Afif Akbari Habibie adalah peserta Indonesian International Student Mobility Awards (IISMA) 2021 di Boston University. Indonesian International Student Mobility Awards (IISMA) merupakan program mobilitas internasional mahasiswa Indonesia yang membuka kesempatan bagi mahasiswa dari perguruan tinggi di Indonesia untuk mengikuti proses pembelajaran di perguruan tinggi bereputasi manapun di dunia untuk memperkaya dan meningkatkan wawasan serta kompetensinya di dunia nyata sesuai dengan minat dan cita-citanya.
Afif Akbari Habibie merupakan mahasiswa Jurusan Manajemen kelas Internasional Fakultas Ekonomi Universitas Andalas. Selain Afif Akbari Habibie, tiga orang mahasiswa FEUA juga dinyatakan sebagai peserta IISMA 2021, yaitu Azizah Dzufa mengikuti program student exchange di Korea University (QS World University Rankings 2021: 69), Mefa Alya di University of Pecs (QS World University Rankings 2021: 651-700) dan Nadhifah Akbari Habibie di University of Pennsylvania, US (QS World University Rankings 2021: 16).
Disela-sela kesibukannnya di Boston University, Afif Akbari Habibie menyempatkan untuk berbagi pengalamannya dalam mengikuti IISMA 2021 dan kuliah di Boston University melalui tulisan berikut;
Introduction
Hi everyone, my name is Afif Akbari Habibie, and I am here to tell you about my experiences from the start of the program for this Student Mobility Award up until now.
So, a little about this program, the Indonesian International Student Mobility Awards or more commonly known as (IISMA) is a scholarship program for undergraduate students to study at top universities abroad that is fully funded by the Ministry of Education and Culture (KemenDikBud). This program is aimed to enrich students with experiences, knowledge and widen their perspectives on an international scale, while also promoting Indonesia to the whole world. This program is eligible for students in their 4th semester and 6th semester in university or college in Indonesia. As for me, I was privileged enough to be part of the 1st batch of the IISMA program to study in one of the best universities in the world, Boston University.
Decisions
First of all, I applied to this program because I
have always wanted to widen my knowledge pool and expand my networks on an international scale since I am one of the brilliant students in the International Management class of Universitas Andalas. Thus, the better way to do so is to have a chance to study in a world ranked university. Seeing the information given by the International Office (IO) from my campus about the IISMA program, I knew that this could be my chance to live up to my dreams and goals. I applied for this program together with my sister who also had the same goals and vision as I do. At first, I was in a dilemma in choosing the destination of where I could be able to reach my goals and dream since practically any universities partner offered by this program would help me to reach it. However, it occurred to me that I have always been intrigued with the education system in the US since many of the top universities and colleges based there such as Harvard, Yale, UPenn, and many others are Ivy leagues. Therefore, I decided that going to the US was the way to go for me, and out of the Universities offered by the IISMA program which are (UC Davis, Michigan State University, Penn State University, University of Pennsylvania, and Boston University), I decided to go with Boston University.
The reasons why I chose Boston University were simply. First, because Boston is located in Massachusetts, a state known for its education as they have two top universities in the world, Harvard and MIT. In addition, part of the reason why was because I have always liked watching the National Basketball Association (NBA) and I have always been a fan of the Boston Celtics, so it is just like match made in heaven.
Selection Process
For the IISMA selection program, I personally experienced three selection stages in the selection process. The first stage was the selection done by my university, Universitas Andalas and the other two were done by the Ministry of Education. The selection process held by my university was to select the eligible candidates that have fulfilled the requirements of the programs, such as TOEFL, IELTS, or Duolingo scores, GPA scores, having national and international awards both in academics and non-academics, organizational experiences, and the students should be in the fourth or sixth semester, in order to proceed to the national selections. Thank God, my sister and I were on the list of eligible candidates from my university. After that, the candidates must go through the second selection process which was done through the online evaluation. In this selection process, the candidates had to write up an essay with a minimum of 300 words about five different questions explaining why the candidate is a great fit for this program. Besides that, candidates were also asked to list their achievements, organizational experiences, and other additional things that would make them stood out. This process took about one to two months before the results were announced. This waiting time was so burdensome and thankfully my sister and I were able to go through the second hurdle of the selection process. A little about this selection, the committee informed us that the initial applicants for this program were around 4000 students and only half were selected for the next selection.
The selected candidates would get the Notification for their success on the second stage on Kampus Merdeka Web and through this web, the candidates were given information about the process and the schedule for the next stage. The third stage was the last and final selection of the IISMA program. At this stage, the candidates had one on one interview sessions with the appointed staffs from the Ministry of education via Zoom. The interview took three days because there were two thousand students who passed the 2nd selection stage. Thus, the interview schedule was divided into three groups based on the schedule given (Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday). I got the interview schedule on the last day of the interview, which was on Thursday at 15:15 Indonesian Time. The interview selection process was as you would expect it to be, intimidating, afraid of making mistakes and so on. This last process took around 1 to 1.5 months to finalize the results and once the results were announced, the selected students received a notification by the International Office as an official acceptance like the one below.
As you all can see, my sister (Nadhifah Akbari Habibie) and I successfully managed to go into the top universities. Me being in Boston University and my sister was accepted in University of Pennsylvania. It was like a dream come true to both of us.
Preparations:
The preparations for going to this mobility program was just like the one I had to go through when I first studied abroad in Japan for one semester under the Asia Kakehashi Project hosted by AFS three years ago. I had to get vaccinated for several immunizations since it was required by Boston University for their students to be fully vaccinated. And of course, I also had to apply for a VISA. Since my sister and I both got to study in the US, we made our own VISAs and throughout the entire process there were so many things needed to pay attention such as the interview schedule, supporting documents and many more. We both applied for the F1 Visa since we will be studying in the US. Aside from that, we also had to prepare what we both should bring to the US since we will be studying there for the entire semester. Surprisingly, my sister and I were set on the same flight and on the same plane from Padang to Jakarta, to Abu Dhabi and finally to Chicago. Thankfully, because of that we were able to watch each other’s backs.
The Trip
There were 20 students in total from all around Indonesia that got accepted to Boston University, compared to my sister’s, University of Pennsylvania accepted 43 students. Each university has their own quotas on how many international students they could take in. So for future reference for the students that wish to apply, keep in mind about the quotas.
Three years ago, I departed to Japan for the Asia Kakehashi Project. It just felt so unreal being able to go back abroad after just returning from an exchange program back in 2019 from Japan. I feel so lucky to meet 19 other people that will go alongside me on my new journey in Boston. The trip from Indonesia to the United States took around two days as we also had to stop for transit. The destination was from Jakarta to Abu Dhabi which took around 7-8 hours and in Abu Dhabi we had a 5 hour transit and then from Abu Dhabi to Chicago took about a whopping 14-15 hours flight and a two hour transit. At O’Hare International airport in Chicago, my sister and I should separate, as she will be departing to Philadelphia, and I will be going to Boston.
Boston University
The first time I was at the state, I was prejudiced to my first experience here since prior to going here there was an issue known worldwide which was the “Asian hate crime” where Asians are being discriminated and some are unfortunately shot by people in America because they were blamed for the Covid-19 pandemic that made people lost their jobs, normal lives and many more. Therefore naturally, I will feel scared and worried about the whole thing, however prior to the real experience, we were able to reduce those fears. Thanks to the online orientation that Boston University gave us. It was very useful in answering questions related to our fears.
About Boston University, Boston University is ranked 110 globally. In the process of enrolling here, we were given the standard of living allowances set by the ministry of education for $2.200, which may seem a lot to many. However, keep in mind that money is also used to pay our dorms and meal plans, therefore the money left for us to live off are only around $300. But we still get the last allowance for another $2.200 to be used for buying books, clothing for winter, laundry and transportation.
Here, I live in one of the dormitories and specifically live in the south campus region. Which is around 15 minutes to the central campus and 20-25 minutes to the FitRec center. Boston is well known for its commune as many people here preferred walking rather than driving a car or even motorcycle. Here, instead of saying the whole “Boston University” we prefer to use the term BU which is short for Boston University. In BU, I and along with the 19 other awardees, are enrolled in the MET college which is the Metropolitan school. and here I am taking 3 main classes and an optional class of PDP, the 3 main classes that I take here are:
- Leadership in the workplace
- Business Strategy
- International Business Management
- One additional class is Basic Ice Skating.
Classes in BU
Like previously mentioned, in BU I am taking 3 main courses, let’s start from the first one.
Leadership in the workplace
One of the reasons why I chose this course is because it is one of the mandatory courses that I can use to transfer my credit to my home university. I didn’t have much expectations in this class since I thought that it will be just like in Indonesia where classes are mostly teaching, presenting and the cycle goes on and on. However, I was mistaken since rather than focusing on the theoretical stuffs, here, they tend to be more practical in their approach. This means that the lesson we learn from the previous class will be applied to us in a daily situational case in an activity such as for example the role plays of “Salary Negotiation”, Overall, I am very pleased to learn and be part of this class course. Business Strategy
Just like the name of the course suggests, in this class we learn about applying strategies in business cases in real life, selecting and adapting to the strategy best suit the situation given. In this class, I was surprised also to see how it was beyond my expectation since I thought that it would be more of a personal course as in doing most of the work individually however, we were put into teams and must analyze a public firm and or business and from the analyzing the team did we have to conduct a solution that can help the business in the given situation. Also, during the Mid-Term period I was able to get a full score of 100 in the test. This is the result of doing the hard work of studying and paying attention in class and the course method that makes me far easier to understand than just simply sitting and listening in class.
International Business Management
So far, it is one of the most exciting courses I have taken. In this class we analyze business problems from an international perspective, learning about Business Management, different styles of it from around the world. In addition, it was initially my goal to learn the business world on an international scale, I was so glad that I can learn to do so in this course. Not to mention, in this class there are many students from around the world, such as Spain, France, Germany, China, Denmark and many others. That is why, we are so diverse that the professor lecturing the course said that the class is a global village. As a result of this class, conversations are very meaningful and insightful to talk about.Similarly with Business strategy, I also took the MidSemester exam for the IBM course and also thanks to the efforts of my hard work and paying attention in class I was able to get a 100 for it.
Basic Ice-Skating PDP
In BU students are given the choice to enroll in any additional courses they want, this is so that students will be able to express themselves, learn new things that they would not be able to from main classes, and have an enjoying fun class. Interested in the whole idea, I decided to take on the Basic Ice-Skating Class, as I have always loved to Ice-Skate, I just never had the chance to do it in Indonesia, mainly because in Padang there isn’t any Ice rink. It was hard at first especially since I have not break in to my skates yet, however the instructor was very nice and patience to not just me but 28 other newbie skaters.
Daily Live in Boston
As of now, I am almost at the two month point from when I first arrived here in Boston. At first,there were obviously culture shocks such as how the city is very well developed, the people are far friendlier and more hospitable than to the ones that appear on TV’s, the food and many more. However, despite the differences, I have well-adjusted myself here in Boston and have created basic daily activities here. For me personally, since I am a Muslim, practicing my religious believe is very important for me. So, I set up an alarm at 5:30 am everyday, in order for me to do my Subuh prayer. Here, there are 2 places that I can pray. First is in my room. Whenever I pray at my room, my roommate is always open and don’t mind about it, as he is a kind and open minded person. The other place that I could do my prayer is at the Musholla. One thing that fascinate me about BU and America is that, on TV we heard that many people here are Islamophobic, while there are certainly several that are like that, the majority of them are not and are open minded, as a proof they have even build facilities to accommodate Muslims to do their religious duties.
I have also decided to join and participate in the Islamic Society for students at Boston University (ISBU). Here, I can talk to Muslims siciety and able to hear their experience here in Boston and none of the person I have talked to and listen to have had a bad experience in terms of discrimination and hate.
Experiences Gained
Like previously mentioned on this journal, one of the reason this program exist is so that the awardees which are college students will be able to widen their perspective and expand their networks on an international scale, and I am here doing just that. On 14th of October, I decide to go to New York since in BU we just finished our mid-term exams and here we had the entire week off. In New York I was able to meet and personally learn from Indonesia’s United Nations (UN) representative. If you would’ve asked me 2 weeks ago about what I know on diplomatics, I would’ve simply said not much. In New York, instead of living in a hotel or Airbnb, I was given the opportunity to live in the house of Indonesia’s UN representative Pak Mohammad Koba , normally when you live in a house filled with people of great stature you would feel intimidated, however they were one of the most hospitable hosts I have ever had. We were treated like a family even though we were measly an exchange student studying in the US. There I learned a lot about what Pak Koba do as a UN representative of Indonesia and one thing that he said which really struck me is when he mentioned ” Berdiri sama tinggi duduk sama rendah” as an Indonesian we should be proud of our country and never think low of Indonesia despite how it seems because in truth the world needs Indonesia as much as we need the world. This is all possible thanks to the Ministry of education for creating IISMA, because of them I have learn many valuable lessons in which I hope I would be able to spread, implement and give back to the community back home.
