The Funny Story Of My Tuition Centre
Wednesday, June 4, 2008 // 3:32 AM
Studying something related to art is definitely something new to me. The last time I took art as a subject was like..umm sec 2?? Haha.. So as you all know, my knowledge of art and its tools such as photoshop, corel, freehand, etc, were all Greek to me. Since I've decided to take comm design, it becomes a must to at least understand a few tools (other than just photoshop alone). So in the end, out of curiosity and willingness to learn, I decided to take a short course on graphic design.
Fully supporting my idea, my mom asked around to find out which tuition centres offer graphic design as one of their courses. To be frank, finding one near my house area is quite difficult since I practically live in the outskirts of Jakarta. In the end, she came up with a few names of tuition centres (of which all are located in the centre of Jakarta). But to my disappointment, all of them were asking for very, very high prices! (More than Rp 1 million?? Cheat my money!). It was then when I looked at the advertisement pages in Kompas. There was this "Professional Institute", located at Roxy, which offers exactly what I wanted. It was the cheapest of the pack, offering price half the others, with teaching time twice a week, three hours each! Without thinking much, I quickly signed up for the limited spaces. Pheww... Finally I was saved! (At least, that's what I thought...)
When I first arrived at that place, I had to say that it was
nothing like I had in mind. It was small, half-dilapidated, and looked teribbly old. When I stepped in, the place looked gloomy and smelled like a very old and dusty sofa. The toilet was disgusting and the air-con was not even cold at all! I was then ushered to a room at the second floor which happened to be the classroom. It was as dimly lit as the so-called reception area downstairs, thanks to the old and broken window sills that were supposed to protect us from the heat of Jakarta city at noon. There were several pentium 3 desktop computers, accompanied with a chair each. And so I sat down quitely and tried to feel the air-con that apparently didn't work.
After a while, the teacher came to class. He looked like a typical
"Guru SD", the one with moustache, batik shirt and long black trousers. Then came my other "classmates". They all looked like the ordinary "
Mas mas Jakarta"; worn out Tshirt and jeans that looked as if it had been washed a month ago. Worse still, as I tried to listen to my teacher, I kept hearing the noise of trains that came from the railway just outside the institute. What a conducive place to study.
So I thought to myself, "Nevermind.. The place might be a disaster, but the teaching might be good." But to my amazement, my teacher apparently doesn't understand English at all! Just imagine, he kept pronouncing
"paste" as
"pas-te", "move" as
"mop", "main" as
"ma-in", "previous" as
"prifiu", "smudge" as
"smut" and many more.. He's got to be kidding me!!
Masih jaman yah hari gene ga ngerti Inggris?? Huahaha...
Yeah, everything was different from what I expected, but I still show my commitment by coming for every lesson. The teacher, apparently, turns out to be a good teacher. He's kind, patient, and teaches really well. He develops my interest in graphic design even more and builds my confidence in this particular field. The place... Well, it's still the same as it was the moment I first stepped in, but hey, now I'm getting used to it.
Haha..:p