Talking about technology, the students must be familiar with it, especially in this era they are required to master technology, both for their campus assignments and other works based on smartphones, laptops, projectors and other devices. The pandemic of Covid-19 that occurred globally, changed the lifestyle of everyone, including my study in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

Lectures that are usually conducted face-to-face, writing on board, group discussion and presentation, and using projector, immediately turned into virtual education to anticipate the spread of Covid-19 infections. It looked easy having lectures from boarding house, by turning on the smartphone and joining the lectures, but it is not easy in reality, sometimes it did not produced good result. There were many problems faced by students due to the change of learning process by using advanced technology in delivering materials and online interactions using Google Meet, Zoom, YouTube and others.

It seemed that the method is easy to follow but it is not, as few students complained about the changes because they have to adjust themselves to this new online learning, to face various problems from unstable connection even no connection at all, no smartphones or laptops so they had to go to internet cafe for attending online lectures, and they often complained the limited allocation of their money to buy internet data packages because the application for online lecture drained their internet data. As one consideration, if one online lecture costs 1 Gb of internet data package, and there are three courses a day, how much money is needed to buy internet data package for one month? Some of them are lucky because of wifi in campus, but what about those who cannot afford it?

This is my new challenge. I came from Lampung to Yogyakarta to continue my study. I live in a boarding house and have to be wise in managing allowance by limiting expenses or  have to do whatever can be done together with friends. However, never claim as a student if you have no solution, my friends and I gathered in boarding house during online lecture, shared one cellphone or laptop, and turned on tethering with friends, for example, one day we used Eri's cellphone, the next day Yuli's, and the latter another friend’s, or used wifi in campus. My friends and I enjoyed this, at least we can save the internet data. In addition, there are other difficulties coming when the presentation time comes because the students are not familiar with the application used.

These experiences made me realize that learning technology is not only during lectures or pandemic. By considering that technology will continue to develop,  I have to improve my abilities so that I can adapt to the work demands based on high technology. One alternative is I took part in Stube HEMAT Yogyakarta with its Cyber Awareness program that equipped me with new motivation to learn many things both technology and other useful skills that I can share when I return to my hometown. ***