A belated thanks to the 25,000 or so undergrads who made up the student body in the late-1970s, when Kenneth Jaconetty arrived via Des Plaines’ Maine West High School.
More than any one professor, advisor or dean, it was many of you who made the future intellectual property attorney and distinguished chemical engineering alum’s four years on campus the time of his life.
The namesake of the UI’s $2.25 million Kenneth E. Jaconetty Scholarship Fund picks it up from here:
“The University of Illinois occupies a beautiful campus with architecturally significant buildings, and a world-class teaching staff and facilities. And yet, what had the biggest influence on me during my undergrad days was not the university's infrastructure but rather its diverse and talented student body.
“How so? I had graduated from a decent suburban Chicago high school with good grades and college entrance exam scores, and I naively assumed that my high school study habits would also work at the college level. How wrong I was!
“I struggled in my first mathematics and science classes. Each differential equation and complex theory that teaching assistants drew on the blackboard baffled me but seemed to be quickly mastered by everyone else in the classroom.
"Though the term ‘imposter syndrome’ didn’t exist at the time, I felt an acute sense of it, and, at the end of the term, my grades showed it. I was getting Cs … Cs! For someone with a near 4.0 GPA in high school, something felt profoundly wrong.
“But things turned around as I made friends with classmates and could study with them and observe their study habits. And not just how they studied, but also how they approached learning in general — with curiosity and discipline. This may have been when I first understood the great gift of being surrounded by people smarter than me.
“My grades improved in the following semesters, and with it the sense that I was where I was meant to be, doing what I was meant to do. Studying became my top priority, but it was at the expense of having not much of a social life on campus. And here, once again, fellow students came to my rescue.
“It was the summer of 1980 and a group of us decided to stay on campus rather than return home. We picked up part-time jobs and took classes: Even the elective I chose — Nuclear Engineering 301 — had an easy-breezy feel to it. I lived in an apartment with my best friend and his fraternity brothers. Sorority sisters occupied other units in the building.
“There was a ‘Melrose Place: College Edition’ vibe there at times. The B-52s’ ‘Rock Lobster’ blasted from stereo speakers and the beer keg on our balcony needed perpetual replacement.
“I will share no more details out of respect for the privacy of my fellow co-conspirators but, suffice it to say, this summer introduced me to the notion of balance. There on campus it was the balance between academic and social pursuits. And, in retrospect, it was the best possible practice for balancing the life that began afterwards.”
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