Written by Novia Lestari
As she walked into a classroom with barely any empty seats left, Yessy Ambarwati braced herself, ready for a new chapter of her life. It was late August last year when the heat and humidity was finally starting to wane from the brutal summer, Yessy began her journey to a master’s degree in educational technology at the University of Florida. She had just enrolled in a required course for her program, Emerging Learning Technologies. Terms like augmented reality, virtual reality, and extended reality were dancing through the air that one late afternoon as the professor and other students exchanged ideas, but she was lost in her own thoughts.
Her new reality is more than returning to student life after ten years — it’s stepping into a new world while holding onto the life she has to temporarily set aside. She left the system she had known for decades and her loved ones in Indonesia. Day turns into weeks, and weeks turns into months. Yessy faces challenges with determination every single day while enduring the heartache of being separated by more than 12,000 miles from her daughter.
Before coming to the U.S., Yessy spent 10 years working as a physics teacher for a homeschooling institute in Jogjakarta, Indonesia. Creativity and technology went hand in hand in her classroom, though it was nothing like the advanced tools she now works with. She incorporated games into her classroom teaching through what she described as game-based learning, using game-based software to assess her students’ progress. These games came in various forms, but they were mostly quizzes with animation, colorful interface, and audio effect. Understanding the unfamiliar technologies introduced in her program was like setting sail to new lands full of opportunity, but the current could sweep her out into uncertainty.
“I felt so small because we learned about something that I never learned before,” she said.
Language barrier was another battle she had to face in the first few months. She hesitated to speak in class, worried that her limited vocabulary would twist the thought she wanted to share. Then the words that could have been brilliant ideas went nowhere but stayed on the tip of her tongue. But week by week, as professors encouraged her and classmates listened patiently, her confidence began to grow. Yessy forced herself to be brave, taking more opportunities to speak her mind in class.
“Yeah, I mean, we have to try,” she said with a chuckle. “If we try, there’s a 50 percent possibility of success and a 50 percent possibility of failure. But if we don’t try, it’s a hundred percent fail, right?”
Cultural differences added another bridge to cross in her life in Gainesville. Back in Indonesia, she rarely used public transportation, but here, she has no choice. Figuring out the bus routes was a headache. She didn’t even expect something as simple as groceries shopping can be a culture shock. She still remembers wandering through grocery aisles, surprised with the sizes of grocery items. When she pushed her cart full of giant products, the self-checkout system threw another surprise. It was all new to her. But what really surprised her was the way students interact with professors. Yessy’s professors asked her to call them by their first name — something that would have been seen as disrespectful in Indonesia. This small gesture removed the barrier between her and her professors, making their interactions feel more relaxed and warm. That openness helped her to see the world of academia differently. Yessy admired how much research is valued in the University of Florida and how professors encouraged students to learn independently. She recalled working on a group project for instructional design involving 3D printing; she and her teammates initially struggled to understand the steps, so they went to the professor for guidance. When she expected a detailed tutorial, but instead, the professor gave her a few readings about self-directed learning. That experience taught her an important lesson. “We need to own that skill to learn by ourselves, how to manage the time, how to get the literature, how to get the references, and how to get the sources,” she said.
Her favorite refuge on campus is her office at the Institute of Advanced Learning Technologies in Norman Hall, where she works as a research associate. The room that she shared with only three others is spacious, and it shields her from the hustle and bustle of campus life. From that same desk, she has written numerous papers, analyzed loads of data, submitted proposals for conferences across the country, and has presented one of her research in front of scholars that she only read about in journals at the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) International Convention earlier this year.
Despite her accomplishments as a graduate student, she can't deny how much she yearns to be home. Her daughter is still in Indonesia, and the distance between them makes everything harder. She tirelessly keeps herself busy with study, research, organization, and travel as a way to occupy her mind; otherwise, the pain of not being able to hold her daughter in her arms every day would be unbearable.
Entering her second year at the University of Florida, Yessy looks back and sees a woman who has grown in more ways than one. She has become a researcher, presented at prestigious conferences, serves as an ambassador for the College of Education, participates in the International Student Council, and mastered how to navigate academic and cultural challenges with grace. She realized that she was more capable than she thought and that stepping out of her comfort zone had been the best decision for her. “Now I know the value of perseverance and the importance of asking for help when needed,” she added. A year of persevering despite all the odds has altered her understanding of what learning means.
“It’s not about just reading or getting new knowledge,” with a grin from ear to ear, she continued, “It’s about how you apply what you’ve learned.”
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