I Thought It’d Be Hard, But It Wasn’t! My Bangkit 2024 Journey

Hey folks! I’m Fauzan, a proud graduate of Bangkit Academy 2024 Batch 2. Today, I want to share my journey of completing the Bangkit program something that many people think is super tough.

By the way, the title’s just a little joke, haha. Bangkit was challenging for sure, but it’s not that hard to graduate from. Even though I didn’t graduate with a “Distinctive” title 😅, that’s okay it just wasn’t my time. What matters is: I graduated! So let’s get into it let’s go!

Introduction

Bangkit Academy is a career readiness program initiated by Google, GoTo, and Traveloka to prepare the next generation of digital talent in Indonesia. It’s well known for its intense curriculum, tough challenges, and awesome benefits. A lot of people say Bangkit is hard, super demanding, and only for people who are already great at coding.

But… is that really true? 🤔

Here, I’ll share my experience from applying to the program, the struggles I faced, to how I finally managed to graduate. I hope this story helps give you a clearer picture if you’re thinking about joining Bangkit or just curious about it. Although I heard Bangkit 2025 is currently on hold 😅, who knows? It might come back, so stay tuned!

Why I Joined Bangkit Academy

A bit of background, I was in my 4th semester at the time, heading into the 5th. That’s when the Kampus Merdeka MSIB program was becoming super popular. Like many students, I wasn’t really excited about going to regular classes so I figured, why not look for real experiences through MSIB?

Actually, I had my eyes on Bangkit ever since I started college. I’m from the class of 2022, and Bangkit has been around since 2021. But you can only apply once you’re in at least your 5th semester so I had to wait patiently.

Why Bangkit? Because it’s different from other MSIB programs. Here, I got to learn advanced tech skills, get mentored by real experts, and work on real-world projects that could actually help my career. I also heard that Bangkit alumni are highly sought after by tech companies so I saw this as a golden opportunity to level up and move closer to a solid career path.

My Bangkit Journey

Long story short, I got the email from Kampus Merdeka I got accepted! I was super excited but also a bit nervous because I’d heard how packed and intense the program could be.

Right at the start, I was given access to several online courses from Dicoding, based on the learning path I chose. These courses covered everything from the basics to advanced topics and became the core of what I’d learn during the program.

What I loved was how these courses weren’t just theory — they had hands-on coding exercises and small projects that helped me build real skills from day one.

Bangkit also helped us learn more effectively by organizing Study Groups led by a mentor. These sessions made it easier to ask questions, share insights, and support each other when things got tricky.

Every week, we also had ILT (Instructor-Led Training) sessions led by industry experts. There were two types of ILT:

• Soft Skills ILT: Focused on non-technical skills like growth mindset, time management, critical thinking, etc.

• Learning Path ILT: More technical, tailored to your chosen path. Since I chose Android Development, my sessions focused on Android-related topics.

ILT happened once a week and alternated weekly (Soft Skills one week, Android the next, and so on). These sessions were interactive and full of useful insights beyond the standard course material.

Another weekly activity was WeeCon (Weekly Consultation), which was a chill hangout session within our Study Group. We’d share our Bangkit experiences, talk about what we found difficult, or even just chat and play games together to keep things fun and light.

Here’s a photo of my Study Group super fun and talkative people from MD-19! 😆🔥

Oh, and sometimes Bangkit even invited Guest Speakers to share motivational talks and valuable insights!

That’s basically what a week in Bangkit looked like. As time went on, we eventually reached the part most people find the most intimidating: the Capstone Project.

Capstone Project

The Capstone Project is the final project that every Bangkit participant must complete in order to graduate. In this stage, participants are divided into two tracks: Product Track and Company Track.

• Product Track: In this track, you’re assigned to a team based on Bangkit’s guidelines, and the team is made up of members from different learning paths (Mobile Development, Cloud Computing, and Machine Learning). The team’s job is to build a product based on a theme provided by the Bangkit committee.

• Company Track: In this one, you’ll be given a real-world case study from a company of your choice. Joining this track is more like applying for a job you’ll need to submit your portfolio and meet specific requirements set by the company.

Between those two options, I ended up choosing the Product Track, haha. Why? Well, a friend from campus invited me to join his team. On top of that, our whole team happened to be from the same university, same major, and even the same class super lucky, right? 😄

But honestly, both tracks have their own pros and cons so it really just depends on your interests and goals.

Building Our Product

Long story short, my team consisted of 2 members from Mobile Development (MD), 2 from Cloud Computing (CC), and 3 from Machine Learning (ML).

At first, we were totally confused about what kind of product we should build. We kept changing ideas, brainstorming non-stop, until one of our members suddenly said,

“Why don’t we build a flood prediction app? Our area gets flooded all the time why not turn that into a problem we can actually try to solve?”

By the way, I live in a city in East Kalimantan, and yeah… it floods every year without fail, haha.

It sounded cool but also crazy! We only had one month, and we had to build an app with a concept like that. After doing tons of research, checking websites, and even trying to get data from local government sources, we finally agreed to go with this idea for our capstone project even if our data was limited. Still, we decided to go full speed ahead! 🚀🔥

At the beginning, we split up the tasks: our Project Manager focused on the project plan, my fellow MD and I started working on the app, the ML team worked on the model, and the CC team handled data crawling and building the API. Sometimes, I also helped the CC team crawl data to speed things up.

As time went on, we got to the model testing phase. That’s when the issues started our model wasn’t accurate because the data we had wasn’t very complete. Our team was stuck, debating whether we should move forward with the existing data or try to find more. In the end, we decided to rebuild the model from scratch. After some trial and error, we finally got predictions that were more in line with what we were aiming for. The accuracy still wasn’t perfect, but definitely better than before, haha.

Once the model was stable, my MD partner and I continued developing the app. We worked hard to meet our deadline. Thankfully, our team finished the project one week before the submission! That gave us extra time to test everything and make sure the app ran smoothly before the final handoff. 🚀

The photo above was taken right after our team presented our app to the Bangkit committee and that’s how we eventually found out that our team made it into the Top 50 Teams from the Product Track!

And in the end, I officially graduated and got my certificate let’s gooo! 😂🎉

Closing

And that’s a wrap on my journey with Bangkit Academy 2024 Batch 2!

At first, it felt overwhelming with tons of assignments and a packed schedule. But as time went on, I realized how much I had gained: learning new skills, collaborating with teammates from different tech backgrounds, and surviving the rollercoaster of our Capstone Project.

Sure, there were moments when we got stuck especially with the model’s low accuracy and tight deadlines but in the end, my team managed to finish our app, BANSAM, right on time.

Was I proud? Absolutely.

Was I exhausted? 100%.

But every bit of it was totally worth it. I didn’t just gain knowledge I gained teamwork experience, new connections, and the mental resilience to face real-world challenges.

So, if you’re thinking about joining Bangkit but still unsure, here’s my advice: Just go for it! 🚀🔥