"And what was academic life like?"
College students in Indonesia surely are familiar with the annual war we go through, the Course Plan War. The legendary war where we have to click on the courses we want to take, as quickly as we can. Battling time and terrible WiFi and thousands of fellow students trying to win the best courses... and when we win, it was exhilarating.
Well, back in the olden days, they had a Course Plan War too.
"We had to fill out a card," my mother reminisced, "and then we queued in front of the Academic Office---I remember it was on the second floor back at FISIP---lots of shoving and being shoved around. Peers plan their classes on that same day, like, 'what class are you taking?' I remember one time one of my friends couldn't be present, so she made her boyfriend queue up for her..."
I also asked my mother a bit about what class was like, not having a group chat for the entire class and all. This question stunned her a bit. "Well, hmm," she said, "wow, I never actually considered that before. But I think we survived just fine. We used to just, you know, copy next week's homework to our notebooks when our lecturer reminds us. We had a set lesson plan, too---so we come to class each week already knowing what today's going to be about."
"What, in your opinion, are the pros and cons of the Internet?"
My mother concluded that what she likes the most about the Internet is how easy it is to find information, from family news to learning entirely new skills.
"It's actually a really good thing, the Internet. Back then, when one of our extended families up at Barus fell ill, it took a very long time for us here in Jakarta to hear the news," she said, "now we can know in an instant. And," she added, "these days it's very easy to learn new things. YouTube, the Internet, you can find anything and everything there." It's like there's no longer the barrier of space and time, actually. She told me about how crazy it is that she's able to know what Elon Musk is thinking about, someone living miles away, just by checking Twitter.
However, speaking of Twitter, she especially disliked the lack of privacy the Internet and social media brings. "People share their lives too much these days," she said. "It's like there's no privacy left. We can know that someone is having their holidays at this date, in this hotel... I don't think it's safe."
"For the last question, what advice would you give to us Internet users?"
"Don't overshare..." she said. "It's not even just about 'don't take pictures of you with your ID, that's a scam', but also, for example, we're a young adult, we're pissed off at our friend, we're annoyed at our lecturers... do not share that to Twitter, or something. It's like we're talking behind someone's back, but we're announcing it to the entire world."
