Sophomore year is probably the most underrated year. Sure, freshman year is shiny and brand new; we meet new people, we explore the campus, we try to get involved in as much as we can. Juniors have reached upperclassmen standing, and they’ve got a lot of business going for them. Seniors are the upperclassmen of upperclassmen; they have come so far and are venturing off into the real world, they’ve decided who they are and what they’re going to do. Sophomore year seems to be forgotten in the middle of all the hustle and bustle of all the other years, but it’s also the year that we’ve finally started getting the hang of everything, correcting all the wrongs we did back in freshman year and figuring out just who we are and what we want to do.
I like to think of my sophomore year as my second chance at freshman year. Freshman year was full of wonder and curiosity and a lot of not knowing what’s going on. By the time I even started understanding how college works, it was the last week of the year and time to move back home to my parents. I spent my first year of college wishing so hard that I was home every minute that I was there. I was too busy being homesick to realize all of the amazing opportunities to experience that were right in front of me, 300 miles from home. I didn’t know anything about social life in college, about classes and grades or even about living with other people. Freshman year introduced me to the basics of all of that, but it was sophomore year that really gave me my first taste of college life.
Sophomore year taught me that all the things that you don’t really need, get left behind; they don’t make it into the next chapter of your life. I lost a lot of friends after freshman year -- some because of dorm drama, some because they left the school, and some simply because we don’t talk as much anymore. I’ve made friends in my sophomore year that I lost that very same year. Sometimes, it just isn’t meant to be. Even as a sentimental person, I learned to accept it because sometimes people just aren’t meant to be in our lives, while others are meant to stay for a long time. I saw that in my roommates my sophomore year, the friends down the hall that I made during Welcome Week and the freshman year roommate that did end up staying out of the two I had lived with.
I learned that it’s OK to make mistakes and to not know where your life is going because I’m not the only one that felt that way. I remember sulking over failed midterms and bad grades. I remember contemplating changing my major because of one class that I couldn’t pass. I remember countless nights of talking with my roommates about what exactly we wanted to do with our lives and how exactly we would get there. They helped me realize that we weren’t in a rush to get to our future, that what we should focus on is right now -- because before we know it, the present will be gone.
The older we get, the more people we know that are graduating. I definitely knew a lot more people graduating during my sophomore year than during my freshman year. Seeing all my friends graduating made me realize that life moves fast, whether we’re ready for it or not, and that I really should take advantage of my time while I have it. I have two years left at this college, so I’d better live it up.
So thank you sophomore year, for all of the lessons, for all of the good times and all of the bad times. Thank you for shaping my life and thank you for being a part of my story.
