Author - Abby

Getting Involved with Research: At-Home Edition

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...

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...

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...

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...