Sophomore slump stems from our loss of freshman securities

Best Four years: Family debate sparks understanding of liberal arts’ benefits

In the three days that I was home over Spring Break, I made the rounds. Besides spending quality time with the parents (dinner, “Argo”), there was my grandma, sister, niece, nephew, and finally, my grandpa.
My grandpa is not always an easy man to spend time with. He runs a dog sitting business and, at any given moment, has up to thirteen drooling guests chasing him around his house. Visiting grandpa means that you will leave with a second coat: one made of dog hair. Grandpa tends to be very opinionated, and lectures without much patience for disagreement. As sweet and well-meaning as he is, his company is often barbed with frequent criticisms.
When I was younger, I often dismissed what I considered to be an unceasing spew of convictions. But recently, I’ve realized that most of what he says is pretty intelligent, or at least well argued and well articulated. And although I may not always agree with him, I’ve come to appreciate his provocations. And at our lunch together over break, Grandpa proposed an idea that I spent quite a deal of time mulling over as I made the trip back up to school.

Best Four years: Engaging with real world from inside the bubble

We’re familiar with the concept of the Bowdoin Bubble—Bowdoin isn’t just a school or community, but is its own universe. A closed, contained system, Bowdoin works hard to supply everything we need without us having to step off campus. We know where to eat, where to sleep and certainly where to drink. Bowdoin is a culture as much as an institution, thick with its own esoteric codes, rituals and customs.
When we return home, we have to translate our experiences in order to communicate. How many of us have generalized the dreamlike and debauched holiday that is Ivies to a less-enthused “Spring Weekend”? Described our proctors as “half-RA, half-dad”? Called Spring Gala, simply, “Prom at College”?
Bowdoin is its own world—and part of that is keeping the actual world out. We forget the Bowdoin Bubble also describes the sheltering effects of this campus. The smallest trips down the road merit the excitement of travel—who here as gone to Wild Oats or Little Dog because they “just needed to get away”? It feels like you should need a passport for a trip to Portland.

Best Four years

Sophomore slump stems from our loss of freshman securities

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

Callie Ferguson

Columnist

April 19, 2013

Let’s talk about the sophomore slump.

It sounds like a spinal conditionor dance move at worst. Despite being the most prevalent association attached to sophomore year, I’ve never stumbled across a definition for the term. Sophomore slump is a catch-all term, something expansive to which we attribute all our sad, sorry sophomore feelings—it accumulates meaning by way of its vagueness. That girl sleeping with her eyes open in Smith Union? Sophomore slump. That existential feeling of emptiness when you walk into a mid-February College House party? Slump-related. Declaring your major? Slumpy.

Sophomores: welcome to the worst, best year of your life.

Grade-associated, clichéd emotions are familiar. Take “senioritis,” for example, which is essentially a senior’s euphemism for “laziness” or “burned out.” But senioritis has different connotations than the sophomore slump—we rarely use “senioritis” as melodramatically as the slump. Senioritis is an eye roll where the slump is a frown—it is an explanation instead of a diagnosis.

So if it is not similar to senioritis, what is sophomore slump? The feeling is difficult to communicate. It’s an ambiguous mixture of unease, gloom and vague pressure. There’s something distinct about our second year in college that cultivates a peculiar moodiness.
How come, unlike senioritis, our “slumping” seems weightier, more serious? It could be a matter of temporary versus permanent: sophomores stare into the prospect of two more years ahead of them, while seniors exchange their academic worries for real world problems after graduation. But this implies that the sophomore slump is purely a symptom of academic burnout, which seems untrue. After all, who has ever heard of “junior slump?”

Academics surely play a role. They must, because sophomore year marks the point in college when we declare our majors—where our freshman-year experimentation and our career-wise evaluations decide on a field of study. There’s no doubt that declaring a major unsettles the lot of us.

Though the actual stakes are pretty low—you can switch your major at any time, after all—the symbolic implications are weighty and scary. Now’s the time when we’re supposed to know ourselves, and to know what we want to do (I use “supposed to” cautiously). At 19 and 20, that sort of self-actualization rattles you. We can no longer blame academic indecision on being a first year. Even for the more assured of us, those who are certain of what they want to do, there’s the fear of not stacking up to our aspirations or finding ourselves ill-suited for them. No matter how important our major really is in the long run—the NAS(ty) report would assure us that it isn’t, mind you—there is always unsteadiness on the cusp of a big decision.

After much consideration, I think social factors contribute to this slump. I experience it as a feeling of being socially adrift. All ostensible features of my life would refute that: topsy-turvy freshman foibles are behind me, I am living with friends in a College House, and I’ve settled myself into different groups on campus. I think Norma even knows my name without having to look at my OneCard. Nonetheless, a subtle dissatisfaction persists.

Slumping begins with the false presumption that we’re “happily settled” now that freshman year is over. Counter-intuitively, I think we’re less settled because all of the freshmen-oriented artificial supports have fallen away. No more freshman floor, no more proctor, no more programming exclusively for our comfort. We’re let loose and no longer forced to rely on institutional structures that maintain our relationships for us. Sophomore year is when we have to “own” college, and the world expects us to actively maintain our relationships, our well-being and our happiness.

With this in mind, my attempts to combat sophomore slump have been to continue meeting new people, put an effort into my friendships, and reach out to the people at this school whose job it is to guide us and keep investigating what’s available to me at Bowdoin. Resist the idea that you’re settled now that you’ve been around for a little while, because it will resist you. Just because our first year is over doesn’t mean we’re done with orientation.

Comments are permanently closed.