With move in beginning next week, I’ve been thinking about something that I often find myself saying to people, when talking about where I live: “I really love living in a university town.” I definitely use the University of Illinois to give some weight to my answer when I tell someone that I’m from Champaign-Urbana. It feels better than saying “I’m two hours south of Chicago.”
It’s true though, that phrase. I do love living in a university town. I grew up in Normal, a bike ride away from ISU’s campus, so I grew up with the benefits of such an arrangement, on though on a bit smaller scale. Having now spent my entire adult life here, it’s hard to imagine living any other way.
In my family, we’ve reaped the benefits of having a place like Krannert Center, where we’ve seen professional artists perform, and also watched our kids take to it’s various stages. We’ve attended sporting events of all kinds, and become even bigger Illini basketball fans than I was as a student at U of I. The electricity of this community during that 2004-2005 season was something to behold.
And, if I’m going to be real here, having C-U be home to the state’s flagship university creates a nice little relatively progressive oasis in the red “south of Chicago” sea.
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