Another one on the universe telling me to do PhD

I’m going to keep posting these “signs” just to remind myself or rather keep motivating myself that I’m really meant to do this :)

 

So, another sign came when I was approached by a student who wants to continue studying in Australia upon graduation from high school/SMA. Compared to my other students of his age, he was quite simple, yet, I can probably say he is the smartest. He actually received a scholarship from the Ministry of Education Indonesia to study overseas because he won this international competition, where he designed a device to help rice farmers obtain more yield (or something like that :D). Aaand.. HE GOT AN OFFICIAL PATENT OF THIS PRODUCT. How cool is that, having your own patent at 17 years old???

 

So anyway, he came to me with the regular application documents. On the application form, there’s a statement to provide research plan – but that’s only for (postgraduate) research students. But he missed that information, and came to me with not one, but TWO research proposals that he plans to undertake during his Bachelor degree. This. Is. Phenomenal.

 

I mean, usually my students just come without knowing what they want to do, or even if they do, research is the last thing on their minds. Because anyway, in Australia, research such as final project or skripsi is an optional component. So you graduate after 3 years of study with a Bachelor degree. If you want to do research, then you do it for 1 extra year – called the honours year – upon which your degree would be Bachelor of Honours. Some of them don’t even know how to fill in the application form, or just too lazy to do things for themselves. Well, I guess because most of the kids who come to me are from privileged background where they’ve had people do things for them all their lives.

 

So yeah, that was another “sign of the universe” for me. If this young 17-year-old can be so enthusiastic and able to make 2 research proposals for a research project that he won’t undertake until 3.5 years later, then what’s delaying me writing that 1-2 page proposals that’s supposed to be sent my next month, for research to be done in 2014???

 

*whips self*