When Does the Semester Begin?

This is a question I have been asking myself daily for the past couple of weeks because there doesn’t seem to be a fixed date on the calendar. At first I was told February 8^th and until recently this was the date I was working with. On Monday, with only a week to go before classes start, I asked the head of my department for a list of classes I would be teaching and this is how the conversation went:

Me: Do you know yet which classes I’ll be teaching?

DH: Ahh, it is too early to say. We are waiting for some students to finish their final exams.

Me: Ok, but classes start on the 8^th, right?

DH: The 8^th? No, I don’t think so.

Me: Oh, that’s what I heard. So, when do you think they will start?

DH: Maybe on the 8^th?

Me (very confused): Oh, but I thought you just said they won’t start on the 8^th.

DH: Maybe or maybe not. It is difficult to say.

Me: Oh. Well, just let me know, ok?

After that confusing conversation, I spent a few hours in my office reading other people’s blogs (I am following some new ones and have a lot to catch up on) and then I went home. I can’t really work on my syllabi when I don’t know what I’m supposed to be teaching. When I came in on Tuesday I finally got a course schedule but I thought we had agreed that I would only teach 4 classes this semester and I was down on the schedule for 6. Hmm. I would have to discuss this with my counterpart.

Meanwhile, I got a message that one of the other lecturers was looking for me to give me some batik. I turns out that on February 9^th there is going to be a big ceremony for two faculty members who are earning the title of “Professor”. Everybody is supposed to wear matching batik outfits. So, Ibu Elsje and I went off to the tailor’s with a couple meters of batik fabric to get my new clothes made.

Knowing that there would be a big ceremony on Tuesday that would take up half the day, I figured that classes couldn’t possibly be held. I mentioned this to my counterpart and Ibu Elsje this morning:

Me: So, there won’t be any classes on Tuesday because of the ceremony, right?

CP: Oh, good point. Yeah, probably not.

Me: But isn’t the semester supposed to start on the 8^th?

CP: Maybe it will start later.

Ibu: The students have a graduation on the 18^th. So I think classes will maybe start after that.

Me: Oh, the 18^th?

CP: Yeah, or later. Don’t worry - you have plenty of time to plan.

So, within the space of two days the start of the semester has been pushed back from the 8^th to the 18^th or later but of course this is all still just speculation and no one seems to actually know anything. I asked Ibu Elsje if she found this at all frustrating. She said, “Yes!” quite emphatically but also said that that’s just the way things are done.

Personally, it’s driving me a little crazy. How hard is it to make a schedule, share it with your colleagues and stick to it? Apparently, very, very challenging. I don’t understand how my colleagues here can work like this. Is everyone prepared to start their classes at a moment’s notice? Don’t they want to know when they have time off so they can plan trips or other activities?

This is the part that really gets me. Maybe it doesn’t matter so much to my colleagues if the semester starts on the 8^th or the 18^th because they’ll be in Gorontalo anyway. But for me, with some cash to spare and limited time to travel in Indonesia, I don’t want to be twiddling my thumbs for ten days waiting for something to happen. If I have 10 more days off I’d like to go somewhere. I could go see the orangutans in Borneo or the famous Buddhist temple of Borobudur in Java. I could go to Tana Toraja in South Sulawesi to see the elaborate funeral rituals or venture down to Komodo Island to see the dragons. If I have time off, I’d like to take advantage of it and I think that’s why I find this vagueness about the start of the semester so incredibly frustrating.