Scholarship / 'To make a positive improvement' - Chevening Essay : Individuals with strong networking skills [2]

Hi friends, I'm Binari from Indonesia. I need your help to give my essay about networking skill some feedback. I will very appreciate your feedback, comment, or correction. I attach the question and my answer below. May God bless those who help each other :)

1. Question : Chevening is looking for individuals with strong networking skills, who will engage with the Chevening community and influence and lead others in their chosen profession. Explain how you meet this requirement, using clear examples of your networking skills, and outline how you hope to use these skills in the future.

Crucial advice from one of my Professors

When I was a freshman, one of my Professor said that, "starting from now you should try to make a good social network. If you are able to build, maintain, or even thrive your social network, I strongly believe the impact it will have on your career will be well worth it". Feel enlightened by the words, I decided to join and actively involved in several student activities. I got the chances to interact and get to know a lot of people either senior or junior students. Being known by my senior lead me to many opportunities to learn various new experiences. One among others is my senior asked me to join his project with one of our lecturer. He recommended me as he knew that I possess the competency that they need to did the work. I gained both monetary and experience benefit from those project.

In 2014, I did an internship at Community Development and Crisis Centre of Faculty of Psychology Universitas Airlangga (PKPK). During my internship period, I maintain the good relationship with my lecturers who also become our supervisors in PKPK and my intern colleagues. I also tried to show them my best performance for the organization while I was an intern. In result, they trust me to handle some major project such as community development joint project with UNICEF and ROTARY. After my internship period in PKPK has ended, I've maintained my relationship with people inside those organization through joining their gathering and social media group in order to keep up to what's happening inside.

I am currently working as a junior lecturer in Faculty of Psychology Universitas Airlangga. I can land a job here due to the fact that my lecturers, who also my supervisors in PKPK, satisfied with my performance during my internship period. They recommend me to become a junior lecturer in our faculty. Some of my duties are to conduct an independent research and organizing community service. My well-maintained network with PKPK has given me many benefit to ease my current job. For example, when I need to conduct a research, I can make a collaboration with them. I can save my time by ask them to help me in data collection process. It will both ease my job and give a new experience to PKPK's intern in term of research.

As a lecturer to be, I am completely aware that I need to expand my network abroad in order to advance higher education quality in Indonesia. International research partnership, curriculum, as well as teaching and learning method are some areas which our higher education sector need to improve. By having my master degree in England, I will get the chance to enrich my knowledge along with establishing a new partnership with my future international colleagues and university. Moreover, if I granted as Chevening Awardee, I will get the best social network I can ever have, and certainly it will bring many positive improvement for our Faculty, also Indonesia in general.

Scholarship / The UK as one of world-leading higher education system has a lot to offer in Indonesia. Career Plan [4]

Chevening Essay : Post-Study Career Plan

Chevening is looking for individuals who have a clear post-study career plan. Please outline your immediate plans upon returning home and your longer-term career goals.

You may wish to consider how these relate to what the UK government is doing in your country.
(minimum word count: 100 words, maximum word count: 500 words)

Dear Friends, please kindly help me to review my essay on post study career plan. Any suggestion will be highly appreciated :)

The collaboration of UK and Indonesia in higher educational sector has been established in quite a long time. UK works along with government, universities, research institutions, individuals and ministries in Indonesia to share examples of good practice in order to help develop expertise in certain areas such as policy, leadership, employability, career development, also academic research. Some agreements has been made between universities in two respective countries. Ranging from double degree program, establishing doctoral training centre, as well as teaching and research cooperation are among programs which initiated based on UK and Indonesia partnership.

After finishing my master study and returning to my home country, I will continue my career as a junior lecturer in University currently I am working for. I will spend my first year to do some research about mental health in the workplace, the area which I am interested in. In doing the research, I'll make a collaboration some of my former colleagues when I studied in UK, and establishing international researches cooperation. As such way, I can publish my research in international journal and hopefully disseminate the result in international conference as well. This activities will have a significant positive contribution in increasing the education quality in my institution.

Following the research activities on mental health, I am planning on handling courses about mental health at the workplace for bachelor degree student. I will invite my international research partner to give some lectures about mental health in the workplace, so my students will be exposed into an evidence-based lecture. Hopefully, this activities will become a stimulant to grow the students research interest and empower them to at least aware and make a promoting activities on mental health issues, especially in workplace.

Currently my senior colleagues in Faculty are establishing community mental health research group. This newly established research group members are comprise of lecturers from community health, psychiatry, and psychology in my home university. I think the range of field which are involved is good enough. However, it will become better if we can engage many experts from different field or even more, countries. So, upon the completion of my master degree, I'll try to make use of my networking connection in UK to attract them to join and make a contribution in the aforementioned group. I will also initiate some campaign activities to promote issues that the group concern about. The output of the research group itself also expected to become an evidence-based tools to advocate and solve the mental health issue in general to the policy maker.

The UK as one of world-leading higher education system has a lot to offer in Indonesia. With sharing lessons and experience, Indonesia will have chance to learn from and reforming National Higher Education System towards internationalization. In turn, Indonesian will ready to compete with other countries in knowledge-based economy. Chevening scholarship will become a key which open many opportunities to improve higher education quality in my institution, and also Indonesia in general.

(496 words)

Scholarship / Organizational Psychiatry and Psychology, Business Psychology courses: Studying in the UK [3]

Hi friends, please help me with give some suggestion on my essay :) thank you in advance

Outline why you have selected your chosen three university courses, and explain how this relates to your previous academic or professional experience and your plans for the future.

*Please do not duplicate the information you have entered on the work experience and education section of this form (minimum word count: 100 words, maximum word count: 500 words)

Chevening ESSAY : Studying in the UK Question

Graduated from Bachelor of Psychology majoring in Industrial and Organizational Psychology, currently I am working as a junior lecturer in Department of Industrial and Organizational Psychology in Faculty XX, Univ. XX. In order to become a lecturer, it is necessary for me obtain a master degree in relevant program study. Obtaining my master degree abroad will allow me to be exposed to the world-class quality education as well as expanding my network.

My first program study of choice is social and organizational psychology in University of Exeter. The modules offered the strong emphasis on behavioral science research skill. Moreover, I chose this program due its' unique nature which combine social and organizational psychology which has not been available in my own country. As an addition, for the past year I've done an observation in my own department. The research skill is a crucial area which we need to improve. Currently, our department have a number of experts in the applied domain of industrial and organizational psychology in my country, but their research skill is less developed. In my opinion, it is also necessary to develop our research skill. This program study also will become a stepping stone for me to cultivate a strong research culture in my home University.

My second preference is Organizational Psychiatry and Psychology in King's College London. This program is unique because it is focused on mental health issues in the workplace, which is one area of my interest. This issue has received insufficient attention, especially by the government and employers in the developing countries, such mine. Studies in the western world shows that workplace stress may have a pervasive effect on employees and reduce the productivity. Unfortunately, studies in such field is still very low in developing countries. Last month, I attended an international workshop on mental health policy issues. One of the main discussions which arose was inattention on mental health at work are very low due to the high stigma. Moreover, Industrial and Organizational Psychologist here haven't paid sufficient attention on this issue, therefore I keen to get a deeper knowledge, carry out researches, and promoting this issues into my society.

Business Psychology in University of Leeds becomes my third options. The Psychology of Effective Organizations is the most attractive course for me. It examines the psychological factors which influence the effectiveness of modern workplace in key behavioral spheres of activity. In studies of psychology, we have learnt that environment contributes to form and influence specific behavior. Environment help to develop mental framework that direct human behavior. Environment could be shaped and designed to promote workers' desirable organizational behavior such as effective behavior.

All of the courses I mentioned above will greatly advanced my career as a lecturer. Each courses will allow me to develop research skill as well as gain a wider critical perspective in Industrial and Organizational Psychology issues. Even more, I could establish a global network so that I can become an initiator of international collaboration between universities.

(498 words)

Scholarship / I develop my leadership skill in professional context since I became an intern in Crisis Centre [4]

Leadership Essay

Hi friends, could you please help me to give a suggestion or correction in my last essay?any suggestion or correction will be highly appreciated, thank you in advance :)

Chevening is looking for individuals who will be future leaders or influencers in their home countries. Explain how you meet this requirement, using clear examples of your own leadership and influencing skills to support your answer. (Minimum word count: 100 words, maximum word count: 500 words)

I develop my leadership skill in professional context since I became an intern in Crisis Centre and Community Development of Faculty of Psychology (PKPK), University of XX.. This was a very interesting experience since this organization was recently established and I was the first batch intern of those organization. So, we had to work extra hard to establish the internal management system as well as building our reputation as an organization. I was appointed as finance manager back then. We organized many community development events, such as reducing plastic bag use campaign in traditional market, raising awareness of reducing stigma towards mentally ill people, and the most memorable and challenging project was our collaboration with XX.

We were honored with a chance to be able to collaborate with XX in Educational Development Projects in several rural areas in XX Province. We had three projects done simultaneously. Due to my experience as an PKPK finance manager, I was appointed as a financial coordinator in this projects. I realized that it was a very challenging projects. Even though I worked as an financial coordinator in my organization, but I never had handled such projects with enormous funds. The main challenge was, I was the youngest and least experienced team members in this collaboration projects, yet I was trusted to handle a crucial role. I had a full control of financial issue. If I wasn't able to perform well, then all of the projects would be in a mess.

I realized the situation and made a move carefully. I came on every coordination meeting which were held. I decided to actively learned from XX financial team by asking his phone number and came directly into his office to learn directly. Such way, I could easily contact and made a consultation in every decision I made as well as asked help every time I encountered the hardships in managing the projects finance. I wrote down all of the knowledge I got and then formed a team consists of 6 people. I shared my notes and gave them a briefing. I assigned 2 persons in each projects and asked them to write down each difficulties they encountered so that we can discussed it and share it among our teams to prevent such events to happen again.

I conducted briefing every 2 weeks to monitor their progress and discussed the problems they had encountered. I always motivated my team, that we could went through this together by effective knowledge sharing and communication as we were all novice in this field. I involved all of my team members in any decision making process so that we all had a sense of responsibility in our team. With such strategies, our projects was progressing as its scheduled. There were no significant problems caused by financial issues, and final financial report were finished well.

(474 words)