The second phase of FEP (Freshmen Enrichment Program) is AO which stands for Academic Orientation. In this part of FEP, students learn about the basics of college life and the whole AO is meant to be a simulation for students to help them adapt to their new college environments. In my major, Computer Science, there are 4 courses of AO, which are:
- Computer Science
- Curriculum
- Academic Advisory
- Support Center for Your Success
Most of my AO classes were in Anggrek Campus, and the schedule were pretty inconvenient, with a lot of the courses started at 07.20 AM and several had a few hours gap in between courses. The class I had in AO was different than the one in GO. I was in the class of CBN02 during GO, and my AO class is called LH01. This new class consisted of half CBN02 students, and the other half was EBN students.
In the Computer Science course, we were introduced to Algorithm which was basically structured thinking. Algorithm is the basic way of thinking made to help us create calculations and solve problems using operations which will be useful in coding and programming. We were also introduced to C++ programming language, pseudocodes, and flow charts. There was a test on these subjects that will determine our SAT points at the end of FEP. The test had 2 parts, the first was an essay about the basic theory of Computer Science, and the second was a coding test done in a computer. The coding test had only 4 problems with each having 25 points. A lot of the students struggle with this test, but a handful was successful in getting the perfect score. Aside from coding, there was an extra course that didn’t seem to be related to Computer Science. It was about learning methods, like mind mapping and giving presentations.
The Curriculum course was about all the textbooks, materials, and lecturers in this semester. This course was held in the auditorium and specialized course (we will have to choose 1 out of 4 in the third semester) was discussed. Academic Advisory course had us separated in groups with one Advisory Lecturer for each group. The Advisory Lecturer will provide guidance in navigating our college life, relationships, studies, and also job seeking. The last course is Support Center for Your Success. Students were informed about support centers that are provided to them by Binus University, such as:
- Library and Knowledge Center
- Study Registration and Service Center
- Student Advisory Center
- Binus Entrepreneurship Center
- Binus Career Center
- International Office
- Quality Management Center
- IT Division
On the day of the event, all the new students of the Faculty of Computer Science gathered at the BPPT 2 Auditorium which was on the third floor of the building. There were shuttles provided by HIMTI to transport students from Kemanggisan and Alam Sutera campuses to the building and vice versa. After students were seated in the auditorium, an animated movie titled “Zootopia” was aired on the main screen while everyone was waiting for the event to start at 9 o’clock. At the exact moment when the hour hand on our watches shifted to the number 9, the movie suddenly stopped and was replaced with an advertisement by Course Net, which was one of the event’s sponsors. That caused a pretty audible and simultaneous sigh from the audience.
After the break, there was a talk show about innovative masterpieces created by Binus SoCS Alumni, a humanoid robot called “Bimax” and “The Big Five” application. “Bimax” is an intelligent humanoid robot developed by Reinhard Lazuardi Kuwandy, Oey Kevin Wijaya, and Christian Tarunajaya. This robot is designed to interact with humans, thus it was created to have face recognition and understand sentences as well as giving responses with Indonesian language. It also has other abilities, such as telling stories, greetings, and playing music. In this talk show, Reinhard and Christian stated that creating Bimax took five months, including 2-3 months of research. The project was funded by the Minstry of Research, Technology, and Higher Education (Kemenristekdikti). Although it was granted 100 million rupiahs by the government, the project already costs 55 million rupiahs just for the hardware, not including softwares. The other speaker was Nathanael Febrianto who is the creator of “The Big Five Traits Personality Prediction” mobile application. He developed this application along with Albert Wijaya and Irwan Prasetia and collaborated with lecturers from the Faculty of Psychology (Binus) and a Post Doctoral Researcher from the University of Trento, Italy. This application only requires a Twitter ID to analyze the user’s tweets and predicts their personality. The tweets have to be in english in order to be analyzed and it will reveal The Big Five Traits of Personality which are Extroversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness.
The most waited moment finally arrived, when all of the new SoCS students were once again inaugurated and became official members of HIMTI. Students proudly wore their Alma mater jackets as they sang along to the hymn of HIMTI. This glorious moment was then followed by a series of contest and door prize winners announcements. Finally, we have come to the second most waited moment of HTTP, the DJ Performance. DJ Angelo gave everyone a fun time and the dance floor was lit (pardon my use of slang). After about thirty minutes of dancing and having fun, HTTP is finally over and everyone was given goodie bags with t-shirts & HIMTI Kit.
Besides BASIC, I recently did BNEC’s TOEFL Placement Test. BNEC stand for Bina Nusantara English Club and one of the reasons I decided to join was because BNEC had achieved the title Best Student Organization in BINUS for 4 times. Also, this organization holds the title from Guinness World Records for “most people doing crossword simultaneously”. BNEC has 4 classes which are TOEFL, Debate, Scrabble, and Public Speaking & Performance. Out of those four, I am interested to join TOEFL and Debate class.
