A picture perfect day

Bonnie Kim’s long road to earning a bachelor’s degree at the University of Illinois is coming to an end. Since spring 2024, when she returned to campus after 45 years to wrap up her coursework, she’s felt something like a time traveler, studying as a full-time college student at a university that’s so familiar and yet so dramatically different than it was in the late 1970s. After all, Bonnie left campus as a young woman to get married, and now she’s 67 years old with three children and six grandchildren. But that’s another story.

One recent, picturesque day she came to the Main Quad with her graduation cap and gown. It was a few weeks before commencement but, as graduating students often do, she rented the academic regalia beforehand for photos and videos. She was with her husband, Max (BS, ’79, chemical engineering).

“Congratulations!” Yelled a passerby, drawn by the sight of the couple. “Thank you!” Replied Max. Bonnie smiled. Partly because she’s made a lot of friends during the past year and a half, and partly because her personal story generated some interest when it was first reported in 2024, it’s not unusual for Bonnie to be greeted by well-wishers on campus.

The afternoon was sunny and warm and the Main Quad was buzzing with students enjoying the turn in the weather. Some studied and sunbathed on the grass while others threw baseballs, frisbees, and footballs. Others walked dogs or passed by on bicycles and skateboards. Some things don’t change, Bonnie and Max agreed, and the Main Quad is one of them.

Bonnie recalled how, when she and Max were students in 1970s, Max would meet her after class in the Auditorium (since renamed Foellinger Auditorium), Noyes Laboratory, or the Foreign Language Building (now called the Literatures, Cultures & Linguistics Building). They’d sit on the Main Quad and eat gimbap, a Korean dish, and he’d play a guitar.

Now, with Bonnie in her graduation gown, they looked at the Quad through much different eyes. “It’s a circle,” Max said. “It’s the same as it was.”

After an interview on camera, Bonnie and Max would walk to the Diana Fountain, where they’d taken a photo during Max’s graduation in 1979. In that photo, Max was wearing his gown and Bonnie was standing proudly at his side.

That old photo was an inspiration. For decades, Max would sometimes look at it and imagine Bonnie wearing the graduation gown. He was the one who, at the end of 2023, asked her to return to campus to complete her degree.

She’d agreed. Bonnie lived on campus while she wrapped up her degree, learning not only the coursework but the new, digitized ways that students checked schedules, did homework, and gave presentations. With much support from her professors and instructors, the College of LAS Student Academic Affairs Office, her classmates, and her family, she earned all A’s and two B’s in her first momentous semester back at school. After that it was all A’s until the end. Bonnie recently received an email from the Department of Communication telling her that she’d been nominated to Lambda Pi Eta, the honor society of the National Communication Association.

What’s next? For now, she and Max plan to take road trips in their RV, which has been parked back home waiting for them ever since she went back to school. Whenever she can, Bonnie said, she’ll advocate “for higher education and the enrichment of life for those people who are just too nervous and scared about going back to school,” she said. For now, she added, she is enjoying a new sense of belonging on campus.

That’s why, on that recent, picturesque day, one of their most meaningful photos would be near the Diana Fountain, in the exact spot that they took Max’s graduation photo in 1979.  This time, Bonnie would be wearing the gown.

Before taking the momentous photo, Bonnie adjusted her gown. Max reached over and straightened the lining of her cap. 

“Do I look okay?” Bonnie asked him.

Max took a moment to find the right words. “You look awesome,” he said.

Editor's note: Watch a new video interview of Bonnie Kim speaking about her experience coming back to campus to earn her degree.