Things I love about UIUC!

This weekend I decided to write about my life at UIUC because I figured I never really wrote about how awesome it is to be an Illini! I guess we just get so used to living here everyday that we often forget how precious it is to be a part of this campus. So, this post is all about my life at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign - because it's special! :)

Alma Mater always greets you with love and blessings

It has been almost 1.5 years since I joined UIUC, but it feels like just the other day that I got here! I remember I fell in love with this campus and the people here from the very first day. The people here in this twin city are so kind, welcoming and helpful that I never felt out of place. 

Places I love on campus - I never get enough of the gorgeous architectural structures here. Starting it's journey as Illinois Industrial University in 1867, and named as University of Illinois in 1885, the university will soon turn 150 years old [1]. I love how all the beautiful historic structures tell the stories of the past, especially the Altgeld Hall (commonly known as Math Building) and the Foellinger Auditorium. Both of them are more than 100 years old, and Altgeld Hall was added to the National Register of Historic Buildings in 1970 [2].

Backside of the Foellinger Auditorium in spring

Another very special part of the university is the library. UIUC holds the pride of having the largest public college library in the nation holding 13,158,748 volumes, and ranked as the second largest college library after Harvard [3]. The Main Library was actually the first place I visited on campus on my very first day since I'm working as a Graduate Assistant (GA) here, and it totally blew my mind away. It has a great environment and I especially love the main reading room on the second floor. During my first week of GA orientation, even before our classes started, I luckily met the coolest people there - Katrina, Alonso, Nate, Madison to name a few. And I'm glad that I can call these awesome people my close friends, who made me feel special here from the very beginning :)

I also like the lake side on the engineering quad, especially during spring and early summer. Busking in the sun while reading book, playing with the dandelions by the lake or just have a slow walk around the quad after work are probably my favorite things to do there.

Engineering Quad

The next thing I must mention is my department - Graduate School of Library and Information Science (soon becoming the iSchool at Illinois). I should write a whole post on that because it's a super awesome place to be! It's great program with lots of resources ranking no. 1 in the nation, and all the people - students, professors, staff - everyone makes it special. I feel like I had a lot of opportunities to grow in last 1 year, and definitely met some of the greatest people here, who I know I'll keep in touch even when we graduate. It wasn't an easy decision for me to leave my comfort zone in Japan but I believe I made the best decision by coming here, which I'll never regret.

Fun things to do - Fun time is really something precious when at grad school :-/ Being full time student and working half time doesn't really leave me or most of my friends with much free time but we do fun stuff here. Krannert Art Museum and Spurlock Museum on campus provide us with the opportunity to enjoy art exhibitions. There are always many cultural shows and performances at the Krannert Centre of the Performing Arts. We have two nice movie theatre in downtown Champaign - the Art Theatre and the Virginia Theatre. I absolutely love the vintage look of the Virginia Theatre! And there are often concerts at the bars like Pizza M or Iron Post. 

Having brunch at Radio Maria, or dinner at my favorite restaurant Seven Saints with friends, going to movies and concerts or just having fun time at home with some good food, good music, and good people - these are enough to keep my spirit up :)

The gorgeous Virginia Theatre 

Concert night at Pizza M 

We also get a lot of stunning sunrise and sunsets here, probably one of my favorite things here. So, my camera is full of sky photos. Also, we have pretty cherry blossom in spring, gorgeous fall and beautiful snow during winter. May be I'll write about them and post those seasonal photos on some other post. I'll wrap up with two photos I took at the arboretum this morning. The sun was peeping through the trees and lighting up the lightly snow covered grasses, and they were dazzling brightly like small pieces of diamond. That scene just made my day, and these are the precious things that make my everyday life special here :)

UIUC Arboretum 

Sparkly grasses

Reference

1. "A Brief History of the University of Illinois." A Brief History of the University of Illinois. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Dec. 2015. <http://archives.library.illinois.edu/features/history.php>.

2. "Mathematics." History of Altgeld Hall, Department of , University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Dec. 2015. <http://www.math.illinois.edu/History/altgeld_history.html>.

3. "The Nation's Largest Libraries: A Listing By Volumes Held." ALA Library Fact Sheets. N.p., n.d. Web. <http://www.ala.org/tools/libfactsheets/alalibraryfactsheet22>.

Squirrels - Adorable Faces of UIUC Campus

Squirrels - Who doesn't love these cute animals? They are not afraid of humans nor do they cause any harm. And we have plenty of them at our UIUC campus, specially at the Quad area. With their small bodies and proportionally big fluffy tails, they move swiftly from branches to branches or play on the ground. To me they are the most entertaining creatures on campus, cause during breaks most of the students go home and any human being can be barely seen around. But the squirrels are always here, adding more life to the green nature and entertaining with their adorable faces.

I always enjoy watching the squirrels playing. But I was wondering how did they get here and how did the population of squirrel grow so big at this campus area? According to University of Illinois Archives, there were not many of them here before 1900. On May of 1901, University President Andrew S. Draper along with Professor Geology Charles W. Rolfe took the initiative to increase their number by constructing breeding cage with several compartments on University lawn. And today we definitely feel thankful to them as their step towards securing the number of squirrels resulted into a more lively campus life of today's.

From University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana Photo-Gravures, ca. 1912

(This image is in public domain)

I personally love taking nature photos and animals are part of that. But I did not have much time during weekdays to walk around campus and take photos since I started grad school here. On this Christmas day the weather was really nice and I thought I would take a walk around the quiet campus and enjoy company of cute squirrels. Then I could capture some photos of them. And one of the squirrels looked so curious as I was taking photos that it looked straight at me and gave a pose for a moment. I really adore that photo and it turned to be the first photo of mine to get Explored on Flickr!

Definitely that was quite motivating to take more photos of them :)

My first Explored photo on Flickr 

The Transition-2

Photo taken by me during fall at UIUC

It's never easy to take those big steps in your life, like deciding to change country while you are already in a comfortable place. It wasn't easy for me either to finally take the decision to leave Japan cause after living for five years there, I knew I had a second home in a foreign country, I knew there were people whom I could call my family and there were my friends, seniors, juniors and many more well wishers. And then there was this big decision to make - whether to choose a better academic path for future career though there can be a lot of uncertainties, or to continue living at a place surrounded by people's love with prospective career opportunities?

So, I chose the first route for my life. Leaving my school, favorite campus, friends, scholarship, work, I decided to move to USA. I have joined Graduate School of Library and Information Science at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from mid-August of 2014. In that sense this post was due a long time ago, but it took me some time (actually a semester!) to settle down in this new place, find out some extra time from school and work and finally sit down and think what I have got and what I have not.

At first I will write about some of the difficulties any usual student in Japan might face during this transition.

• In Japan, semesters usually start from April and all the procedures to start at an institution has to be done by March. And the entrance exams take place in August of the previous year. Though some universities like Tokyo University, University of Tsukuba have started Fall semester in October for foreign students at a small scale, but this is not the standard case in Japanese educational system. Now, in my case, I was not sure whether I am going to join any university in USA till June, until my Graduate Assistantship was fixed. So I had to face a huge problem to cancel my admission and scholarship. Though my professors were by my side, but these systems are very rigid in Japan and once someone is in the system, it is very difficult to come out of it without huge pay off. Again, if I decided to stay in Japan then that would not be a problem, I could just follow the rules. But to them I was an exception, and Japanese administrative system are not good with handling exceptions. So I faced a lot of stress and troubles just to get out of the institution and cancel my scholarship.

• Because of the time gap between the starting time of sessions of two countries, someone has to lose 4-5 months doing nothing (or may be doing fun!). In my case, I attended class for the first semester there and submitted my paper at conference and got accepted there, so worked positive for me though I had to go through those administrative complexities later. 

• Now fixing housing from Japan was another difficult task to do. It's already difficult to do that while you live in the country, contact the landlords and find a trustworthy leasing agent. I had good luck and found a very good place from Wampler Apartments. I would recommend them to anyone who is searching for housing in Urbana-Champaign area.

• Once you get your housing fixed, you have to start the electricity, gas and water service at your place. In Japan I found it comparatively easy, just call them and they will do everything for you. But USA is too big and different states have different rules. When I called them for starting service from Japan they asked me for my Social Security Number, then send notarized copy of ID card etc. Any of which I did know how to get done in Japan, also in that short amount of time. So the summary is, I was in trouble. Glad that the person at Wampler Apartment was very understanding and helped me out with this matter by saying that I can take my time and he understands that these are difficult for international students to handle. 

• Closing all the contracts/ services in Japan took a lot of time, effort and money. To close my phone contract with Softbank I had to pay thousands of extra money.

• Packing and sending all the important stuff from Japan - I am still afraid to think about. Buying all those big cardboard packages from post office, packing and sending them cost me huge amount of time, effort and money again. 

• Finally I booked my bus ticket to go to campus from Chicago and booked hotel room for the night cause the landlord's office will close by the time I will reach and I needed a place to stay for the night.

I am usually little reluctant to take help from others as long as I can handle them by myself. So doing all these things by myself was pretty difficult and I was extremely stressed by the time I was done and could not believe I was actually leaving Japan and feel the pain of tearing the bond. But yes, finally I got here and started a completely new life at a new school with new people and of course, with new struggles. It is not all bad but like I said, there is no perfect place to live on earth. So I am always trying to find the best way to enjoy my life no matter where I am.

And here is something I created as a guide for new international students who are here or will be joining UIUC. I created this libguide as my final project for LIS501 course but I hope to expand it in future as my personal project so that I can help future students be well informed before they land in this city and start their new life.
Guide for International Graduate Students at UIUC

I will keep posting about my experience at UIUC, stay tuned! :)