Opinion | Four years, two faces, one name

College is where most people make a name for themselves, but that’s a little harder when you’re not the only Megan Miller. MADDIE MANTOOTH, Staff Photographer

Megan Miller

I had always wondered what it would be like to have a twin — so much so, I even convinced the entirety of my fourth grade class that I had one. I then proceeded to come to school as this twin for about a week until my teacher finally had enough of this stupid ruse. 

Megan Miller, Opinions Editor

However, my fantasy merged with reality once I got to college. A series of mix-ups began to unfold as I discovered I was not the only Megan Miller on campus.

The first time I got a glimpse of my name-twin was during orientation week. I was already scared out of my mind and entirely out of my element. My parents had just left, I had just moved across the country and I was entering a highly competitive film school with next to no experience in my field. 

I stumbled through my greeting with the lovely orientation leaders (OLs): “Hi … uh … Megan Miller?”

They handed me a name tag and told me to go to a room to meet my OLs. But after talking with another screenwriting student, I noticed their room assignment was completely different. I double checked my name tag, and it did not say “screenwriting” or “Dodge College” or anything close to that. 

That’s when I realized it wasn’t mine. 

I went back to the check-in table, but my tag was nowhere to be found. So they improvised; the orientation leaders wrote a new one, like it was no big deal. But to me, as a terrified and anxious freshman, it felt like a personal attack.

Now, I’m the first to admit I have a bit of a dramatic flair. What can I say? I’m a Gemini. But I took that day as the start of a competition: I wanted to find this other Megan Miller, and I wanted to prove I was the “better” one — whatever that meant. 

But then time passed, and it became a funny anecdote I got to tell people. Someone from work would ask me a question about an email they sent me, and I’d be able to reply, “Oh, you must’ve sent it to the other Megan Miller.”

A professor held me after class one time to ask me why I was on his roster, for the same class I was about to finish, for next semester. Once again, I got to blame this mysterious name-twin. 

Megan Miller, senior screenwriting major

Finally, after three years of taking the same journalism classes, I got to meet the other Megan Miller. 

I assumed our relationship would be a rivalry, where each of us would fight to prove who deserved to be called “Megan” in class and who would have to go by a nickname.

But instead, it was just funny. Our professor couldn’t tell us apart no matter how many weeks we sat there, in completely different seats. Though I will admit, it probably didn’t help that we worked together on projects a lot.

Now that we’re almost at the end of our Chapman careers, I feel like I have to mourn my ultimate separation from this name-twin. I’ve met a ton of different Megan’s, Meghan’s and Meaghan’s — however you want to spell it. But never have I gotten to live out a whole formative experience with another Megan Miller. 

P.S. I am still mad that she got the megmiller@chapman.edu email, though, since I specifically had my friends start calling me Meg instead of Megan once I got to college. But I guess without that, we might never have inadvertently crossed paths all those times. 

Megan J. Miller

I remember the first time I met my ghost.

Nestled among the gentle blue hues of Outlook, she was there. The profile picture showed the same freckled skin and the same dark hair. The body of the email showed the same name in 12pt Calibri: Megan Miller.

But she wasn’t me. Not even close.

I recognized every corner and curve of those letters. But when I stared at the actual profile photo, I was faced with a total stranger.

I was a bright-eyed freshman then, eager to tackle college and make a name for myself. Over the next three years though, I realized I wasn’t the only Megan Miller doing so.

That single fleeting moment blossomed into a regular stream of weird and strange encounters with the ghost  — the other Megan Miller, as I came to know her.

Sometimes a professor would mention her, saying something along the lines of: “I had a Megan Miller last semester … but she wasn’t you.” Sometimes I would get her emails, until some higher-up realized the emails meant for memiller@chapman.edu were being sent to the black hole of megmiller@chapman.edu.

I remember someone in my class once exclaimed, “Megan Miller? I love Megan Miller!”

I blinked. She looked at me, then amended, “Oh … I meant the other Megan Miller.”

Ah yes, the other Megan Miller.

It wasn’t a rivalry. It wasn’t a grievance. She was just … a ghost. Someone whom I felt I knew intimately and yet not at all. Someone walking around with all of my identity and none of it. Someone who had stripped me of my individuality and also empowered me with a sense of belonging.

How many other people can say they’ve gone to college with someone in the same year with the same exact name as them? Maybe a John Smith at a larger university; but we’re Megan Miller, and Chapman only boasts 8,000 students. 

I remember the first day I met my ghost.

The fall of 2021 — my first class back in person — and there she was: the other Megan Miller. She was sitting in my senior seminar. Same freckled skin, same dark hair, same name — but a complete stranger.

All at once, the bubble popped. I was finally meeting her face-to-face — this strange, nebulous entity. The mysterious Bermuda Triangle to where much of my missing correspondence had disappeared. The burning question which had haunted three of my college years.

And she was lovely.

The blunders never stopped, of course. We still received each other’s emails; but this time, we would make sure they went to the right Megan Miller, always adding little messages like “Oops! This is for you” or “You might need this Zoom link — good luck!”

We had to figure out a way to differentiate our names in class. Going by “Meg” and “Megan” was too confusing, and we couldn’t do “Megan M.” and “Megan” for obvious reasons. We settled on “MJ” and “Meg,” but that never alleviated the occasional, “Oops… I meant the other Megan Miller.”

The other Megan Miller is no longer a ghost, nor is she a stranger. She is just another student who happens to share my name, who is a brilliant individual in her own right and whom I’m glad to have met.

This campus will go from two Megan Millers back down to zero in a few weeks when we both graduate. But even so, I don’t think I’ll ever truly separate myself from her.

Even if that link is just a sly, knowing grin as I tell anyone who will listen:

“Hey, you wanna hear about my ghost?”