Hello there! It’s me, Ama. Welcome to my so-so blog. Currently, I’m a second year computer science student at Universitas Indonesia. I recently created this blog to capture my experience, mainly in my journey as a student who wants to pursue many goals. Even though right now I’m still searching for my main goal while trying many different paths.

Why Computer Science?

In this post, I want to tell you the reasons why I chose computer science as my undergraduate major. It’s not a scientific explanation, just a story from someone who has not met her expectations. I think it all started from my naive dream back in the elementary school when I thought I’d like to make my own version of Harvest Moon, a role playing game, for myself. Back then I didn’t know that the process of making a game is so complicated, so I thought that it’s easy. In junior high school, I tried to make a tumblr blog and customized my themes by adding a music player, a ‘troll’ cursor, and changing the menu bar. I felt curious about the system behind the appearance of a website and tried to learn a little bit about web development. From that experience, I realized that creating something with a computer requires a lot of knowledge and patience because we need to tell exactly what the computer should do in a way that the computer can understand. It also opened my mind with the fact that computer is always objective, it is very logical and doesn’t create any drama. If I told the computer to create something and the result is wrong, then it must be some half-baked npm package me that create the fault. Not the other way around.

It turned out that in my high school there is an extracurricular that facilitates students who want to participate in Indonesia’s National Science Olympiad called the Student Club. At first, I didn’t know that there is informatics subject, which is equivalent to computer science, in Indonesia’s National Science Olympiad, but after knowing it I immediately registered the entrance test for the informatics subject. The test included discrete mathematics in the topics of number theory, logical statement, probability, and the basic algorithms. I wasn’t prepared enough for the test but kept on doing the test because YOLO I tried to answer the questions as much as possible that I could. Fortunately, I passed the test even though I placed in the last place (around 12th/13th) from around 40 people. I thought it’s a miracle that I could pass the test even though I only placed last. Just like the selection process of high school admission in my city, I placed in the last place (28th) in the cross zone section (it’s complicated) from around 800+ participants that applied to my high school. Sorry it’s a little bit out of the topics but I believe that there are many prayers that contribute behind my life’s journey.  

After 2 years being a Student Club member, I felt guilty that I didn’t have any achievements in competitive programming competitions that I participated in. I lost my focus on Student Club because of my other activities outside it, while the other members kept focus on studying and succeed in achieving what they deserve. In the end, I learned a lot from Student Club’s studies. My mentors and my friends that are successful made me aware that I don’t know much about competitive programming and I need to learn more if I want to keep on this path. In my senior year, I couldn’t think of any major besides computer science because I already feel attached to it. I love how computers can help people with its persistent computational thinking and its freedom in way of processing something. Then I realized that the best and the nearest computer science major in my country is famous with its high passing grade of admission test, it is the Faculty of Computer Science in Universitas Indonesia. I felt pessimistic after I know about that. So I made some alternative choices of university but still in computer science major. After some phase of studying, tests and admission processes, thankfully Allah showed me the way to pursue my nearest goal at that time.

It’s just the beginning of my path. Hopefully the naive me back in the elementary school is still hoping that I could achieve her dream. Although my passion right now is not into game development, but who knows?