. It simply tells the truth about the conditions from which my scientific life grew.

Thank you :D

Benarkah minat baca orang Indonesia itu rendah?

Sun, 17 Aug 2025 09:47:21 +0700

Setiap kali ada pembahasan soal literasi, kita sering disuguhi kalimat klise yang menyebuth bahwa minat baca orang Indonesia itu rendah. Narasi ini berulang kali muncul, kadang sampai ada yang menyebut peringkat 60 dari 61 dunia. Tapi kalau kita coba telusuri, ternyata banyak miskonsepsi di balik klaim itu. Dsta resmi justru menunjukkan bahwa kegemaran membaca orang Indonesia perlahan meningkat. Perpusnas mencatat indeks kegemaran membaca 2024 sudah berada di angka 72,44, kategori ini termasuk dalam level sedang dan naik dari tahun sebelumnya ¹. Artinya, orang Indonesia memang membaca, atau setidaknya ada keinginan dan aktivitas ke arah situ. Yang macet mungkin bukan di minat, melainkan di kemampuan dan akses. PISA 2022 memberi gambaran kontras yaitu hanya 25% siswa kita yang bisa mencapai level minimum buat bener bener memahami bacaan ². Jadi problemnya bukan orang Indonesia ga mau baca, tapi kemampuan membaca sejak dini ga kokoh, dan ekosistem yang menopang kebiasaan itu belum kuat. Klaim “Indonesia peringkat 60 dari 61” sendiri bersumber dari studi World’s Most Literate Nations (2016), yang menilai ekosistem literasi (perpustakaan, koran, ketersediaan bacaan) bukan minat baca secara langsung ³.

Kalau kita pakai kacamata Maslow!, membaca sebenernya berada di level aktualisasi diri. Di puncak piramida itu, manusia mencari makna, pengetahuan, dan pertumbuhan diri. Tapi bagaimana mungkin aktualisasi bisa jadi prioritas kalau kebutuhan dasar belum stabil? Garis kemiskinan kita per September 2024 masih Rp595 ribu per kapita per bulan, dan lebih dari 74 persen pengeluaran rumah tangga miskin tersedot untuk makanan. BPS juga melaporkan 8,47% penduduk masih hidup di bawah garis kemiskinan pada Maret 2025 ⁴. Dalam kondisi ini, membaca memang sering tampak sebagai kemewahan, artinya bukan karena orangnya malas, tapi karena energi mental dan uang habis untuk sekadar bertahan hidup. Kita bisa lihat contohnya pada perbedaan UMR di berbagai wilayah di Indonesia, Jakarta sudah di atas 5 juta IDR, sementara di Jawa Tengah hanya sekitar 2,1 juta IDR ⁵. Bagi pekerja dengan upah minimum segitu, satu buku seharga seratus ribu rupiah bisa terasa terlalu mahal karena setara dengan ~5% gaji bulanannya.

Faktor lain yang jarang disorot adalah distribusi buku di negeri kepulauan atau daerah daerah yang sulit dijangkau. Harga cetak terus naik, PPN 11% masih berlaku untuk buku umum ⁶, walau ada pengecualian untuk buku pelajaran dan kitab suci ⁷. Di sisi lain, distribusi logistik kita juga sangat mahal. Biaya logistik domestik diperkirakan 14 persen dari PDB, dengan kinerja logistik Indonesia berada di peringkat 61 dunia ⁸⁹. Semua ini dapat dilihat pada harga buku di Papua atau NTT yang bisa dua kali lipat lebih mshal dari di Jakarta. Jadi ketika kita mengatakan “minat baca rendah,” seringkali yang kita maksud sebenernya adalah “harga buku ga masuk akal untuk banyak orang.” Akses fisik dan distribusi yang lambat membuat buku semakin ga deket dengan pembaca di luar kota besar.

Memang ada jalan keluar lewat bacaan digital. Sekitar 79% orang Indonesia sudah terhubung internet ¹⁰, dan ini membuka peluang untuk membaca tanpa harus menunggu buku fisik sampai ke pelosok. Tapi akses digital juga ga sepenuhnya merata. Kuota masih mahal untuk banyak keluarga, kualitas jaringan di luar Jawa sering buruk, dan literasi digital belum cukup kuat untuk membedakan mana bacaan yang mendidik dan mana yang hanya sensasional. Jadi, internet belum otomatis menjadi jawaban untuk literasi, apalagi kalau daya belinya tetap timpang.

Ada hubungan menarik antara membaca dan kebahagiaan. Penelitian di negara lain menunjukkan bahwa orang yang rutin membaca untuk kesenangan cenderung lebih sejahtera secara mental. Buku bisa jadi ruang eskapisme, cara meredakan stres, atau jendela untuk memperluas makna hidup. Tapi arah hubungannya dua arah: orang yang sudah lebih sejahtera, dengan waktu luang dan rasa aman, memang lebih mampu menyediakan ruang untuk membaca. Sementara membaca itu sendiri bisa memperkaya kesejahteraan batin ¹¹. Di Indonesia, dilema ini terasa jelas, banyak orang sebenernya pengen baca, tapi kondisi hidup membuat membaca sulit diprioritaskan, sehingga manfaat psikologisnya pun jarang bisa dirasakan penuh.

Namun jika kita menengok akar rumput, kita bisa melihat bahwa minat itu sebenernya ada. Gerakan taman baca masyarakat, gerobak buku keliling, hingga komunitas baca di warung kopi terus bermunculan. Anak anak di desa bisa antusias rebutan buku tipis yang dibawa relawan. Itu bukti bahwa kemauan membaca ga pernah hilang, hanya terhalang oleh struktur. Jadi yang seharusnya kita pertanyakan bukan “kenapa orang Indonesia malas baca?”, melainkan “kenapa sistem distribusi dan ekonomi kita membuat membaca terasa jauh dan mahal?”

Pada akhirnya, narasi tentang minat baca sebaiknya direvisi. Bukan turun, melainkan terhimpit. Bukan malas, melainkan terbebani. Ketika kebutuhan dasar lebih aman, ketika rantai distribusi lebih efisien, ketika sekolah menanamkan kemampuan membaca sejak dini, dan ketika bacaan digital bisa diakses dengan murah dan sehat, membaca akan naik kelas dari sekadar kemewahan menjadi kebiasaan. Dan saat itu terjadi, kita mungkin akan sadar bahwa minat baca orang Indonesia ga pernah bener bener rendah, mungkin ia hanya menunggu ruang untuk bernapas.

Sumber:

Ketika kata 'pengabdian' menjadi tameng eksploitasi

Sat, 03 May 2025 09:47:21 +0700

Di banyak organisasi sosial dan komunitas pendidikan, kata “pengabdian” sering banget diangkat sebagai nilai utama. Kesan yang muncul itu positif, penuh semangat kebaikan, dan bikin kita pengen ikut terlibat. Tapi kenyataannya, kata ini juga sering dipakai buat nutupin sesuatu yang gak sehat, yaitu kerja keras tanpa penghargaan yang layak.

Kadang, orang yang rela ngasih waktu dan tenaga dianggap harus ikhlas sepenuhnya. Bahkan kalau dia mulai ngomongin soal honor atau kompensasi, langsung dinilai kurang tulus. Padahal menurutku, menghargai waktu dan keahlian seseorang itu gak bikin pengabdiannya jadi kurang berarti. Justru itu bentuk penghormatan.

Aku sendiri pernah ngalamin. Dulu aku buka sesi mentoring gratis buat bantu teman-teman yang mau studi ke luar negeri. Niatnya memang tulus. Tapi makin lama, makin sering kejadian orang daftar lalu batal seenaknya. Ada yang ghosting, ada juga yang janji tapi gak muncul. Aku udah nyiapin waktu dan materi, tapi ujung-ujungnya cuma buang energi.

Akhirnya aku coba ubah jadi sistem berbayar. Harganya gak mahal, tapi cukup buat nunjukin bahwa waktu dua pihak itu sama-sams penting. Hasilnya beda banget. Peserta jadi lebih serius, datang tepat waktu, dan benar-benar ngehargain sesi mentoringnya. Komitmen mereka juga lebih tinggi karena mereka ikut invest, walaupun kecil.

Yang pengin aku tekankan di sini adalah sistem berbayar itu bukan soal cari untung. Ini soal membangun hubungan yang saling menghargai. Mentor juga manusia, punya kesibukan lain. Kalau terus diminta kerja gratis dengan alasan “pengabdian”, lama-lama bisa capek sendiri dan ngerasa dimanfaatin.

Masalahnya, ini gak cuma terjadi di komunitas kecil. Di Indonesia, banyak tenaga kesehatan dan guru honorer yang juga ngalamin hal serupa, bahkan dalam skala yang jauh lebih besar dan berat.

Lihat aja cerita para nakes di daerah terpencil yang digaji ratusan ribu per bulan, padahal mereka bertugas nyelametin nyawa. Atau guru-guru honorer yang digaji jauh di bawah UMR, bahkan kadang dibayar setelah berbulan-bulan. Mereka tetap datang ke sekolah, tetap mengajar, tetap berjuang. Tapi ketika mereka menuntut gaji yang lebih layak, mereka malah diserang balik dengan kalimat “Katanya mengabdi, kok nuntut bayaran?”

Ini pola yang sama, glorifikasi pengabdian buat nutupin kegagalan sistem menghargai manusia. Kata “ikhlas” dijadiin tameng untuk ngelak dari tanggung jawab struktural. Padahal orang yang mengabdi juga butuh makan, bayar kontrakan, dan nyekolahin anak. Mereka bukan superhero. Mereka cuma pengen dihargai atas kerja kerasnya.

Pengabdian itu penting, tapi dia gak boleh jadi alasan buat melegitimasi ketimpangan. Kita tetap bisa bantu orang lain, tapi bukan dengan mengorbankan diri sendiri terus-menerus. Dan buat organisasi, ngasih honor atau kompensasi itu bukan berarti kehilangan nilai sosial. Justru itu langkah konkret buat bikin sistem yang adil dan berkelanjutan.

Kalau terus-terusan pakai narasi pengabdian buat nutupin ekspektasi kerja tanpa penghargaan, lama-lama kita malah jadi gak sadar lagi kapan kita mulai ngeksploitasi orang baik.

Jam karet: Why are we so chill about being late?

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 09:47:21 +0700

So here’s something that’s been bugging me for a while.

I grew up in Indonesia, and like many of us, I got used to events nwver starting on time. Family gatherings, meetings, hangouts with friends, there’s almost always a delay. A meeting scheduled for 7 PM? It won’t really start until 7:15 or even 7:30. And somehow, nobody seems too bothered. We even have a name for it: jam karet, or rubber time.

But the more I started noticing this, the more I found myself wondering ‘why?’

Why is this okay for us? Why do we plan something for 10, but then act like 10:10 was the real plan all along? Wouldn’t it be easier to just be honest and schedule it for 10:10 from the start?

I started asking people. Not just to complain, but to genuinely understand how we got here. And the more I listened, the more I realized: this isn’t just about time. It’s about culture, relationships, expectations, and maybe even how we see the world.

Mari kita bahas

From a time perspective: A point or a range?

In some countries, time is treated like a precise point. If a meeting is set for 7:00, that’s when it starts, 7:00, not 7:01. In Japan, a train delayed by 30 seconds can trigger a formal apology.
But in Indonesia? Time is often seen as an approximate direction. “7 PM” usually means “somewhere between 7:15 and whenever people show up.”

This isn’t about laziness or disrespect. People often intend to be on time. But over the years, we’ve built a culture where lateness is tolerated, and even expected. Come on :"

A culture of harmony over punctuality

In many Western cultures, especially in work or business, time is money. Being late is seen as a sign of unprofessionalism or inefficiency. But in Indonesia, and many collectivist cultures, what matters more is social harmony.

Imagine this: you’re running late for a meeting, but on the way, your neighbor asks for help with something. You stop to help because relationships matter. Arriving late might seem “bad” in a schedule sense, but not stopping to help might be worse socially.

The result? We tend to forgive lateness because we value connection over the clock.

The Vicious Cycle of “Everyone’s Late Anyway”

Here’s where things get tricky. Because lateness is normalized, people who try to be on time get frustrated. “Why bother?” they think. And so they, too, start showing up late.
It becomes a self-reinforcing loop: no one’s on time, because no one expects anyone to be on time.

Sometimes, it goes further.

Let me tell you something that happened back when I was a college freshman, masih maba bro, bayangin. There was this event, nothing too fancy, but we were told to come at a specific time. I showed up on time. Others did too. But we waited… and waited… and waited. The event didn’t start for another 15 to 30 minutes.

Why? Because they said, “Kasihan yang telat.”

Now, think about that for a second.
You’re telling me that people who arrived late get extra grace… but those of us who showed up on time just sit there waiting? Who are we not being kind to now?
If we’re talking about fairness, shouldn’t we “kasihan” those who made the effort to be punctual?

And here’s the kicker: I even wrote a short reflection piece about it. Thought it’d be a fun little critique. But instead of sparking discussion, I got “called in” by some senior students. Yeah… let’s just say it was more of a lecture than a chat.

But that experience stuck with me. It made me realize just how deeply this “rubber time” mindset is ingrained, and how even questioning it can feel like a rebellion.

So What Can We Do?

Let’s be honest: shifting an entire culture isn’t easy. But small things help:

Be realistic with scheduling. If you know things never start on time, either actually start on time, or just set the time 15 minutes later to match reality.
Value people’s time out loud. Say it: “Hey, I really appreciate you being on time.” Positive reinforcement goes a long way.
Start anyway. One of the strongest signals that things will change is when events start as scheduled, regardless of who’s there.

“Jam karet” isn’t just about being late, it’s a mirror of how we see time, relationships, and expectations. It tells a story of kindness, flexibility, and sometimes… a bit of chaos.

But maybe, just maybe, valuing each other’s time is a form of respect too.
What if the future version of Indonesia is not just warm and communal, but also right on time?

How does it feel like to have dreams?

Sun, 30 Jun 2024 22:37:32 +0700

I didn’t grow up imagining a life full of academic degrees or international opportunities. For a long time, I thought just getting by was enough. If you’ve ever felt like your dreams were too far away, I hope my story gives you a little hope. I’ve been through moments where even surviving felt like a win. But life had other plans, and this is how I learned to dream again.

Part 1: Early Childhood (Kindergarten and Primary School)

Me and my mom, circa 2003

I grew up in an upper-middle-income family, and my early childhood felt safe. We had a home and everything we needed. I thought life would always be that way. Then everything changed.

Just after I finished kindergarten, my mother was scammed by her colleagues. We lost our rice fields, our house, and almost everything we owned. With no other option, she went abroad to work as a TKW (Indonesian migrant worker). I was in the second grade of primary school when she left, and my grandparents raised me.

Living with my grandparents brought a new set of challenges. My grandfather worked construction and did everything he could to keep us afloat. He pedaled his bicycle from Bondowoso to Situbondo every day just to earn enough for the family. My grandmother held the household together and looked after me. Their support was the backbone that kept me standing during those years.

To help keep us afloat, I collected coconut leaves, made them into brooms, and sold them. I helped my grandmother sell kerupuk whenever we had the chance. I even taught myself to forge knives and sold those too, adding whatever I could to the household income. At one point I roamed around with magnets to collect iron scraps. I would do anything that I could to survive.

A house where I used to live, captured in 2023

When my grandfather died while I was in fifth grade, life became even harder. Money was tight, and I almost had to leave school. At that time, dreaming about a better future felt impossible.

Part 2: Middle School (SMP)

By middle school, I was used to finding ways to make things work. My mother’s situation had improved, but her previous employer kept her passport and work permit. She also lost money to people who promised to fix her immigration problems but never did. At home, my grandmother and I still received monthly letters from the bank about our debts.

My grandmother gathered rice left in nearby fields after the harvest, and I went with her. We mixed it with government-issued Bulog or Raskin rice. It was often dry and had a strange smell, but it was what we had. We also collected fern shoots, taro leaves, water spinach, mushrooms, fish, and snails from the river.

I started to see education as a way to change my life. But my dreams were still small. I only wanted to finish school, find a stable job, and make my mother proud. Even becoming a cashier at a minimarket felt like more than enough.

There were times when things got really tough. Our family was struggling so much that we had to sell almost everything we owned, our fan, our TV, until the only thing I had left was my bicycle, which I used to get to school. In those moments, I tried reaching out to my dad, hoping maybe he could help, or at least respond. But I never heard back from him.

Part 3: High School (SMA)

In 2015, my grandmother had a stroke. I became her main caregiver, changing her clothes, serving her meals, and keeping the house clean while continuing school. None of it felt optional. She had cared for me throughout my childhood, and now it was my turn to care for her. My uncle helped when I needed time to study, and somehow I still managed to do well in class.

After high school, I applied to several universities and programs. I was rejected again and again. Every rejection made me wonder if university was really meant for someone like me. Then, at a campus expo in Bondowoso, I joined an entrance-exam tryout and placed in the top ten. I received a scholarship for an intensive preparation course at Primagama Bondowoso. One month later, I was accepted into Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember (ITS).

Part 4: University and Beyond

I could not have started university without help. My aunt supported my living costs and tuition, and the ITS finance office gave me the lowest tuition rate of 500,000 IDR. In 2019, I also received the Bidikmisi On-Going Scholarship. For the first time, I could focus on studying without constantly worrying about money.

During my first two years at university, things weren’t always easy behind the scenes. There was a time when I only had 12,000 IDR (0.62 EUR) left, and I had no idea how long it had to last me. I ended up buying a pack of Roma Kelapa biscuits for 9,000 IDR, and that’s what I ate for the next three days.

I never shared this story with my friends. It wasn’t because I was ashamed, but because I didn’t want to be a burden. I didn’t want anyone to feel sorry for me. I just kept walking, believing that someday things would get better.

In 2020, I received a fully funded scholarship to study at Chulalongkorn University in Thailand. Studying abroad had always felt impossible, but suddenly I was doing it. After returning home, I joined competitions and took side jobs in tutoring, photography, and design while continuing my studies and helping my family pay its debts.

In 2022, I started a full-time remote job and received an Erasmus+ scholarship to study in Poland. Both gave me new experiences and more financial stability.

I later received a fast-track scholarship and completed my master’s degree as the best graduate in my cohort. Looking back at my childhood in Bondowoso, I still find it difficult to believe how far that path has taken me.

A rare moment where I actually believed in myself :D

A few months later, I applied to PhD programs at ETH Zurich, the University of Zurich, and the University of Vienna, and I was grateful to receive offers from all three. Today, I am pursuing a PhD at the University of Vienna.

I know I did not get here alone. My family, teachers, friends, scholarships, and a lot of luck helped me along the way. Their support is one reason I now try to help other students find their own paths.

Few slices of Uni Life

I now mentor students for free, especially those from backgrounds similar to mine. I help them navigate university life, scholarships, and academic opportunities. Seeing them find their own paths brings me joy and reminds me how much the right support can matter.

Some of my mentees who continued their studies abroad

Sometimes people look at my life now and think everything happened easily. They do not see the rejections, the financial problems, or the people who helped me keep going. I am not sharing this story because I want anyone to feel sorry for me. I am sharing it because someone with a distant dream might need to know that life can change.

‘Mimpi itu selayaknya sayap, ia yang akan membawamu terbang kemana pun’

‘Dreams are like wings, they’re what will carry you wherever you want to go’

Terima kasih :))

I Learned R Backwards, and Somehow It Worked

Thu, 15 Jun 2023 12:45:39 +0700

I did not start learning R because I had a carefully planned career goal. I started because, during my time at Chulalongkorn University in 2020, my labmates were using it for their master’s thesis analyses and I had no idea what they were doing.

They could turn messy biological data into figures and statistical results by writing a few lines of code. I was curious, impressed, and if I am being honest, a little worried about being left behind. So I installed R and RStudio and decided to make a graph.

This was my first mistake.

Code anywhere

Starting in the wrong place

At that point, I did not know the difference between wide and long data. I did not know how to import a dataset properly. Words like function, object, and argument meant almost nothing to me. Before I could even produce a bad graph, I got stuck trying to install a package, lol.

I had treated R like another piece of software: install it, click around, and eventually something useful will appear. R does not really work that way. Once I accepted that I needed to learn some basics first, I enrolled in an introductory R for Data Science course on edX. It covered variables, data types, functions, syntax, and data manipulation. None of this felt exciting at first, I still wanted to skip ahead and make pretty plots, but it gave me a map of what I was looking at inside RStudio.

Coming from biology, even simple programming ideas took time to settle in my head. A loop looked unnecessarily complicated. Conditional statements felt like riddles. Error messages looked hostile, especially when I had no idea which part of the message mattered. Sometimes I would spend an hour on a problem caused by one missing comma or a column name typed with the wrong capitalization. IT’S REAL.

What helped was working on small things I actually cared about. Random exercises could teach me syntax, but a real dataset gave me a reason to keep going. I would find someone else’s code, run it, change one part, break it, and try to understand why. Slowly, error messages stopped looking like personal attacks and started becoming clues.

The point when R became useful

The real turning point was a metagenomics project. The dataset was large and required far more wrangling and manipulation than anything I had handled before. For the first time, R was not a course I was trying to finish. It was the tool I needed to answer a biological question.

When the analysis finally worked, I could see the distance between that project and the person who once got stuck installing a package. I would not call the code elegant, and I am sure I could write it much better now, but it worked.

After that, curiosity took over. I moved from data manipulation into visualization and statistical modelling, then kept finding packages that made me want to try something new: gganimate, ggplotly, highcharter, flextable, flexdashboard, rayshader, spatstat, and many others. Every package suggested another kind of question I could ask or another unnecessarily fancy plot I could make at 1 AM.

Stack Overflow, forums, social media groups, and other people’s GitHub repositories were a huge part of this process. Most of the time, someone had already encountered my error. The difficult part was learning how to describe the problem well enough to find their answer.

Code anywhere

What I wish I had done earlier

If you are a biologist opening RStudio for the first time, do not begin with loops or advanced statistics. Learn how R sees data. Understand rows, columns, data types, missing values, and especially the difference between wide and long formats. Learn how to import a file and inspect it before trying to analyse it. I skipped this part and made everything harder for myself.

Then choose a small project with an output you genuinely want. A visualization is a good place to start because you can immediately see what your code changed. Get comfortable with dplyr, tidyr, and ggplot2; together, they cover a large part of the work many new R users want to do.

When something breaks, read the entire error message before copying it into Google. Check the line R points to, but also look at the line before it. Search using the package name and the important part of the error. If the first explanation makes no sense, find another one. Stack Overflow and the RStudio Community are useful, and #TidyTuesday offers plenty of datasets and examples to take apart.

Most importantly, read code written by other people. Run it, modify it, and see what changes. I learned much more by breaking working code than by staring at a blank script and trying to remember the correct syntax.

Courses can give you structure but you do not need to wait until you complete a curriculum before working on something real. And if you need a very specific explanation for free, there is probably a random Indian guy on YouTube who has already saved thousands of students :D.

Code anywhere

Where it led me

Learning R has brought me into projects I would not have been able to take on before. Those personal and professional projects eventually became part of my portfolio, but the bigger change is how I approach data now. When I encounter a messy dataset, my first reaction is no longer, “I have no idea how to do this.” It is, “Okay, how can I break this into smaller problems?”

I learned R in a messy, inefficient order. I copied code I barely understood, produced errors I could not explain, and definitely made some ugly graphs. Still, each project left me knowing a little more than the previous one and i think that is enough.

I believe in sharing code, so feel free to visit my GitHub. If you are also learning R from a biology background, I would be glad to hear what you are working on or what error message is currently ruining your day.

Cheers, I’ll see you in the next one!

My Thought on Minimalism and Minimalistic Life

Sun, 28 Aug 2022 11:04:28 +0700

Have you ever bought cheap things, but the goods did not last long, then it becomes easily damaged and eventually you have to buy new things again? I’ve been there, done that. Or have you ever on a trip that consider to always spend money as minimum as possible, always choose the cheapest option, but ended up don’t get a good experience, or even worse your trip was messed up. The initial plan is to save money, ended up spending more money. This super frugal behavior is often associated with a frugal lifestyle. There is nothing wrong with it if we tend to buy things that are not expensive, or at very low prices.

But the question is: Is it true that living a minimalist, frugal life, you have to buy the cheapest things?

In this article, I want to share my opinion and thoughts to address these questions. Actually, there is nothing wrong when we want to live a super frugal life. In fact, I also encourage everyone to live a life that is not extravagant. But that doesn’t mean we should always spend the smallest amount of money. If we’re always compelled to be like that, yes, maybe it can be said to be ‘pelit’ anyway. Especially without considering many other aspects that can create new problems for us. Which may not be a priority.

Put it this way, we need a vehicle for example for daily use. Since we want to save money, we finally buy an old-school second hand motorcycle. After several day of usage, the motorcycle often breaks down. Because we have no clue about the motorcycle, we ended up must go to the workshop frequently to deal with these problems. In the end, it becomes more expensive from various aspects, not even just from money. We have to spend more time, overthinking more, etc.

Sometimes some of you considers that frugal living is the same as a minimalist or frugal lifestyle. Even though it shouldn’t be the same thing. Then, what kind of minimalist life is like? then how to solve this overly frugal problem? It may be that we spend more money than people who buy things a little more expensive.

In this article, I will discuss what a minimalist life is. Basically, a minimalist lifestyle is when we prioritize everything that matters to us. Living a minimalist life by eliminating unimportant things or even distracting us from the important things. That important thing can be anything. The definition of each person’s importance is different. We will buy something when it is something that is important to us. Another example is that in social media, we’re not going to subscribe certain yotuber because we don’t think that their contents are important to us, right. Or we will not do certain activities if they are of no benefit to us. Simple, isn’t it? But in fact, it’s not easy to do.

Chances are, many of us are misrepresenting a minimalist lifestyle. Instead of happy, free and peace by using this lifestlye we ended up become overthinking, unhappy, or even extravagant because thinking too much to spend less money. I often see that a minimalist lifestyle has to limit the number of goods, quality, or price. Even though it shouldn’t be. The problem is not in the quantity of the goods, the price, or even the quality. But the problem is in our needs and what we consider important. It could be that this minimalism is more expensive than the lifestyle that is not minimalist. For example, my own case. I am a person who consider a practicality as an important thing. Finally, I bought an expensive laptop, for example, a Macbook Pro that is light, simple, the specifications can meet many of my needs. I bought a smartphone that is in the flagship class, so that it can last in the next few years and can do many things faster. Although the money I spend is quite large, but I can be considered to have a minimalist lifestyle. Why? Because it becomes more practical. I am able to work with my laptop for 3 days without charging, it can speed up a lot of activities as well. But if people who are too frugal or tend to be stingy, maybe they won’t buy a Macbook Pro that costs 40 million IDR even if they can afford it. But in the end, it distracts yourself because you may face the problem when the laptop often crashes when opening heavy software or even lags to just type documents on MS word.

So, it’s not a matter of saving. Financial management is sometimes how to optimize expenses so that our lives can be more comfortable and practical. It could be included as a form of investment. This means that investment is the investment of expensive goods and that can be achieved through spending money which can be quite large. Back to the original discussion, if it is important, it can increase productivity, and we also have money yeah go for it. It doesn’t always have to be the best specification, just adjust it to our needs. If we need it that is lightweight but doesn’t really need a great specifications, you can buy a Chromebook.

Considering a lot of things before buying something is something important. There is nothing wrong with buying things that are a little more expensive, but durable, and provide the best experience. That’s why sometimes people are said to be extravagant and unimportant. When in fact, it could be that buying expensive things is his passion, he already has money and indeed his needs are different from ours. Frugal life, it can be not worth it if for example every day we continue to feel stressed and do not enjoy life. I personally think that the ideal life is when we can indeed enjoy life. Enjoying life at its finest. I encourage everyone to be happy, one of them, by having a hobby, play games occasionally, watch a movie, exercise, travel etc.

Life is good bro, there’s nothing wrong with how much we spend money for our better life, even if it’s just having fun. Although the budget may not make sense for people, but yes, as long as it is still in our budget, just buy it. And this is also different. It could be that in certain areas, for example in rural areas, urban areas, offices, minimalist living will look different for everyone. So back again, it’s about the needs and values in our lives.

“How can I live a minimalist lifestyle better and according to what I want?”. Well, the answer is to live a meaningful life for us. Well, if I quote from the book ‘Minimalism: Live a Meaningful Life’. This is an interesting book because there are 5 life values that he said can make our lives more meaningful. First is Health. This is the most important thing if I think so too. Physically and mentally must be healthy. The second is relationship. If you have a toxic relationship, just cut it. And if for example, fighting with parents, maybe you can apologize. The third is passion. Have a passion for something. Hobbies, work, or whatever. So we have the motivation to live, to do activities. The fourth is growth. Learn to continue to develop so that later our lives will not be stuck there at a certain point, and become boring. The fifth is contribution. Now this is like what we can do for others and for society.

Have a beautiful day!

Jawaban Dari Berbagai Penolakan

Wed, 29 Jun 2022 12:15:33 +0700

Pendahuluan

Kehidupan akademikku terbilang cukup biasa saja dan tergolong medioker. Hidup adem ayem di pinggiran kabupaten, membuatku tak terlalu memiliki mimpi yang tinggi. I mean, aku tidak lahir di privileged family yang punya koneksi di mana mana, aku tidak dibesarkan di lingkungan yang kompetitif, sehingga ini membuatku berpikir bahwa untuk kuliah saja sudah syukur, apalagi sampai bermimpi untuk kuliah di luar negeri, hampir tidak mungkin. Untuk memenuhi kebutuhan sehari hari saja bukan hal mudah, jangan bercanda.

Penolakan

Long story short, saat aku masuk di tahap kelas 12 SMA, aku mendapatkan kesempatan mendaftar SNMPTN 2017 dan mendaftarkan diri di Sekolah Tinggi Intelijen Negara. Ketika itu, aku mendaftarkan diri di UNEJ, Teknik Sipil sebagai pilihan pertama, Teknik Mesin sebagai pilihan kedua. Aku cukup percaya diri kalau aku bakalan lolos skema ini, mengingat nilaiku yang tak terlalu buruk serta terdapat beberapa alumni dari SMAku yang terdaftar di jurusan tersebut. Namun beberapa bulan kemudian, aku dihadapkan kenyataan pahit kalau aku gagal SNMPTN 2017. Aku cukup sedih, namun masih ada kesempatan SBMPTN 2017. Saat itu aku kembali memilih kampus dan program studi yang sama. Hasilnya juga gagal. Di sisi lain, aku juga gagal di tahap akhir tes STIN. Di fase ini aku kebingungan karena kawan kawanku telah terdaftar di perguruan tinggi negeri ternama dan lembaga lembaga yang prestis. Tentu, aku mengalami banyak tekanan dari banyak pihak yang memiliki ekspektasi tinggi padaku. Kegagalan ini membuatku semakin terpuruk. Saat itu aku mencari segala alternatif seperti masuk seluruh skema tes di POLINEMA, dan gagal semua. Sial sekali. Setelah itu aku mencoba peruntungan di mandiri UM sambil berat hati memikirkan bagaimana nanti cara membayar uang pangkal dan spp yang tentu bagiku merupakan jumlah yang tidak sedikit. Hasilnya? Gagal juga, sial.

Bagiku, 2017 adalah titik terendahku. Kenapa tidak? Bundaku hilang kontak beberapa bulan, ayahku tidak peduli aku di mana, dan masih harus menerima fakta bahwa aku setidak beruntung dan sebodoh itu, semua kata kata motivasi tidak dapat kuterima di fase itu. Kegiatanku hanya bersedih dan berusaha menerima fakta ini. Pernah suatu malam aku berkendara Situbondo-Bondowoso berjam jam hanya untuk menangis di sepanjang jalan. Sialan, aku selemah itu.

Beberapa bulan selepas itu, kampus expo bondowoso yang bekerja sama dengan primagama membuka tryout SBMPTN, aku mencoba mendaftar untuk melihat bagaimana kemampuanku setelah berbulan bulan tidak belajar. Ternyata, aku masuk nominasi 10 besar dan mendapatkan beasiswa kursus intensif SBMPTN Primagama Bondowoso. Aku bertemu dengan orang orang dengan vibes positif, terbuka, kompetitif serta saling mendukung. Aku sangat bersyukur bisa mendapatkan kesempatan ini, terima kasih sebesar besarnya untuk Primagama Bondowoso, terima kasih. Saat itu, kami disiapkan untuk mengikuti SBMPTN 2018 dengan masa persiapan 1 bulan. Kami diwajibkan memilih kampus top 10 di Indonesia, atau prodi dengan grade tinggi seperti kedokteran. Saat itu pilihan pertamaku ITB, kedua ITS, ketiga IPB.

Titik Balik

2018, aku mendapatkan pengumuman bahwa aku diterima di ITS. Ini merupakan titik balikku. Ini merupakan salah satu jawaban dari penolakan penolakan yang kuterima tahun lalu. ITS adalah rumahku untuk berkembang dan bertumbuh. Apakah semua berjalan mulus? Tidak, aku masih banyak mengalami penolakan. Aku bermimpi aku akan keliling dunia tanpa uangku sendiri. Sehingga aku mencoba mendaftar di berbagai kegiatan internasionalisasi. Aku kembali mengalami penolakan. Gagal excursion ke Singapur dan Australia, gagal exchange ke Shibaura Institute of Technology, gagal exchange ke Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. Namun, itu tidak menyurutkan semangatku. Aku terus mengevaluasi dan belajar hal baru hingga suatu titik aku diterima exchange dengan beasiswa penuh di Chulalongkorn University, Thailand. Pre internship di National Yang Ming University. Collaborative online learning di Kumamoto University. Exchange di Institut Teknologi Bandung.

Di tahun ketiga perkuliahan, aku mendapatkan kesempatan diterima di program magister ITS dengan beasiswa fast track. Finally, aku diterima exchange di University of Szczecin dengan beasiswa Erasmus+.

Ucapan Untuk Semua Pihak yang Telah Membantu

Finally, aku sadar bahwa kegagalan dan penolakan bukan akhir segalanya. Failing is just another word for growing, and I keep going. Sekali lagi, kuucapkan terima kasih sebesar besarnya untuk Primagama Bondowoso dan seluruh tentor yang membimbingku selama proses persiapan intensif SBMPTN 2018. Terima kasih juga kuucapkan ke segala pihak yang telah membantu dalam proses ini. Terima kasih.