A Reflection on My Journey at UIII 

By Mohammad Dawood Alkozay (M.A in Education batch 4 student)

 

I still remember, as if it happened only yesterday, the day I held my ticket and my visa in my hand, ready to travel to Indonesia. That feeling has not faded from my memory even a little bit, although now, when I look back, I cannot believe that it has already been two years since that day. Time here has passed so fast, faster than I ever expected. Maybe it is because Indonesia does not have four different seasons like my home country, so the days blend into each other without me noticing. Or maybe, and I think this is the real reason, it is because I have been happier here than I thought I would be, and happiness always makes time move quickly without permission.

Since I was young, it had always been my dream to study abroad one day and to know, with my own eyes and ears, what it truly means to live inside an international community, surrounded by people from every corner of the world. I have always held the belief that human beings do not learn only from the pages of a book. We learn, perhaps even more, from experience and from meeting people who are different from us. To me, every person is like a book waiting to be read, because every person carries their own ideas and their own beliefs inside them, and once we open ourselves to interaction with them, a new window opens in our mind that shows us a way of thinking we had never considered before.

Honestly speaking, when I first started this program, I was not very interested in the field of Education itself. My heart and my mind were somewhere else. But slowly, day by day, I began to learn things that I could never have learned if I had not come to Indonesia. Most of what I gained did not come only from my lecturers or from the articles I read, though those were valuable too, but from the interactions I had with different individuals around me. I built friendships here, real friendships, the kind that I believe will remain with me until the end of my life. At the same time, the lessons I received from my professors and from the books they gave me opened new horizons in the way I see the world. They deepened my understanding of education, of how important it is for mankind, and of how much it contributes to shaping individuals who can, in turn, shape a better society.

Beyond the classroom, living in Indonesia taught me lessons of a more practical kind, lessons that no amount of money could ever buy, no matter how much I paid for my studies. Here, I learned the value of things I had always taken for granted back home. Cooking my own food, washing my own clothes, cleaning my own room, going out to buy groceries, all these small and ordinary tasks made me finally understand how much time and effort my mother and my sisters had been saving for me all those years, quietly, without me ever noticing. I did not know the true value of what they did for me until I had to do it all by myself, far away from them. There is a well-known saying in the Persian language, which, translated simply, means that a man cannot become a complete man without traveling. I feel, now, that I have become more complete, and that I have gained a kind of maturity that I believe will help me live a happier and more grounded life once I return to my country.

I truly believe that studying here will open many doors for me in the future, even though I come from a country that has suffered from war for a long time, where finding proper employment is never an easy task. But even if those doors do not open as I hope, I will never regret the decision I made to come and study at UIII. What I have learned here, I would not exchange for millions of dollars. I am deeply thankful to the administration of UIII for giving me this opportunity, and I am equally thankful to my instructors, who I once thought were not doing enough to help me, but whom I later understood were doing exactly what a teacher should do.

I remember, for instance, during my thesis writing I went to my first thesis supervisor, with a question about which theory I should use for my research. Instead of simply telling me the answer, he would point to a book on his shelf and ask me to read it myself. At first, I found this frustrating, even a little strange, and I wondered why he would not simply name the correct theory and save my time. It was only later that I came to understand that what he was doing was, in fact, the right way to teach. By guiding me toward books instead of giving me easy answers, he was showing me the most practical way to learn how to think and work as a proper researcher. I once believed this method was a waste of time, but now I know how much I gained from those very books he recommended. There are many more stories like this one that I wish I could share, but the limits of this reflection do not allow me to write them all here.

As I sit here now, trying to gather all these memories into words, I realize that no reflection, however long, could ever truly capture what these years in Indonesia have given me. UIII was not only a place where I studied for a degree; it was a place where I grew, quietly and slowly, into a person I did not know I could become. I came here as a student searching for knowledge, but I am leaving as someone who has also found friendship, patience, humility, and a deeper love for learning itself. Whatever the future holds for me, whether the doors of opportunity open easily or not, I will always carry this chapter of my life close to my heart. To Indonesia, to UIII, and to everyone who walked a part of this journey with me, I owe a debt of gratitude that words alone cannot repay.