Graduation #1
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| mixed feelings behind that smile |
After discussing the topic with my supervisor, we both
agreed to do research in deep learning in speech recognition. Speech
recognition (ASR) was new to me. Although I’d learnt a few things about spoken
language technology in Trento, I didn’t learn ASR in detail. So, I needed more
time to fully understand the concept before declaring my research statement. I
worked on the case of speech impairment, dysarthria, so I’d gotta learn a bit
basic linguistics, the impairment itself, and the differences between people
with and without dysarthria. And the method I used, deep learning, was actually
a recently effective method used in many classification tasks. Hard to
understand the concept but easy to build with tool (and tutorial). But, come
on, I didn’t want my thesis looked as crap so of course I didn’t just follow
some tutorials on internet and make a shallow report. I also tried to analyze
the method I used.
When I presented my research proposal in front of some
professors in October 2016, I was quite satisfied with the responses they gave
over my topic. I felt the excitement of starting the thing I thought I was
interested in. However, the excitement dropped to lower level as the time went
by and I found out my work wasn’t that simple. I didn’t discuss my problem with
my professor regularly because she seemed like quite busy and she wasn’t
actually expertise in speech recognition, so most of the time I tried to find
the solution on my own. I would have been more stressed out if I hadn’t had my
friends around me, who were also facing their own thesis problems. I felt much
more relaxed after sharing my thought and it was also nice to listen to others’.
I’d been in the condition of being stressed out of doing college project alone
so I always cherish moments when I can help my friends releasing their thought
and feel grateful when they also do the same to me.
Everything was running quite well until late January and I
was confidence I could finish it on time. However, I doubted my result because
it was too good to be true. Then I found out there was a method I used
incorrectly and after I resolved it, the result fell to the worst level. I was
shocked and moped. The other struggle I faced was program was too heavy to be
run on my laptop so I had to use either lab’s PC or Rifqi’s. So I couldn’t use
it freely and during the weekends, while I needed to run many experiments to
increase my result.
It was February and I almost gave up on graduation in May.
My result was still bad. My father started asking about my thesis progress. My
mother did too. I didn’t know whether their question encouraged or discouraged
me. One day, I made a change on a thing on the method I used, and surprisingly
the result seemed to go “more normal”, not high but not too bad either. I couldn’t
be happier. I still had 2 weeks before the submission deadline in March. After
asking my parents to pray for me (although I know they always do) and for
approval from my supervisor, I immediately ran few more experiments and finish
my report. Eventually, I made to submit my thesis for March period. It was the
latest month if I wanted to graduate in May.
The scariest thing about thesis is the time to defense it.
On March 23rd, in front of 3 professors (including my supervisor) I
presented everything I’d been working on for the last 8 months. I tell you, it
was the most terrible experience in my life, more than when my machine learning
professor shouted on me during oral exam. I made mistakes. First, I didn’t
prepare the simulation for the work I did. I didn’t know I had to do that and
nobody reminded me about it (I regret it too). It made one of the professors
doubted my work, like everything, although I’d written the whole process on the
report. Second, I got emotional. I realized that several times I expressed my
opinion in impolite intonation. But it was because I was accused of not
writing, let’s say, a process in my method, while I’d written several
paragraphs about it and I also explained it in the presentation. We were a kind
of debating and in the end I gave up and calmed myself down. After all, thesis
defense is the time when we “defend” our thesis right? I just did what I was
supposed to do. I’m just bad at controlling emotion.
The next things happening are that we finished the question
session and I had to go out while the professors are discussing, I cried while
waiting, I was asked to come in and the congratulated me for “passing the
thesis exam with revision”, I went out of the room with bitter smile, and my
friends gave me some presents.
The next thing I realized was that then I’d had right to
obtain the title of Bachelor of Computer Science…….if I finish the revisions.
Finally, Alhamdulillah. Graduation is coming soon 😊
Memeeey :""")
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