You have just made the great hurdle of going to a new school, new schedules, and new teachers that comes with being a freshman. You think it is over and your sophomore year will be a breeze only to get slapped in the face with reality that being a sophomore is not what it was all cracked up to be. Being a sophomore can be one of the worst years in a student’s high school career for not just a couple but a lot of reasons.  

Your parents do not understand you, and your teachers use this wonderful year to dump a heavy workload on your already busy schedule. Counselors tell you that these are the grades that count for college without realizing that sophomore year is just a purgatory of getting ready for college and/or living with teenage angst. Suddenly, sophomore year is all about thinking what colleges to attend and what you want to do in life. Sophomore students could be wondering about what would happen if they do not want to attend college and if making a living taking pictures of clouds will support their need for foods and shelter. You are told that you must put college first as you put those polaroids of cumulus clouds in a shoebox under your bed. Cool, but make it more specific to sophomore year. Before the freshman year even starts, Dr. O’Connor warns all the parents to take it easy on their child as a get of jail free card as they learn the new schedules of high school. Now, as a sophomore there is no more coddling and we get hit with a ton of bricks with harder classes and now sophomore history.

Most sophomores begin to get their learner’s permit and must face a new form of responsibility that your mom or dad is no longer going to need to drive you to school anymore. The stress of driving with a loved one and their constant parental critiques and getting prepared for a test that if you bump into the curb while parking, everything you have worked for must start over. Most parents go the route that, if their student does not keep his or her GPA up, they are allowed to take away the license that gives their child freedom to get away from home once in awhile.

Now is the time where sophomores are trying to find their own identity and want to swim as a small guppy away from the common carp. Sometimes those little fish find themselves in a crowd of sharks with ‘I just want to belong’ inscribed across their forehead. Sophomores will get hurt when they feel like they are unaccepted and while our parents tell us ‘it is a life lesson’ does not keep their children from questioning why me of all people? Freshman year was more about discovering the campus and new friends, but now as a sophomore you have more to worry about with fitting in instead of remembering where each classroom is.

Sophomore year has the perks of knowing the campus and no longer needing the map that the CHS staff hand out at freshman registration and knowing your group of friends from the previous year. There are a lot of things to rejoice about being a sophomore but sometimes when there can be so many negatives, they can block out the good. If I could relive my high school experience, I will remember that I will avoid sophomore year as much as possible.