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In my college’s department mailing list, there is an interesting discussion about the quality of IT bachelor degree in the workplace. There are some reasons behind that:

• The bachelor graduate worker lacking practical skills. They can not answer a fundamental question that every IT or computer science graduate should know.
• The bachelor graduate worker also lacking soft skills, like how to speak with the higher-ups and communicate with another workers.

As a result, the companies prefer to hire a vocational IT graduate. Why?

• A vocational graduate sometimes have the practical skills that a bachelor graduate didn’t have. Computer science or IT is a wide spread knowledge. It means you didn’t have to go to the college just the learn how to program. It’s all over the clouds. So the learning materials are reachable to everyone.
• Vocational graduates are easier to manage. Some of them have more respect to the higher-ups than the bachelor graduates.
• The standard salary for the vocational graduates is less expensive than the bachelor graduates. Combine this factor with better skills and higher respect means that bachelor graduates’s job are in a grave danger.

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“What would you like to drink?”

I just finished my order when the waiter asked me. I guess I have no choice. I, then, ordered a glass of ice tea.

Actually, the foods price here isn’t high. On some small restaurants, you can even pick your own dishes. It’s up to you how much do you want to eat. But, you must pay it before you eat it. The problem here is about the drink.

Based on the drink availability, there are two kinds of restaurant or cafetaria. The first one is my favorite, the restaurants that provide free drinking water visibly . They usually have some jugs or water dispensers with a bunch of clean cups. The customers are free to drink the water at any time as much as they want.

The second one, is the restaurant that invisibly provide free drinking water. They usually ask us first about what we want to drink using the magic question, “what would you like to drink?”. If you’re a shy person, you’ll just order ice tea or warm tea. But actually, if you dare, you can always ask plain water for free.

I’m telling you again, it’s not always about the price. The ice tea here is just cost about one thousand to one thousand and a half rupiah. It’s pretty cheap compared to the price in Bogor or Jakarta. The real problem is about self healthiness. Drinking too many tea or coffee is not good for health in the long term. Not to mention the sugar that accompany the tea or the coffee itself.

So, from this point forward, on my daily meals, if someone asked me, “what would you like to drink?”, here, I’ll answer, “just gimme a plain water”.

Credits: image Drinking Water by de:Benutzer:Alex Anlicker, licensed Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0

I sent out my graduate’s application letter at the end of April this year. The application process was simple, thanks to the Internet. I just need to register myself to their site, print out the registration form, then send it along with the academic requirement to their office. The official site said that the selection will be held in early May. So I just need to wait for their calling.

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