Now, for I've been schooling for 15 years and it has ended.. a question pops up in my mind: what did I go to school for?

For 15 years of my school, I just found the answer in the last year which is this year. Well, it is my own answer based on my characteristic and way of thinking.


For almost 15 years I studied hard, struggling for good grades and trying to be an outstanding student. I memorized all the lessons, practiced, and worked hard on every test. All are for good grades. But, now, I found it useless and it is not the real goal of studying at school.

Grade, which is more than 90% of students, teachers, and parents are looking for, doesn't matter. What matters is how we, with a good morale, behavior, characteristic, and intelligently survive in this harsh world and how we make a better life for ourselves and, especially, others who are not as lucky as we are. That's why we go to school; to gather knowledge and experience as much as possible and becoming a critical-thinking and ethical person. We also built relationships and friendships for our future. To find true friends that will help and support us later when we find ourselves struggling hardly for our life.

So, in the end, what for is chasing for grades by memorizing lessons and so on if later we will forget it? It's better that we can understand the whole thing of it well (understand well doesn't always mean getting good scores at tests) and apply it in our life later. I mean, it feels really great when we can understand lots of things happening in the world. For example, Indonesia is intersected by 3 major plates that it commonly shocked by earthquakes and sometimes crashed by Tsunami. Lots of Indonesians are afraid to go to beaches because of that. But it doesn't mean that every part of Indonesia has a chance to be badly damaged by earthquakes and Tsunami. Studying geography makes me understand that parts like East Sumatra and Borneo and north of Java are safe from it. Why do we have to be fearful? So, it is the understanding of the concept of lessons that we got is what will be used in life.

That's why I don't really care with the National Exam's questions. All I want to know is the reasons why recent things could happen.


Well, it is just my point of view.