A lot of people will go on and on about how the transition from high school to college is the most extreme you will experience in your lifetime. They're right, but it's not the most important transition. Being wild and reckless your first year away from the nest is expected, the test comes the following year. Do you continue down that path or do you find your place elsewhere? You decide your destiny your sophomore year of college. (That's scary, I know).
Freshman year: what a wild ride. To describe my first year in college, I will just say that my most-said line might've been, "Did I really do that? That's hilarious." It's an experience that I would not trade for anything but certainly would never want to go through again. I never realized how far I had strayed from my roots until the summer after Freshman year. That was when I looked back and said, "Who was that girl doing all those things?" It was incredibly bizarre that it took a full year to question myself, but hey, it's college.
Sophomore year is completely different. You go into Sophomore year with the whole "college" thing down. You don't feel obligated to say yes to everything and everyone. You don't feel that desire to go to Foundation's on T-shirt Tuesday. You settle down and realize that you are not the person you were freshman year. It's a strange feeling, but it's reassuring. You grow from the mistakes you made your first year in college. Maybe you fall in love sophomore year, something you never thought would happen when you were a freshman. You will look at a picture of you that made TFM and say, "Ok, wow, I hope my kids never see that." (See picture above). You most likely lived on campus freshman year and now are off campus, truly on your own. Your friendships become more sincere. If there was someone who steered you in the wrong direction last year, you're big enough to cut them out of your life. You're a sophomore now, you can do that.
Sophomore year is the most important year of your life. There, I said it. You determine who you are. You truly become a mixture of who you were in your last 20 years of life, and who you want to be in the next 20. You discover the person you were, you are, and you want to be. If you don't like something about your life, it's not too late to change it. This is the year that you go out and grab life by the horns. You're young, but you're experienced.
Go enjoy life, all you Sophomores.
