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Straighten up that sophomore slump and rise to success

By Carla Gharibian

Feb. 11, 2010 9:01 p.m.

It’s happened with record sales, athletes and presidencies. Raised expectations mixed with an inability to adapt to shifting circumstances is a combination that too often results in disappointment.

I have likewise become fully aware of the phenomenon known as the sophomore slump. Though my life has never felt as stagnant as it does now, I am actually realizing that this experience has a potential upside. Complacency in any realm of college can be a dangerous thing, and accepting current circumstances as permanent merits some intense reevaluation.

My own troubles arose from growing accustomed to a predictable pattern of academics, social life and aspirations. This past September, I entered my sophomore year with a confidence that I lacked as a first-year student. I was optimistic about classes for my new major, meeting new people and a sense of concreteness that I thought I had finally attained in college.

At the halfway point of this school year, though, I find myself lacking this idealism and experiencing a kind of cynicism I have not encountered in a while. Now that this safe formula is failing to bring about the comfortable results it once did, I have the foreign task of ridding myself of some bad habits.

“I think it’s primarily a function of having first of all established your circle of friends and secondly taking more difficult upper division classes,” said fifth-year computer science student Matt Sperry, who experienced his own sophomore slump.

“My second quarter of my sophomore year, I got three Ds and a B-plus. … I do believe it’s a period of unwarranted comfort. You get too comfortable basically with school in your second year and you let it get the better of you.”

Coming out of freshman year, the way we socialize undergoes a major shift. In the dorms, many of us are surrounded by friends and peers at all hours of the day. It usually just takes a short trek down the hallway to join in on a conversation or figure out plans for the weekend. Complacency in this environment severely impedes participation in campus groups and activities off the Hill.

As with all parts of the college experience, balance is a crucial component. It’s likely advice your parents and counselors have been hurling at you for years, but whether it’s between academic and social life or having an existence both on and off the Hill, failing to achieve some sense of equilibrium can lead you to forget the real reason you’re at UCLA.

With UCLA’s requirement that we must declare a major by the end of sophomore year , as well as the beginning of upper-division courses for many students, the relative ease of academic life takes a rather sharp turn after freshman year. I somewhat naïvely expected to continue taking afternoon classes that allowed me to sleep in and enjoy late nights with friends. I now find five hours of sleep to be pretty satisfactory, and naps have been few and far between.

The excuse that “I’m a freshman” just doesn’t cut it any more, and if we want to get serious, we need to realize this very soon. This means going to the Career Center and looking up internships, taking the extra time to attend office hours and simply accepting a new kind of social life that does not have to be as overwhelming as many make it out to be.

“You just have to say you will do something and do it,” said Sperry.

“The sophomore slump can be very helpful in terms of shocking you into correct behavior and forcing you to reevaluate what you’re doing in school.”

Sophomore year and beyond should be more exciting than our experiences as freshmen. We’ve figured out the basics of college life and have an opportunity to branch out from the comfort zones many of us established as freshmen. We just need to get over the initial shock of no longer having counselors and RAs holding our hands and put ourselves out there to do something about it.

E-mail Gharibian at [email protected]. Send general comments to [email protected].

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