Once again I am required to make an essay. This essay is actually a study objective. The application said that the essay should: “Give your reason for wanting to pursue them in the U.S.  Describe the kind of program you expect to undertake, and explain how your proposed field of study fits in with your educational background, your future objectives, and your future involvement in community development.” Please give your comments here or anywhere you desire. 😀

“Childhood is the fiery furnace in which we are melted down to essentials and that essential shaped for good,” Katherine Anne Porter. My childhood shaped my deep passion to a smart machine called computer. I used computer for the first time when I was 4 years old. I used to sit with my parents when they were using computer for working or playing. I was so much entertained by only watching my dad playing Solitaire or the Windows 3.0 loading screen. It drove me curious about what that smart box with a monitor could do. When I was in second grade of my elementary school, my dad bought a new PC with Windows 3.1 installed. I was so happy and spent most of the time playing with the computer, from playing games into exploring all the system files. If I retraced back my life, I have understood the MS-DOS commands since I was a fourth grader. I could even fix the computer booting problem by trying to reinstall the MS-DOS system. I learned it by watching my dad’s technician fixing the computer curiously, and I could repeat what he had done to my computer on my own.

I learned my first programming language when I was in second grade of junior high school. I learned it because I was so much amazed with its capability to understand my commands and obey my order. I knew that if I’m creative enough, I could make computer do everything I want to do. I bought many books to help me learn about computer programming. It was quite rare for kids at my age back then who curious about that subject. The passion to this subject was growing stronger and finally strengthens my willing to study Computer Science at Universitas Indonesia.

Studying computer science in Universitas Indonesia is very tiring and hard. I need to perform extraordinary in order to maintain my academic performance to be perfect. I am trying to keep my GPA high so that I can graduate with the Cum Laude honor. And by considering that this is my final semester in university, I am only one step away to the honor to be achieved. I never want to waste my time in university. I took various courses in computer science fields which most students avoid. I did that to expand my knowledge in computer science because computer science is a very broad and large field and I try to at least know every bit of it. I also work as a teaching assistant for programming courses since my second year. It really helps me to keep the knowledge I have learned and learn how to teach students. By becoming a teaching assistant, I also encourage students to learn programming more since many students are afraid to do programming even though they have already enrolled in this major.

I am going to graduate this year. It is quite unbelievable that the time passed very fast. I know that to become a renowned computer scientist, studying for higher education is required. I have a dream that in the future I become a person who invents a new technology in IT that will be used by everyone and beneficial for the mankind. In order to achieve that, I need to pursue the higher education overseas.

United States is one of my study destinations because it is the place where many inventions in computer science invented. United States is the origin of mass usage of IT in daily life. It is the birthplace of the Internet, the personal computer, the Google, and so on. I believe studying computer science in the US is really worth to develop my knowledge in computer science even further and deeper.

I also chose United States because I’ve been dreaming to go there since I was a kid. I tried applying AFS-YES and I failed on my last step. I also applied for Global Undergraduate Exchange program and I also got rejected. I also failed to advance to the next round in Imagine Cup 2011 by Microsoft which will be held in NY this year. This scholarship is my fourth try out for my ticket to United States and I highly hope that I will step my feet in the land of Columbia with this scholarship.

For my master degree, I am going to study more on Information Retrieval (IR) and Natural Language Processing (NLP). I am highly interested to those fields because they utilize computer system for a more specific usage that can be beneficial for people. In the past, computer was used only to compute extensive mathematical computation or to store large set of data. By using IR and NLP system, computer can process documents like the way human thinks, especially in this current era of information which information must be processed fast and accurately. The most current notable use of IR system is the internet search engine, such as Google and Bing. This interest also led me to write my thesis about an IR system and join the IR lab in my faculty.

“Computing is not about computers any more.  It is about living,” quoted from Nicholas Negroponte, the founders of One Laptop per Child foundation. Computer is now part of our daily life. With my high passion to this amazing technology, I will try my best to give contributions for the mankind. I want to be one of the few Indonesians who excel in this field. I want to write my name and my country as a part of history of computer technology. It is my biggest lifetime achievement that I’m going to achieve, and I know I can do this.