Halo! My name is Aditya, I am a student majoring in Law – with an emphasis on Business Law – in the Faculty of Law at Universitas Gadjah Mada in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, and I am currently an exchange student at Queen Mary University of London. The opportunity for me to study in Queen Mary is supported and sponsored by the Indonesian International Student Mobility Awards (IISMA), which is in essence a scholarship programme held by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology where they send around 1100 Indonesian University Students to study at Universities all over the globe. This is the second year they’ve done the programme and out of the 7501 applicants I am blessed enough to be one of the selected four applicants sponsored to study at Queen Mary University of London.

IISMA Programme experience to date.

My IISMA experience to date has been pretty hectic I would say, but the type of hectic that’s pushed by excitement. Like when you’re getting ready to go on a school field trip the night before and there’s so much to do but you’re giddy 24/7 – that’s basically the IISMA experience. See, the thing about this programme, is that it really does aim to challenge the awardees and push us to actively develop our skills and our potential as learners, and because of that, the program would often assign us to do a number of activities. This includes mentoring sessions, group challenges, weekly reports, and even have us be involved in arranging matters such as the accommodation, enrolment, travel, etc. With that in mind, the amount of work isn’t comparable to how fun and exciting the entire experience has been so far. Within the three months since I’ve been accepted to the program, I‘ve made so many new friends from universities all over Indonesia and I’ve even been able to learn so much pre-departure information from the IISMA challenges, workshops, and webinars. Overall, the experience has been a highlight of my academic career.

Fears.

I would have to say my biggest fear in making my journey to London has to be my own ability to adapt to a whole new environment. I mean, London seems like an amazing city to be in and I’ve always wanted to visit, but moving anywhere new is always a scary thing, and I feel like your ability to adapt is basically the make-it or break-it factor. In a way, my main fear is more that I won’t be able to adapt well and have it affect my studies and time in London – that and the tube system. I mean, I wouldn’t say I’m afraid of the tube, but to me the tube system seems confusing and I’m like 80 percent sure I will get lost down there–and getting lost underground in a whole new country kind of freaks me out.

Hopes.

Well, my main hopes are honestly to be able to make a whole lot of friends, make pretty interesting memories, and find myself in an environment that really does support me and that I can support back. Community will forever make a place more like home, because then you have people you belong with, and I hope I can find an open and supportive community during my time at Queen Mary University of London.