Wildan and Luluk's essay

Islamic Boarding School toward Students



After graduating from Junior High School, I was sent by my parents to an Islamic boarding school to be the student there while I thought that home was the only place for me to live and grow. However, I couldn’t reject my parents’ want and I finally lived there. In that place, I had to obey several rules. There were some activities that had to be followed. Also, I had to live and share with 7 other students because we were placed in one room. At first, I went through hard time. Then after several years of living there, I got something that I never knew before. I found out that Living in an Islamic boarding school brings positive and negative effects toward students’ life


To start with, living in an Islamic boarding school can make students independent.When they stay at an Islamic boarding school, it means that they do not live with their parents. So, they do not depend on their parents and they will grow to be unspoiled students. Also, living without parents means that they have to take care of themselves and manage all their needs. They have to be wise in managing time because they not only need to fulfill their daily or private needs such as cooking food and washing clothes, but also have to deal with obliged activities in the Islamic boarding school such as pengajian (religion study), jama’ah(together) prayer, ro’an (cleaning together), and so on. They will be accustomed to organizing their lives and they are eventually good at managing their lives. In addition to being good at life management, they will be able to manage their financial well because they have to consider the income and the outcome so that they will make do with the money given by their parents.


Talking about living in an Islamic boarding school is also talking about living together with many friends from diverse backgrounds of custom, knowledge and personality. Therefore, the students will be able to socialize with friends of theirs for sure. Because they live with different people with different characteristics, it makes them understand differences among others. Likewise, living together makes them share and help each other. For instance,when one of them is visited and brought some food by his family, he cannot be stingy and he has to share the food with his friends. Furthermore, if they can socialize well with their friends, there can appear a good friendship among them for good.


On the other hand, students can easily get stressed and frustrated when living in Islamic boarding school. There, several students are placed in one room in which they gather, do their activities together and share spaces with others so that their privacies are limited. Because of that condition, stress and frustration can be what they suffer from. Besides, living together definitely makes them lose their me-time. They cannot do everything they want because they do not live alone. In Islamic boarding school, moreover, there are some strict rules that must be obeyed. If the students do not follow the rules, they will get a punishment. This can press and limit the students unless they can adapt with the rules.


Another negative effect of living in an Islamic boarding school is that the students are vulnerably fazed with bad things by other students. Bad behaviors easily spread from one student to others because they interact and communicate every day so that they will influence each other. For example, if one student often curses or says impolite words, others will tend to do the same because they often hear the curse, get used to it and think that it is okay to do the same. Also, diseases are the things that can easily spread from one to another because they live in the same place and use the same bathroom. They both are the media which spreads germs and viruses among the students. Another thing that can spread among the students is a hedonist lifestyle. This can occur because they live together and there is usually a trending stuff. If some students have the same or similar stuff, other ones will feel that they have to posses that stuff as well. They will do anything to afford the stuff. They might lie to their parents that they need additional money for their studies or, moreover, steal their friends’ money to buy the trending stuff.


Living in an Islamic boarding school can really affect students’ lives. It can be in forms of either positive or negative effects. Therefore, students who are going to stay at an Islamic boarding school should consider both positive and negative effects and be ready to undergo life changes.

Wildan and Didin's essay

Things You Should Do Before Performing a Song

Are you going to sing a song on the stage but you do not know what you should prepare for that? It is not really complicated, actually. You only need to do several things that will build up your singing performance.


First of all, you should choose a right song for you. A right song here means a song that suits your timbre or your tone color. Choose a song that you can adjust your timbre tothe song easily without straining your vocal cord so that the song will sound good and natural. For example, if you have a thin and quite weak voice, choose an easy-listening song that will not make you sing with a powerful voice so that you don’t need to strain your vocal cord. You also need to choose a song that suits your feeling or mood. Since singing is conveying a message, choose a song that you think you can both sing and deliver the message. Don’t try to sing a happy song when you are terribly gloomy because you will break the soul of that song. In addition, sometimes you are asked to sing in a themed stage, party or ceremony. So, you have to select a song that can suit the wanted atmosphere. It will be ridiculous if you sing a welcoming song in a farewell party or a jealousy song in a wedding party.


After picking out a right song, you should practicesinging that song. In this section, you may need a vocal couch or someone that has a good sense of music because you need to find several things here. The most important thing of all is to find the key of the song thatsuits your comfort zone. Comfort zone here means the note area or range of the song that is the same as your vocal range. If you think that the key of the song is too high for you, make it lower and vice versa. Singing too low notes will make your voice sink in the music and singing too high notes will strain your vocal cord or, moreover, you will crack your voice. Another thing that you should do in the practicing ortraining section is to nail the song which means that you have to sing it perfectly and give the soul to the song. When you arepracticing singing, try to feel the meaning of the song and then try to deliver that meaning through your body language and facial expression. Likewise, you should try to make an improvisation to the song. Find some notes that you can change and improve to make themsound different from the original version so that the song will be like your own song. It will be amazing if you can sing better than its original singer. But be careful. Don’t do improvisation too much because the song will lose its beauty and soul if you change many parts of the song.


After training to sing the song, it is time to do rehearsal on the stage. It will help you perform the song well if you know the stage. While rehearsing, you can check the sound system whether it is good or not. You may ask the soundman to equalize the sound system so that its sound will suit your voice. The performance of the sound system will influence the output of your sound that is really vital. Never skip the rehearsal if you want the sound system to improve your voice quality. For instance, if your voice is weak and edgy, you can ask the the soundman to add the bass in the sound system so that your voice will sound stronger. If your voice is husky and you want to make it sound smooth, you can ask the soundman to give an echo effect to the sound system. Another use of rehearsing is to help you get used to the stage. If you know the stage, you can take possession of it so that you will be able to perform your song like a profesional.


Another thing that will support your singing performance is your outfit. Choose an outfit that suits your body shape and your skin color. You should look the best of you. Also, the right outfit will help you to deliver the song. If you are going to sing a song with an upbeat tempo, use a sporty outfit because it will ease you to move and follow the groove of the song. Don’t wear something that will give you a problem moving. If you are going to sing a ballad song, use a tuxedo for male or a gawn or another beautiful outfit for female because ballad songs really uphold the beauty of music so that the beautiful outfit will help you to deliver the beauty of music in a complete package of both sound and look.


The last thing that you should do is vocal warming-up right before performing the song on the stage. You have to do this to improve the quality of your voice and to prevent voice injury. According to Cari Cole, a celebrity vocal coach and artist development expert,the first vocal warm up that you can do is lip trills. Just simply create a sound by loosely placing your lips together or you can try to voice some note by this way. This helps you to relax your lips and warm up your voice. Then, you can do the next vocal warming-up called humming. You can just simply hum. Hum from the low note then go higher and higher. Humming help relax your vocal cord as well as warm-up your voice. The last step that you can do is warming up with an arpeggio. Try to voice the sound [a] in the notes of do mi sol do! sol mi do. Repeat for many times and make the notes become one-note higher in each repetition. This helps you to expand your vocal range and complete your vocal warming-up.


Those are several things that you should do to be able to perform and nail the song on the stage. If those things are done well, your performance will be able to be listened well as well as be watched. Show the world that you can sing like a professional!

Harun and Ika's essay

GLOOMY GLOOMY GLOOMY

Gloomy is a condition in which a person feels down. It is often a product of rumination, the grating mental do-overs of horrible past events, usually with no solution in sight. Being gloomy will cause a person to be depressed. Which will be followed by a willingness to suffer and it might even cause that person to commit suicide.

The gloomy person is easy to get depressed. He/she thinks too much of their problem and will not care about their surrounding because all he/she care is their own suffer. He/she thinks that no one will understand their feeling and none will willingly help them solving their problem. Feeling lonely, he/she won’t show mercy to the other, instead of hurting anyone else. All he/she think is how hard the situation he/she face, and even though he/she has something else that he/she has to do, he/she will not do it.  Moreover, even though he/she does their work, he/she does it incorrectly. That’s because he/she lose their intention of work. If it goes for a long time, he/she will start to feel hopeless. He/she will easily get mad or sad caused by merely small problems. For them, everything looks worse, every problem looks bigger than it should be. Then, he/she will stop to face their life and try to forget their problem by drinking alcohol or consuming drugs instead of facing and solving their problem.

After getting depressed, the gloomy person will choose to suffer. For the first time, he/she just simply late to eat. Then he/she will forget to eat. Later, he/she will hurt themselves. In the beginning he/she would not care about their surrounding, making them being careless and eventually he/she will get the scar incidentally in some accidents like scratches from a thorn, bruises from falling over etc. At first, they will ignore the pain caused by those incidents. But then, he/she will search for more pain by making “incidents” such as scratching their hand with a cutter, or in a serious case, stabbing their body with a knife. For us, it sounds scary, but for them who experience gloomy, it isn’t as bad as their suffering.

In the very critical condition, the gloomy person will commit suicide. It happens because he/she can’t hold their feeling anymore. He/she feels that he/she has nothing to do in this world and he/she doesn’t deserve to live anymore. He/she also feels that none will sad if he/she dies, and anyone will be glad if the gloomy person is gone instead. If this happens, it will be a blow to people who love him/her. Eventually, they will probably get the same condition, gloomy.

So, one should not stay in a gloomy state for a long time. It will cause a negative effect that will be followed by other negative effects. Therefore, beware of being gloomy for it will affect your life.

Harun and Robeto's essay

Effective Ways for Your Words

“The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing.” ― Voltaire. Language is one of the vital important needs of human being. Language is a means for communication, because through the language people could socialize and interact each other. Every language has different vocabularies. As the learners of language, you need to enlarge your vocabularies in order to improve your language thoroughly. There are some effective ways which really can help you to improve your vocabularies.

To begin with, note down some vocabularies that you do not know before. There are so many new vocabularies that are often found in the daily activities. It may be from entertainments, such as from movies, songs, radio broadcasts etc. Also, it can be from conversations with native speakers where you do not always know and understand the word one by one. Sometimes in books, such as novels, magazines or encyclopedias, there are many new vocabularies or some particular unknown terms. After getting those new words, you need to note them down or make a list in a special note book. Be careful not to miss noting down the words or you might actually forget it. The more words you note down, the more vocabularies that you will get next.

After you note down the unfamiliar vocabularies, look up in the dictionary. Having a dictionary is the major solution, because those all vocabularies are clearly listed inside it. All vocabularies for writing or speaking are provided in the dictionary. There are two kinds of dictionaries that we can get in this modern era, manual dictionary and electric dictionary. The electric dictionary is recommended because it is more practical than the manual one. Just install that electric dictionary in mobile phone so you can bring and open it wherever you want.  Do not open your dictionary only for looking up the meaning. The meaning is important but the uses and the pronunciations of those words are also important. Sometimes people use some words incorrectly, it makes the hearers or readers cannot understand what we are saying or writing. Therefore, a good language user not only know what the words mean, but also know how to use, where to use, and when to use the words.

Knowing and noting down those new words are not enough, there must be some practices to really make you memorize and keep them in your brain. You have to apply them in your life, especially in your speaking and writing activities. In term of speaking, you may use those words in your daily conversations, formal meetings, speeches or debate competitions. In term of writing, you can apply them in your diaries, letters, English writing assignments, English writing competitions such as writing an academic article, research, short story or poem. From applying those methods above, you are not only able to enrich your vocabularies but also increase your confidence in front of people.

Eventually, by applying those steps, your vocabularies will increase rapidly. Those steps mentioned above prove to be really useful in improving your vocabularies. As quoted from Dr. Seuss, “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.”

Robeto and Dayanara's essay

Too Much Dollars for University

Education is still primary and important need for human being. Everybody should get the knowledge continually in order to improve and to survive their lives, especially in terms of finance/economy.  Many of students continue their study in the university because it is kind of parameter from the society whether they are qualified or not. Studying in university also becomes such a requirement or a guarantee to get good job outside with high and promising salary. Unfortunately, the needs of being university students are not as easy as what people think. The continual development of university that never stops and spends much money every year really becomes a horrible monster or a huge barrier wall for those who are from low economy level. Nowadays, the tuition fee of every university, either state or private universities always becomes higher from year to year because the government of the university needs to increase some facilities in order to improve the quality of that university itself. For example, to fix some detriments in some buildings, to replace or buy new equipment such as computers, air conditioners, books for the library, LCD etc. The high tuition fee that must be paid for every student, especially for those who are from low economy level, really gives some negative effects both internal and external effects.

The high tuition fee that must be paid by the students gives two internal effects. For the first, it discourages the student’s motivation to continue their study in the university. They will be pessimist and feel there is no hope getting the knowledge there. There are so many students who just passed from the senior high school decide to not study in university because of knowing that high tuition fee, especially the tuition of first registration that they must pay. Then, they prefer getting work immediately, so they can help their family’s economy. There are also many students are quite able to face this kind of problem so they can be student’s of university. At the first time they could pay the registration fee, but later they are burdened by the others needs such as the expensive rent house, the transportation, the daily foods and many books that they have to buy for their lessons. Those needs will make the students feel under pressed and it absolutely disturbs the process of their study. It will decrease their spirit and their passion. Certainly, they will not get maximal score of their assignments or other tests.   

Those internal effects are not only the problem that students face, but there are some external effects which really become more serious problem for their study in the university. Firstly, parents have the important role in education of their children. They have to pay the tuition fee because their children do not work.  The very high tuition in the university can be the heavy burden for the parents. They have to be a hard worker for getting money for their children’s education. Indeed, it makes the students think that they do not have to be burden of their parents. They think that they have to pay their study by themselves. Getting part time jobs possibly can be one of the solutions for them. However, there are good and bad jobs outside. It is something helpful if the students luckily get the good part time jobs such as shop workers, private teachers, translators etc. Otherwise, it becomes bigger problems when the students have to get bad jobs such as prostitute, drugs seller, kidnapper etc. It happens because of the limitation of good jobs, so they do not have another choice to avoid the bad jobs. Moreover, the salary from those part time jobs is not always as what as students need, sometimes they get more but sometimes they get less. They have to wisely spend the money for the need in the university and for their daily needs such as the rent house cost, the transportation, the foods. It possibly happens they do not really care about their health. They may not pay attention with the place where they stay, whether it is clean rent house or not, the important thing is that is cheap rent house. There will be no consideration when they eat their daily foods, whether they are healthy foods or not. If they often eat not healthy foods which are cheaper, some serious illnesses may come into their body eventually.

The very high tuition is profitable thing for the University, but it is not for the students who are from low economy. That unacceptable tuition fee absolutely gives very heavy burden for those poor students and makes them face some bad impacts both inside and outside in their studies. Therefore, the government especially the ministry of education should pay attention seriously in this problem and solve it immediately. All students have the same right to get knowledge in the university, because every student in this country is the agent of change. As quoted from Ir. Soekarno “ Give me a young man, because a young man is able to change the world than a thousand old men”. The students need study, knowledge and also University ,because they have big responsibility for themselves, their family and they are the people who will bring the bright future for this great country.