During my run as a columnist two years ago, I tended to fill the niche of the angry activist, at times calling for progressive reform but mostly ripping into the wide array of people and things on this campus that I found unacceptable: Frat Park, the Orange and Blue Observer, my roommate. I covered all the bases and took delight in my own grouchiness.

This time around, I think I’ve been notably less sassy, though not yet a fully tamed shrew. Like many others in this generation, I’ve been raised to believe that I can get my way if I just stomp and yell for long enough, and at times I have taken it too far. But now that I’m just weeks away from saying goodbye to the university that I have called home for the past four years, I can’t help but think about all of the things that are right about this place.

Amidst all the divisive battles over campus controversies like the recently retired Chief Illiniwek, it often seems to go unnoticed that we have been blessed with a team of top-notch administrators who go the extra mile in listening to the concerns of the student population. As symbolic of a gesture as it may have seemed to some when President B. Joseph White and Chancellor Richard Herman agreed to participate in this semester’s STOP forum on racism, power, and privilege, I think it’s important to note that a lot of other college administrators would have balked at an invitation to take the hot seat in an auditorium full of hundreds of angry students.

Similarly, when Chancellor Herman agreed to listen to the concerns of the LGBT student community through the advisory committee he established, he could have stopped there.

He could have said, “Look, I’m agreeing to meet with you guys. I don’t have to be doing this.” Instead, he led the way in securing the funding necessary to expand the Office of LGBT Resources to better accommodate the needs of this university’s LGBT students. By moving past lip service and actually paying attention to the special needs of the people they have been called on to represent, the University of Illinois administration has demonstrated true leadership.

I am equally amazed at how inattentive most students have been to nationally recognized academic institutions such as the Institute of Government and Public Affairs.

Before my junior year, I had never even known this campus unit existed, but in just one year as an undergraduate intern at IGPA, I was exposed to countless speaking engagements featuring the nation’s leading experts in a variety of policy-oriented fields. I met the second most powerful member of the U.S. Senate, had coffee with a member of the European Union’s parliament, and stood in the Library of Congress as we presented our annual Ethics in Government Award to the chairman and vice chairman of the 9/11 Commission.

Amazing opportunities like the ones I had at IGPA can be found throughout all of the departments on this campus. They are not always publicized as well as they could be, but they are yours for the taking if you just look closely enough.

Don’t let the surrounding cornfields deceive you – the University of Illinois is a world-class institution, and this distinction is not limited to what you see north of Green Street.

For all of the not-so-great things about Champaign-Urbana that have provided me with three semesters’ worth of column fodder, I have come to realize that this university deserves more credit than it generally receives from those who attend it.

For every ho train that comes chugging along your path and makes you wonder what it really means to earn a degree from this school, realize that there is a network of Nobel Prize winners, political heavyweights, and technological pioneers at your disposal, with a cadre of principled leaders at the helm. There’s reason to be proud.