Growing up in Decatur with two UI students for siblings and a fomer music professor for a dad, Ethan Henderson knew his way around campus long before he actually enrolled here.
On his frequent visits, he remembers walking through the Quad and passing the Main Library but never actually going inside.
"Not until my first day of graduate school at the university did I step foot in the reading room of the Main Library," says the now-curator of the main library at Georgetown University. "Opening the heavy front doors, walking up those deep steps to the second floor, catching glimpse of the beautiful reference desk, and then a feeling that I can only describe as belonging.
"It may not be the most historical, beautiful or technologically-advanced, but when I walked in to that expansive and soaring space, I felt that I finally belonged to the strong intellectual community of the University of Illinois.
"Soon, I realized that I was too distracted by the sights, sounds and smells, to study in that space so I signed up for a research carrel in the dark underground of the library. But I would always stop and take a moment in the reading room to remind myself of that first-day feeling.”
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