10 Things I Learned in College

After four years of incridible college life, I have learned few things.
Not including Bandung is a concrete jungle where dreams are made and nothing you can not do in this city.

1. People will stop ask you out if you don't go.

People tend to ask people who come out first on their mind. If we never go everytime we were invited, we will not be on their top of mind. As an introvert who enjoys a "me time", I often had hard times to resist the gravitational pull of my room. But we need to fight, sometimes.

2. If something is wrong with the person in the team, it is the failure for whole team.

In college, we had the opportunity to work with different types of people. In academic life alone, dozens of different groups had been formed. In here, we used to call teammates as "partner". It is very common to talk about partner's behind. Not as a hobby, this is usually done just to meet the outburst, as human being.

After all this time, I just realized that talking about our partner's weaknesses shows the failure of the team. Why? First, we may not well aware to the weaknesses of our own which might also disappointing. Secondly, when we talk about our partner's behind, then there we were talking about our own weaknesses. We are not able to work with our partners well as a team. So I believe, that is the failure for the whole team.

3. You can not please everyone.

No matter how hard you try. Leave it or you will be the only one who left unhappy.

4. When you are too afraid to make mistakes, you might be the one who has hardest time forgiving others' mistakes.

I divided the kind of person who is too afraid to make mistakes into two types:

1) The one who avoids the risks or hardly forgive himself.

2) The one who easily puts the blame on others.

If you are one of them, you might be the one who has hardest time forgiving others' mistakes. And if you are, believe me, the sorrow will always follow.

We really need to learn that we all make mistakes.

5. When people see good, they expect good.

But we don't have to live up people's expectation.

When people told us that we are not as good as they thought we are, ignore it. As long as we don't do bad things, people need to learn that we all have weakness. Secondly, people need to learn that we have our own reason about all the good things we didn't do.

But when people told us that we did a bad thing, that means they believe that we can be better than we are now. A little self-introspection would help, to be a better person we can be. 

6. Peer group is not a social taboo. 

Peer group can help people to form their identity. But it somehow is often misinterpreted as a "block". Children are less likely to accept those who are "different" from them. But teenagers and adults can form maturer social relationship.

Identity is a mental border, not a mental blocker.

Identity borders/defines who we are and what we believe, but it has to have pores as a border.

Karena kelompok sosial yang solid itu bukan tentang berkumpul dan melakukan segala sesuatunya bersama dengan pandangan yang sama, bukan tentang menyatukan semesta kelompok sosial menjadi kesatuan yang dense, tapi adalah tentang bagaimana setiap individu di dalamnya dapat berdifusi secara menyeluruh dan merata ke seluruh area yang tersebar seluas-luasnya.

And peer group itself is a home.

A place we will always come back to.

7. When you are angry, count to ten. When you are very angry, count to hundred.
Some said people show their true self when they are angry.

And that is the scariest line I have ever heard.

I have seen hundreds tragedies when people get angry. We say terrible things, and somehow end up feeling regret. At first I thought the scariest moment is when the most patient people get angry, I feel like I was losing them. But apparently, 

the worst feeling is when you lose yourself.

It is funny to conceive how angry can show people's true self but make them feel they are losing theirselves at the same time. And the solution is simple, don't get angry. Think of million terrible things that you might posibbly say when you are angry, how people judge you because of that, and those that you can never completely undo.  

8. Friendship takes time and work.

"Friendship takes time: time to get to know each other, time to build shared memories, time to invest in each other's growth."

Everyone does understand the concept. But sometimes most people don't realize that it is simply by sending our friends chats or texts, resist the gravitational pull of our confy bed and go to parties, arrange some time for lunch with our friends that don't live across the street, cook some meals and bring them to our school then eat them together with our friends, keep our friends' birthdates in the notes and sending them a short birthday messages. Some of us may not the one who are very fond of the today's social media or technologies. But those may be some tools that we can use to maintain our friendships.

We have to put in the effort to keep (or make) friends.

9. You are what you choose to be.
You are feeling sad about something, you get angry with people, you get good or bad grades, you are always late, you are not a morning person, you are treated good or bad, the major you took, the games that addict you, your successes and failures,

You are not what happened to you, but you are what you choose to be.

You can not blame anyone about all the things that happen to you. Nor your parents, friends, (ex)girl/boyfriend(s), neighborhoods, or else. Don't let your hatred or regrets consume you. Give some time for self reflection and keep moving on.

10. Chemical Engineering does really know how to make me fall in love.