My name is Rizky. I live in Vincentius Putra Shelter. I currently study at Pertamina University, majoring in Chemical Engineering. I started studying in 2019 and will finish in 2023. My feeling when I was chosen to receive the Heliconia Scholarship was very happy because I don’t need to think about the costs. I don’t need to burden my parents and relatives with it. I’m driven and full of ambition to not disappoint everyone who helps me, and I will strive to get good grades. Heliconia has provided me with opportunities that others might find difficult to obtain. I will try to convince the Heliconia Scholarship Foundation that they are not wrong in choosing me to receive the scholarship. Heliconia helped me to reach my goal to study in the Chemical Engineering department. This is a true gift to me.
Message from Rizky, September 2022
In the 6th semester, I had many lectures. The courses were very difficult and there were many group assignments to do. As usual, I often get lazy group members, work assignments, and many other problems. In the end, I have to work extra to fix it all. I think my leadership skill is bad because I couldn’t manage my group. I want to fix it in the future. But I was very lucky, in the midst of my difficulties in doing these various tasks, I was given support by other friends so I was not too stressed with the tasks.
During the learning process, I faced various difficulties, especially regarding the explanations from the lecturers who were less accessible. To overcome this, I always brainstorm the materials with my friends, and even then, I often still couldn’t find the answers to the difficulties I face. So, we tried hard to understand the lecturer’s explanation and read the book and its meaning. Luckily my friends and I were able to understand these materials. There were two courses that were delivered in English, but my listening ability is lacking and I need to learn English more. Sometimes there were also quiz questions that were not taught by the lecturers and the duration was so short. I got a bad score on the quiz. Because of this, I tried my best in the midterm and final exams to get good grades.
I registered for various campus activities, I became a practicum assistant for two courses, the 2nd Basic Chemistry and the 1st Chemical Engineering. I also was involved in lecturer projects. In the 2nd Basic Chemistry, the course was conducted online, the problem I faced was that I had to check 17 reports and 17 group assignments, whereas in the previous policy I only needed to check eight reports. It was very burdensome because it went hand in hand with other coursework assignments. In the 1st Chemical Engineering, course was done in the laboratory where I taught my juniors about the practicum materials. There was one interesting thing that happened in the laboratory, when we studied the “centrifugal pump” module, we forgot to close the valve on the hydraulic bench so that when the pump was turned on, the air gushed out very beautifully and the view of the laboratory ceiling made the whole room wet.
In the last activity, I was working on a project about “making thin films for optimizing the performance of solar panels”. I worked on this project with two seniors who chose this topic for the title of the thesis. We have to make the film as thin as possible so it won’t block the light that will penetrate the solar panels. Until now the project is still running and continues to be developed. In this project, I learned many useful things and I became aware of how to research for my thesis later.
Recently, I’m doing an internship at PT Mayora Indah as a Quality Control staff. Here I learned a lot about how to maintain product quality from the arrival of raw materials, packaging materials, central kitchen, oven, packing, and storage in the warehouse. Although the thing I do is not related to chemical engineering, I have a special task to design shell and tube heat exchangers. Currently, I have completed the internship and need to revise the internship report.
Message from Rizky, 2022
During the 5th semester, there was quite a lot of valuable experience that I got. Honestly, the 5th semester was fairly difficult both from the lesson itself and from the tasks along with the midterm exam and final exam. I spent most of my time studying from morning to night to learn the whole material. Every day the materials were increased and were quite difficult to follow, therefore a review is needed. It was very tiring in the midst of my busy learning, every day I also had to do a lot of tasks. Not only that, the transition of the curriculum from 2016 to 2021 causes many things to be sacrificed such as Chemical Engineering Operations courses 1 and 2 (practicum courses in Chemical Engineering) that must be merged into one semester. It was certainly very burdensome where the practicum becomes twice as much as usual, and sometimes I had to complete two modules in one week. But the practicum for this semester was done in the laboratory at the university, not online. Very interesting.
After the mid-term exam, it was the peak time when I had to face many projects in almost all courses in Chemical Engineering. In the Numerical Method 2-course project, I was grouped with people who ‘lacked concern’ with this project, even though this project has a considerable assessment weight of 25%. There were friends who never responded to me at all on Whatsapp. Then I thought, I’d better do it myself. During the process, I consulted many high school seniors and friends from other groups, made the scripts on Matlab, and did the presentations. Thank God I finished it well by myself. For project work on other courses, I did not have too many obstacles because each member of the group contributed to the project process.
This semester, I was entrusted to be the Vice Chairman of the Chemical Engineering Festival (ChE-Fest) 2022 by the chemical engineering student association. My tasks are to prepare the event, such as finding staff members, making activity proposals, brainstorming about competitions and events, meetings with each division, evaluating staff performance results, following events and evaluating feedback from the audience, conducting fundraising, making donations, and making accountability reports for the event.
I am also active as a Teaching Assistant (TA) for two courses namely Numerical Method 1 and Basic Physics for international classes, and also became a practicum assistant for Basic Chemistry courses. As a teaching assistant, my tasks are to prepare, teach, assign the students tasks, and correct every student’s task, give the midterm exam, and final exam. My tasks as a laboratory assistant are to prepare the material, teach in detail, follow each briefing, and correct the report in one group. Here I learned many things, especially public speaking where I had to convey simple material, so it will be easily understood by my juniors.
This semester I was able to go through it very well and get a GPA of 3.86. I am quite satisfied with the results I got but for the next semester, I will try to get even better results than this semester. Thanks to Heliconia for always supporting me, may God bless all the administrators and members of this Heliconia Foundation.
Message from Rizky, 2021
4th semester was full of dynamics because I have considered a lot of things for my future. Some of the courses weren’t too difficult for me to understand because I could follow the courses well. Oftentimes I was busy with various assignments that needs to be submitted by the end of the courses or the end of the day. Doing journal tasks for practicum preparation and making the reports after practicum took quite a lot of my time. But I could manage my time properly. Because of my efforts in managing my time, I’ve gotten pretty satisfying grades this semester.
This semester I’ve been active lately in organizational activities on campus. I became a mentor for the academic division at ChELo. ChELo is a regeneration activity to prepare students of the Class of 2020 to become association administrators). I provided direction, guidance, and important information for them about the basics of organizing. Then I also registered myself as the deputy chairman of HMTK (Himpunan Mahasiswa Teknik Kimia / Chemical Engineering Student Association) for the period of 2021-2022. I prepared for the election, I created a grand design of the organization, work program, etc., which will be presented to prospective voters. Furthermore, I also formed a team and prepared the materials to argue with my opponents, but unfortunately, I lost the vote. It gave me a lesson.
From now on, I’ve been entrusted to be the deputy chairman of ChE-Fest (Chemical Engineering Festival: HMTK’s annual external activities which hold various competitions, online seminars, etc.) for the period 2021-2022.
The problems I’ve faced this semester weren’t many, but some of them were quite fatal. One time I forgot to submit some assignments, which made my Drawing Process course get an A- (A minus) grade, I was sure I would get an A score if I didn’t forget.
Then for the matters of time, I often do my assignments and reports at 11-12 PM which makes me get reprimanded by the caregiver in the shelter for being unable to manage my time properly. The main factor that makes me do my assignments until midnight is because the college courses are finished in the afternoon, then being active in the organization made me often attend meetings that are usually held at 8-10 PM. I’ve tried to do those assignments on the sidelines of my free time because I am not the kind of person who likes to procrastinate. As a solution, I’ve tried to negotiate to be given compensation for the sleeping hours but sometimes I still get reprimanded, and this thing makes me quite patient to deal with. This semester I got a GPA of 3.89 and I’m quite satisfied with the score, but next time I’ll do better to get better scores. I’m very grateful to Heliconia, who has always supported me. I wish Heliconia always successful. God Bless.
Message from Rizky, January 2021
The 3rd semester was quite tough because I had to face some courses which refer to chemical engineering. Many new materials that I really didn’t know about. As a result, I felt a little difficulty when studying the subjects. Also, this semester’s courses are entirely run online. The question and answer process was deemed ineffective if I did not understand the material, and also the practicum which was carried out online makes the tasks overloaded. Fortunately, I have a study group and a partner that I can invite to discuss the difficult materials together.
There were various difficulties in the 3rd semester, especially the study time and technical issues. When attending online classes, I often left the meeting because of an internet problem that suddenly turns off. In the end, I had to buy internet credit, so I could join the class again. The laptop is also not good enough to open two applications at once, so it often crashes. I would like to add more memory to my laptop next time to solve this problem. In the shelter, the sleeping hours are now limited. I need to start sleeping at 10 PM according to the shelter’s rule, it makes me hardly finish my tasks on time, especially when I have so many tasks. I never put off doing my assignments, but the tasks are so many. I have spoken to the head of the shelter that it is difficult for me to have limited sleep hours. Actually, I am also tired of doing those tasks, but I still have to set aside hours of sleep for the sake of the assignments. In the end, this semester could be passed well.
During this semester, I did many things. I joined a committee program called MOTK. MOTK is the Chemical Engineering Orientation Period. I became the mentor leader who directs the mentors, arranges the assignments for the new students in a chemical engineering major, and gives announcements and directions to the new students. This activity takes a lot of my time because the program starts in the afternoon until the evening. My challenge is in managing my time between doing the assignments and attending the events. I left the gameplay because I don’t have time to play the game anymore. Besides that, I also attended various seminars to fill my time and increase my knowledge.
In the end, I passed this 3rd semester well. I got a GPA of 3.87. This result is good enough for me. In the future, I will try to maintain and even improve my GPA. Thank you to the Heliconia Scholarship Foundation for supporting me during this lecture process.
Message from Rizky, 2020
When I started studying in the 2nd semester, there was no obstacle in my study before the Covid-19 pandemic. I attended classes, tutorials, practicums, and extracurricular activities well. The lecturers teach with a method that was easy to be understood. When I had difficulty understanding the explanation, I was given a personal explanation by the lecturer. I also have some friends who are very supportive of learning, we discussed each other so we could overcome the difficulties. Things went very smoothly before the pandemic.
In March 2020, I attended a night of togetherness for students in Bogor, West Java for two days. The activities were very exciting. Some of my friends brought toys to play together, lots of snacks for us to eat together, we had barbeques, shared stories, took pictures, and we also played games in groups.
After that event was finished, I got an announcement that the teaching and learning activities will be online until the end of the semester because of the Covid-19 pandemic. When online learning was begun, I felt the atmosphere of teaching and learning was very different because the lecturers only explained the materials in PowerPoint. They used to teach us by using a blackboard and explained to us step by step. There were also some lecturers who only sent modules and explained by using sound recordings and sent us the YouTube links. There were also some lecturers who did not explain anything but often gave us assignments. I hope I could study independently and understand the material by myself. To anticipate the misunderstanding, my friends and I created a WhatsApp group, so we can learn together online, this idea was quite effective for us.
My practicum class was done online, I think it’s unique. The lecturers provided videos for practicum procedures, provided data to be analyzed, and I did the practicum report. The final semester exam was conducted online. There were several courses and group project assignments in the exam. This 2nd semester, my GPA decreased because I lacked in preparing for the English exam and got an unsatisfactory grade for the creative problem-solving subject. In the future, I promise to be more serious about learning, so I can improve my GPA for next semester. I thank the Heliconia Scholarship Foundation for supporting my study. I will prove that this foundation is not wrong in choosing me by increasing my grades during college.
Message from Rizky, 2020
After attending lessons for 3 months at Pertamina University, I don’t have any obstacles in attending classes, community or campus activities, and social relations. I was quite happy when I knew that some lecturers who teach me are from ITB (one of the best Public universities in Bandung). It motivates and encourages me to be more serious in learning. My main problem is that I often get sleepy during lessons, especially in some subjects such as Critical Thinking class, English class, and Chemistry class. Indeed, my weakness is I can’t listen to the Lecturer for too long, especially for some subjects that I am not interested in. I handle this by taking notes of the lessons that I don’t understand and then I review my notes at night.
When the Mid Test results came out, thank God I got pretty good scores. But I am not satisfied with this result because there are some scores that are still below 80, and in my opinion, it is not good, especially the TTKI score which is very unsatisfactory. Indeed I made a mistake because of underestimating this lesson. As a result, I got a bad grade. But I was confused with the Critical Thinking subject because I felt confident with this subject but unfortunately, the result is not pretty good. The lecturer did not share or show the assessment criteria so I thought that the assessment was subjective. For the remainder of this semester, I will study even harder so I can get an ‘A’ score in all subjects and my minimum GPA target to achieve is 3.60.
Message from Rizky, 2020
During my 1st semester at Pertamina University, I got many lessons, especially science and life lessons. When I was in high school, my study was based on Catholic values. Now I study with friends from different religious backgrounds, which makes me love diversity more. During my campus activities, I take lessons according to the class schedule, complete assignments with friends during break time, go to the library to read books, and chill out in the canteen. We play games, eat, chat, complete our tasks, and discuss the lessons with friends.
I joined some extra activities at university. I joined Chemical Engineering Student Association as an administrator, I became a committee for UPMOAR (Art Organization at university) as a decoration section, and I also registered as a general election committee for BEM UP (university students association).
This 1st semester, I was struggling to get the best grades, I studied more at home until late at night. When there was any material that I didn’t understand, I watched videos about those lessons on YouTube, and I discussed the materials with friends. I also often consult with the guardian lecturer about lecture matters.
I have attended some seminars to get more knowledge about my study. I think this will be useful for me in the future. After struggling during the 1st semester, finally I got a 3.93 GPA, and I’m very grateful for this. In the future, I will try to keep my grades good.
