I moved in to South Quad my freshman year. I’d been looking forward to going to a private school, but at the very last minute, my parents decided they couldn’t afford it, and I was one of those typical cases where my parents made too much money for me to be eligible for any financial aid. So the U of I was the only other possibility. And I was pretty sure it would suck. That it would be a large, impersonal, un-navigable bureaucracy where I would be nothing more than a student number in a large industrial meat grinder. For the most part, I was correct. But the one thing that turned it all around and made it the very best five and a half years of my life was the Foreign Language House.
From they day I moved it, it felt like home. I got pretty damn lucky the first year with my first roommate Tad. Though from smalltown Manchester and a military guy, he never gave me any trouble about being gay and was a considerate and kind guy. Though he probably thought I was one of the strangest creatures he’d ever met. Subsequent years would see me paired with an old high school classmate, Paul Schultz, who became and fantastic and supportive friend who I still have occasional contact with today. After a short semester with a third roommate junior year showed us to be incompatible, my remaining time in the FLH was in the coveted single rooms.
South Quad was a fantastic place. Relatively self-contained, with the exception of the student-run radio station in the basement, it had the fantastic feature that the main entrance ran through the communal lounge, meaning you could see and say hello to everyone who was coming or going. And the lounge had people in at almost any hour of the day or night. The closest thing we had to that in later years was the “Vortex” of Hillcrest, which was nothing more than a place three hallways met at an access. Even then, people tended to congregate there sitting on the floor and talking at all hours of the day and night. We would get together and watch our favorite TV shows (Star Trek: The Next Generation garnered the biggest audiences, especially the first season), but most importantly it was a place where we could learn and practice our many and varied foreign languages almost 24 hours a day. In practice, I think we spoke mostly English (with the exception of the weekly “House Dinners”) because of the mix of so many different languages in the house, but it was nice to be able to bump into someone at least once a day that I could practice Spanish, French, Japanese or German with (the languages I was studying at the time).
In short, the FLH was more or less a big co-ed fraternity/sorority that gave me friends, comrades, big brothers and sisters (and later little brothers and sisters) to help me navigate the complexities of early adult life and the university. I will always remember it as one of the most important experiences of my life. Indeed, it gave me the international orientation that motivated me to study for a year in Spain, and left me feeling well-prepared for a temporary job assignment overseas that eventually became permanent. And I fell that I’m far better prepared for working in a company with 31 different nationalities and customers all over the world because of my FLH experience. So thanks to the U of I for supporting it (albeit sometimes begrudgingly, it seemed) and for all of you who were such a wonderful part of my experience there! Hope we can stay in touch over the years!