Adrian NorthrupIf you’re looking for junior and Towers Hall North RA Indira Nugroho, you might find her hitting the books in her sixth-floor room, tackling her 18-credit load of accounting, finance and math courses.
If that doesn’t work, try the Center for International Education, where she serves as treasurer of the Association of International Students, or in Schneider Hall, where she just got accepted to the student investment management program.
Still no luck? She may be serving subs at Blimpie’s in the Hilltop Center Food Court or doing office work for the College of Business, where she works on occasion.
Sophomore and fellow international student Claudia Lozano said she can sum Nugroho up in one word – amazing.
“Indira is the most hard-working woman I know,” Lozano said.
Since the second half of her freshman year, Nugroho, 19, has been taking 17 or 18 credits a semester. She’s double majoring in accounting and finance, as well as minoring in actuarial sciences, a math program. She said she usually works about 10 hours a week, the maximum that’s allowed outside of her RA position.
People who know her said her ability to juggle so many things baffled them. But Nugroho, who grew up in Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, said being busy has always been a way of life for her.
“I have to say that my city really was a fast-moving city,” she said.
A recruiter’s dream
In Jakarta, a city of nearly 9 million people, Nugroho attended a private high school, where her studies emphasized natural sciences. Outside of class, she said, she had tutors in English and more science.
“When I was back home, my typical day started at 6 o’clock in the morning and went round and round until 9 o’clock at night,” she said.
She said that English is prevalent in the Indonesian professional world and universities. She started learning when she was about 6 years old.
Nugroho said she wanted to see what it was like to go to school in another country.
After attending an international education fair in Jakarta, she chose Eau Claire.
International student adviser Phil Huelsbeck said UW-Eau Claire often recruits abroad to attract outstanding students from around the world. He said there are about 150 international students attending Eau Claire at any given time. About half pursue entire degrees here, like Nugroho. There’s no particular program that draws them here more than any other, he said, but many choose to study in the College of Business.
“I know from first-hand experience that so many of our international students are taking 17- or 18- credit loads consistently every semester,” he said.
He said Nugroho is exactly the kind of student they’re looking to attract.
“She’s just a stellar student,” he said. “She’s in student organizations, she’s involved, she’s a terrific scholar, she’s academically top notch. And she just has a dynamic personality.”
He said there are currently three Indonesian students studying at Eau Claire.
Busy in Eau Claire
When Nugroho came to Eau Claire in August 2004, she found a different culture than she was used to back at home.
“When I arrived here and met my host mother for the first time, she just hugged me.”
Nugroho said. “In my country, if you just meet someone for the first time, you wouldn’t hug her or him at all.”
She had to adjust to everyday differences, like Wisconsin’s climate as opposed to the tropical climate of Indonesia. She said she also had to get used to eating dinner at 6 or 7 p.m. instead of 9 p.m., as she did at home.
Nugroho described Eau Claire as a “small town.”
“It’s still beautiful,” she said. “Quieter, calmer, not as fast moving (as Jakarta).”
She stayed with her host family for a few days before moving into Towers Hall North.
Nugroho applied to be an RA after several friends convinced her, she said.
Her good friend and fellow Towers North RA Anjali Anand said Nugroho has a gift with people.
“She is a person who motivates everyone,” Anand said. “It doesn’t matter who you are, she’ll advise you and she won’t be condescending.”
Nugroho said she likes being an RA because she gets to meet people she wouldn’t otherwise get to meet.
One of Nugroho’s residents, junior Jovana Bogdanov, said Nugroho helped her adjust when she first moved into the residence halls from Serbia.
“Indira is the first person that I met when I came in this dorm . I had some difficult times and she helped me get over it,” she said, adding that Nugroho cares about her residents’ personal lives and does a good job keeping them informed about campus events.
Nugroho spends five hours straight in classes every Monday and Wednesday, and four hours straight on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
She said she was relieved not to have classes before 11 a.m. this semester, as sleep is a highly valued commodity in her life. She said she averages about six hours a night.
Nugroho said she likes the flexibility of campus employment. She usually works one night a week at Blimpie’s. She enters data or supervises computer labs for the College of Business as a substitute, whenever someone can’t come to work, and she said her supervisors are forgiving if she gets bogged down in schoolwork.
Nugroho said her daily planner is essential to her everyday life.
“If you want to get everything done on time, with very good quality, for me, I need to write it down,” she said.
Lozano said Nugroho has that strategy down pretty well.
“The thing that I like about her is she always says, ‘I will get the job done’ and she actually does,” Lozano said.
To relieve stress, she said, she hangs out with her friends, shuts out the world in her room for awhile, or sometimes sits down at Borders with a good book.
Anand said Nugroho sometimes uses another stress-relief strategy – shoe shopping.
“If she’s angry, if she’s tired, if she’s pissed off, anything, shoes calm her down,” she said.
Nugroho said that for the most part, she’s happy being busy. But she’s starting to realize that she can’t keep joining student organizations and still have time for the ones she’s in now.
“I’m trying to limit myself now,” she said. “But I like my jobs.”
What she misses the most about home, she said, is her mother. Nugroho is an only child, and her father died when she was a baby. She said she goes home about once a semester to visit.
“We e-mail every day; that’s for sure. And sometimes we e-mail each other like twice or three times a day.”
Headed for greatness
Nugroho said she doesn’t know where she wants to work after she graduates. She said she’d like to stay in the United States for awhile but would probably live in a larger city, maybe on the East Coast. But she said she could also see herself moving overseas.
“Basically, (I’ll go) wherever the jobs take me,” she said.
Anand and Lozano both think Nugroho is headed for big things.
“I’d say she’d be on her way to be on the way to making her first million,” Anand said when asked where she sees Nugroho in five years. “She’d definitely be in some kind of managerial position. And she’d have a rack full of boots.
“The only thing that would bring her empire down is if she blew it all at a shoe sale somewhere.”
Lozano said she could picture Nugroho running her own business five years from now.
“I see her sitting on top of a million dollars,” she said. “She has accomplished so much and she’s so young, and I’m sure she’ll accomplish many more things.”
