Photos for Us

Unless I come back to UIC for grad school, this will be my final blog for UIC Radio. I’ve had quite a few blog ideas that I never got to. I wanted to write about the Disability Resource Center and disability representation at UIC, as well as my long list of issues with modern music reviewing. I decided, however, that I had to take this a different direction. I wanted to end my time at radio similar to how it started and take the opportunity to talk about my friends and how important joining radio ended up being for me.

When I started going to high school, I thought of it as a new start to try and find my place and my people. I was lucky enough to get scholarship money and grants to go to a private school I tested into in the city. It’s an experience that I don’t take for granted and I am lucky that I got to experience. I also felt out of place, though. On my early morning train ride to school or morning practice, I often felt like I was going back to a world that I wasn’t meant to be in. I didn’t find a lot of people that I related to until too late. Even though it was a rigorous school that I felt I should have belonged in, I also felt like the things that were easy for everyone else were the hardest for me. I felt like an impostor in everyone else’s world. I never ended up in the place I thought I would in high school. 

Going forward a few years to the Fall of 2023, pretty late at night close to the deadline, I submitted my application to be a DJ at UIC Radio. I never noticed that applications were open until the last minute. I had no idea how important it would end up being that I turned it in on time. I interviewed and was accepted into UIC Radio, which I was so ecstatic about and proud of. Like any community, it took me some time to find my place. As I started to develop my voice, I also started to find my people. That was a big shock to me that took quite some time to get over. 

In Spring of 2024 during my second semester at UIC radio, I wrote my first blog titled “Photos for Me.” It was about all of the ways I felt after having my new friends from radio over for the first time to play games and spend time together. It really is quite something for me to be able to look back at that time and remember how I was feeling. I definitely still was trying to accept my reality, convincing myself that it wasn’t too good to be true and that I wasn’t just inserting myself into these people’s lives. It can be easy to ignore how far you’ve come and how much you’ve grown, so having this as evidence of how different things are for me now after a relatively short amount of time is pretty special to me.

I eventually got over that feeling and started feeling something new that I was not used to at all. I felt like I had found a community that had a place for me. Looking back at how I felt before, it really is quite different now knowing that I have all these close friendships that I can trust and don’t feel like I have to question. It feels like that support is at the backbone of everything I do. Almost everyone that is most important to me in my life I either met through radio or through people I know in radio. 

I’m glad this community existed for me to find my way into it in the first place. It was a place where I could find people with similar but also completely different interests than me. I found a creative voice and outlet, and got to peek into other people’s worlds through their endeavors as well. All this was just a tool, though, that gave a way for me and my future friends to connect on what we all already loved. I’m glad I never changed for the people around me, because in time, I found people who accepted me for who I am. I can be myself and know that’s the person they want around. We can talk about anything, serious or stupid, and we can understand each other. My friends helped me find more of my passion in music. I play drums in three bands right now, all of which other UIC Radio members are in. That is something so fulfilling that I never had. To make something I am proud of and really connect to together with my friends is so precious to me; it’s one of the things I am most passionate about in life.

I am transitioning into a part of my life that will bring a lot of changes and uncertainty. At a certain time in the last couple of years, I would be much more worried about this period in my life. After all, I am going to be leaving one of the only places that I felt like I belonged. But even though I am leaving, I know that the people are still going to be here with me, and that is what’s really important. I live with a weight lifted from my shoulders knowing that the group of friends I always wanted as a teenager is real, I just had to find them.

I really struggle to put my thoughts into words sometimes. I think my point in writing all this is just to attempt to express to everyone in my life how important they all are.  I wish I was better at expressing that more. I hope that people reading this know that you’ve had an impact on me. The people in my life are no doubt what is most important to me. And even those in radio that I don’t know as well have made an impact on me too.

One of my next episodes of my show Primordial Radio is going to be celebrating my friends more thoroughly and going through songs that signify moments with my friends. Stay tuned for that!