Once Opposed His Child Studying Out of Town, Sahrul Gunawan is Proud His Child Got into UI

"I’m happy, very happy. He really likes to study, my first child really enjoys learning. It's not that he can't go to UGM, you know, I have to be a package deal with his mother, so I told him, 'I won’t allow it if it means being far away, because he has to live in a boarding house,'" said Sahrul Gunawan when met at Rendezvoo Cafe, Friday (1/8/2025).

"So just go to a nearby one, that he can travel back and forth to home, to Jakarta, to his mother's house, right? He didn’t accept that because he feels a sense of pride that he can be accepted while his friends are not," added Sahrul.

The child's determination to enter a favorite state university made Sahrul feel an extraordinary tension. "Well, I was nervous too, because there’s the IUP program at UI and only a few percent get accepted, right? I was nervous too. He was told to go to private universities, but he didn’t want to, 'because this is dad and mom's fault, if not, brother won't go to college,' oh what to do," he said.

His worries didn’t stop there; his status as a public official also made him anxious. He feared that some parties might think his child's graduation was due to intervention or special connections.

"I was already rejected there, and then I became confused in politics, not because of my diploma or anything really. Until finally, I clarified, detecting this official, that official, fearing my child wouldn’t be able to enter UI, because he is pure, both of them are pure," he said.

All that tension was finally paid off when the graduation announcement arrived, which was met with joy by the whole family. "As soon as I entered, 'Alhamdulillah, I’m in college!'. So that was an achievement that my child could give to his parents for the second time, so we are happy, even though we are apart but we often communicate for the good of the child," he stated.

Sahrul's pride is multiplied many times over because of his child's achievements, as if they pay off his struggles in the past. He reminisces about the time he failed to enter a state university through the UMPTN pathway and was forbidden by his parents to study outside the city.

"Yes, just proud because it’s not like me, hahaha. I used to be in Bandung because I didn’t get into UMPTN back then, so I tried here and there including at Enhai hospitality, I got in but my parents didn’t allow it because the agreement was that if it was a state university, it could be outside the city, but if it was a private one, it could only be in Bogor," he said.

'Revenge' for not being able to study in the tourism field turned out to be the fuel for his spirit to succeed in other paths. From his hard work in the entertainment industry, he successfully realized his dream by establishing a tourism school in 2023 that is still running to this day.

"Well, that's revenge, revenge. In the end, from all the auditions, I got one soap opera, I saved the money. So at that time, I was determined that I couldn't study tourism, the field that I was in hospitality, even though my economics degree was still ongoing, even though I was studying there I created tourism, finally in 2023 a tourism school was established until now. So I am also in education now," he concluded.