Your freshmen year of college truly is unlike any other. It is filled with many firsts and immense amounts of fun. Now that I’ve survived it I’ve come to realize just how beautiful that start of these college years truly was and that it really was a time to remember. As time is ticking down to the start of my second year of college, I have noticed that while everyone is always providing tons of advice for that first year shock of college, not much gets said about year two. While sophomore year lacks the wonder and mystery that typically comes with freshmen year, it has several other distinct differences as well. Here’s just a few of the differences this short-time sophomore has noticed.
1. You Enjoy Your Friends More
Freshmen year is full of awkwardness when it comes to friendships. You spend the first couple of months meeting enormous amounts of people and then trying to decide who you’re the most compatible with. Then you spend the next months gauging the amount of 'you' they’re willing to put up with and you travel through the first awkward stages of getting to truly know someone. By sophomore year you have your friend group down to a science. You know who to call when you want to hit up that party, who you can and can’t study with, who is fun for a movie night and who you can rely on to come running when you’re in a crisis. This time around you get to actually enjoy your friends. You don’t feel self conscious around them and you don’t question their loyalty to you. It is full on friendship bliss.
2. You Don’t Have The Freshmen Excuse
We’d be dishonest for not acknowledging the major slack everyone cuts us when we are new to the college world. People are always so willing to give directions when we’re lost, teacher’s give us sympathy when we can’t figure out the online homework, and we get out of a lot of things simply because we’re young. That’s not the case anymore. This year we’ve got to handle life all on our own and in the eyes of the world, we should be pros from that whole year of practice. It’s definitely intimidating.
3. Responsibility Is At An All Time High
Last year you gained a lot of responsibility. You had to learn to do things that, for the most part, were typically covered by your parents, like washing clothes, and how to keep up with school work without a teacher hounding you. But, now the responsibility comes in much more serious forms. For most of us, this is the first time we’re living in an actual place (dorms are not near as much upkeep as an apartment or house) and have to now take over the responsibility of rent among other things that come along with home “ownership." This year is more like a real dose of adulthood reality.
4. You’re Over The Homesickness
We all handle adjusting to college differently. Some of us breeze right in and don’t skip a beat, much less battles serious separation anxiety, but others have to take adjusting at a slower pace. Regardless, at some point you did ache a small bit for home. Whether it hit you on the first day of class or on the way home from Christmas break, your college town felt somewhat foreign. Not anymore. Now you are just as at home here as you are anywhere else. This college town is your comfort zone and you wouldn’t chose to be anywhere else.
5. Motivation Is At An All Time Low
You’ve made your first impressions. You survived the adjustment to harder classes. What now? In freshmen year, you have your parents’ expectations, your individual goals, and the desire to start off with a good GPA to motivate you academically. Senior year, you have the fact that the real world starts soon to help you keep your crap together, but not this year. Sophomore year, and maybe junior year alike, is just like a floater year. You don’t want to buy your books before school starts, you don’t want to get to class on time, and you most definitely don’t want to study. The sophomore slump is real and I’ve noticed all I really want to do is sleep.