As we are slowly approaching Week 9, it means that we are almost done with the quarter. I am only two weeks away from finishing my sophomore year at UC Davis. For this, I wanted to write a quarter recap and talk about my experiences that I have endured this second year. I wanted to start off by saying that my sophomore year here has been incredibly difficult. I have felt extremely out of place, and I simply have not been able to adapt and feel connected to this school as I would have liked and wanted to.
There are so many great people here that I have met in a few of my different classes across the past three quarters but they simply are not my people. No one really talks about how hard making friends in college is and how lonely people get in college when they don’t have that connection. I truly believed that I would have found my place in college by now but that simply is not the case. I have struggled a lot with that feeling and wondering if I simply cannot adapt to my environment or is it the school that makes it hard for me to want to adapt. I have contemplated a few things when coming here and how I want to change for the following year. I am going to be honest, could I have done something differently in order to better help this transition between high school to college and the transition between freshman and sophomore year? Of course, but being stuck in the headspace of loneliness and feeling like it is never going to end is a dark tunnel. I just wanted to find the end of the light because I knew it would bring me to a better place and that was what I was striving for—finding the light. I did not try to take a different path, I continued with the same path hoping it would help.
I know now the things that I could do in order to better help for my junior year at UC Davis. Although I have been struggling there are a few things that I am going to do entering my junior year to prepare myself for a better fall quarter. I am the type of person that likes having multiple plans in case one falls through, and this is not going to change for me trying to change my experience here. My junior year is truly the year of me trying to figure out if Davis is my home. Just like highschool, college will flash before our eyes. While it might seem pointless to possibly transfer for my senior year. College will end incredibly quickly but why should I wait for it to try and get better if it hasn’t gotten better after three years? Why would I spend my last year potentially miserable just because I felt that I had to stay since I was almost at the end of the tunnel? Sophomore year has been hard; I have loved and hated a few of my classes.
This year has truly taught me that I can survive things that I am faced with. Although I struggle, I found that it’s okay to not feel okay. I realized that I like being alone when I choose it, not the other way around. I have become incredibly comfortable with myself. I’m learning my strengths and weaknesses both mentally and physically and for that I am thankful. Sophomore year, you won’t be missed; I truly hope that I will forget about you because I never want to remember all of the things and the emotions that I went through this year.