Franklin Pierce College University

I've been getting notices from my alma mater lately asking me to update all my information for the alumni association as they're trying to update all their records or something. It's been kind of reminding me a of my college days so I thought I'd write a bit about em.

My senior year of high school I applied to a total of 6 colleges; University of New Hampshire, Plymouth State, Castleton State, Franklin Pierce, Southern Vermont and, I think Keene State. The only one I really wanted to go to was UNH of course as almost all my friends were going there. So naturally, UNH was the only school of the 6 that I didn't get accepted to. I had toured Franklin Pierce College and liked their Mass Communication department so I decided on them as my second choice with my mind on a possible career in radio. FPC, at the time, was a small, private, liberal arts college tucked away in the southwestern corner of New Hampshire in a little town called Rindge, right on the Massachussets border. There is literally nothing there except the college but it sits on a lake with beautiful Mount Monadnock in the background overlooking the campus and it's such a gorgeous picture that many people choose it simply because of the view. Of course those same people spend most of their 4 years complaining that there's nothing to do. When I was there, the enrollment was somewhere around 1,300 students so it was very small and they were so big on the small town, family atmosphere that fraternities and sororities were not allowed. A year or two ago, Franklin Pierce College changed their name to Franklin Pierce University for reasons I've yet to fully comprehend.

Looking back, I would have loved to have gone to college far away from home, maybe even on the other side of the country...but I had enlisted in the Army Reserve to help pay for school and I'd have to drive back home for drills once a month so I opted to stay closer to home mostly for that reason. Of course it was my first time being on my own so even though I was only two hours away, it felt like a lot more.

I remember my first day pretty vividly. I had on my favorite pair of acid wash jeans with the legs pegged at the bottom - hey, it was 1989! - and a yellow shirt. My dorm room was tiny, barely enough room for me and my roomate. My roomate was from Connecticut, his name was Paul Keegan but everybody called him "Kegger". He was really tall, a basketball player, and we got along really well. He was pretty laid back, had a girlfriend back home, seldom studied and ended up dropping out due to terrible grades after the first semester. I myself finished my first semester on academic probation. But that's a story for the next post...