5 Steps that I Do as a Student to Advance the World

5 Steps that I Do as a Student to Advance the World

By: SRI HINDRIYASTUTI

If there are people who asked me “who are you?”. I will answered “I am woman who has big motivation and million of dreams”. That is me. My family live modestly, and I have lovely parents and a sister. My father was a gardener in elementary school of Sembaturagung 01 elementary school. He was inaugurated as a civil servant in 1987, the same years when I was born. My father retired from his job last years in 2007. My mother sold Tempeh to help my father. Even just junior high school graduate, my father is very concern about education. He told me “Do not be inferior, You are the best. Even you a woman, show to everyone that you can do what a man can do. Do not feel lose with man, Woman can change the world to be better, remember! More glory the woman in a country, more glory the Country is.” The beautiful world from my Father makes me realize, that women have the same opportunity with a man to give the real contribution for the world. Then, I grow up to be a woman who has million of dreams.
Everyone has dreams, whatever her/ his background is. Old or Young, rich or poor, all of them have the same right to have dreams. In my village, there is stigma that women are not proper to get high education. Almost all my friends (women) in my village have married and feed their babies. Almost all of them got education up to junior high school only, just one or two who continued to senior high school and become a college student, including me. In my village, people think that it is very strange if ladies get high education. I want to show them that women have the same opportunity with men. And once day it will establish a new paradigm in my village that a woman is proper to get high education.
Issue of gender is one of recent issues in Indonesia. There are women who live like in a jail. They live in fettered. They do not have their right, including education opportunity. I understand that to change that stigma, is not easy. But I believe that everything would be change if we try to change it. Understanding about gender issues is not only happened as my village’s problems but also as my country’s problem. So, I try step by step to do some action as the real contribution for society. I do some action in my campus and extra campus because I have to improve my ability in all aspects so that I can change that opinion.

a. I try to be independent person
In my study, since I do not want to depend on my parents fully, and to minimize my parents’ burden, I try to take a part time work as a private teacher in chemistry (my favorite subject when I was SMA), physics and mathematic for Senior High School students. I also work as a private teacher to teach elementary school students to read AL-Qur’an up to now. Besides that, I also teach at TPQ (Al-Qur’an Learning Center) near my lodging house in Semarang. This TPQ is organized by moslem student community of Nursing Science and Public Health faculty of UNDIP. We are the volunteers to teach all children in that area. It is a free program for children from us. This program trains me to be a calm person and to love children so much. It also teaches me to become a patient person.
From the scholarship and salary I have got, I can take some courses (English and Japanese), follow training programs and seminars, pays my tuition fees every semester. Besides, I can also pay my rent for my lodge every year. However, because I have to prepare a lot of fund for my thesis this year and my father had retired in 2007, I delayed my English course since it charges me a lot and plan to continue it after I graduate. Now I still follow Japanese course. After I finished my first step, actually I decided to stop. Yet, the “Sensei”/ teacher offered me to continue to the next step freely. He said that I have big willingness to study Japanese. Because the chance never comes twice, I received his offer. So, until now, I am still studying Japanese freely. How lucky I am!

b. To change the world we have to be open minded
The world need people who are open minded. For that, I try to wider my knowledge with join some organizations extra and intra campus. Talking about my organizations, in my collage I started to be a staff of Human Resources and Organization Development Department (POSDM) of student nursing council of Diponegoro University in 2006, and then the secretary of advocate department in 2007. Next, I was elected as the president of student nursing council in 2008. As a president, I try to make my organization environment as my second family. As the leader, I am always ready to be my staff’s sister to hear their complaint and acts as well as a consultant. I am opened to any criticisms from everyone. I realize that president is nothing without the other components. I love all of my members in student nursing council so much. Beside of that, I also join some extra college organization. In the 3rd year of my study, I got the best student in 2008 all over nursing students in UNDIP.
I also become the coordinator of External and Social Department of National Organization until 2009 (it was inaugurated on May 13th 2007 in Jakarta). As coordinator of External and social department of ILMIKI, I try to establish networking. By joining the organization, I get more experiences. I learn how to establish networking and communicate with others well. I also find my close friends, who have the same spirit with me – having the same vision and mission, big passion, big dreams. It is also the one who faces the world optimistically and never gives up. I get a lot of knowledge that will be useful for real my life later. In real life, knowing many things makes us broad minded and can lead our live easier as well as appreciate others better. Besides, it will also be easy for us to cooperate with others or work in a team.

c. As a student, I try to give real contribution for my profession
In many other countries, a nurse (especially who has RN title) is an honourable profession. This is very different with the condition in Indonesia today, even we know that the most health worker is nurses. We can imagine if this profession is buried, so there will be many patient unthreatened. Although there are people who says that nurse is a bad profession, but I always keep in my mind that I can improve the condition to make this profession as an honourable profession. So that, as student of nursing, some action that I had played for Nursing Profession is made audience with the leader of PPNI (Nursing Profession’s Organization) In Central Java (Mss Suharsih S.KM., M.Kes) to discuss about nursing law and some issue which is happened in nursing area. I also made conference with some public media like SOROT magazine, TV-ku, RRI radio to explain about issue of the Diploma IV (D IV program) of nursing education field.

d. As a student, I try to give the real contribution for Indonesia and the World in TBC cases
There are some issues faced by Indonesia such as global warming, the increase of HIV sufferers, malnutrirtion in Children and also tuberculosis (TBC), I would like to explain about TBC. Now, Indonesia is in the third rank of the number of TBC sufferers in the world. Every year, 500 cases appear as new cases and more than 140 thousands of sufferers are died. TBC is very easy to spread out. It can infect people easily by air. Unfortunately, the societies still do not have enough understanding about this disease. They still consider that TBC is not harmful.
I realize about this condition, My friends and I try to make a community group for screening and giving health education to TBC sufferers in Jangli Krajan Village. Beyond our expectation, the phenomena of Ice Mount do not only happen to HIV cases, but also to this Disease. When we tried to make a database of the TBC sufferers of those villages by collecting data from Ngesrep Public Health Centre (Puskesmas Ngesrep), we just found about 18 persons who are infected by TBC. However, in a fact, when we checked to the community directly, there were many families whose members are infected by the disease too. It is terrible I think. Unfortunately, no medical workers come to them and give them information about this disease. They just supply the medication if there are some people go to public health centre and are positively diagnosed as the TBC sufferers. It indicates that preventive program is not the priority. The medical workers still focus to heal it. They keep themselves away from doing actions to prevent the disease or keep it away from infecting other people.
Because of this reason, my friends and I try to contribute something to handle this condition. By some activities that we do, we hope that it will inspire many other medical workers to improve their services to society. There is a wise word which says that the best of us is the most contributing to others. My friends and I try to touch the community directly. And we hope that one day; there is awareness from the society and medical workers of how important a preventive program is. Next step, we hope that this action can minimize the proportion of TBC in Indonesia. In 2010, I hope that Indonesia will not be in the top 3 for the TBC prevalence in the world. I do hope so.

e. We can change the world by writing
In all my life, I try not to waste my time. If there is no activity, I spend my time to write. I write anything like essays, research project, short stories, poems, and join some writing competitions. I got the top five of Essay competition over Central Java and Jogjakarta in 2004. In college, I got the 2nd Winner of writing competition about Jilbab(Veil) all over Semarang in 2007, and in 2008, I got the finalist of National Research and Non Research Competition of National nursing student in Jogjakarta. Beside of that, I also joint Other Writing Competition. Although I have failed for many times, I never give up and never surrender. I realize that there are many successful writers that begin their career from zero and get failed thousands of time in their process. I realize that to be successful is not easy. I am sure that I can blow up nursing science by writing. I believe that failure is a part of success and God will give us the best only if we try hard. So, I just try to maximize what I can do by joining some journalism training or other activities about writing.
My parents and everyone around me teach me many things. They teach me how to be strong woman, how to be a wise and calm person and how to be an honest human being. They teach me how to keep smiling while facing many problems. They teach me how to be patient and never give up in doing something, be loyal and make a sacrifice to someone else. And, the most important thing, they teach me how to love and care everyone. No exception, whatever his/ her background is.
I have grown up to be a woman who has millions of dreams. Some people said that I am just “a dreamer”. However, I believe that there is nothing impossible. And I will not give up to make my dreams (not only my dreams, but also my parents dreams) come true. Think globally and act locally to get the success is always there in my mind. I believe that everything is possible. I also believe that where there is a will, there is always a way.
Those are all of my effort as student to change the world to be better. In all of my condition, I have to try and try giving the best for everyone around me. I am sure if we do something seriously, we will give the best result. What have I do, have not change the world fully, but I believe if there are awareness from youth generation about how important their roles are, so the world will be better. Amin.


ORIGINAL by:
SRI HINDRIYASTUTI
NURSING SCIENCE STUDY PROGRAM
DIPONEGORO UNIVERSITY
SEMARANG