Heading off to College

College was a time of big changes in my life, even more than High School had been.  I had lived in Auburn all my life prior to heading off to Cal-Lutheran in Southern California.  One thing that I decided before I left, was to try to avoid being stereotyped as the "smart guy" at the expense of all other characteristics.  That basically entailed playing dumb, all of the time.  That was something I was never very good at in the past, but I was fairly committed to the idea.  Trying to break outside of that box was one of the reasons I had chosen to go to college at CLU, so I might as well maximize that effect, since the sacrifices were being made regardless of the outcome.

When I showed up, one of the first people I met was my "peer advisor," a senior named Scott.  To be honest, he had very little effect on my life in that role, but eventually did years later in a slightly different capacity.

Months before, I had opted to live in the suites of "Pederson" which was traditionally known as the wilder dorm, with residents who were more social, over the more isolating "Mt Clef" with pairs living in long hallways with no interior windows.  Ironically my year the trend ended up being reversed, and Clef was where the wilder students ended up, but that was okay with me.  I preferred the suites overlooking a central courtyard anyway.

I was assigned to a room in the residence hall with four other students.  The five of us would share a relatively small suite and bathroom.  These rooms were clearly designed to house four people, but the school had been growing.  The five of us could hardly have been more different, with a soccer player, a football player, a beach bum from Santa Barbara, a Jewish Russian, and myself.  Justin was a soccer player from Hawaii and talked even less than I did.  Travis was a football player who was never around, and moved to another room after a few months.  Keith was from Santa Barbara, didn't really stand out much.  Alex was quite an interesting character, having escaped Russia to Israel during the fall of the Iron Curtain, and then recently having escaped Israel to avoid compulsory military service as he was 18.

The first day was pretty intense, meeting everyone, moving in, getting familiar with where I would be living, and saying good bye to my parents.  That whole week they had freshman orientation events planned until at least two in the morning every night.  The first night there was an event in the gym after midnight, designed to try to introduce you to every other person in the class of 3-4 hundred.  Prior to that night, I had a flawless memory for names and faces, and could pretty much identify anyone I had ever met at a moments notice.  That night just overwhelmed that part of my brain, and it just never recovered.  For months after that, I would be walking around, and someone would say "Hi Mike" and not only would I not be able to recall their name, but I couldn't even remember where I met them or how I knew them.  I have regained some of that ability since then, because I usually meet fewer people now.  But I usually still need some detail beyond a name before I can really remember someone.

It was a long week of orientation activities, keeping us busy from early in the morning until late at night.  The last day that week we took a bus to Zuma beach, which wasn't too far away.  I ended up spending a long time standing at the edge of the surf, talking with J, a sophomore from Santa Barbara.