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Throw Your Applications to The Wind (Pt. 1 & 2)

6 Agustus 2014   20:36 Diperbarui: 18 Juni 2015   04:15 102
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Kompasiana adalah platform blog. Konten ini menjadi tanggung jawab bloger dan tidak mewakili pandangan redaksi Kompas.

asking: did I write his email address correctly?

wondering: did I write the email politely? anything rude?

… did I REALLY click SEND?}

until I stop myself

When a week or so has passed, another loop is automatically activated:

repeat{

give me an answer, please!

rejection is fine, too

(it is NOT, actually)}

until I give up. #kByeThx

Part 2: My Problem, My Way

During that “Waiting for Professor Picture’s Elusive Reply” era, I became more informed (and more interested at well) about studying in the US, particularly under the Fulbright scholarship scheme. I must say that it was enormously encouraging to know a person who had been a Fulbrighter. I used to think that Fulbright had been like something next to impossible for me. In mycase, the person was a bright colleague of mine who was a faculty at the same department with me. I owe him so much, in the sense that he triggered me to think “I can”. I mean, if he had been able to qualify for the Fulbright scholarship, why should I not stand a chance, too? I heard in myself a voice… like your oldest friend, just trust The Voice Within (Aguilera, 2002).



I can’t deny the prestige of Fulbright (although one day I told a friend who had been living in the US for years, “Hey, I’ve got Fulbright scholarship!”, then she answered, “What is that?”… gurrrl, kByeThx), but what attracted me the most was the fact that “they” would help us applying to 5 universities. Before applying, “they” would have even considered our potential through our academic history, CV, test scores, etc. in order to find the universities that were within our league. (I did not even know who “they” were. Fulbright? AMINEF? Wait, were they even different?) I am kind of the person who often finds dealing with documents are tedious. Therefore, getting help for applying to 5 (yes, FIVE) universities for me was a great thing. It sounded like a “Buy 1, Get 5, Pay 0” promo.

It was around March 2013. Days were both crawling slowly and sprinting rapidly, if you know what I mean. They were crawling when I was expecting for Professor Picture’s reply. At the same time, they were somehow sprinting as well when I was thinking about the Fulbright deadline (April 15, 2013) that was lurking nearer day by day.

Most of the documents required for Fulbright submission were quite easy to obtain, like the copies of transcripts, certificates of degree, TOEFL result, etc. The most difficult requirements are, in exponentially increasing order of difficulty, CV, Study Objective, and Research Proposal.

*CV

My Problem: how to put “everything” into it without loolike like any of these: lengthy, a jumbled mess, boring, overly boastful, desperately seeking for attention.

My Way: I tried to partition my CV into distinct parts. For example, I made a “Publication” section, which I further divided into several sub-sections, such as: Theses, Book, Journal Papers, Refereed Conference Papers, etc. In my opinion, the partitions make it easier for readers to spot and check a specific part of my CV. Looking at my final CV, I wish I could have made it look more ‘integrated’, despite of the partitions I had made. Oh, by the way, no pictures or images allowed on CV, so don’t need to worry about background picture, cute decorative images, etc.

*STUDY OBJECTIVE

My Problem: what should I write? To be very honest, I only wanted to study, live, and travel abroad (which did not have to be USA). And, oh, to get that good-looking “Ph.D.” title, of course.

My Way: as much as I hate embellishment (I suddenly realized that the word ‘embel-embel’ in Indonesian language might stem from this English word), it was obvious that I could defiitely not state my objectives as bluntly as they actually were. Since I was working as a lecturer, I made it as the starting point for writing the objectives. I tried to comply the study objectives with the “Three Essential Obligations of a Lecturer (in Indonesia)”, i.e. teaching, research, and social contribution.

I tried to describe how this Ph.D. study (specifically in a US university and particularly under the Fulbright scholarship scheme) would support my performance in teaching, conducting research, and giving social contribution. I got the tip which suggested to mention specific professors of US universities whose research topics matched our interest.

For this study objective essay, there was a word limitation, i.e. no more than 500 words. In writing essays, I usually write the initial draft without thinking about that limit. I let all ideas be explored and flow into the writing, without filtering whether or not the ideas were really either important or impressive. If I remember correctly, my initial essay was completed at more than 800 words; which is 160% of the given limit.

Afterwards, I pruned the essay by cutting back unimportant ideas or lengthy sentences, merging sentences, compacting sentences, and rearranging the paragraphs. Of course, once you cut a sentence or two, you will need to ‘stitch’ back the remaining sentences into a seamless flow. Finally, after the length has been below the limit, do not forget to check for typos, misspelled words, grammatical errors.

*RESEARCH PROPOSAL

My Problem: I kept on telling myself, “Hmm… I’ll do this later”, until there was not enough time left to afford another “later”

My Way: I browsed through professors’ webpages to find their papers that matched my interest. Since I was mostly looking at the paper titles, I felt like I had found and downloaded enough papers as the resources for writing my proposal. Thus, for several weeks, I felt contentedly safe just by collecting the papers whose titles sound compatible with my interest. I had not read more deeply into those papers, because I believed that “later” never ceased to exist.

It went on that way until about three weeks before the Fulbright deadline (April, 15). I suddenly realized that reading papers, let alone understanding them and coming up with an idea for my own proposal, required a lot of time. I felt like… THUNDER! (East 17, 1994).



Come to think about the process of writing my research proposal, this comes up in my head and which becomes the title for Part 3http://edukasi.kompasiana.com/2014/08/07/throw-your-applications-to-the-wind-pt-3-678631.html

If I Could Turn Back The Hands of Time (Kelly, 1998)


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