89 linguistics students from batch 2024 gathered online on Saturday, August 10, 2024, and on Sunday, August 11, 2024, Kalingga (Keluarga Linguistik Universitas Gadjah Mada) welcomed the students in Auditorium Sugondo. Dr. Suhandano, M.A., the head of the Master’s Program in Linguistics, officially welcomed all the new students. The main focus of the meeting was a discussion of academic things before the first semester began. “We learned about how the lecturers held, the syllabus, and all the administrative stuff. Also, the most important thing was about the study plan. We did talk about it a lot since we did not have any clue how to plan and choose the course. Gladly, all the information was shared,” said Kiva.
On the second day, Kalingga held a gathering to welcome the freshmen. It opened by introducing what Kalingga is. It invited the first head of the organization, Aziz Zulfian Afisianto to give a brief history of the organization. It was followed by Yuliana Kristianti, the head of Kalingga, who discussed Kalingga’s work in academic learning and the program they run.
The interesting part was the discussion involving the linguistics students from batch 2023 to share their experiences while studying in this program. The discussion was conducted in a small group based on three concentrations: descriptive linguistics, sociolinguistics, and translation. “In my group, the translation group, we talked about who the lecturers are, and the learning system in every course. We also tried to use Simaster,” Dita explained. Dita and Kiva also mentioned that this sort of discussion was worth conducting since they could get more detailed information regarding the real-life situation that they might encounter.
To end the gathering, linguistics students in batch 2024 decided to choose a representative as the bridge to share information from the department as well as the study program with the students. “I hope that all the discussions held, either held by the study program or by Kalingga, can be a medium to get and share important information that can boost their academic performance in the future. I wish you very good luck” said Yuliana.
