My University Journey-1st Semester

Hi. My name is Rizky, and I’m a graduate of Institut Teknologi Bandung, ITB (Bandung Institute of Technology, BIT). I have just finished my 4+1, bachelor’s + master’s programme, and I thought that maybe it’d be interesting to look back at it.

Background

Let’s rewind a bit. The year is 2017, and everybody around me were preparing for the next stage of their life. I had set sail on what I wanted to do next from the previous year, which is to study pure mathematics, so when the SNMPTN (an Indonesian nationwide mechanism of admitting high-school students to national universities without testing) period arrived, I was confident in choosing BIT as my destination. Specifically, the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, since one doesn’t get admitted straight to a major, but rather, a faculty. Perhaps, a bit too confident, that I didn’t have any plan B. You’d think that this can backfire pretty easily, but I had a good reason to be. I was the top applicant (by academic grades) of this specific programme according to a list compiled by the counselling teacher, so I went ahead and didn’t really plan for the SBMPTN (an Indonesian nationwide mechanism of admitting high-school students to national universities with testing), until I was told to. (I still studied for the test, but never thought of registering for it.)

One day, the decision came, and I became a part of the faculty. Hooray!

Okay, now what?

During the break between the national examinations and the start of the university’s academic year, I didn’t really do much. I played video games, attended driving classes, and… uh, not much else, as I said. I was just enjoying my last few moments before university.

Near the start of the academic year, my parents drove me to my grandfather’s house, which is close to the university. This is where I would stay for the entire duration of my studies, except during exceptional circumstances that would definitely not take place during this timeline…

The next thing on the agenda were formalities. An inauguration event, some seminars, and an English “placement test” (which didn’t actually place anybody into different classes) took place in the space of one and half a week. Four days before the start of the first classes, came the OSKM (Orientasi Studi Keluarga Mahasiswa), a three-day orientation event set up by the students, for students. It was tiring… uh, yeah, just tiring. (For me at least.)

“Come on, where are the classes?”

Alright, sure. Here are the classes.

I took 6 courses for 17 credits. Each credit is supposed to represent 1 hour of face-to-face instruction, 1 hour of homework, and 1 hour of independent study. As a freshman, I couldn’t modify my study plan, as it’s a pre-defined curriculum by my faculty. Here they are in no particular order.

FI1101 Elementary Physics IA (4 credits)

This course is one of several courses that almost every ITB freshman has to take, with the exception of those in the School of Business and Management and Faculty of Arts and Design. This course is mainly on basic classical mechanics, waves, and thermodynamics. The textbook used was Halliday, Resnick, and Walker’s Fundamentals of Physics. If you think “hey, I’ve seen this material before in senior high school”, well, that’s because you have! This is the nature of most of the courses in the first year: students will usually be familiar with the content. However, it doesn’t make those courses any easier.

You see, if you have been carried by learning assistance centres (bimbingan belajar) during the senior high school level to help you pass the university entrance examinations, you will most likely have seen one or more “quick formulas” that your tutors told you to simply plug numbers into. You will see that ITB (and really, any good university around) will not ask the same kinds of questions as the ones you encountered in the entrance tests, and therefore, the same strategies cannot be employed. Here, 90% of exams only have essay questions, in which one has to actually show systematic work in order to — first and foremost — show understanding of the concepts used, and then to obtain the correct answer. As such, students will often have to devise actual study plans that isn’t solely focused on problem solving. (Actually, I was still guilty of this, because of my familiarity with the materials. I felt that I could just get by by doing exam questions from a book of compiled past exam questions given by a senior.)

Anyways, lectures aren’t the only thing one has to go through. Enter practicums and research-based learning (RBL) components.

Practicums were held once biweekly, and each student is placed into groups. There were over 10 topics, but each group will only get to do 5 of them. Practicums weren’t too bad, really. Before each practicum session, students have to finish a preliminary assignment. During the practicum day, students conduct their assigned experiment(s) with their group and write up a quick report to be submitted that day.

The RBL component acts as a practical final group project, and the topics vary each year. When I took it, students were assigned to create a wooden spinning top. To finish this task, students design the top on paper, go to a nearby carver, and then figure out a way to launch the top. Oh, don’t forget to analyse relevant statistics too.

The exams weren’t as difficult as I thought it would be. There was a time when I thought that the exams for even a freshman physics class would be similar to regional-level olympiads, but really, they’re just buffed versions of questions that can be solved quickly if one uses the aforementioned quick formulas. The physics midterm was the first exam I went through in my ITB life, I went through it — and subsequently, the entire course — with flying colours.

KI1101 General Chemistry IA (3 credits)

This is another one of those courses that will make you go “hey, I’ve seen this material before in senior high school”. This course covers stoichiometry, redox reactions, thermochemistry, quantum aspects of an atom, chemical bonding, kinetic gas theory (which has some overlap with physics), and metal complexes. The textbook used was Brady, Jespersen, and Hyslop’s Chemistry.

This course also has biweekly practicums that alternate with the physics lab schedule. However, students are held to a higher standard in this lab than in the physics one. Whereas the physics practicums only expect students to finish a short preliminary assignment before the day, students have to write up a practicum journal that has way more content than the physics preliminary task. As students will be working with hazardous chemicals, the journal must also contain the material safety data sheet (MSDS) information for each chemical that will be used. This journal is incredibly time-consuming, but wait, there’s more! While a short report that is to be written in the lab after the experiments is mandatory for each practicum, certain topics require you to write up a long report in addition to the short report. Even more time sink.

What about the exams? Well, the format of the exams are similar to that of the national chemistry olympiad in Indonesia. You have 6–7 questions, each of which consists of multiple sub-questions that are designed to be answered sequentially and systematically. For example, question 1 may have 6 sub-questions. You need to answer 1a, then 1b, then 1c, and so on all the way to 1f. You really, really have to know everything inside out to ace the exams.

Speaking of acing the exams, I didn’t do so well on the midterm, yet I obtained a perfect score on the final, being one of only two who achieved this feat for the final. This surprised me when I checked the results, because I never expected to study chemistry any further.

KU1101 Introduction to Engineering and Design I (2 credits)

As an engineering-focused university, this course is required of all ITB freshmen, even for a faculty of pure sciences. The content of this course varies from faculty to faculty, yet they take a course with the exact same code and name. Go figure.

Anyways, the textbook used was Kosky, Wise, Balmer, and Keat’s Exploring Engineering, however it is up to the professor to decide if they want to follow the book closely or only loosely. My professor took the middle ground and left us to our own devices to present the contents of the book in groups. The course covered an exposure to multiple disciplines of engineering: chemical, mechanical, electrical, electrochemical, computer, material, civil, bioengineering, and manufacturing engineering.

The exams were horrible when I took it. There was a midterm and a group final project. For the midterm, well, let’s just say I didn’t know what to study, so I didn’t study at all until an hour before the exam. To my surprise, the midterm looked nothing like what was covered in class. It looked as if the professor should’ve taught us from the book! For the final, we were put in groups to create a “flying thing” that can carry an egg across a room. My group made a miniature plane that can house an egg, and one simply have to throw the plane like a paper-made version of it. This was conducted as a competition, where each of our designs were pitched against each other. We didn’t win, however. The winning design was a UFO-like contraption where the egg is housed in the centre of it. To make it fly, one throws it like a Frisbee.

In the end, everyone had a good time. But not necessarily a good grade.

MA1101 Mathematics IA (4 credits)

This course should’ve been renamed to Calculus IA, because all it covers is calculus. You know, limits, derivatives, integrals, and differential equations. This should also ring a bell to freshmen. The textbook used was Purcell, Varberg, and Rigdon’s Calculus.

This course, just like freshman physics and chemistry, always finds a way to punish learning assistance centre merchants. In this case, students are introduced to mathematical rigour, that is, a way of writing mathematical arguments in a logical and systematic manner. If you fail to provide sufficient rigour in your test answers, you risk having points taken off. The mathematical rigour expected of freshmen aren’t as high as that for math majors, but high enough to make students lose out on points.

This course has no practical or groupwork components, which is to be expected of a math course. Moving on.

KU1011 Indonesian Language: Scientific Writing (2 credits)

This course is simple at first glance. In it, you learn the technicalities around writing scientific articles in Indonesian. To succeed in it, you have to remember many grammatical rules in the PUEBI (Pedoman Umum Ejaan Bahasa Indonesia), in addition to having an eye for detail. This course also teaches you to write scientific articles, as the final assignment involves writing a short paper on literally anything your group likes. This can be said as a training for when you have to write reports that resemble articles in a journal, and later when you have to write your undergraduate thesis.

KU1160 Introduction to Mathematics and Natural Sciences (2 credits)

Last but not least, we have this course. This is one of those courses every faculty put in their freshman year curriculum to expose freshmen to ideas in each of the majors contained in the faculty. This is probably the most laid-back course out of the bunch, as you simply listen to professor presentations and guest lectures about… just about anything related to any of the four majors, really. Hey, we got free food!

The contents vary by year, so there’s not much I can say here.

And that concludes my review of courses taken this semester.

Off the Class

I didn’t really do much outside of attending classes and trying to get by. I had my eyes set on several student clubs, but in the end, I only signed up for one: the robotics club. Unlike many clubs, the training programme (kaderisasi) for this club takes place in the second semester instead of the first semester. This made me appear always available, so I figured out I might as well spend the extra time I have by playing video games and writing. There was a freshman futsal cup among the 12 faculties, which I attended as a supporter…

I guess that’s all. I know this made the end of my story quite underwhelming, but this was all I did.

So yeah, see you next time!