Undergraduate Journey [II]: Community ft. Troy & Abed
B.Sc Mechanical Engineering ITB: A review of my 2nd semester
After adjusting to the academic part of university, my next goal was to expand my connections. Other than meeting new people from within my own major through group projects and study sessions, I believed that exploring beyond my direct study major circle is important as to increase the diversity in knowledge and personalities that I interact with.
Classes taken:
Mathematics II ; Physics II ; Statics ; Introduction to Engineering & Design ; TTKI Bahasa Indonesia ; English
The easiest way to do this in my opinion was to join student clubs that aligns with my interests, and with that I decided to join the volleyball club (UBV ITB), debate club (SEF ITB), and a professional mechanical engineering association (IMechE ITB SC). I had also applied for the economic study & investing club (KSEP ITB) but because of the workload given, I decided to rank them in order of importance and thus prioritize the other clubs first.
Highlight #1: Playing volleyball together [Volleyball Club ITB]
Ever since watching the anime Haikyuu, I have been obsessed with playing volleyball and I wanted to continue playing the sport into university as a form of exercise. However, after half a year of never touching the ball along with the shear talent that the ITB volleyball team brings along, it was clear that they played the sport to a much higher quality. Nonetheless, I still joined as many practices as possible as an opposite spiker and saw them as players to strive to become (as well as competition to overcome).
Highlight #2: Event Division for an International Paper Competition
As part of Institution of Mechanical Engineers ITB Student Chapter (IMechE ITB), I took an active role in developing IMechE ITB’s first ever competition by creating and formatting the paper guidelines and procedures. The paper theme itself of “Optimizing the Transition Towards Industry 4.0 in Southeast Asia’s Automotive Industry”, was also a topic that I myself find crucial to analyze which is why it was such a delight to read some of the submissions themselves and differing opinions on the topic.
Highlight #3: Data Division for a National Debate Competition
Upon joining the debate SEF ITB club, I realized that I had a very limited understanding in the professional rules of debate forums e.g. judge criteria, argumentative structures, developing arguments together as a team etc.— in truth I just enjoyed a vibrant verbal spar. However, as I lacked expertise in the formal debating side, I focused on giving value to the club by helping them in their national Ganesha Open debate competition through the monitoring of participant score data. To do so, a widely used debate monitoring program was taught to us and despite never having used it before, I was able to adjust and learn quickly enough. After that, it was just a matter of enjoying the show that the participants performed, in which they all gave valiant effort throughout.
