I actually wanted to write this article for a very, very long time. However, I must admit, due to procrastination and real life stuffs (master studies, video games), I have not even started this article. So, without further ado, let’s begin!

At that time, I was in my third semester (out of supposedly four semesters) of my studies. In my first and second semester I have taken B1 and B2 German classes, respectively. Both classes were held fully online. From my experiences taking those language classes, I noticed that most of my classmates are PhD students, and hence they usually pick up language concepts extremely quickly. They seldom make mistakes when they are called by the teacher to give their answers. Finally, I noticed that most of them also opened their webcam, which is not the case in most of my online classes in my study program. This showed my classmates’ ambition to do well in the class and hence, learn German. I even remembered when I finally met one of my classmates from my B1 class (we are still good friends as of now thankfully!), whom I considered to be one of the best-performing students in the class, and I found out that they got a 1.0 (the highest grade in the Austrian grading system) for that B1 class, while I got a 3.0 (still a satisfactory grade, but I still felt that I could do better). That is why I constantly feel self-conscious about my German skills; I have fears that other students will make fun of me making mistakes in the exercises and also when I speak during classes.

And the time has come. It was Tuesday, 4 October 2022 on 17:15, the first day of my B2+/C1 German online course. The course started innocently enough, the teacher divided us into groups of 3–4 people from like 15 students, where we took turns to introduce ourselves in the group. At this point, I started to become calmer as I managed to get to know my online classmates more. Just like my previous B1 and B2 classes, most of my classmates are pursuing their PhD, although some of them are in either bachelors or masters, mostly studying for a program with German as a language of instruction.

Then, suddenly, everything changed. The teacher asked us to go to the folders section of our Learning Management System (LMS). There, he pointed out that he has uploaded a file. I then checked the file, and I was flabbergasted! Sixty fill-in-the-blank questions that tested our knowledge in German grammar. We were also asked to write a short introduction about ourselves, although I was pretty sure that this would not be discussed together (I would get a private feedback about my text, though).

I thought to myself, “Okay, I’ll just do it by myself, and hopefully I don’t make many mistakes”. If I remembered correctly, after around 35 to 40-minutes mark, the words “fertig” (which means “done”) flooded the public chat. This is a common practice in my German class, where we write “fertig” in the public chat once we have finished an exercise. I immediately felt bad about myself, as I was only reaching number 54 or so, but thankfully I was done by the time the teacher asked us to check the exercise together, which saved me from humiliation from my classmates in my imagination… For now.

The teacher then called each of us to answer each question, alphabetically. Some of us did give wrong answers, which is expected when we learn a foreign language, but a majority of us confidently gave the correct answers to each question. After like 10 or so students, my name was called. I then tried to answer whatever I have written in my Word Document regarding the solution to the question I was asked. Of course, the teacher said “nein (which means “no” in German)”, followed by “kann jemand antworten? (can anybody answer?)”. This is then followed by a correct answer from one of the super-smart students. I thought, “okay Timmy (my nickname), one mistake is no big deal; maybe you’ll nail the next question!”. The cycle repeats: those geniuses giving mostly correct answers, while I gave erroneous answers. Not only that, but I also got mostly wrong answers from other questions that are answered by my classmates. After I answered 4 questions during the discussion, I was actually on the verge of tears, but luckily neither the teacher nor my classmates saw that I almost cried.

Finally the discussion to the grammar exercise was done. At that point, I was thinking that my classmates laughed and said terrible things behind my back, such as “how can such a stupid student even in this B2+ class?”, or “did he actually learn anything during his B2 class?” or “He should have just quit! He is not suited to learn German with us!”. Once again, the imposter syndrome, which I have experienced ever since the first day of my master studies, and only getting more intense during the B1-B2 German courses, kicked in. Only this time, I feel it was real. I thought about how (almost) flawlessly my classmates managed to nail the exercises. I thought that the teacher was really disappointed with me as well, as these are the grammar from B2 level and lower, which, if I wish to continue my language learning journey to B2+ / C1, he expected me to master them. The teacher then asked, which topic do we need to concentrate on. While my classmates suggested some sophisticated topics to be reviewed, I, holding back tears, just managed to say “Präpositions (basically ‘prepositions’ in English)”. “Präpositions” is a topic from A1, and by saying that I still have to learn “Präpositions” in a B2+/C1 class, it was a dead giveaway that I am clearly the worst student in the class.

Finally, the clock in my computer showed 20:30, when the class is supposed to be dismissed, and hence, he finished the class for today. The class may be done, but my feelings of inferiority were not done yet! Now that nobody can see and hear me, my tears and feelings of being inferior were ready to freely come out! I went to the bed, arguably having the most intense sobbing in my last two years, as a result of practically felt humiliated in front of my classmates and teacher.

A few weeks before the incident, I came across the “Nightline” from my university, where an anonymous volunteer (I believe they are psychology students from the university, although I am pretty sure that there can be volunteers from other study programs) will take our calls in the evenings (from 20:00 to 23:59 on weekdays), and we are freely able to anonymously discuss our hardships to them. We are also free to tell them if something good has happened in our lives. I was already contemplating to call “Nightline” before, as my mental health was already not in the best condition due to me feeling inferior to my classmates in my study program. However that time, I simply could not take anymore, and it was time for me to call the “Nightline” despite my clearly insufficient German proficiency. Someone from the “Nightline” picked my call, and as I expressed (in tears) my concerns how I made numerous mistakes in the grammar exercises. I was glad that they patiently listened to my concerns, and said that it was an achievement by itself that I called them in German, which is my third language. They were not judgmental while hearing my side of my story, and guided me to find my own solution, instead of lecturing me of what was I supposed to do during this dreadful situation.

And then a few days later, I realized, why did not I just refer the grammar books to do the grammar exercises? I had two grammar books, one for A1 — B1 level, and another for B2 — C1 level! First, that thought did not cross my mind during that day, as I already felt really intimidated by the exercise. Second, I was also thinking, since this was a test for the teacher to know our German knowledge before truly beginning the lesson, I did not want to misrepresent my German skills to him.

I am glad to say that I managed to persevere until the end of my B2+/C1 German class and passed the course, despite the fact that during the entire semester of the class, I was barely scraping by, and plenty of times I felt that I was the worst student in the class. I also managed to pass the final exam, albeit barely. I thought it was because I did not do well in the the speaking part of the exam, because the conversation with the examiner lasted barely like 3 minutes.

So what are the key takeaways?

• Everyone in the German class were actually really nice. My classmates and I were often separated into groups to do the group assignments, and I never felt that my groupmates have a feeling that I am dumb, and more often than not I managed to contribute something to the discussion (despite the clear disparity of the German skills between me and my classmates). From there, I learned (and am still constantly learning) that unless proved otherwise, we should not assume that people will make fun of us if we perform worse than them (or not having as many achievements as them). The teacher was actually really patient too; I like his enthusiasm in teaching. Despite me constantly making mistakes, he kept his enthusiasm while it was my turn to answer the questions from the exercises.
• Being with all those motivated, brilliant students (many of those who are also a prodigy in whatever PhD they are pursuing for) also actually motivated me to do the best in each class, and also remind me why I took German classes in the first place.
• I would be a hypocrite for saying this, as I am still struggling with feelings of inferiority when compared to other classmates in my study program, and also with other students who get a scholarship to fund their studies. However, at least I learned not to compare my grades with one another, a habit which I had during my bachelor studies. I think to myself that comparing grades with other students is a lose-lose situation. If we get higher grades than the other student, then they will feel bad, possibly jealous with us, and the reverse is also true when the other student gets the higher grade instead.

In the end, I must admit that although I still have a lot to learn regarding the German language, I am glad to say that compared to two years ago (when I first arrived at Innsbruck), I can at least understand quite a bit when there is a lecture delivered in German; 2021 me would not understand anything at all! I hope this article can give you some perspective about difficulties in learning a foreign language. Happy New Year 2024 and good luck for those who are learning a new language!

When answering „What is my identity?“, there are so many possibilities to answer this question. For example, I can say that my name is Timothy. I can also say that “I am a master student at the University of Innsbruck, studying Information Systems.”, or “I am a Christian who likes to play Pokémon”. All those descriptions correspond to what I am as a human being.

But what if our name is removed? How would people address us? By a series of seemingly random numbers and / or letters? I cannot imagine if people call me something like “SB73R124”! That would be not only strenuous to my friends and family, who now have to remember what essentially is a jumbled phrase, a phrase that would only consist of three syllables otherwise. Not only that, but a name would be a lot more meaningful to our identity. My parents tell me numerous times that my name (and everybody’s first name) carries a special significance. Since me and my parents are Christian, my first name means that my prayers will be listened to by God. I also really like it whenever people mention my name when we communicate, especially when I am chatting. It feels like my interaction with that person is more personal, and I feel more acknowledged too. I also feel that when people (as well as I) mention our names in the conversation, I feel more closely connected too.

Or how about if we got robbed of my hobbies, dreams, free will, or whatsoever? Would we be simply like a robot in those factories that only does one thing repetitively? Or will we be at the mercy of other beings in the universe, being exploited by those aliens to serve them? By removing our hobbies or dreams, and especially free will from us, we basically lived in the past; a world full of oppression from other humans, just like in the first world war! We would also lose ourselves, and become more similar with the other humans in this world. One of the factors that makes the earth a colorful place to live is the diversity of the humans. That is one way humans can collaborate with each other, supporting each other with their strengths and weaknesses!

Either way, removing our hobbies, dreams, free will, or names will be disastrous for us, as we will lose part of our identity that makes us so special and memorable to other people’s eyes. Maybe those 195 countries that we know would not exist, and there would be just one country to rule all the humans! There may be no more cultural exchange when we go to a new place! Student exchange would be a way less enticing opportunity too as every student is stripped of their identity! Over time, people may die from boredom. Same food, same people, same activities over and over every day. That would definitely be catastrophic!

Note: This article is crossposted from my article in LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:ugcPost:6950684773619015680?updateEntityUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afs_updateV2%3A%28urn%3Ali%3AugcPost%3A6950684773619015680%2CFEED_DETAIL%2CEMPTY%2CDEFAULT%2Cfalse%29

As part of the VU — Usability Engineering and Interaction Design by Mr. Jan David Smeddinck, we are given a project to ‘build’ an application to support the students’ mental health. This project can either be tackled alone (which is precisely what I did), or in groups of 2–5. I decided to ‘establish’ Complihealth, where this app encourages users to compliment each other from their lifestyle. If the other users appreciate the compliment that we give, then we can obtain points. The points can then be exchanged to various coupons, for example with Deutsche Bahn (German state railway company) or ÖBB (Austrian state railway company) to have price reduction for our next trip using train. The rationale behind this application is because from my experience, we seldom receive compliments from other people. According to NBC News, receiving a compliment has a same feeling as getting money. Imagine if we really get some kind of monetary value every time we compliment others!

Step 1 — Interview & Empathy Map

During the course, we were taught several steps that should be taken before I actually begin creating the UI / UX design for the application. The first step is to interview people. For the sake of this course, I interviewed two people from the class. This is conducted to emphatize what the user actually needs. The following questions were asked, with clarifying questions asked as the interview progressed:

• What do you think of acts of kindness?
• How often do you get positive and negative feedback?
• What are the current applications that you use to lift your spirits?

From these interview, I learned that people do not receive feedback often, even though by human nature, they like to help one another. Furthermore, people also like to be helped without being asked. Finally, an empathy map is created on Miro which collates the results that I got from the interview, which is shown on below figure:

Step 2 — Point of View (PoV) & How Might We (HMW)

Then, we formulate the answers from step 1. we want to actually identify the user needs, wants, and insights. The combination of those creates the users’ POV. I have to create 2–3 POVs, and one of the POV is:

“We met a sports person. We were amazed to realize that he mostly gets positive feedback from people that know him well. It would be game-changing to get enthusiasts from specific fields give out positive feedback to fellows they do not know.”

There were other POVs as well, including someone who was a culinary enthusiast who wants to share their skills and tricks, as well as people who just wants to help and being helped. However, ultimately I chose the bolded POV because it aligns well with the vision of Complihealth, which is to encourage users to compliment each others’ lifestyle to help maintaining the lifestyle that they wish to.

I then reframed those POVs into questions to make HMWs. I aimed for at least 7–10. I found a lot of HMWs. For example, we wonder how can we maintain our sleep schedule. We also question on how can users spread kindness to one another. In the end, I chose the following HMWs to move forward to the steps:

• How do we know if that student appreciates the encouragement that others give?
• How might we bring comfort to students facing any kind of problems by confronting them with people that face similar issues?
• How might we give positivity to students who can only be comforted by knowing their problem is shared by others?

The following HMWs are chosen because again, I want Complihealth to encourage students to support each others’ healthy lifestyle through encouragement and appreciation. At this point, I am sure you know where the project is going to.

Step 3 — Top Candidate Solutions & Sketch

From these HMWs, we then proposed several candidate solutions to solve the users’ problems. We have to think of 2–3 candidate solutions and then choose one that we think will best solve the users’ problems. We also have to identify the dark horse (that is, the solution that we do not expect to pop up, let alone being chosen). Again, there are many proposed solutions, such as:

• The application will use API to integrate functions as Sleep tracking, diet to other (smart) device, e.g., Garmin Smartwatch, HoloLens, iPhone. Users can set their goals for their health (sleep for how long, calory consumption, and so on)
• The application can be integrated with online tests about our health, so that it can determine if we have indeed become healthy based from the experts. If there’s an accident, then we can call the emergency. The application can also directly call the help center via voice recognition.
• Basically, the application is a learning management platform. The application will show several videos about how to do certain sports (ala Udemy). If the user successfully completes all videos (and maybe also online tests), the users can get sports certificates. — this is the DARK HORSE, as videos about the topic are already present on Youtube, and the competition is fierce.

Ultimately, I chose the following candidate solution:

“Users can comment on other users’ results. Users can give appreciation to the encouragement given (for example thumbs up). Users then gain points when other users appreciate the encouragement. Once user got enough points from the appreciation, users can then exchange points with vouchers (for example ÖBB, Amazon).”

As mentioned on previous steps, I chose that solution because from Complihealth’s vision, I believe that complimenting people and being compensated for giving compliments would be an incentive for users to support each others’ lifestyles.

I then made one or two sketches of the application’s user interface. This is shown on the figure below:

Step 4 — Low Fidelity Video Playthrough

For this step, the professor asked us to record a short, narrated video to explain our design to him. The video need not be super high quality, however our design should be visible enough to him.

The video playthrough can be seen here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PcpMp3z5eGlwcu2t8oa5xTj1ejhmys6d/view?usp=sharing

In short, the video playthrough shows the sketches that I have made. Currently, the sketch shows two core functionalities of the application: give appreciation to compliments of each lifestyle type, and update lifestyle parameters. To give appreciations, the user can either give like to the compliment (which allows the complimenter to give score), give appreciation to the compliment, or both. There were only three lifestyles for this video, this being sports, sleep, and calorie consumption.

The update parameters functionality were also admittingly lacking. There was no tabulation to separate lifestyle types, so users have to scroll manually to input each parameters of each lifestyle.

Step 5 — Expert Heuristic Evaluation

Ideally, this evaluation is done by the experts. However, for the scope of the course, the heuristic evaluation is done by ourselves. Each of us act as ‘experts’, and we try to find the features that can be improved in our application. From the evaluation, there were two main things that can be improved:

• Two lifestyle parameters would be added: water consumption and work hours. I decided to add water consumption as another parameter because water is one of the most important aspects of human living. Humans can only live without water for three days. I also added work because some people do overwork themselves, to the point of burning out.
• As stated before, when inputting the value for each lifestyle parameters, there was no tab to separate each lifestyle type. As a result, there was tons of scrolling needed to fill in the parameter for each lifestyle type. Therefore, the new iteration of the application would include the tab to separate each lifestyle to make navigation easier.

In addition, several of the key features, such as add friends, claim rewards are still missing. These would be added on “Step 6 — Interactive Prototype”.

As the expert heuristic evaluation was conducted by us, there are several advantages and disadvantages. The advantages are:

• It is quick and simple to perform because we do not have to make an appointment with other people to ask for feedback. Improvements can be made more quickly too.
• We ourselves are also the harshest critic, so there should be more improvements from our side.

However, there are several disadvantages too. As the evaluation was done by us, the evaluation can be biased. We can think that our application is already perfect without us noticing it. Therefore, user testing that is done by other people is very important, as they can otherwise spot the mistakes that we do not notice.

Step 6 — Interactive Prototype

At this point, our professor required us to develop a more interactive prototype. He said that it is okay if we just use PowerPoint to illustrate the interaction between each screens. However, to make the interactive prototype, I used Figma, a well-known web application for UI / UX development. I chose Figma because no programming is required to build the UIs; we just have to drag and drop. Figma also helps us to align the elements that we have added into the application. Furthermore, I learned using Figma when I took an online course in Coursera titled “Introduction of User Experience Design” by Georgia Tech, so I think it is time for me to apply and level up my Figma skills.

To reduce time spent on prototyping, whenever there are two or more rows of items in a screen, the interaction was only implemented on the first row of the item. Furthermore, the input text box was not implemented due to complexity.

The figure above shows the high-fidelity prototype on Figma. The core features of the application, such as replying and / or giving like to compliments, updating lifestyle, exchange points, and use coupons are all present. In addition, there is also water consumption view for lifestyle type. It also shows that each lifestyle parameters have been divided into tabs to make the application tidier.

Step 7 — User Testing

Normally for user testing, it is ideal to have two or three people testing our application. However, Mr. Jan said that for solo projects, one user is enough. Our professor recommended us to assign a fellow student in the course for the user testing. However, I decided to go a different route. I asked a good friend of mine, who is passionate about UI and UX, to give my prototype a try and give feedback.

The user testing was conducted in two parts. The first part is when I ask the user to actually use the application and provide feedback. I asked them to use ‘think aloud’ method. This method involves the user saying what they are doing, aloud. Due to distance, the user-testing was conducted via Google Meet. The user was provided with the Figma link, so that they can try the application. Before the user testing began, I first explained what the application is. We also discussed what the user should stress more, and I asked them to stress more on the UX design, as it fits with the course title of “Usability Engineering and Interaction Design”. The user-testing as a whole lasted approximately 50 minutes. From the user testing, I obtained the following feedback:

1. Reply should be below the commenter, not above, as the user found it quite difficult to see whether the user has successfully appreciated the complimenter.
2. Points should go down instead of being static. This is a bug which I have not considered during the UI / UX development.
3. In the update activity, they says that the input text looks like a progress bar.
4. It will be helpful to add the dates when updating the parameters of our lifestyle, as they found it confusing on which date of the day.
5. App is quite manual
6. Cannot go out. Again, this is a bug.
7. Icons on the bottom of the application for easier navigation. they commented that when they saw the application the first time, they were quite confused on what they should do. In addition, it will help users to reduce number of clicks to view desired lifestyle.

The user also commented that our app may be exploited by users using fake accounts to garner easy points without relying on other people, as well as they can simply ask other users to accept the compliment given. A simple solution to combat this is to limit the times a user can earn points for each day. This also has a positive effect of encouraging genuine compliments to people you are close with.

I then decided to implement all the suggestions from the testing process, except the comment about having to manually input the lifestyle, as I feel that this is better for the next iteration of the development.

The second part involves the user filling out the survey. For this purpose, the System Usability Scale (SUS) framework is used, as from there we can tell if the user finds it easy to use the application. From there, basically the user found that the application is easy to use, with one complaint of having to input the parameters of each lifestyle manually. The survey for the second part can be seen here: https://forms.gle/PQRgDG7LDcVLwGCi9

The final results can be seen in this link:

https://www.figma.com/file/SbFuoIpRPon3TCMLyCOcrc/VU---Usability-Engineering-and-Interaction-Design?node-id=0%3A1

The final video can be seen here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/17SHjg0-MrTbYKXAuUppT_k9UdthC2JIk/view?usp=sharing

I would really appreciate suggestions for improvements for you all!

Closing notes

To be honest, this course was not my first choice for my electives on my second semester of my Masters in Information Systems. I consider myself to be atrocious when it comes to designing or drawing, especially when it comes to User Interfaces. However, this is one of the very few courses whose class schedules did not clash with the other compulsory courses, so I have no option but to take it in order to graduate on time. I thought “well, even if I did not perform well in this course, I might as well as go out from my comfort zone and learn new stuffs”. If I recalled correctly, when we finally got to the step of UI design, he said that our UI does not need to be flashy. After all, the course is called “Usability Engineering and Interaction Design”, not “User Interface Design”.

Now sure, I still think that my UI still has a lot of room of improvement. After all, I am not a designer. However, I am proud that I successfully managed to complete all the steps of prototype development. I hope that me taking this course can serve as a stepping stone for all of you to step out from your comfort zone and learn something new!

Our driver is well-known to our family as a fast, yet calculated driver. To give an idea of how quick he can be, he regularly drives on expressways at a speed of 140–160 kilometers / hour, whereas my parents and I would be comfortable driving at 100 kilometers / hour. I also remembered that he blasted through a large city in just 10 minutes on our trip back from Bali to Jakarta by car! You may think he is a reckless driver, but I observed that every time he wants to overtake a vehicle in front of him on a narrow road, he always observes whether there are vehicles coming from the opposite direction.

However, during the trip, there were numerous vehicles against our car. As a result, it is arduous for our blazingly-fast driver to find an opening to overtake that truck. Our driver was thus forced to match the truck’s pace. Honestly, I became aggravated with the situation. Why does the truck have to be that slow? Why are there so many vehicles opposing us in that settlement?

However, because of that, I realized something:

In my life, sometimes I have been like that truck on a narrow road.

The Realization

Ever since I was rejected from my dream universities for my undergraduate studies, I always felt dumb. I wondered whether I hadn’t done my best when I was still in high school, a trend that I, embarrassingly, continued even while studying for my undergraduate degree. I played too many video games, and spent too much time surfing the internet. Ironically, at the same time I also became jealous whenever my classmates achieved something worthy of being celebrated, whether it was something as small as getting the highest grades for a quiz, or getting a scholarship that I could not manage to get myself. This is aggravated by the presence of social media platforms, my obsessive social media usage, as well as my friends sharing those so-called achievements there.

Because of my jealousy, as well as me being overzealous in wanting to become the best in my class, I had a feeling that a few of my friends resented me. Many times I complained about getting a score that would make the other students feel contented, especially when my score wasn’t the highest in the class, since that would mean diminishing the chance of me getting the best-grade scholarship. I did manage to graduate with very good scores, however I still think that I can do better than that!

Then not long ago, one of my friends posted about her accomplishing something that triggered my insecurity. At first, I complimented her about her achievement. However, this inevitably backfired as I later reproached myself. I then did what most people actually view as ‘taboo’:

I told her that I sometimes feel dumb, and I asked her some reassurance.

Mind you, the friend that I am currently talking about is a friend whom I only seldom talk to nowadays. Being a compassionate person, she tried to cheer me up. However, stubborn me refuses to upheave my confidence level. Eventually she did what I often do to other people as well, deprecating herself.

I felt bad afterwards, guilty that I brought my friend down to my level, just like the truck that set the pace of the vehicles behind to a snail-pace. I then expressed regret to my friend, and acclaimed her success in getting into a prestigious university for her undergraduate studies.

What should we Do Instead?

As I contemplated about the lorry that hinders the other drivers behind (albeit I know, unintentionally), another analogy pops up in my mind, as shown in the picture below:

Yes, F1 cars.

I used to watch F1 when I was still a kid, and even though I don’t watch F1 anymore, I do know that F1 drivers drive to win the race, to get the most prestigious title that a driver can get, the F1 champion. So what happens when one driver is about to be overtaken by another driver (assuming that driver is not about to be lapped because of the blue flag)?

Their competitive spirit means that drivers will do what it takes to prevent themselves from getting overtaken. They may increase their speed, they may try to close the gap so that they cannot be passed. The driver behind will hence do the same to match the speed of the driver on the front, and also try to search for the tiniest opening to overtake. And so on, which makes the competition more interesting to watch as well.

So I believe we should all be like F1 cars that inspire others to push their abilities to their limits. Now, I know that cut-throat competition, which involves people stabbing each other for their own benefit, is not a bright idea. That sort of competition will destroy friendships. However, healthy competitions will not only maintain these friendships, but also make people push their limits.

Every time that word comes up into your mind, it isn’t pleasant, right?

You think about dying in a video game, just like in this picture below:

Or, on a more serious note, when one of the people close to you has passed away. You feel lost. Your heart shatters, as the person you once loved no longer accompanies your life.

But wait.

Is death…. All about the loss of a loved one?

Sure, according to the Oxford Dictionary, one of the definitions of death is “the fact of someone dying or being killed”. However, the dictionary also has several definitions of “death”. Another one is “the permanent end or destruction of something”. Here, I want to tell all of you how I managed to kill my inner nemesis in my life once and for all!

The Birth of the Nemesis

I used to be one of the podcast script writers for a certain church organization. Honestly, I was not really into the podcast thing; I seldom listen to any podcasts, let alone those from that organization. However, I figured out this would be a way to put my writing skills to good use, learn new things (particularly about how podcasts work), and also to get more involved in organizations.

One day, one of the coordinators of the podcast team assigned me to write the script for a podcast, with another person helping me. That person was also in the same friend group as mine, as does the coordinator of the podcast team. Unfortunately, nearly at the same time as the script-writing assignment, I got a high fever, which turned out to be me contracting COVID-19. I remembered my partner assigned me to write several questions for the podcast, while he would tidy up what I have done. As this script-writing was assigned to me, I did my job, despite my body not feeling well. I then waited for my partner to do his job as well.

Two days passed. I saw nothing changed (the script was shared in Google Docs). Three days, four days, five days, no change in the podcast script. Then suddenly, on the deadline,

I got the news that my partner has just finished the script. I then looked at the finished script, and I saw something unpleasant:

Most of the questions that I have written for the podcast have been changed by my partner.

Instead of collaborating in the Google Docs shared by the podcast leader, my partner downloaded the document, and put his changes without me knowing. I thought that this is not how teamwork works! I felt disrespected, felt that the work I did was for nothing!

The Nemesis Grows in Power

Of course, I became mad at him. I tried to contain my anger during the discussion of the podcast script, since the leader of the podcast team was also present. However, it was obvious to the podcast team that I was angry with my partner based from my tone.

Shortly after the meeting, my partner apologized to me by text, saying that he didn’t know that he was supposed to tell me about the changes he made in the podcast script. I told him that I forgave him by text, and texted him not to do the same thing again. It’s over, right?

Nope.

As time went on, the nemesis inside me grew stronger and stronger. I became more and more resentful of my podcast partner. I got irritated every time my partner spoke in group chat, especially with regards to how he speaks in chats. At this point, I knew something was wrong with me. The devil began to control my life. I tried commenting on my partner’s stories on Instagram, making myself busy with Reddit and video games, as well as listening to music.

Somehow, nothing worked for me.

The nemesis was too strong for myself to handle. It has become more and more influential to me. Every day, my thoughts were disturbed by that grudge towards my partner.

Several months later, I got unpleasant news from my friend regarding my friendship with them. I was heartbroken. I got swamped with work, then the bad news, plus I was still battling the grudge with my podcast partner.

A few days later, my podcast partner did something that I thought was inappropriate.

Here it is. My nemesis has grown fully.

I lost it. I then called my podcast partner, and told him that I was still resentful about what he did in writing the podcast script with me. My concerns were not responded well by my partner, and eventually, the argument devolved into a screaming match! I then ended up blocking him from Whatsapp for a few hours. (I did unblock him once my anger subsided, though)

The Death of My Nemesis

However, this became my turning point for my battle between me and my nemesis. My grudge toward my podcast partner dissipated slightly, especially after I told the incident to two of my friends. However, the fact remains. I still harbored some grudge toward my podcast writing partner.

But suddenly,

The leader of my friend group asked each of us to meet up. This is the first time that I have a face-to-face meetup since last year I joined that friend group. Of course, being an active person in the group, my podcast partner also decided to join. At that point, my nemesis still haunted me. I dreaded him coming to the hangout, as I was scared that I would explode on him during the hangout and embarrass myself.

Eventually, after several hours of waiting, my podcast partner came.

Strangely, I didn’t feel malice towards my podcast partner. I just wanted to have fun with my friends whom I haven’t met before. I got along well with my podcast partner. After a while, it turned out my podcast partner, the one who I used to have an intense hatred of, bought mineral waters for each of us. I brought a water bottle with me, along with another drink that I bought after buying a snack for myself.

However, it turned out that if my podcast partner did not give me that mineral water, I would not have enough drink to last the whole hangout. I thanked and appreciated my podcast partner for what he had done to me. I felt relieved.

This is it.

After several months, I finally defeated my nemesis that has haunted my life.

My grudge towards my podcast partner disappeared completely. That meeting has changed my impressions towards my podcast partner; someone that preemptively cares towards other people’s wellbeing. I was no longer irritated by the way he sends his texts in group chats. Shortly after the meeting, I prayed to God as He has opened the forgiveness in my heart.

Final Words

Looking back, I felt it was silly.

I let my grudge controlled my life over my partner’s simple mistake.

I almost lost my friend group because of this. My friends repeatedly called me out over my grudge towards my podcast partner.

So the key takeaway is:

Never allow your bitterness towards other people got into your minds, or it will cause problems with not only other people, but also your own life.

“Don’t play too many video games, Tim.”

That’s what my parents often say to me when I play video games, usually on my phone. That line was also said, even when I am not currently playing video games, usually when I’m watching videos on Youtube, or browsing Reddit. Now, I do agree that doing something excessively is not good, and this includes video games. However, I think that video games can have many benefits if played in moderation, and I will talk about specifically about this game, which is:

Final Fantasy Record Keeper, which is often abbreviated as ‘FFRK’. Not many friends in my real life have even heard of this game, despite having ‘Final Fantasy’ in the title. It has ‘only’ been downloaded around 1 million times, which is nothing when compared to say, 100 million downloads of Mobile Legends, and it also does not reach the top 500 in the top free games list in Google Playstore, at least in my country. Despite this, and also me having hiatus for a few times, this game has a special place in my heart, for reasons that I will explain below.

For those wondering, FFRK is a Final Fantasy game developed by DeNA, with the original intention of nostalgia of playing with popular Final Fantasy characters such as Cloud, Terra, and so on, in the paintings, which represents parts of the story from the Final Fantasy series. However, as DeNA develops FFRK more and more, the gameplay eventually becomes more complex, in the form of strengthening characters after reaching the maximum level of 99, gaining stat boosts from defeating a monster locked in a dungeon, and so on.

Not only was the gameplay fun (although this is more because I repeatedly take hiatus since I do sometimes get fed up with the loading screens in the game, but that’s another story), but I feel that the game also helped me in various ways in real life. Here are just a few ways that I can think of:

Reminds me to not overthinking things

I think that FFRK has a lot of life lessons, either told explicitly or implicitly. One of the life lessons that have stuck in my mind is how the game reminds us not to overthink things. I am a person who overthinks a lot, whether it’s about bad grades or when my friend texts me back much shorter than I expect. As I overthink, it leads to me shutting down, unable to do anything meaningful as I dwell into the things that didn’t go as expected. However, as I play through this game, suddenly a scene like a picture above appears, which exactly reminds me not to overthink things. Those bad grades which I mention may not affect your final grades that much. Similarly, the friend who replies very short in text messages may be very busy or have a very rough time in their life. Yes, I still overthink things a lot, but thanks to FFRK, I’m doing my best to just focus on my priority whenever something bad happens.

I think the record dungeon, where FFRK’s original characters go inside painting to experience many moments from Final Fantasy series, has a lot of life lessons there, so if you think your life leads to nothing, consider playing Record Dungeons in FFRK!

Distinguish between ‘needs’ and ‘wants’

FFRK is a ‘freemium’ game. That means, while the game is free, there is some kind of premium currency in the game which can be bought by real money. In this case, the currency is Mythril. Mythril can be spent on gacha, that is, obtaining some kind of equipment by luck, revive the party after it has been defeated in a battle, expanding slots to store our pieces of equipment, and many more, however, it’s most often used for gacha. Many times, there are gacha banners that offer a more powerful Soul Break, which is a powerful special attack, usually exclusive to a character. Sometimes it may feature your favorite characters’ equipment. After all, who doesn’t want your favorite characters to be stronger? Is it part of what makes you play FFRK?

However, as I say, Mythril is a very valuable currency, one that cannot be simply obtained as you fight battles with the enemies. They can only be obtained once each day, with some more can be obtained through events. To have a guaranteed chance of getting a 5* rarity item, which is the minimum rarity that is considered *barely* viable by most players, players need to do 11x gacha draw, which costs 50 Mythril. Such an amount of Mythril is not easy to obtain if the player just recklessly spend their Mythril for their favorite characters and hence, the player then faces a choice: do you want to spend the Mythril for their favorite characters now, at the risk of not being able to clear end-game content? Or, do you choose to only spend the Mythril to get a piece of equipment that can help to clear a boss you’re struggling with?

Now, choosing how to spend my Mythril also affects how to spend my money. I always like to eat outside, especially since I can’t cook well. However, foods outside can be quite expensive, when compared to eating at home. For example, when I eat ramen at Ikkudo-Ichi, it can cost around Rp. 70000, whereas with that same Rp. 70000, we can have a meal 5 times at home. Similar to the Mythril dilemma, do I want to try new, more exotic food, but more expensive? Or, do you just settle for cheaper, good ol’ cooked food by ourselves / by our maid?

Improve my problem-solving skills (and patience)

Many battles in FFRK can be hard, especially if we just blindly go into battles without proper preparations. For example, an ability called “Hastega” makes your characters take turns more quickly. However, the boss can easily mess up your strategy of speeding up your characters’ turns by removing the speed buffs or even slowing them down instead. Sure, you can buy equipment from the aforementioned relic draws, or wait until a better relic suitable for that boss comes down. However, there are many reasons why those two options may not be desirable:

• The first option uses up Mythrils, and even if you manage to get something good from the draw, there will be more powerful equipment that will come in the future. Spending too much Mythrils may make you starving for Mythril when stronger equipment comes in the future.
• The second option makes a win for that boss less satisfying since new abilities will be released every month, so once you manage to get those new abilities, the boss will become easier. Furthermore, as time goes on, your characters will get stronger when you do relic draws, especially when the game gives a free 11x relic draw ticket every 15 days.

Therefore, players who want to advance far through the game content need to optimize the resource that they have from the relic draw. Specifically, there is a user in Reddit that specializes in beating content with outdated Soul Breaks, amongst other additional restrictions, like only bringing characters from the same Final Fantasy game the boss comes from. The user also takes advantage of abilities that most players won’t think of bringing into a battle. For example, he once used an ability that automatically revives a fallen character immediately after death to deal with the boss’ Instant Death attack (Xarukas, 2020). Such an ability is very seldom used otherwise since buffs would need to be reapplied.

This affects my work too. As a software developer, I often encounter difficulty while doing the task given. However, FFRK taught me that if one approach does not work, then we should try another approach. The same goes for my job. If an algorithm that I use fails to solve a given task, especially after trying for around 30 minutes, then I should try a new algorithm instead.

Expand my imagination

I also feel that playing FFRK expands my imagination. I remembered when I pulled the 11x draw using Mythrils on a banner in Transjakarta Bus (for those wondering, it’s one of the public transport in Jakarta, Indonesia), and got rewarded with one of the most powerful equipment in the game. Since then, I always try to pull in the bus, and lately, this has inspired me to create some mini-stories regarding how Tyro and Elarra like pulling inside public transport.

As a side effect of this, I become excited every time I was about to do some relic draws, as that means this is an opportunity to write some story regarding how the FFRK characters feel regarding the draw, especially when the pull is performed while I am taking public transport. This has an effect of me wanting to pull inside public transport so that I can make a story regarding the outcome of the draw. As I write more and more, it not only expands my imagination but also improves my writing skills. An example of the little story can be seen here, where Tyro and Elarra ‘pulled’ in the commuter line train, only for the train to give one 5* relic, and Tyro and Elarra become upset with that pull.

To sum up, although I do agree not all aspects of video games are positive, I feel that playing video games as a hobby has a negative stigma in the community. People often say that playing video games often just wastes time, when a game like FFRK exists. I think that despite FFRK’s aim to provide fun for mobile gamers, as well as making Final Fantasy fans nostalgic about older Final Fantasy titles, people should not overlook how many life lessons this game gives to us, as well as the other benefits that I have covered in this article.

References:

DeNA (2015). Final Fantasy Record Keeper. [Online] Android. Google Playstore: DeNA

Xarukas 2020, [Dreams] [III] Infernal Xande’s Clone | No BSBs+, No LMRs, No 5* Magicites, Full CM, Mastery, Reddit, accessed 17 February 2020, <https://www.reddit.com/r/FFRecordKeeper/comments/ensa5i/dreams_iii_infernal_xandes_clone_no_bsbs_no_lmrs/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x>