Four Years
on the Prairie

The Quad in October is a particular kind of beautiful — orange leaves over green grass, Altgeld Hall's limestone tower at the edge of your sight, the smell of autumn threading through Champaign's flat air. Four years of that view taught me to pay attention.

I came in knowing how to write code. Illinois taught me how to think — in systems, in tradeoffs, in the long arc of a design decision made at 2 AM in Grainger. The CS curriculum is relentless, and the design courses quietly rewire how you see every interface you'll ever touch.

Between lectures and project sprints, there were Illini basketball runs to State Farm Center, late-night diner booths on Green Street, and the kind of friendships that only form when everyone around you is equally exhausted and equally hungry to build something. I'd do it again without hesitation.