When I decided to stay home this year, I automatically assumed it would mean saying goodbye to some of the incredible opportunities on campus. It turned out that this was not the case at all! I had more time to get...
Author - Abby
Civil and Environmental Engineering at UIUC
If you’ve ever found yourself fascinated by the built and natural environments around you, then Civil and Environmental Engineering might be a great path for you! Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) is a...
Celebrating Sustainability on Campus
This past October, the University of Illinois celebrated a huge landmark for campus sustainability: the signing of the 2020 Illinois Climate Action Plan! This document, known as the iCAP for short, outlines the major...
Getting Ready for a Virtual Semester
After an unconventional spring semester and an equally strange summer, I’m really looking forward to going back to school, and I hope you all are too! I’m excited to get back into the routine of having class every day...
Wellness and Working From Home
Instead of staying cooped up at my makeshift dining-room-table desk today, I’m blogging from my hammock outside with my dog at my feet. In times like these, it’s so important to add variety to your days to keep you...
Living-Learning Communities
I didn’t realize how much I missed living at college until I started writing this post. Thinking about all the friends that I made and all the opportunities I had during my first year of college has made me realize just...
The Costa Rica Chronicles: Part 2
In my last post, I talked about the projects that I worked on as a part of the WIE-GFX Global Sustainability Scholars class in Costa Rica over winter break, as well as a bunch of the places we visited and the...
The Costa Rica Chronicles: Part 1
During winter break, I had the exciting chance to go on one of my dream trips. Shortly after I applied to University of Illinois last year, I also applied to the WIE-GFX Global Sustainability Scholars program. This...
Bowl Games, Bridges, and Bands
After five years, University of Illinois was finally selected to go bowling! This year we traveled to the Redbox Bowl in Santa Clara, California—our first bowl game since the Heart of Dallas Bowl in 2014. Despite the...
Beating the Stress of College Application Season
You know how Snapchat gives you those “one year ago today” memories? Well today my memory was a picture of my computer screen with the words “Abby, you’re an Illini!” front and center. For those of you who have just...
An Introvert’s Guide to Making Friends in College
In the weeks leading up to move-in day, the biggest thing I worried about wasn’t how I would adjust to living on my own or how I would do in classes; it was how I would make friends. I read dozens of college blogs to...
Keeping Healthy in College
We’ve all heard the stories about the “freshman fifteen” or the “freshman plague.” This is typical college lore used to scare freshman into forming healthy habits early on. While these stories can often be a bit...
A Day in the Life of a Freshman Engineer
One of the biggest things I wondered about as I came into college was how I would structure my days. It’s no longer as simple as driving to school, walking into the building, following my daily schedule, and then going...
Pursuing My Passions at Illinois
We’re officially six weeks into the semester, which is over 1/3 of the way through! These weeks really flew by, and I still can’t believe how much has changed in this amount of time. I’ll be honest—I came into...
The Tutor Becomes the Tutored: A New Approach
In high school, I was always the friend that people came to for help with homework. I was a math tutor in my school’s peer tutoring program, and I answered dozens of late-night text messages from people panicking about...
Preparing for Your Transition Into College
Like most incoming freshmen, I’ve been thinking about move-in day all summer—usually with excitement, but also with a fair amount of anxiety. My summer has been all about preparing for this day. From dorm shopping to...
