Miles McDonals

Miles McDonald, a 19 year old sophomore at Eugene Lang, dreamt of coming to New York since he was a kid. Having been born and raised in the confines of Hartford, Connecticut, Miles was never really able to settle for his surroundings. “I never really liked [Hartford],” Miles told me one Wednesday afternoon. “The people are very provincial. I always wanted to come to New York.” And it was this longing that brought Miles to the New School. “I didn’t want to go to NYU, but I wanted to be in the area. My aunt worked here in admissions and originally heard about the New School through her.”

It is therefore fitting that Miles moved to New York the year after graduating high school. First settling in an apartment on East 11th Street and Avenue B, Miles first had trouble adjusting to his new neighbors. First living under a “super old woman with 15 or 20 cats,” Miles’s new life in Alphabet City was as simply as counting his ABC’s. “She was actually losing her mind and had been living there for 50 years,” he told the story with a high level of shock and enthusiasm. “She started drilling holes in the floors and taking a sledge hammer and breaking the pipes.” Miles, who lived under her, had had enough. The next year, he moved in with his boyfriend, Michael, and their friend Angelina. Miles went to visit his Michael, a senior at The New School, last year when he studying in Dublin.

Miles always felt himself to be the black sheep of his family. Unlike his 22 year old brother who works in finance or his father who is a successful healthcare consultant, Miles has struggled with what he wants to do for a career: “I’ve struggled with what I’m interested in doing ever since I got [to the New School]. I definitely want to do something where I can make money though, and I’ve even thought of doing something in advertising.” Miles described his brother, a recent graduate from Boston’s Babson University, as very different. Conservative, driven, and financially motivated, Miles and his brother seem as though they could have grown up in entirely different households. However, the latter appears to fit much more in to the McDonald family that Miles does. “My dad has a ton of phone calls and business trips. When he’s at home, he’s sitting on the porch, smoking a cigar, and drinking a martini,” he told me in a neutral tone during on Wednesday Journalism class. He then smiled a little and said, “My mother just runs around screaming at everyone. I have a super liberal family though.”