— Nadia Shafa Rahmadiena. —

 Education has played a major role in the modern life to all individuals in the society. It has enabled societies to prosper both socially and economically by enabling them to develop common culture and values. Education nowadays is very promising for future generations. Schools and colleges’ quality are growing simultaneously along with the development of facilities and standards, additional courses seems guaranting to complete the triumph of future’s success, and technologies such as full-length online classes and prosthetic devices also take a huge part in order to equalize the education needs.

But does it feel like what it sounds like?

In reality, students tend to feel more and more stressed as they go into higher degree; despite the fact that their choices of facility to support studying activities gets more and more diverse. With such an excellent picture of education above, what could have possibly gone wrong?

In my point of view, as a student, I have to agree that government had make it easier for us to explore a larger path of knowledge from around the world with their syllabuses and system. But they doesn’t make them easier to accept. Todays system is, I think, built to prescribe students than to assure their future. School forces us to learn more than 7 hours a day. But that isn’t what I concerned at. It forces us to learn things, a lot more than what we keen of. What is the purpose to keep millions of ‘unused’ knowledge if we’re going to push them aside later when we finally find a field that we actually put our hearts in? Yes, it is true that experts said learning is not useless and waste of time, but let’s just tear up the reality. Why would they work on how much an atom weigh when they wanted to be an artist? I think it is wiser to let students choose their field from the very beginning than to force them to literally suck the whole system up. 

And instead, give them more useful knowledge such as how to socialize with people, how to earn the leadership skill, and so on.

On the first day which is December 26^th, we spent our night sleeping in the school classroom because I believe that it was too dark to start walking up to the location.

Second day, we drove all the way to Rancawalini tea garden with an army truck. It was a fun family place if I could say, but sadly it wasn’t our main destination, of course. The seniors told us to do a 20 minutes stretching and rub some oil to our feet as soon as we jumped out of the truck, saying that we would go on a very far walk; and they proved it just right. Carrying a 15 kilograms weighed carrier on our back, we started to walk. The road had its up and down, and so did my voice as they told us to sing along the trip. Even a single breath felt hurt—How could they made us to scream those lyrics? Every some certain period of distance they would gave us time to sit for 5 minutes, and drank mineral water in amount of just 3 water bottle cap (and that was how mineral water had became my favorite drink now). The extreme heat and sweat-producing bright sunlight hath made the walk even harder. I could hear my friends screamed “I can’t continue” dyingly as the road changed from dirts to some ridiculous uphills with their own signature slippery giant rock. But of course, the seniors didn’t gave up on us that early; they pushed us to walk until the first sleeping site. Later at night, we were been told to made biovac out of ropes and raincoat and to built campfire in just 60 minutes. We were divided into 3 groups of 3 people, recorded a 45 minutes of penalty, still failed to built the fire. So we got 6 sets of push-ups along with freezing wind at sleep. It was yet the coldest night I've ever passed.

On the third day, we were forcedly-awake with the sound of horn seniors had prepared. We got 5 sets of push-up later on because of our low awareness at cleaning up the biovacs and packing our belongings back. After that, we first instructed to do morning exercise and meal. And it was the time when I realized, that this kind of mornings will became a routine for us for the next 5 days—what a truly mental breakdown. About 15 minutes after that, we walked down the hill until we find a wood-based shelter. It was the open-navigation lesson. We practiced several times at the Bali Field, but the real condition was just way too hard; we've been asked to find our location in the map, using the coordinate of two mountains standing ahead of us and I still got nothing after the first 1 hour! Furthermore, we were been told to make a plotting to a coordinate that seniors had prepared—and pin our steps to it. The other groups started to leave as I stared blankly at the map hoping my team-mates could find the coordinate. The rain soon started to bawl, and maybe that was when seniors decided to help us. I was happy when they told us to wear our carrier and raincoat because it was time when we finally moved on to the next location, until they stopped us and uttered an order to do 3 sets of push-up. It was my first 3 sets in the middle of pouring rain, carrying a 15 kilograms carrier with such an energy-drained body to live in. But we got to continue. Soon as we arrived at the meeting point, we asked to make the afternoon meal. The meal routines was basically we build a shelter out of woods and raincoat, and we would sit below it, while cooking the materials we gave a day before this basic training. Each person got they own field stove and paraffin, but we did it as a team. They would give us 60 minutes to do the whole thing—meaning the cooking, eating, and packing—and usually we would split the job as this: one person did the rice and water, one person did the side dishes, and one person would be the caretaker of the paraffin and cleaning the surrounding since paraffin was toxic—the person who touched it couldn't mess with food. For the water, we usually fill out water bottle with the ones from river, and that was why we had to cook them first. On the third day, after we finished our afternoon meal, we basically just walk again. But it wasn't a "just", apparently, in fact we walked until the dawn for another crazy distance but we started to get used to it.


Day 4. We woke up in panic and rush, but shockingly the as freezing as the first day, although there were still no team who was succesfully made a campfire. The ground wasn't so steep compared to the first one, but all the wet woods surrounding the place from the rain last afternoon would be our excuse. That day, after we finished the morning routines, we set off to the next location. Heavy carrier and the sun was no longer became our concerns, yet they turned into the deeply muddy track and slippery roots which was difficult because we had to keep our speed in the line; or those seniors would scream at us telling to faster our steps. It would take double energy than keeping up. For instance, my friend once got her feet stuck in the mud—and they couldn't lift it! That is pretty much how deep the mud was. Or if you're still wondering how slippery the road was, I once slipped when trying to step pass a tree root for just landed my tibia on another tree root. It still hurts until 2 days after we came home. Moving on, after about 30 minutes of walk, we stopped on a dimly-lit side of the site and as they announce the changing of the team member. We were instructed to split work, the boys carried a machete to clean the trees, woods, or anything blocked the path, one person carried a compass to keep the walk straight, and one person carried a bundle of rope to tie streamlines; a rope tied on a branch to tell us that we had passed through that path. I'm not quite sure what was the lesson really called, but in a sum, it was for incase we got lost in the woods so we can try to find a way out. And it works! Except we had to do it 2 times because we messed up the coordinate at the first attempt. This one is pretty easy to be memorized since it was when a thorn carved a scar near my left-hand artery which is still there until now. Reminds me of the whole thing each time I looked at it. But everyone had a scar at that time, so tiny ones like this shouldn't be an excuse to gripe. The path was pretty long including a river in the middle of it, and soon as we reach the nearer-end (we couldn't make it to the finish yet) we were forced to run to the sound source. Again, the horn. After some push-up penalty for being late, we asked to do the afternoon routines.