Cate Roser

My sophomore year at Yale commenced quite similarly to the first one — attached to my suitemates at the hip, bonded by our shared fatigue from move-in, hopping from one party to the next in the days before classes officially began. In the sultry heat of the New Haven summer, I found myself revisiting all my favorite spots after a three month hiatus. My first week back consisted of multiple bagels split at Book Trader with my roommate and hours spent cramped on a tiny picnic blanket on Cross Campus, surrounded by more love than I would have ever envisioned for myself when I first arrived at Yale a year prior.

 

I basked in this enveloping warmth, assured — at least momentarily — that the year awaiting me would outdo the fantasy and frenzy that made up my freshman year.

 

The buzz of being back on campus — a feeling that persisted through much of my first year — gradually dimmed, though. Ever afraid of slipping into the notorious “sophomore slump” I had been warned of by upperclassmen, I found myself measuring my experiences against the unchecked excitement to which I had grown accustomed. The thrill of getting ready for a night out, crammed into the sweaty common room of a vague acquaintance you were always making plans to “totally hang out with soon,” mellowed along with the frequency of said nights out. 

 

Conversations about summer plans and internships became unavoidable. Major-related deliberations were aplenty, entirely populating the collective sophomore mindset. After drifting from one first-year seminar to the next, ending up in the rite-of-passage intro econ classes and shopping that obscure science credit I knew I would never climb the waitlist for, I was confronted with the impending reality that such meandering would no longer be feasible in the near future. I spent hours contemplating what I should major in, attempting to reconcile the side of me that felt alive in my freshman English class with the international student bogged down by employability and visa options and the 18-year old self who entered Yale starry eyed about Global Affairs. 

 

With each passing day, my second year at Yale began to feel like a season of reckoning — a time to define not just the academic focus that would shape the rest of my college experience, but also the life I wanted to lead beyond it. The pressure, although largely self-imposed, was unrelenting. For every hour I spent rediscovering the joys of campus life — reliving the giddy late-night laughter at the buttery or the times we actually made it to East Rock for an 8 a.m. hike — there was another spent fretting about how I was nearing the halfway point of my Yale experience and there were still so many people to meet, so much to do. 

 

If this “slump” is symbolic of a muting of the dizzying highs and lows of freshman year, then perhaps sophomore year is indeed a slump of epic proportions. It took a great deal of recalibration to view the mounting responsibilities and existential musings that characterized sophomore year less as an unresolvable source of stress, but more a natural progression — growing up in real time within the comforting bounds of a campus that I very much likened to a second home. The quiet tug-of-war between who I was and who I wanted to be dulled, as I embraced the emerging maturity and subsequent unpredictability that emerged during this so-called “slump.” 

 

After a year marked with the inevitable drama of freshman friend groups, one too many Gheav runs at four in the morning and an utterly ridiculous sleep cycle, sophomore year has felt like a very necessary pause — a feeling of settlement that is no longer a fleeting appearance but far more sustainable. My time is no longer spent attempting to collect experiences like souvenirs, but rather chosen with care, steeped in the comfort of knowing exactly who I want to spend it with.

 

Sophomore year — or at least the half of it I can account for so far — has brought with it far greater expectations (both those I feel subjected to and that I hold for myself) and perhaps a slowing down of life I did not know I needed. As much as this “slump” has meant an elevated sense of responsibility, it has also entailed more time to cozy up with a book in L&B and countless hours spent talking about everything and nothing in the Elm — I have little to complain about.