Anatomi Essay Penerima Beasiswa CCIP

Beasiswa CCIP atau Community College Initiative program adalah beasiswa global yang diberikan oleh Pemerintah Amerika. Program beasiswa ini didanai oleh Kementrian Luar Negeri Amerika Serikat. Sebagai penerima beasiswa CCIP tahun ini saya ingin berbagi anatomi essay yang biasanya harus ditulis ketika mengajukan beasiswa CCIP. Mengenali dengan baik program beasiswa  yang akan diikuti sebelum menulis essay adalah hal wajib yang harus dilakukan bagi scholarship seeker. Calon penerima beasiswa CCIP biasanya harus menulis 6 essay yang berkisar antara 150 sampai 800 kata. Essay tersebut meliputi masalah personal, pengetahuan tentang Indonesia dan negara tujuan, jurusan yang akan diambil dan hal-hal yang ingin dipelajari secara mendalam di Amerika. 

Essay pertama berkaitan erat dengan bidang atau jurusan yang akan diambil. Perlu diingat bahwa beasiswa CCIP  bersifat tidak linear misalnya Jika mengambil jurusan Keguruan dan Pendidikan pada saat kuliah dulu dan mengambil jurusan lain untuk program beasiswa ini. Walaupun demikian Kesesuaian antara pengalaman, kegiatan sosial dan pengalaman-pengalaman formal maupun non formal sangat penting. Tanggung jawab professional, kemimpinan dan pengalaman-pengalaman menarik lainnya harus disampaikan dengan sederhana dan apa adanya. Sinkronisasi dan koheren dari hal-hal tersebut adalah poin utama yang harus diperhatikan. 

Essay #1: Within your proposed field of study, please describe your specific area of interest and your related experience.  How would this program relate to, and build on, your past education, training, and/or experience? 

 

Focus of area that I would like to take is journalism. Since I was young, I am very fond of books. I have traveled a lot in the books and map. Starting from a reading lover I become a writer for myself. Later on, I found out and realized that a huge number of resources are mostly in English. It made me take a deep breath and convince myself to focus on languages first. Then at university, I studied language and art. This field of study has led me to become a confident and communicative English speaker and writer. It has opened my eyes and inspired me to be more aware about what is going on in my place, my country and my world. At university, I started my career as a private translater. Mostly I translated tourism brochures and document. Working a lot with various brochures and documents has assisted me to get closer with my surroundings. Indentifying and finding the richness of Lombok and Indonesia. In 2010, these skills, knowledge and character have taken me become one of Indonesian representatives for Australia Indonesia Youth Exchange Program. During this program, each participant was obliged to write a weekly newsletter, to perform Indonesian music and art, to do an internship and community development etc. After completing this program, I start my own publication through my personal blog—Ziadah’s journal. I always spare my time to write among the tight teaching schedule at Nusa Alam—an International School that applies Cambridge Curriculum. It is very surprising, this blog has been seen by more than 10,000 thousand people around the world. The readers mostly from Indonesia, United State, Latvia, Australia, Malaysia, India, Russia, France and Germany, and a few months ago, a Japanese researcher emailed me. He would do his research in Lombok about Sasak Buddhist—the Lombok tribe—and used my blog as reference to conduct his surveys. I was stunned and came with the idea that I had to create a professional media. As a result, I started my own project in August by collecting and editing some pieces of my writing. On 1^st October my online magazine Lombok page.com is officially launched. 

A long those things that I have been working on I also get involved in various youth programs such as International Youth Camp Asean+6 2011, Indonesia Youth Camp 2012,  Conference of Youth Exchange Program Alumni 2013 and Youth Interfaith 2013.

As Community College Initiative program focused on the academic, vocational and cultural studies that requires its participants to have broad knowledge and interest in specific field of studies and also requires its participants to be able to promote their own culture through communicative ways that is eventually expected to firmly build mutual understandings, these goals are pertained with mine and  my background.  In addition I put great expectation that by sharing Indonesia and Lombok through my writings and my photographs in particular to the world through various social medias will benefit me and people in my country. Therefore I believe Community College Initiative program will provide my needs as its goals and mine are in agreement.

Pada essay kedua kandidat menjelaskan seraca rinci rencana jangka pendek dan jangka panjang terkait dengan tujuan personal dan profesional. Jelaskan pula rencana apa yang akan dilakukan dalam kurun waktu 5-10 setelah kembali dari Amerika dan menghubungkannya dengan keterampilan dan pengetahuan yang bisa didapatkan dengan mengikuti CCIP. 

Essay #2:Please describe your future professional and personal goals.  How would this program help you to achieve these goals?

Since I have wide range of interest, I have not decided yet what career path that I have to take in the future. In the short run, I hope to have opportunity to improving and sharpening my personal skills and ability in the field of journalism abroad. Then, my options will be working with non-profit organization, entering social media and publishing world, and continuing my personal project. To work on these options, it requires me to sharpen each element of language skills, to train my independence and to build up positive characters within myself. By getting involved in one year program abroad definitely will strengthen myself discipline, languages, communicative skills and my critical thinking which lead me to my professional and personal goals. Through my writings, photographs and the high will to share, I put a massive expectation that what I am doing and I will be doing in the short term and long term would benefit my country, my island, my family and myself.

Dalam menulis essay ketiga diharuskan untuk menulis pengalaman menantang dan berbagai rintangan yang pernah dialami baik itu berkaitan dengan masalah pribadi, sekolah, kampus atau pekerjaan. Dalam menulis essay ini kandidat tidak harus memiliki cerita yang sangat luar biasa. Kejujuran sangat diutamakan. Ketika menulis bagian ini dan kembali membacanya, kandidat bisa merasakan semangat dan perjuangan yang telah membangunnya untuk menjadi seseorang yang lebih baik.

Essay #3:Please describe a problem or challenging situation in your educational, professional, or personal life and describe how you resolved it.

The darkest point in my life is when my late father had to face bankruptcy of his business. He lost his job and he had to go to another country to work as a driver.  My family had to struggle a lot. My mom was working very hard to help my dad to fulfill family needs. It was getting worse and was worsened by a civil disturbance that happened in Lombok. A day before the riot between Christians and Muslims in Lombok in 2001, our Christian neighbor came to our house to ask for help to put his car in our garage before he fled. My mom agreed to help them. The next day, it was a disaster for my family, some random people came to my house wanted to burn it down. I saw how strong my mom was to protect me and my siblings without my dad in her side. The following year, we received news that my father passed away in the car accident. It was very hard blow for my family. However, those things were a turning point of my life. It has thought me a lot about hard work, brave, tolerance, peace and independent as a woman.  These series of events were giving me a force to positively act upon them and up on my life.

Sedangkan pada essay keempat kandidat perlu menekankan perannya dalam masyarakat setelah mengikuti program beasiswa dan memaparkan keterampilan dan pengembangan personal maupun professional yang bisa dicapai dengan mengikuti program ini. Ceritakan mengapa program ini cocok untuk kandidat dan kaitannya dengan daerah, propinsi atau Indonesia pada umumnya. 

Essay #4: If you participate in this program, how do you think your contributions to your community will be different in five years?  

Through this non-degree program of academic, vocational, and cultural studies, the improvement and the development of my skills related to the focus area and also personal experience that I will have experience would shape my characters and ability which will lead me to gain more achievement in the next five years. In five years, I believe I will have my online magazine printed and it will have read by more than hundred thousand people around the world that will help my island and my country in general in promoting its culture, history and tourism. 

Dalam menuliskan essay kelima kandidat diharapakan untuk memiliki pengetahuan tentang negaranya sendiri dan negara tujuan. Jika belum mengetahui dengan pasti sebaiknya melakukan internet research tentang negara tujuan atau bertanya kepada alumni atau teman yang pernah mendapatkan beasiswa di negara tujuan, misalnya tentang budaya pendidikan dan Community College di US, budaya kerja, kehidupan sosial di sana dan berbagai hal menarik lainnya. Pengetahuan tersebut akan membantu kandidat untuk mendapatkan gambaran yang jelas tentang hal apa yang ingin dipelajari secara mendalam. Kandidat bisa memulai essay dengan memaparkan bagaimana pendidikan, kehidupan akademik atau budaya kerja di US berbeda dengan negara-negara lainnya. Memaparkan bagaimana kehiduapan akademik dan budaya pendidikan dengan jurusan yang akan diambil juga merupakan nilai tambah utama. Terkait dengan pengetahuan tentang Indonesia, akan lebih baik lagi jika kandidat bisa memiliki keterampilan seperti memasak makanan-makanan khas Indonesia, menari dan memiliki pengetahuan umum tentang sejarah, budaya dan kearifan lokal dan nasional. Selain terkait masalah konten, essay haruslah ditulis dengan bahasa yang baik dan benar. Untuk penulisan essay yang mencapai 800 kata sebaiknya mengikuti kerangka essay yang biasanya terdiri dari introduction yang mencakup thesis statement, kemudian memetakannyke dalam beberapa paragraph dan mendukung setiap thesis statement dengan kalimat-kalimat pendukung yang lebih spesifik. Pada paragraph akhir atau bagian kesimpulan tambahan harapan dan keyakinan untuk mengikuti program beasiswa secara singkat. 

Essay #5: 

a.)What part of U.S. culture are you eager to experience? Why?

b.)  What would you like to share about your country and its culture with the people you meet who may have limited knowledge about it? 

As one of the most sophisticated countries in the world, USA is a representative country that could give comprehensive picture of western culture. If I have a golden opportunity to involve in Community College Initiative Program, I would love to experience the following list of experience. Those are college atmosphere, work experience, American family, the sense of native English and travel. 

Being a collage foreign student in USA is a great opportunity to experience American school life and school system with its qualified standard since USA is also known as one of the best education providers in the world. Being a part of school community will enhancing and deepening theories, knowledge and provide social activities. Meeting new teachers, new classmates in collage community will help me to exchange some information and idea that are not only related to school life.

Besides experiencing an academic life, it will be beneficial to do an internship or a visit to a particular work place in order to feel the ambience of American work culture. As stated in various books of cross cultural understanding, American work etiquette is discipline and professional. Furthermore, they provides a great number of companies to do an internship. Therefore, direct experience in work place would strengthen my work pattern and etiquette. 

Studying in USA would not be perfect without directly being a member of American family life. Through experiencing real life of American family and witnessing how the family member interacts would make me able to deeply comprehend their thinking, ideas and their attitude upon issues and choices. Furthermore, the exposure of English environment at school, work place and in the family would make me able to obtain the sense of English in its native country. As a lot of advantages that I would gain by getting involved in this program, I am also really eager to travel to USA since it is a country that I have not visited yet.

Parting from the list that I would like to learn above, at the same time I would also like to share my own Art and culture with American citizens. This art and culture covers daily life, wedding, fashion, celebration, beautiful places, work habit, stereotype, learning etiquette, languages, indigenous people who live in Indonesia, belief and etc.  This knowledge would be shared through various activities e.g cultural performances, discussion and natural interaction. 

I believe this one year program would allow me to witnesses the various aspects of American life and allow me to share the diversity of Indonesia as well as to get Lombok more globalized. 

Pada essay terakhir kandidat diharuskan untuk memaparkan hambatan dan tantangan yang berarti ketika menjalankan program beasiswa di negara tujuan.  Hambatan dan tantangan setiap orang bisa jadi berbeda-beda mulai dari masalah makanan, homesick, cuaca, budaya dan sebagainya. Saat menjelaskan cara untuk menghadapi tantangan tersebut sebaiknya diceritakan dengan detail.

Essay #6:

What do you think will be most difficult about being away from your home for a year?  What steps will you take to overcome these difficulties?

I have been away from home for about four months before. I was fine and I did not find any serious difficulties. Consider the CCIP runs for a year; I think I will get homesick especially in Hari Raya such Idul Fitri and Idul Adha. To overcome this problem I think I would simply chat via face book or make video call with my family. Another thing that I would do on that day I would try to find Muslim community in the college and join with them for the celebration.

Tahap terakhir dari menulis essay adalah koreksi. Sebaiknya koreksilah essay setelah sehari atau dua hari penulisan untuk lebih memudahkan proses pengeditan. Selamat menulis! semoga kamu menjadi penerima beasiswa CCIP selanjutnya. Untuk informasi lebih lanjut mengenai beasiswa CCIP silahkan kujungi  www.aminef.or.id