Introduction
The long battle has finally ended. In the end I won it, but not by my own strength. It is all thanks to GOD that I managed to pass this battle on two fronts. Between the last time I posted here and today, other than doing my thesis, I also had to coordinate and join a specially selected team from Agaphe choir to do a joint recording with some other choirs (Zion). It took a great amount of my time and my strength, I had to not only give it my all, but give more, 100% for the choir recording and 100% for my thesis, making it a 200% effort for this battle.
Last week was the hardest week of the battle…
Monday, October 3rd, 2005
We headed to the studio to do our first recording session. Thanks to GOD, we managed to finish 7 songs in about 3 hours, a lot faster than the original plan. We first plan to record 4 songs in this first session, and the other 5 on the next. But since we finished all 7 songs where we had to join with Zion, for the next only Agaphe had to record the remaining 2 songs. Earlier that day, I also went to campus to consult my lecturer on my thesis book. I’ve had my sleepless nights typing the book, and the book was finally finished on that day. I went to my lecturer and he pointed out that there was about 20 pages with mistakes among the 180-pages book I made. So I sent the other 160 pages to a copy centre and took home the other 20 pages for correction.
Tuesday, October 4th, 2005
I woke up early morning to correct those incorrect 20 pages and reprint them. After that, I went to the copy centre to copy those 20 pages and append them to the other 160 pages. I had to carry five copies of the book, so it was a hard work to carry up about 900 pages of A4 paper from the copy centre to the faculty office on the 3rd floor. By 3.30 PM, I managed to gather all the requirements for the book submission, including my latest grade transcript and other forms and papers. So I submitted them to the office and went home, quickly stumbling into my bed to take a long rest. The deadline for the book submission was actually on October 5th, but I didn’t want to submit it on the deadline day, in case that something went wrong, I still have a day to fix it if I submit it the day before.
Thursday, October 6th, 2005
The second recording session. I was exhausted from all the thesis work, so all I did this day was to see my friends to the studio and waited while they were recording. I was too tired to sing, and my voice was absurd. Even if I had my voice, I couldn’t sing that final song because I missed the practice for that one, so it’s better to leave it to the ones who can really sing that. In the end of the day, we finished the entire recording superbly. Then it was long days of resting until the final battle.
Tuesday, October 11th, 2005
Thesis Judgement day. Not too much to say about this one. My presentation went well, and I went through the first hour of the Q&A session quite well. The judges managed to find my weakness and bombard me to the point where I couldn’t reply at all during the final 30 minutes. I was heck scared when they said that the Q&A was over and they will discuss about my result: pass or not. I was afraid to fail, and I closed my eyes in fear when the lead judge said, “Nathan, after discussing and judging your thesis, we conclude today that you have…”
“…passed the thesis judgement, and now you are a Bachelor of Information Engineering (IT), congratulations”. I sighed a breath of relief when I heard that, and the judges could well see that I was nervous. So they came to me and shake my hand to congratulate me. According to one of my lecturers, I got a B+ for my thesis (where I actually asked GOD for just a B mark). That means my final GPA will be about 3.40, not bad at all. Now I can take a little rest from all this, and maybe try to find a job vacancy for next year. Until Christmas, I will just focus on church activities and Christmas event preparations.
Thanks to GOD and all of my friends who have abled me to go this far. You have my credits.
Conclusion
This is not just a graduation from my studies, but also a graduation of my services to GOD during September. That month I sang in two sessions of Stephen Tong’s Surabaya Crusade and I also sang in four Sunday Services, three of them with the choir, and the other one as a backing vocals. People say that hard work for Christ is never in vain, and yes, now I can see that GOD has granted His best blessings for me this month. Even though some people said that I must be crazy to minister that much in the final month of my thesis, GOD have proved that I was not crazy, but I was depending entirely on Him and His strength. Usually people backed off a little from their ministries during their final thesis month - where they will be extremely busy - but it was during that month GOD gave me so much ministries to do. I did them all well, while not neglecting my studies, and now, you can see the end result. Praise be to GOD and eternal glory be unto Him.
So now I am Nathan P. Suwanto, S.Kom (Sarjana Komputer neh… not Sarjana Kompor Gas… :p)
