The Importance of Communication

I know, the title really sounds cliché. But let me tell you the background of this post, by showing this meme :

For the previous post, I already wrote about leadership style, and as summary, I said that the best leadership style is flexible, which means we must adjust our leadership style based on who will be led by us.

But the topic sounds a little bit far away than our daily life, since we might think leadership is only needed by a manager in working life, which is wrong thinking but I guess it’s fine for now.

In this post, I’m gonna write about something that I think more relatable to all of us here : communication. Who doesn’t need communication skill? Everyone literally needs it everyday.

But why do I mention it as a ‘skill’? Should it be learned? Doesn’t it just flow normally? It’s not as simple as that. Let me give you two facts, which will make you more concern about this :

Complement of Leadership Style

Do you know how many leadership style exist? Or, do you know which leadership style suit you the most? From Toastmaster course, I learned there are 8 leadership style.

Oh by the way, for you who don’t know what Toastmaster is, Toastmasters is a nonprofit educational organization that teaches public speaking and leadership skills through a worldwide network of clubs. Fortunately it’s free and fully paid by my office! It’s very recommended to all of you whose office is confused how to spend HR development budget effectively and efficiently.

So back again to our topic about leadership style. I took the quiz from Toastmaster course, and this is the result :

Research Everywhere

From the title, can anyone guess what kind of research do I want to talk about? Is it about data science? Weellll no, data scientist do a lot of research, just like common scientist job. But I don’t want to talk about that today. Especiallyyyy

I guess that this is your face right now

Don’t worry. I will try my best so we don’t make this kind of expression ever again after hear “research” word. I’m going to start with a simple riddle. When was my first research conducted?

When I was 21 years old, for my thesis? Wrong.

When I was 18 years old at senior high school? Also wrong.

The answer is ………..

Sign Out from 2020

2020 is definitely one of a damn year for everyone, including me. We barely go anywhere comfortably. Covid-19 really change our life drastically. Now, it’s predicted that 2021 won’t be very different. There’s even a meme like this :

Well it’s a pretty lame joke. Anyway, for this post, I’m sure it will be sounded cliche, but let’s change our mindset. Instead of thinking how many our plans are ruined in 2020, think the opposite way : how many things we’ve done in 2020?

Anxiety of Generation Z

Recently I heard two podcasts talk about topic which can relate to almost all of generation z (were born between 1995 and 2015 or currently between 5-25 years old) (source)

First podcast from “Sampah Berfaedah” with title “Kegelisahan Generasi Ambi : Sehat Gak Sih?” and my friend Reynaldi became a guest there. You can hear them on https://open.spotify.com/episode/2sPSQNOkb74q9F5B3Pa9qy

And second podcast title is “Podcast Unjuk Asa : Episode 1 – Mabuk Ekspektasi” made by Ardhi Rasy Wardhana and M. Syaeful Mujab. They were President of KM ITB and Chairman of BEM UI respectively. The link is here too : https://open.spotify.com/episode/7KLQdc2ZMvsaq1bj7DvbpL

Now, I want to share some key points from those two podcasts, and also my opinions.

Mardigu – Some Crazy Stuff, yet Sounds Logical

I just had a conversation with my father about thought from Mardigu, a person whose name I haven’t heard before. He’s a businessman who is also an advisor from BIN. His name was raising since he talked a lot about dedolarization, and he initiated that dinar gold supposed to be the replacement of dollar because from 1971 to now, USA stated that they will print dollar without gold as the collateral anymore. This could make inflation and it is really up to USA to decide (source : https://www.cnbcindonesia.com/news/20191226170257-4-125806/dunia-tunggu-dinar-emas-jadi-mata-uang-global ). I mean it’s a very interesting yet dangerous idea if we remember how powerful USA as a country itself despite pandemic situation.

Regardless how realistic it is, that introduction already can attract my attention to hear all about him from my father. There are other interesting Mardigu’s point of view, related to how government handle this corona. I won’t talk about how ambiguous the PSBB rule is (we already know, aren’t we?). We realize that the layoff victims everywhere, Plant or corporate is shutting down, and economy is not even moving right now. He suggested what government should do instead of kartu pra-kerja or direct cash assistance (BLT) . There are two crazy ideas, which I guess never cross anyone’s mind before :

Life : “Surprise!”

Nowadays, FAQ that I often face is about my job, such as “Are you sincere to let all of lesson you’ve been studied in campus being useless? Do you really want to give up on geophysics? What about your idealism? What is your plan in the future, still wanna find geophysics job or you wanna stay there where you are?”

So in this post, I ‘ll try to answer those questions and share my spiritual experience when I was a jobseeker for more than 6 months, because maybe you’re feeling this now or will feel it later (but I really hope you won’t)

Toy Story 4

Toy Story franchise is unimagibly the saddest story I’ve ever watched. Can you imagine, we all cry over some toys! Don’t compare it to another sad animation such as Grave of the Fireflies. It also could make me cry, but it’s reasonable since we are talking about a movie with war background. Everyone could cry because the war, right? But Toy Story, with such an unimportant (or at least unnotice) conflict : about toys which we used to abandon after we’ve grown up, could make most people around the world cry. Once. At Toy Story 3. That was my thought when Toy Story 3 won the Oscar, clearly unmatched in 2010.

Nine years later. Trailer of Toy Story 4 was released in 2019. “How the hell could disney & pixar make us cry uglier than we did after Toy Story 3?” is exactly the first question that crossed my mind

Then Disney & Pixar like : Watch us. They answer our doubt perfectly. It is out of my imagination. There are some interesting opinions (and facts) I’ve been thinking this whole day. Spoiler alert!

Should College Students be Required to Take Classes Outside of Their Major?

I agree with a statement that said “college students should be required to take classes outside of their major fields of study in order to graduate”. Even though it is debateable since there is maybe anti-thesis which will say it is not going to improve the skills that related to the major fields of study, I still believe there are more positive sides than college students only take classes from their major fields of study. At least there are three reasons to support my argument

First of all, the college is not all about skills, but also about mindset. What if there is a very smart student in his/her major fields of study, but he/she want to change the ideology of our country? It could be happened if he/she doesn’t take a class that teach about value from pancasila.

Beside mindset, college also have to teach their students about character. We could learn about character from Ethics and Religion class. Normally that class won’t be held by major fields study. This is important because doesn’t matter how briliant the student is, but they won’t reach their highest peak possible of their career if their habits are bad. To be a leader or a general manager in the company, we need a nice character so people around us won’t hesitate to give us a help. It’s exactly the most important thing for a leader : to influence people without any conflict so they will do sincerely whatever our direction in order to achieve the company goals.

Third reason, last but not least, is classes outside major field study will definitely expand our horizon. For example, there are a lot of students who are not sure enough whether they chose the right major or not. If they take classes outside major field study, maybe they will find something that will be more enjoyable in their opinion. So after graduate, they will not confuse and confident enough to choose their own path.

To summarize, there are more benefits if students must take classes outside of their major field study. Now it’s university duty to organize some useful classes for the general study that must be taken by students before they graduate.

Teacher Should Encourage Their Students to Question Everything

Now I’m struggling for the TOEFL test. I need to score more than 92. So I will really appreciate if whoever read my wordpress, could check my grammar in this kind of written test, give me a score or any suggestion. Thank you in advance!

The issue at hand is whether teacher should encourage their students to question everything. This issue is important since there are many schools that make a wrong regulation to limit the question of their student. I’m not sure why but probably they are scared to face a hard question from their student. I believe that teacher should encourage their students to question everything.

I prefer to agree to the statement I mentioned on the title above because first, teacher is only a human being, who could done anything wrong. For example, when teacher is teaching and they forget something, normally they will improvise. Then they will teach something not perfectly true. It’s fine, but when the student are not trained to question everything, they will definitely keep silent and believe everything the teacher said is true for the rest of their life, and it’s not good.

Second, every student need to train their critical thinking skill. It’s one of the most important skill that needed to be mastered by every profession. For example, can you imagine if a lawyer doesn’t have a capability? He/she will be useless since he/she couldn’t find a way to win the case that given to him/her because they don’t have a proper critical thinking skill that needed to be practiced from the very beginning,started with how they could question something to their teacher

At last, not all parents tell their son/daughter to participate actively in organization or extracurricular. Then where will they get bravery to talk or question something? Therefore, teacher have to accomodate that case by encourage them to question in class so they will become a brave student.

The conclusion is, ‘teacher must encourage their students to question everything’ is the correct regulation for all schools. I believe that because there are more positive things if we could make a brave student with good critical thinking skills.