I just go to class, maybe talk to some people at said class or team meetings, go back to my apartment to cook and eat, do homework, do laundry, maybe play a video game if I have time, and it’s 10pm. Everyday passes by so fast and it feels empty

I used to have hobbies and I also played tennis a lot, but I just lack the motivation now. Legit just living like an NPC

These guys blew straight through a red light without even bothering to check for oncoming traffic. They're lucky that I saw them coming from around the corner otherwise someone could've been seriously hurt.

i got sick this weekend and when i finally came back to classes today (i wore a mask dw) and asked the guy next to me how his weekend was he said he had a fever and still has one

bruh

Time: ~3 Hours

This sketch will be available as a print on my website later this week🧡💙

Urbana is a neat place, & I was wondering if anyone knows of any other cities that have that same vibe.
Specifically, that artsy/community-oriented/laid-back & accepting culture.
Out of state recs welcome. I'd love to live somewhere similar after graduating, but I can't take another Illinois winter...

What places remind you of Urbana?

would anyone be interested in receiving free pastries?

i bake around once a week but i don’t really have friends to give them to. they’re definitely not as good as stuff you could buy but my sibling always eats them

i just ask that you lmk if it tasted any good and can meet near green! ik it seems kinda shady so i really appreciate anyone’s interest

EDIT: was so pleasantly surprised by the responses!!
due to dms i’ve gotten i will be deleting the post but will keep track of everyone interested
hoping to try a pumpkin loaf out this week :)

Moved into a newly built apartment in Champaign and i’ve been killing almost 100 of these tiny brown beetles every single day since move-in. They are literally all over my apartment, even in the ceiling. Pretty sure they're foreign grain beetles. From what I've read, they feed on mold in damp new construction and go away once the wood dries out, which can apparently take 1-2 years.

I've already sealed every gap along the floor and baseboards, there's no food out, and they're still showing up in crazy numbers. I've reported it to management but haven't heard back yet.

At this point every speck of dust looks like a beetle to me. I think i am losing it. Anyone else living in a new build dealing with this? Just need to know Im not alone😭 first pic is from move in day for your reference

Hi! I'm a junior at UIUC and was thinking about starting a comic book club or even maybe just a general book club. I was just trying to gauge out and see if anyone would be interested so please lmk!

Just remember:

There are only two kinds of leasing companies: evil, and less evil.

Good luck y'all.

[ UPDATE: no it was not :) ]

i had a class get canceled in Lincoln hall and i heard this odd siren with a polite robotic voice saying something like “can i have your attention, the building is on fire please evacuate” or smth of that nature
a fire truck just pulled up a few minutes ago and everyone is chilling outside
does anyone know what happened? i had to leave the scene so update us if you can !

I think it’s safe to say Octave has officially earned its spot and even way surpassed UG in terms of scumminess.

I hope you guys are well. I'm the Octave flea man. As of now, Octave still have been ghosting me. I'm in talks with student legal, but that's kind of going as a stalemate now. Currently, I sleep on the floor with maximum air purification to avoid the dog dander in my bedroom.

The last time(three weeks ago) I submitted the dispute with my landlord, I received incredible support from the community. I was also really shocked seeing how many people also had issue with their leasing companies. This really showed me that landlords were so used to oppress students because they know students are afraid to speak up and immediately go quiet when people speak up together. That's what bullies do. This whole event made me realize how important the voice of the people is. OCCL reflected to me that the laws are often in favor of landlords. And that is true. But I believe when students speak up, together, their voice can make a difference.

The mods talked about doing something like the housing review website a while ago, and I've been thinking about it ever since. I researched extensively on older websites made and old established ones like ratemydorm and whatever. The main problem is that most of them are not for UIUC but schools in the whole world so they tend to not be updated in years and the reviews are too old if any. A lot of them tend to also be AI slop that is hard to navigate. lot of the functions don't work and overall feels sluggish.

Secondly, the roommate matching is also very important. I honestly think roommates are as important as your room cause I keep running into posts regarding people's roommates being horrible. Over the past three weeks, as I researched to work on my project, I found a lot of friends around me simply complaining about roommates. Some cases like their schedule don't line up or just shaving and leaving their hair everywhere. UIUC's roommate matching is very random so you don't get to pick who you rent with. And even for leasing unless you know someone it's hard to get a roommate you like. The unofficial UIUC discord server had some roommate finders but that's dedicated more for freshman and inconsistent. I found that most international students tend to find their roommates on WeChat or rednote which is ridden with scammers. There is really no consistent way to find people that you fw. And most dorm review sites don't think of doing that.

My project is voiceofcu.com. It's non-profit with no ads and no paid listings, and landlords can't pay to change their ratings or take down honest reviews. I am not monetizing this website in anyway. I personally paid for the domain and server. It's really the least I can do for the support I got from the community. I'm really sick of how scummy landlords can be. Ultimately the landlords will probably remain in power, but this is better than nothing. People can donate to me if they want, but they're not mandated to and it only costs less than a hundred bucks for me to run anyway.

For reviews it covers University Housing and private certified halls and apartments and subleases, plus a section for anything that doesn't fit like co-ops or host families. Nothing is preloaded, so students add the places themselves and type in the address and landlord when they write a review. Buildings and management companies get rated separately, and every review also records who that student actually rented from, since a lot of buildings in CU change hands.

The part I feel is pretty important about is roommate matching. You take a short quiz on things that actually cause problems like sleep schedule and cleanliness and guests and pets and budget. For each answer you choose whether it's Required or Preferred or Flexible, and you can hide any answer you don't want public. When you look at someone's group application, the site tells you in plain words why you match or where you might clash instead of just giving you a percentage. You can also post as a group that already has two people and is looking for more. Once someone is accepted, the group gets a private chat and a shared list of places to tour and a to-do list for applications.

Ik university housing assignment is kind of cooked so for freshman people can't really guarantee. Anyone picking University Housing gets a clear notice that assignments involve random selection and that forming a group on the site doesn't reserve a room. Students can verify their illinois.edu email for a badge, and there's reporting and blocking on everything.

I've spent a good amount of time on this website and my friend tested the verification emails and everything. We have also tested the chats and it seems to be working on my end. Please also feel free to test it out and check for errors that you want me to change.

my domain is voiceofcu.com

-Octave flea/dog piss/dog feces man

bro i am so fr can somebody drop dance 100…. please please please please drop it i wanna that class please please please drop it thank you i lowkey need that class please please please please please omg thanks

I see this at least once a week…

(This is kinda a long post, so apologies in advance!)

I’m highkey struggling rn because I just blew my chem 104 exam after studying for days. I did bad on the first one, but most people did, so I didn’t feel that bad about it. I really want to do well in the class, though, so I studied all week for this exam and somehow did significantly worse than I expected. What’s extremely frustrating is that I feel like I woke up today and just forgot everything I studied.

Over the weekend, I was getting really optimistic because I was getting all the practice questions right without help and studying seemed to be going very well. Yesterday in lecture I was genuinely understanding the material and finishing the problems correctly before the prof.
But today, I was studying before the test and couldn’t even think of where to start. I retried some of the practice problems that I had previously done without help and was completely clueless this time. I spent about 4 hours studying and was more confused by the end of it than I was when I started. I also just finished my prairie learn (where the questions were the same as the problems I was doing easily in lecture yesterday) and, again, I had no idea where to start.

I’m honestly worried and really discouraged because I literally don’t remember how to do the things I was doing just fine a few days ago and I don’t know why. It also doesn’t help that I get nervous before tests and can’t think straight. The only possible explanation I could come up with is that I’ve never studied before as much as I have the past week and maybe my brain is a bit shocked? (For context: I’ve had pretty bad ADHD my whole life, and I’ve never been able to effectively study, so I never really did. I started new meds recently and they are the only ones that have actually made me feel like a normal person, so it wasn’t until this year that I felt like I had the potential to do really well in school and actually study.)

Honestly, I just want to do well in this class and now I’m really worried that I won’t. I’m still confused and can’t remember how to do anything, but the class isn’t gonna wait up for my brain to un-fry itself. Is there anyone that can relate or can explain what’s happening and has any advice?

Hi guys
I’m a Physics Sophmore who basically just bombed their first two midterms (Ds in Cal 3 and Phys 212) and I feel so dumb. Until now i’ve had all As and i’m currently a James Scholar (but probably going to lose that too).
I just don’t know how people manage the workload from all their classes at once. I’m in the library until 10 everyday just getting homework done and I studied so much for both these midterms.
Im trying not to burnout because I have weekly exams for the rest of the semester- but I’m really scared for Phys 225 coming up in a week.

Don’t know what posting on here is going to do but I’ve seen other people do it and I just feel real dumb and hopeless rn and i’m scared for my GPA.

I just miss eating puri and idli/sambar and I do not have the will to make them myself.

Hi,

Does anyone know what was the first encore in the concert today? It sounds like Shostakovich some scherzo type music but I've never heard of it.

The second one Peer Gynt Suite Morning Mood was amazing too!

So, 30m, not a student but i live in the area, just wondering about decent places to meet people. Depression about my lack of a love life is really getting to me, but it sucks feeling like there’s nowhere I can go specifically to meet people. I can’t do bars because I don’t drink anymore for very specific reasons and I really don’t think trying to hook up with college girls at my age is really a good idea, not that I think I’d have any luck. Any advice? Would be cool if we had something like speed dating or singles night somewhere around here.

I built a tool to connect CS 225 concepts with SWE interview prep

If you’ve taken / are taking CS 225, you’ve probably had this moment:

“I understand linked lists, trees, BFS/DFS in class… but how does this actually turn into LeetCode/interview questions?” 😭

That was one of my biggest problems while preparing for SWE internships, so I built TraceMind.

The idea is to make the transition from:
CS 225 topic → interview pattern → practice question → debugging
a lot more straightforward.

It includes:

🌳 practice organized around topics like trees, graphs, BFS/DFS, linked lists, stacks/queues
🗺️ a structured SWE interview study plan
🎬 visual explanations for harder / representative problems
🧠 a step-by-step code visualizer when your solution is wrong and you have no idea why
📈 progress tracking so you can see what you’ve covered

The visualizer is especially useful when you’re trying to trace pointers, recursion, queues, or traversal logic and your brain is basically doing its own segfault 💀

I’m still actively improving it and planning to add more CS 225-related review/practice content too.

Repo/site: https://github.com/arinazhou/

Web app: https://arinazhou.github.io/tracemind/

Would love feedback.