Sophomore Slump
I never thought the 'sophomore slump' was a real thing. In high school I never felt it and never did I expect to feel it in college (bc ya know the 'best four years of your life' bullshit). But here I am half way through my second semester of sophomore year and looking back, and forward, I have had a pretty shitty year. It's weird.
It's not just me. In fact, I didn't realize it until I was talking to my friend, a senior, and she told me about how her sophomore year was a complete 'sophomore slump' and I was like woah, same. I then talked to my roommates about it and they completely agreed.
So for the past like three weeks of my life I've been trying to figure out why sophomore slump is a thing. What I've realized is that freshman year was overall pretty great, everything was fun, exciting, and most importantly: new. New friends, classes, food, places, and adventures. But now, we've experienced all the 'newness' of college and it's all just routine now. It takes some of the freshman ambition and excitement away from college, now it's just stress and work.
College is much less fun and a lot more work, which is good because I'm not going into insane debt just to have fun, but it's also sad. The sense of adventure freshman year was so much fun. Nothing compares to diving head first into a completely new place with new people, and that is why sophomore year is such a slump.
So where to I go from here? I know this year sucks and I know why, but what the hell do I do with that information? Just accepting the fact that it sucks is no fun at all, and lets be honest feeling sad and shitty all the time is awful. I've come up with a few ideas of how to make the sophomore slump a little less 'slumpy':
1. Don't dwell on freshman year: it was (hopefully) great and lots of fun but dwelling only makes you miss it more. You still have three or maybe more years left of college, you should have as much fun and learn as much about yourself as you can. And trust me, soon you'll look back at pictures from freshman orientation and cringe so much it hurts.
2. Don't stop adventuring: even if you've explored the creepy building on campus before or been to an event or hiked that same trail before, do it again! Go with new friends or the same ones as before, it'll be a new experience either way and you won't regret it.
3. Don't lose motivation: this has been the hardest thing for me this semester. I've just felt like, well why should I do my work/go to class/change out of pajamas/insert literally anything here. But that's not good, life is still going and you're still growing and learning, it's just going to get better from here.
The other form of sophomore slump I have felt this year, has been outside of school and I wanted to touch on that really quick. Personally, I have sort of felt like my life is falling a part. Everything sort of seems to be going down hill at an accelerating rate, and it's terrifying. School, work, family, and love life, have just been sort of all over the place and confusing. But! I can promise you that things do get better. No matter how cringey and overused these sayings are, hold on to them because they are true:
when one door closes, another one opens
and
be patient, life happens and gets good when you least expect it
and
when in doubt, channel your inner leslie knope.
