This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Brown chapter.
The sophomore slump is nothing new. It’s talked about, dreaded, and avoided like the Ratty whenever it makes fish. The sophomore slump hits when you no longer have the gusto to make new friends, do any school work, and every attempt to go to the gym ends in a 3 hour long nap. I don’t really believe in this said slump. But then again I’ve been a sophomore for, like what, 2 weeks?
The word “sophomore” means wise fool. It’s the only grade description that doesn’t exactly correlate with one’s exact position in college. So why call us wise fools?
Sophomore year is a unique year of college. Cooler than freshmen, but not yet cool enough to be juniors, we are lodged in between knowing everything and knowing nothing. We scoff at the freshman as they walk to the “Sharpe Refectory” for food and “Keeney Quadrangle” for sleep and pretend we never did the same thing. We know we know so much and yet know we have so much to learn.
I don’t like the sophomore slump because it give us a false premonition of what this year could be. Sophomore year is boundless in it’s opportunities. Take the desperate freshman struggle to raise your head above the surface—it’s time to tread water, look around, see the vast emptiness of what could soon be. We are not asked to know, not expected to know, not able to know everything. And so we don’t. We can hold onto out foolishness with whatever wisdom we have and accept our present position in our live.
With out the pressure of finding out what I want to do, without the need to make friends—my mind is pretty empty. I have the energy to seek what makes me excited and not care so much about the consequences. The sophomore mind is removed from high school and not yet in the real world and so is fully immersed in the college mindset.
There is so much more I’m sure I could say about the wisdom of being foolish—but I haven’t figured it all out yet. If week two of sophomore year seem pretty good, I think I keep it that way.