Another University of Illinois Graduation Weekend Come And Gone

For any of you not in the Champaign and Urbana metro area, or with any active connection to the school, this past weekend graduation, the end of the Spring Semester, and the beginning of a nearly abandoned campus. It was a significant graduation weekend for me, not because of any of my own accomplishments, (I graduated from undergrad two years ago now) but because both my little sister and fiancée were getting degrees, thus putting an end to my slightly extended college lifestyle.

For the last two years, I have been working toward a Master's Degree in history at ISU just down the road from Champaign, but living in Urbana, and living my life closer to that of a college senior than a grad. It was really easy the first year,  I still had several friends who had not yet graduated, lived with a friend who was also in a two year grad school program and who happened to share my affinity for video games and netflix. 

It was a very good run while it lasted, and I have really enjoyed putting off growing up. But as I mentioned before, everyone I knew at Illinois is now an alumnus, so there was an added level of finality to this weekend that I had managed to avoid up to this point.

It is no longer my campus, no longer the place where I could walk down the street and know that most everyone is my peer. No, I am too old and have too many degrees to be confused with an undergrad. Its someone else's campus now.

Did you know they are knocking down the Six Pack? They are replacing them with huge, incredibly nice dorms, but they are knocking down one of the most identifiable places on campus. They renamed it Ikenberry Commons, and there aren't even six buildings anymore, so in a few years time I would be surprised if anyone on campus still called it the Six Pack. But that's okay. This campus has hundreds of landmarks and  traditions, its okay to let new generations make things their own too.

While I was on campus, they renovated Memorial Stadium, and it is probably unrecognizable to someone of my grandfather's generation, but I think he would appreciate how nice and new it is now, just as it was nice and new when it was built. In the mind of every former student, campus is  never as great, in one way or another, as when they were there. 

I started this blog, and its predecessor one that was written from a student's perspective, which is of course not all that difficult when you actually are a student. Not the perspective of a local, not an alumnus living in Chicago but a student, and that is the sort of personality I think this blog has been able to maintain, that of a college senior taking yet another victory lap. Carrying forward I want this blog to be a place where the current student can feel at home talking about Illini sports,  and those too old to be carded at Kam's can channel our inner super senior.

The credo of Hail to the Orange will remain side with the student, no matter how far all of us get from actually being students.

Oh and one more thing, congrats to our very own Producer Scott and Ben from the podcast, who got themselves a Master's Degree from Illinois this weekend, congrats guys.