I am UIC: Celebrating UIC spirit

When you’re in the midst of UIC Homecoming week, it’s hard not to be excited about the festivities.

Hustle up UH was a sweaty, fun-filled challenge where advisors, faculty and students (including me) ran up 27 flights of stairs to benefit student scholarships. When we reached the end, we found cheese plates, seasonal fruit and other treats that made the long trek worthwhile.

The 28th floor, usually reserved for events, meetings and other administrative tasks, was filled with the joyful exhilaration born of completing a difficult task.

On Wednesday, different student organizations hosted Taste of UIC (modeled after Taste of Chicago, complete with tickets for food), where I tried milk tea with nata de coco for the first time.

However, the highlight of this week will certainly be this Saturday. I am thrilled that the homecoming dance will be in the Field Museum. Although I realize that it is an uncommon location for a college dance, the choice makes sense to me. Both museums and dances are places of celebration. Dances celebrate our college and the student experience; museums celebrate our culture and the history of our world. I believe mixing the two is the epitome of UIC. We will explore and learn about our fellow creatures and the earth we inhabit while we celebrate our own experience as humans and students. In addition, there’s an added bonus to this choice of location. We will be among the select few who have had a museum to themselves after hours. Indeed, I imagine that the Field is quite different after hours. The chatter of children, teachers, and the general public will be silenced. Solemnity will descend upon the artifacts which have endured for thousands of years and will endure for thousands more.

We will get to be witnesses to this phenomenon, and we will realize how brief our celebrations (and our lives) are on the time scale of eternity while we revel. This is only more reason to celebrate remarkably at the dance, so l plan on remembering every detail of homecoming. Perhaps one day, my descendants will look at the photograph fossils of that night and dream about a different, bygone era.