“You have four years,” they said. “You have plenty of time to figure it out,” they said. I don’t know who they are, but they’ve got it all wrong.
Morale and hopes were high in the beginning. New classes, being reunited with friends, football season, and the prospect of all of the opportunities to come fogged our brains as we unpacked our things and settled back in to our home under the Dome. Nothing could possibly go wrong, right? Wrong.
Spending an entire year taking classes that are now irrelevant to your major is more than just a minor setback, especially when you want to pick up a second major or a minor or even two minors. Once you take into consideration all of the university and college requirements, four years just doesn’t seem like it’s enough time.
The realization that you have to get your life together doesn’t really hit you until you’re a sophomore. At this point, there are enough people who actually know what they’re doing to make you feel a little bit nervous. You’re just wondering what kind of Ben & Jerry’s to get from the Huddle later and they’re trying to decide if they want this internship or that one. Intimidating.
The first wave of tests didn’t seem like it would be as bad in theory.
Until you realized you had four exams in one week. Or when you realized that you have two exams on a Monday after a football weekend. No matter what year you may be, exams are always annoying and stressful and make you want to wrap yourself into a blanket burrito in your bed for a week straight.
Sophomores, however, seem to have this sense of really knowing what they’re doing this time. We’ve mastered the art of studying already because we totally are not those young, naive freshmen anymore. We’re mature. We’ve done this before, we can do it again.
Except now, we seem to have all of our tests at once. We don’t have the free tutoring in CoMo anymore. We’re not in all of the same classes as our best friends because we’ve all decided to go down different paths. Maybe we’re studying for classes that we’re really interested in, but that doesn’t make it easier. If anything, it might make it harder. When you do badly on your Gen Chem test freshman year, you’re not the only one. You will persevere. But when you do badly on an exam in a class that you think you’re supposed to do well in because it’s something you really enjoy, it can be hard not to question yourself.Â
Next is the problem of extracurricular activities. We all probably feel like we were under-involved freshman year, which may very well be true. So now, to make up for our lack of extracurriculars on our resumes, we decide to take on so many things that it’s hard to find a break to breathe.
On top of finding the balance between schoolwork and extracurriculars, we also have to go through the process of applying for study abroad. From creating an eportfolio for you advisor to meeting with your advisors and rectors/rectresses to filling out the actual application, the process is a long one that takes a lot more than what one would initially think. In the end, it will all be worth it when we’re starting our own clubs and adventuring in a foreign country.
Another major thing that many collegiettes have the tendency to worry about that may not be necessarily school related, but is important nonetheless, is their social lives. We all think that we found our friends for life during freshman year and, in many cases, that ends up being true.
On the other hand, sometimes weird things happen. People change, decide to follow different paths, and inevitably grow apart. It’s hard sometimes not to second guess yourself and the role you play in your friend group. When you are all in different majors, classes, and extracurriculars, it’s hard to find common ground sometimes.
We’ll meet new friends who have the same interests as we do, but we shouldn’t let that interfere with the friendships we have already made. After all, you can never really have too many bridesmaids in your wedding.
There are a few other small, seemingly unimportant things that nevertheless affect us. We aren’t getting enough sleep. We’re eating everything we see. We take naps at inconvenient times in the day. We cry a little bit when we’re feeling strung out. We have to watch so many people get “baed up” while we are just trying to find someone to cuddle with us just maybe one time.
It all adds up. After only a month of being back, I feel more stressed out now than I ever felt as a freshman.Â
The important thing to remember is that we are here for a reason.
We may have a bad day or even a bad week, but staying positive is important to getting through it all. We’re not failures, we don’t need to change our major because we got a bad grade, it’s not the end of the world if we don’t want an internship next summer, and our friends are our friends for a reason. All of the little things will fall into place as long as we continue to focus on the bigger picture.
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