A Senior Year Reflection

By the time I swipe in for a concierge shift at the Siebel Center for Design, it already feels like I’m coming home.

As I approach graduation this May, I’ve been thinking a lot about how SCD has quietly shaped my college experience. What started as a place I stopped by for meetings sophomore year has become the thread connecting so many of the opportunities that have defined my time at the University of Illinois.

A typical day begins at the marketing table: brainstorming with teammates, writing scripts, filming Reels. But what I love most about being at SCD is the constant movement. There’s always a student solving an equation on the whiteboards, a team huddled over a prototype in the Shop, or a class in full discussion just steps away. Even during quieter shifts, the building hums with possibility.

SCD first became my home base through the American Advertising Federation. As a journalism major, I made the decision sophomore year to explore advertising and marketing more intentionally. I started attending AAF meetings here multiple times a week, slowly realizing that this building was more than just a backdrop. It was a launchpad for incredible ideas. Through AAF, I met students already involved with the SCD marketing team. Those connections eventually led me to a role working at the very place where I had once just been an attendee.

Joining the marketing team gave me my first real taste of what workflow looks like on a large but tight-knit team. Brainstorming sessions turned into drafts then campaigns and feedback sharpened our ideas. 

One of my favorite memories from my first semester on the team was helping plan and campaign for our UX Days event in April. I vividly remember tabling with teammates and walking around campus to hang flyers. After weeks of collaboration and promotion, seeing UX Days come to life, and witnessing how successful it turned out to be, was incredibly rewarding. It was the first time I saw a campaign through from ideation to execution, and it solidified my interest in pursuing advertising professionally.

For the first time this semester, I even have a class here: ADV 409: Media Entrepreneurship. In this course, we are creating and designing an app using human-centered design taxonomy. Because of my time at SCD, I was already familiar with human-centered design principles, which made stepping into this class feel natural rather than intimidating. Now, I see HCD everywhere; in the way we think about user experience for events, in how we craft messaging for different audiences, and even in the way I approach conversations at the concierge desk.