My story, part 5: off to college!

In the fall of 1991, I travelled north to Fairbanks, Alaska to attend the University of Alaska Fairbanks. (Go, Nanooks!) This was the first time I lived apart from my mom for a significant period of time.

In fact, my stepfather’s health had declined so much, he required a heart transplant. He had three major heart attacks by age 45, multiple bypass surgeries, and still couldn’t quit smoking cigarettes. To get better care, he and my mother moved back down to North Carolina for a year, so he could be seen by doctors at Duke University.

When I got to Fairbanks, I introduced myself as “Mike” but said some of my friends called me “Milo”. That led other people to start introducing me as “Milo”, and soon that’s what everyone in Fairbanks knew me as. I started getting strange looks when a family member would call on the shared phone line and asked for “Mike”. That was basically when my nickname became my dominant name.

My first semester, about two weeks in, I started feeling quite ill. A trip to the student health center confirmed that I had mononucleosis. If you’ve never had it, it’s basically all the symptoms of the flu, plus an enlarged spleen and fatigue that lasts for months. They call it the “kissing disease”, which was like salt in the wound — I hadn’t even had the pleasure of kissing anyone to make up for the misery! As a result, I had to drop basically all of my classes in my first semester. I was only able to complete one or two of my classes.

My first roommate, a guy named John Koski, was hated by the entire dorm. In fact, a bunch of dorm mates threw a party in my room when I moved in to commiserate with me and annoy him. But I was so sick that fall, I didn’t really think much of him at all. We divided the room and didn’t really have any arguments.

I did start to make some friends when I felt better, and one of them, Eric, became a close friend. In the spring, we decided to move in together as roommates. We got along really well, having lots of similar interests and both were from Anchorage.

I also met Scott, an upperclassman and fellow computer science student. Scott taught me ping pong and helped me get a job working in the VAX support crew for my second year. Eric and Scott were my best friends during my freshman year of college.

I also dated Rhonda in the spring, a music major who lived in one of the apartments on campus. We got along well, but split up because we definitely were looking for different things from life. She’s still a good friend, though, after we reconnected a few years ago.

The summer after my freshman year, I went back home to Anchorage and worked at a business doing furniture refinishing and repair. For me, that mostly involved standing over a giant cat soaking wood pieces in acetone and scrubbing them to remove the old finish. It was an okay summer job. My parents were still in North Carolina, but I did fly down towards the end of the summer to spend a short visit with them. While I was there, I even got a chance to go see Lollapalooza, which featured two of my favorite bands, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden!

Speaking of music, I had gotten really into grunge music. Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Stone Temple Pilots — they were totally my jam and I listened to them incessantly. Still a fan of them to this day, and I’m happy to say I got a chance to see most of them in concert. Not easy to do when you live half your life in Alaska!

The summer job had one advantage: it got me in the best shape of my life. Hours of scrubbing furniture will do that to you. In fact, one girl in the dorm the following August would see me for the first time and burst out, “Milo, you’ve got shoulders now!”

My second year of college was a bit rockier than the first one. But I’ll save that for the next post…