Your first year of college is down. Two semesters gone, with just about six more to go. It sounds like a lot of time, right? By doing the math, you’ve figured that you have just about three more years of hard work (or hardly working, if you’re doing that sort of thing), living with ridiculous roommates and complaining about being broke. For these next three years your biggest problems are classes and friends. Then the hard stuff begins. Three more years until you’re shipped off into the real world, right?
Wrong. Well, sort of wrong. Because you may have three more years until the real world, but the real world seems to slap you right in the face during the Sophomore Slump.
The Sophomore Slump. What is it, you may ask? Well, if you have to ask, I can assure you that you have definitely not entered into your sophomore year yet. Nice try, kids. And if you’re currently a sophomore and haven’t experienced this chaos yet—you just wait. I think, like puberty and broken hearts, the Sophomore Slump is an inevitable part of growing up. Symptoms may include increased crying, decreased sleep quality and quantity, lethargy, increased or decreased appetite, increased anxiety and decreased confidence…in just about everything, including yourself. But this letter isn’t to explain this seemingly universal phenomenon; it’s to offer some words of wisdom and support to get through it. So here we go:
The Sophomore Slump is real. I think I’d like to start out by telling you this, by validating your feelings and emotions and fears. It’s a real thing, experienced by way too many. But at the same time, I find this to be comforting. You’re not alone in wanting to be at home with your parents even though you’re 20 years old. You’re not alone in wanting to drop out of school but still make a hefty living; despite realizing it may be impossible. You’re definitely not alone in debating skipping every single class (my advice: go to the class, always). Your internal chaos is completely and utterly valid, and some may even go so far as to call it growing up.
You may be a sophomore in college, but you’re still young! You can and will make many more mistakes in your life. You will learn things. You’re not any more on top of the world than you were as a 15 year-old with emo lyrics as your AIM away message. You will look back at these years and laugh about your friends, style, opinions and more. It’s OK. Maybe you’ve stopped experiencing those growing pains in your legs like you did as a child, but you’re sure to experience some growing pains in your brain and heart.
Your worth is dependent on one thing only: yourself. You may see your best friends at other schools “succeeding” more than you in friendships and classes. You may see yourself changing and losing friends (or your sanity) as a result of it. You may change your major three times before your third semester. This is all OK. None of it explains your worth. Your worth is much more than the number of likes on your latest Instagram post, your GPA (although, please try to work hard in school) or any other number that may be getting you down. You are worth so much more than these four years of your life, and I hope you know that.
So you’re going to have bad days… and bad weeks… during your sophomore year. You’re going to experience one of the many negative aspects of this milestone. But, at the end of it, you’re going to become a junior. And you’re going to become a junior who beat the Sophomore Slump. Good luck. You can do it!
