I have only attended one university for my education, and that is the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

University of Illinois was an excellent school. I didn’t pick it because of reputation; I didn’t think that way as an undergraduate. I picked it because I visited Champaign-Urbana with my dad once and fell in love with the towns. Like in many other parts of my life, I fell into a good decision.

In academia, it is strongly discouraged to attend the same university for graduate school as for undergraduate. However, my undergrad was in a significantly different field than my graduate degree, so the intellectual stagnation of such a move wasn’t an issue. My undergrad degree was in Foods in Business, a food industry-focused major. My graduate degree was in Family and Consumption Economics, which is about people and their decisions about money. It involves everything from decisions people make about whether to move to take a job to things we can tell about a country by what they buy.

I was recruited into graduate school. I was taking family economics as an elective and fell in love with it. Family economics is a class about financial decisions a family makes, from who has the say in purchasing decisions to family job migrations to child support. After class, I asked the professor if there were graduate degrees in the field, and she escorted me down the hall to the department office and introduced me to the chair.

In the 11 years I spent at University of Illinois, I became familiar with its spaces. I ran across campus to get to my classes, napped in the South Union (with many others), drank coffee at various places in campustown, and moved into my own office in Bevier Hall eventually.

I went back to Champaign-Urbana a few years back, and I hardly recognized the place. The campus town now features tall buildings which give the streets a claustrophobic feel. They are filled with high-end apartments for students, whereas the undergrads in my time lived much more modestly. I do not feel at home there anymore; I could not take a nap in the South Union anymore, as the lounges have disappeared. The cafeteria is now a food court. I know it’s a natural thing to be disappointed in the places you once dwelt because of changes, but I didn’t believe it until I stepped on campus again. It had been over twenty years, however; time flows on.