Photos of students hugging their parents, who drove them, goodbye and walking with their suitcases and boxes into their dorms. Huge crowds enjoying welcome gatherings and get-togethers. Familiar scenes that depicted what was home in a distant past.
Images of this kind came plenty on my Facebook account this week.
It’s this time of the year when I tend to get nostalgic as these images have been flashed in my alma mater’s FB page — taking me to a trip down memory lane as Fall term begins.
The photos remind me of the feeling of awe and wonder at the sheer size of the campus, the massive multiple buildings and the tens and thousands of students around me that first day I officially became an Illini, being a Journalism graduate student.
“See you in September,” as the old song says, “when summer is gone” comes a week early for students of the U. of Illinois, where classes start on the last week of August.
My classrooms were at Gregory Hall, the home of journalism and other media — film, radio, television and advertising — students. It is a good 25-minute walk from my graduate dorm.
Each day, I passed a major landmark in the University — the Main Quad — unless I take another way, which I occasionally did to take a good view of the imposing Alma Mater statue.
The Quadrangle is a common feature in many American universities. At U of I today, there are three Quads — including the South and North Quads.
The Main Quad, which is more than 60 meters wide and almost 300 meters long, has the heaviest human traffic walking on its seams or across, as I usually did.
Around it are about 15 main buildings, including Gregory Hall, and the Student Union, also a major landmark in U.S. universities, which serves as a multi-purpose building with libraries and study halls, restaurants and food counters, an art gallery, a hotel and recreational centers, including a bowling alley.
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The Main and North Quads are the venue of the Quad Fair, which is held on the first Sunday after the opening of the Fall Term.
The Illinois Quad Fair is the biggest of its kind in the entire United States.
About 1,000 students groups and organizations as well as community booths take part in the event aimed at recruiting members and also distributing free merchandise for student use.
Other campus events are held in the Quad, which also serves as an ideal place to get a nice tan or spend a moonlit night during summer.
It is, at the same time, a popular spot for a Frisbee game a study or a friendly get- together session.
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The Main Quad became widely known during my time in the university because it served as a venue for the nationally-televised Hash Wednesday (held close to the Holy Week observance). Hash Wednesday was a popular annual protest and counter-culture event (many drove hundreds of miles to attend) to openly smoke marijuana and push for its legalization.
The annual event lasted for almost three decades, until 2006, before recreational cannabis became legal in the state.
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Still unaware of such event, I was surprised to see an unusually big crowd of people gathering at the Main Quad on my way to class around 7:30 in the morning.
Having been used to activities held there in the past months, I thought it was one of those events until I walked back to my dorm at noon, when I noticed a national TV crew filming the event.
I stopped for a while to watch until I started to feel giddy and smell something distinctly pungent.
It was only later that afternoon when I realized what was happening when my foster counselor called to check if I passed by the Quad that day.
“Oh yes, But I didn’t stay long as I felt dizzy after 10 minutes,” I replied.
“You were smelling a sea of marijuana smoke,” he said as he explained to me that I was in the midst of Hash Wednesday.
The Evening News, too, featured a long segment that educated me more of that one storied Wednesday in Urbana-Champaign.
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Reminiscing the August episode and the subsequent days at Illinois, as Psychology Today says, is one way to engage in self-reflection, to show resilience amid challenges we have faced. It allows us to savor once more a facet of our past, like that once-in-a-lifetime experience that started one late August
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I remember the days of old; I meditate on all that you have done; I ponder the work of your hands. (Psalm 143:5) | NWI
