Nadira Sarah Salsabila, or who is more familiar by the name Sarah, is a student from batch 2017 that is keen on two different activities; Reading fiction and volunteering in the humanitarian fields.
Reading is an act of solace and for Sarah, the budding interest towards the activity started when she was as young as nine. Having to deal with the nervousness that comes with having to deal with moving back and forth abroad, young Sarah dealt with this by paying her local library multiple visits where she would sit by the children’s section to read new, unfamiliar books or simply appreciate the drawings of the picture books she could find at her grasp.
This is Matheus Raoul Supriyadi, he is a 2017 student of IUP Psychology who has a particular interest in the classical Yogyakartan dance. He did not realize his fascination until he moved from West Java to Yogyakarta. It all started when Raoul first came to Jogja in 2014 and went for a small trip to the Kraton (Royal Palace), where he saw a male dance performance taken from the epic of Ramayana. “As I saw the dance, strangely my mind did not wander at all. My only thought was that the dance was very masculine and elegant at the same time,” he told us. From there, he was finally able to start learning how to dance in 2017 considering the lack of free time he had in high school. “I prefer to dance the refined male characters as opposed to the coarser ones. My breath can’t catch up with the energetic movements hehehe,” he joked as he explained more about his specialty.
Harera El Muhalla of batch 2017 is also known by his peers as a talented musician. It’s rather rare for them to see Era not listening to music in one day. As musical as he is, Era was not actually born into a family of musicians. He attributed his musical abilities to the interest that he has towards music. “Not one of my family members is a musician. So for me, determination contributes far more to my abilities than talent does,” as he told us. He started out as an autodidactic piano player since elementary school. Having no formal teacher, he turned to tutorials on YouTube as his source of pop-oriented piano knowledge. “Of course, I thought of playing the piano as a fun activity for an elementary student. That’s what kept me going until junior high!”