Sincerely, A Uni Senior

It’d be wrong if I didn’t reciprocate the appreciation I got from Emi Brown a couple of blog posts ago. We met in 1st grade, but back then everyone kind of got along. The girls normally hung out with the girls. Boys hung out with the boys. We still had the issue of “cooties.” Emi and I were on pretty decent terms. However, she went to another school the following year. The only time I’d see her was when I bumped into her in the hallways of Chinese Sunday school. Sadly, we took different classes. I had my ups and downs in elementary school. I made sure to call out the kids who’d try to tease my friends. However, my friends changed over time -- relationships would just fall apart or they had to move away. At one point, I sat by myself on a hill during recess. I ended picking up the habit of just bringing a book outside to read. I figured I just wasn’t cool enough to have my own group of friends. I had people point at my lunch as weird. Sometimes I had snow shoved down my winter coat or ...

Other than my own home, my favorite place in Champaign-Urbana is the Grainger Engineering Library. I go to Grainger so often that my friends say I’m heading to my second home. I used to go there occasionally throughout my high school career because my dad taught UofI classes in the afternoon. I’d head over and buy a hot drink from Espresso Royale and prop myself on a high table. My occasional trips to the cafe were nice. However, my obsession with the place started once I got my driver’s license during the 2nd semester of Junior year. My brother, Jerry, is an UofI Alumna, and he taught me all the tips he knew about Grainger. The basement and the fourth floor are great places to have study groups. The first floor is great for grabbing an Iced Dirty Chai (a shot of espresso mixed with Chai) from Espresso Royale. The second and third floors have sets of small cubicles so I could have an isolated, dead-quiet place to work. There was one cubicle on the third floor that used to be my ...