Sophomore year has been quite the rocky road – and as it turns out I am not experiencing this alone. It seems like these year two blues hit every student differently, whether it be personal, interpersonal, or academic, a lot of students are facing these new stressors under lock-and-key and nobody really seems to realize it.

I had never even heard of the term "sophomore slump" until one night when I was sobbing on the phone with my mom this past October about how "I can't do this anymore" in which she filled me in on an article she was reading about this concept, assuring me that this overwhelming feeling of newfound expectations and challenges were nothing less than normal.

So that leads me to question – why did nobody warn me about the sophomore slump? How many more of my classmates are experiencing this exact same thing right now? And why is nobody talking about it?

The sophomore slump is most commonly defined as a time of uncertainty and growth for second-year students, but without the warnings of "do's and don'ts" that you receive as a freshman – we are just expected to know how to handle these hardships on our own.

For me, the sophomore slump came in the form of personal and academic where I fought an internal battle about forgoing my childhood dream and changing my major, and if I did this, what kind of life was I going to lead without this strong identifier of who I was as a person?

At the time, I was mind blown to find out that I wasn't the only one experiencing this mid-college crisis. Now, after having made it out of my slump alive (declaring my major as journalism and understanding that just because I am no longer pursuing a career in veterinary medicine does NOT mean I don't love animals anymore), I am curious as to why so many schools are not acknowledging and taking measures to help resolve these drowning feelings of identity crises if it is truly such a widespread problem? If it wasn't for the phone conversation with my mom I wouldn't even be writing this right now.

Now if you look up the term sophomore slump, sure, you can find articles describing exactly what it is, how normal it is, how to cope with it and avoid it altogether, but of all the thousands of messages constantly being plastered around universities (at least mine) advertising someone or something there is not ONE to be found about the plague that is the sophomore slump.

So, to us sophomores out there who are wondering what this existential feeling of dread that comes along with the internal questioning of,

"Why am I putting myself through college right now?"

"Why don't I find joy in the things I am studying?"

"Am I making the right decision?"

"Why does everything feel so uncertain right now?"

You may have caught the sophomore slump, but let me assure you that it is manageable, universal, and will be overcome.

And you will end up feeling SO much better after it passes.