A Story of a Final Year's Student: Having a Research in Geophysical Station for My Minor Thesis

Within a few weeks after my internship program, I completed my report and I got to transfer the score to the academic section of campus. Along with the time I had my consultation about my internship report to my campus adviser, I also had my proposal done for minor thesis that he could have a check. As I got my revision done, I could also send my proposal for doing minor thesis research. For this research I chose the same place I had my internship. I only picked another topic that needed no field data collecting. I preferred to do my research using the historical earthquake data. I started my minor thesis research on May 2nd, 2016.

Throwback to when I had my proposal, I actually did not send it by mail like I did for my internship. I went to the BMKG office on March 7th and showed the proposal. I wasn't sure with the topic I chose and I did not wait until I found the right one. I would rather bring it and have a talk with the staff there to see what I could do for my research. I met my adviser for the research. He told me why I should not do the research with the topic I put in my proposal. He suggested me the topic that was more relevant. After getting the right topic, I got back to my campus and completed the documents for the research, Later, I sent the revised proposal and the application letter to BMKG office by mail. For this application I felt like it was much easier cause I could choose any time I wanted to start the research. I was glad that the staffs in the office were nice and welcome. I felt less awkward and more motivated to do my research there. I chose to start the research after middle test in campus because in this 8th semester I retook a course.

I contacted my adviser when I started my first day in the office and he said he'd see me there. The first day I went to the office, on Monday, May 2nd, I came by 9 a.m. I entered the observatory room and asked somebody if I could see my adviser. He said he already went home after the night shift. I was a little surprised. I got more surprised until they said that it was his last day before his day-off and he came back to office on May 11th. That meant I could not see him until next week. I texted him that I had come to the office. He suggested me to get the historical earthquake data that I needed. He said that I could ask another staffs to give me the data. It wasn't easy for me to easily ask for the data but I was so glad cause that one staff, the same person that said it was okay for me to do presentation on Thursday, told me that I had to know which area I would do my research for. He then gave me the data after I set my exact area for the research. It took two days for me to get the data, which meant I still had some days before May 11th. I decided to come back home. Before I went home I told my adviser that I got the data and he asked me to sort the data and make a seismicity map. Another challenge came when he suggested me to use the mapping software that I never used before. I had known that mapping software in lecture but never got to use it due to its hard installment. That was actually the challenge. Installing that mapping software had turned me upside down. First, it had a huge size, 3.26 GB. It took me many times until I could finally download it. When I installed it, it had problem with the license. I browsed everywhere about how to install it and I just had to follow the crack tip through blog posts and Youtube videos. After all those crack steps that actually cracked me up, I finally got to run the software properly. I was so so thankful that my effort actually paid off. It felt so good to know that I did it on my own with the help from some sources in the internet.

I learnt by myself how to show the global map, input the data, customizing the map and etc. I had a trouble to make the earthquake epicenter show on the map. Turned out that I had to adjust the grid. I had wandered all over the software looking for where I did wrong. I was so happy that I could find one by one of how to operate that software. 

I sent every progress that I made to my adviser through chat when we could not meet. On May 11th, I finally got to meet my adviser in the office. We discussed about my progress of data processing including histogram and seismicity map. We talked about the future data processing and analysis. Day by day I spent for processing the data and analyzing them. I did those stuffs in my room. The green painted room in the house next to the office where I lived with an old lady and her daughter. There were also some other students rented a room next to mine. There were three of them living in a room while I still got my own room like when I was in my internship program. They were high school students and they were very loud. They talked and laughed day and night. There was nothing I could do but accept that living with other people didn't always go easily.

Most of the days I didn't attend to the office because I had no appointment with my adviser and I would rather continue my work in my room. That was one day when I didn't attend to office and one of the office security, who lived around the office and the house i lived, invited me to come to the hall of BMKG for there was a farewell party for the head of  observatory section's retirement. The head of observatory section was also the one who was responsible for students admission for having research. I thought I need to thank him for giving me such opportunity to be there.

The other day, I came to the office and showed my progress to my adviser. I said that I would continue my work in home as he said before that once it was enough to do research in the office I could get home to continue my work. I thought after getting that permission to go home, I could just go home. Some days earlier, the old lady who own the house I lived had to check to hospital. She was diagnosed for vertigo. It was weekend when she went to hospital and I was left home alone cause the other students were home for the weekend. There were some nights that I was home alone. It was so quiet until the rain fell down. My room got wet because of the water from the leaked ceiling.     

Few days later, I got home. The days counted as I was there doing my minor thesis research weren't more than 3 weeks cause there were some days I went home. 

As I got back to my hometown I attended a class that I retook in this semester. It's time to finish my study in the university and get my bachelor degree.