Everyone talks about surviving freshman year.
We believe that after we’ve survived our first year, we’ve figured out the entirety of our college career. We’re lulled into the false sense of security that we overcame the hardest part of the next four years of our lives. We made the friends we wanted to make, we passed the gen-ed classes we needed to pass, and we feel as though we mastered the college experience. Up until now, it was our biggest accomplishment.
Everyone talks about surviving freshman year, but no one talks about making it through their sophomore year.
I don’t mean to downplay the struggle that is the entirety of our first year of university. Between figuring out how to map out our classes, navigating the different kinds of friendships that come with college, and the overwhelming amount of first year activities, we’re kept busy. Everything is shiny and new and so incredibly distracting. We barely have time to think for ourselves, much less have time to contemplate the reality of our situation most of the time. Everything is a messy, yet exhilarating, blur of ramen and take-out and the promise of a stable second year.
It isn’t until none of those distractions and novelties are in the way anymore that we find ourselves questioning the minor we chose, balancing the probability of graduating on time, wondering how the guidance counsellors somehow became less helpful, and re-discovering not only your friendships, but part of yourself, too. Everything is the same, but less exciting, and it’s completely up to us to fix it.
Sophomore year means forcing yourself to go to your major’s classes because you know that deep down you’re passionate even though you don’t feel it. Sophomore year means maintaining friendships, not just making them. It means remembering to do the things you love just because you love to do them. It means pushing through the nostalgia of last year and being okay with the way it turns out – even if it’s different.
I thought I would find myself my freshman year. I thought that graduating high school was enough to change me as a person. I thought I would instantly turn into the the best version of myself. I thought that after eight college credits I would have it all figured out, that everything would work itself out just because I successfully made it through my first year of college.
In many ways we do find ourselves our freshman year. We’re on our own trying new things with new people in a new place. We’re laying down the foundation for the person the next four years will eventually build.
We find ourselves just to lose ourselves.
