From Nothing to Something

Motivation is very important for us, its can make our spirit is up. I have a lecture in my university who makes my spirit is up and he has many inspiration story. In here, i want to share his great experiences. 

When he was in Junior High School, he didn’t really has a lot of language and artistry talent, but he has a tremendous interest in the subject of Mathematics in the High School. When he was in Senior High School, he was included to the student community who has the best track record.

However one of his expectation, he want to able to speak in English. The distance from home to school is 20 kilometers and the lack of Internet access in the time is not a barrier for him who are eager to speak English. In his spare time, he liked to cycle to his grandfather’s house. He also liked to shop a lot of books in the Shoping Center first because so many people were selling in that area. Start of books published by Hong Kong, Rainbow magazine that tells about the environment and animals and so forth. In essence, he was  motivated to continue read  interested things.

In the story, in high school, he successed to win both general and intends to continue his studies in FKIE Yogyakarta State University (Mathematics Education IKIP Yogyarta). One of the most memorable experiences and he ever got result B in the Statistics lesson. Imagine, only two people at that time, which totaled completed in the course. Finally, he was appointed to be an assistant professor and kept his expectation be able to speak English, because he wished to college and then he would be a master in foreign. TOEFL minimum requirement when it should reach 500, then in the end he was financed by the University to get an English Language course scholarship  in the IKIP Malang for 6 months. It is very unfortunate, one of the bitter struggle which had been done was obtaining a TOEFL score which only 449. Apparently, it's based on some mistakes and he was not aware.

After  6 months course at the IKIP Malang, he got a good result on TOEFL test. The result is 550. In 1996, he got a scholarship from the World Bank to continue his college in England. He was able to complete his college for 1.5 years. Finally, he decided to spent his time to complete his S3. So many stories that he got in the England. Starting from a very formal English language to the unformal language. I think, he was very brave man, because everytime he always around in English by himself.  His routine activity was jogging around the Hospital University of London and heard conversation of villagers and other tourists.

In 2000, he had traveled to many countries. He had been visited in Thailand up to six times, in Japan up to ten times, four times visited to Australia and he also visited in Kamboja. He always told to every audiences that "If we always speak with correct grammar, we don’t be worry with our pronouncation.”  He has many times in the presentation of an international seminar on Mathematics Education.

I think, one conclusion based on his great experience is “from zero to hero”. It means we must struggle to get our dreams come true. From nothing to something. 

Thank you so much, Mr. Marsigit had given the motivation to me.