I will never forget how I felt at the end of Frosh-O when the upperclassmen returned to campus for their official move-in. I think the best way to describe it would be devastatingly intimidated.
Over the course of orientation, I’d gotten used to campus being filled with freshmen. It was reassuring to walk around knowing that everyone else was just as lost as me. Then, all of a sudden, the campus I had been just starting to figure out was flooded with upperclassmen who already knew everything there was to know about it. They used cool abbreviations like “CoMo” and it seemed like they spent the whole first week of classes hugging long lost friends (how could one person know that many people?!). As someone who doesn’t like to seem ignorant, I hated how inferior all the confident upperclassmen made me feel for the first few weeks of school.
(If only I was as cool as these girls…)
This year I was lucky enough to be able to get to school early because I’m on PE’s Hall Council (shout out to the Pyros!). I arrived just as Frosh-O was getting started, so I got a good look at all of the newbies. For the rest of the weekend, I reveled in the feeling of the freshmen’s eyes on me as I confidently navigated the dining hall, happily reunited with all my friends, and fearlessly conquered communal bathrooms. It felt so good to finally know what was going on, and to feel like I was returning home to ND instead of starting over. My sophomore friends and I strutted around campus like we owned the place because in our minds, we did.
Apparently, there is a name for this phenomenon. At my dorm’s sophomore meeting, an RA warned us all about “sophomore syndrome.” She said that many sophomores, overwhelmed by no longer being the lowest on the totem pole, could get a little cocky. She reminded us, we are “not the best things to ever happen to Notre Dame.” This was met with surprise from many of my classmates. Common responses were “We don’t think that!” and “It’s not our fault that we’re awesome!”
As a sophomore, I do have moments when I feel superior to the freshmen. In a competitive environment like Notre Dame, everyone wants to feel like they’re better than someone, either in an academic or social setting. After a year of figuring things out on my own, there are moments when I feel like I’ve earned the right to have this infamous “sophomore syndrome.” I don’t want to be ashamed that I know what I’m doing or where I’m going. Yet when I remember how intimidated I was by all of the upperclassmen on campus after Frosh-O ended, I realize how much easier it would have been if I had felt comfortable enough to ask someone for help. The main thing holding me back was that I was afraid that these people who walked around with the air of knowing everything would laugh at my silly question about the fastest way to the dining hall.
Maybe “sophomore syndrome” is a real epidemic, or maybe it’s all in our heads. Either way, it’s made me look at my actions and attitude towards ND’s new generation differently. I’m going to continue being proud of myself for all the knowledge I’ve accumulated, but I’m going to be careful to remember that I have two more years until I’m officially at the top of the college hierarchy.