Tasmania, in Australia, and Norway have the privilege of being the entrance to the Earth's North and South Poles. This also has an impact on interest in education on campuses in the area.
Imran Aryan Kamil from the University of Tasmania and Genesia Wahyu Saputro from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, shared their experiences ! 'Fasting at the ends of the Earth's North & South'.
"Tasmania is the gateway to Antarctica, the South Pole. There are so many at the University of Tasmania who study marine biology or south pole biology, because the experts who have experience going to the South Pole are mostly from here and are close. If you want expeditions, thesis writing and etc. (related to the South Pole) are quite famous," said Imran.
Imran himself majored in physics at the campus and according to him other majors were not as busy as those related to the "North and South Pole".
"I studied physics because I was interested in space astrophysics and I want to one day go to outer space," said Imran.
He also said that most of the graduates in the field of science there took master's degrees before working, and the professions involved were dominated by fields related to Antarctica or astronomy because of their geographical location.
"In terms of astronomy, in Tasmania, light pollution is almost non-existent, stars can be seen a lot at night. In the residential area in the middle of the city, you can see many (stars). So if there is an observatory and binoculars here, you can see a lot of stars. in astronomy his work is more or less there or to things related to Antarctica," he explained.
Just like in Tasmania, in Norway which is the gateway to the North Pole too. According to Genesia, who majored in Project Management at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, the field of study related to the North Pole is full of interest.
"In Norway, it is the gateway to the North Pole, so courses such as marine biology, marine technology are very popular on this campus. There is also a petroleum department related to oil because here there is also an oil mine, as one of the large oil producers, it is interesting learn this," he said.
Both Imran and Genesia said that they were generally given the task of how to solve real problems in everyday life, for example, as Imran exemplified, how to solve the problem of broken internet cables.
"We were taught problem solving, we were given a problem and then it was collected from different fields of study for brain storming. Some time ago the internet in Tasmania was down due to a broken cable. Then we were given problems such as how thick the cable must be, what material, so that our internet is stable and not vulnerable," he concluded.