Name: Raluca Dragusanu ’06
Hometown: Bacau, Romania
Major: Economic and mathematics double major
Activities: Investment Club, student government, Model UN fund-raising chair, student worker in Information Technology, economics and German teaching assistant, modern languages department intern, an assistant for the ODY Library Systems office, assistant in the international and intercultural office.

As a teenager who had never lived outside her home city in eastern Romania, Raluca Dragusanu ’06 dreamed of traveling and meeting people from other cultures. Studying in the United States seemed like the perfect opportunity to gain a solid education and a broad perspective on the world. “My experience at St. Lawrence has offered me more than I had ever hoped for,” she says. “Contact with American culture and so many other cultures through friendships with other international students has taught me a great deal and made me more aware of my own roots.”

Raluca spent spring 2004 studying in Denmark through St. Lawrence’s program, and a month last summer working in Austria. “Getting accustomed to a new culture is not easy, but the ‘storm’ an individual faces opens the road to incredible enrichment and inner growth,” she says. “Now it takes me less and less time and energy to get adjusted to new cultures.”

She hopes to work for an international organization such as the United Nations, or for the European Union in economic development and policy. “I dream of a job that would allow me to travel and experience new cultures,” she says. “Through whatever I pursue I hope to make a difference for the people back in Romania or in other developing countries. I want to give back to the world at least as much as I have received.”