Sophomore Year: Behind the Steering Wheel

Sophomore year comes with comfortable uncertainty.

You know what you are getting into, but you don't really know what exactly will happen. With the pressure of not being “fresh meat”, comes the tendency to become invisible yet overwhelmed with liberty. Sophomore year is synonymous with being comfortable and bombarded with college anxiety all in a year.

Sophomore year encapsulates students with more liberty and more responsibility, but also with a chance to find where you fit in your community and what you can give. With this, sophomore year is truly the time to branch out and try new clubs and sports and see what  you like and what you don't. You have the liberty to join school clubs and prioritize sports. For example, I am in the baking club which donates income from the bake sales to malnourished children in Mexico. Being able to be part of these activities have allowed me to not only make new friends and memories, but learn leadership skills and create good teamwork abilities that will last a lifetime. Being able to meet all my teams in my basketball team have allowed me to have a new family which will hold a special place in my heart.

However, with all of the new experiences and responsibilities, you may get very overwhelmed. With two AP classes, a varsity sport, clubs and student council, I can honestly say there were days that I thought would never end. At the end of each quarter, everything seems to be put on your shoulders. My ambition truly got the best of me and required me to constantly work during recess and late at night in order to stay on task. Of course all of that teaches time management skills, but it can and it will become completely exhausting.

I remember how various times in the year, the amount of pressure and meeting I had to go to wouldn't even allow me to rest. Even if I went to bed at 9pm I would still feel drained and unmotivated. But at the end of the day, it's those activities, those sports and those commitments that truly motivate you to do something with your life. I think at the end of the day, school can get truly nauseating. The same everyday routine makes a lot of people dislike the educational aspect of their lives; however, once you have these passions, going to school makes it worth it. Maybe it’s just me and my ambition, that allows me to be motivated by things like this. It’s also an incredibly rewarding experience when you are able to accomplish something outside of the school surrounding.  Of course that comes with the pressure of actually doing good in school first, but at the end these extracurriculars form who you are as a person and allow you to stand out.

However, as my basketball league ended, I found myself with hours of free time in which I felt useless. Consequently, I joined every student led aspect of school, which was probably not a good idea. Although most of my year has had high stress levels, I’ve never felt as much the last few weeks due to all my jobs. I constantly had to battle with my own self doubt and the continuous negative mind chatter that led to me to a very dark place. I found myself trying to hide my insecurities and my stress with more commitments in order to find purpose in my life. It took me a long time to truly unravel my feelings and understand that I loved all of the commitments I had made; however, as a teenager, as a student, as a human, I needs to chill sometimes. Just chill out and enjoy it. It can be too much, but I think that has allowed me to learn time management skills and truly understand what are my priorities.

Sophomore year was definitely a year in which I started as a whole different person than I am today. Not only with extracurriculars, but the mere experience of high school as you start taking AP classes, honors classes and more specialized classes. These things start to change how you look at life. One of my favorite things that have happened this year is that with that liberty, I was able to truly understand the values that I believe are important and the person I want to become. 

At the end, what's life without a little uncertainty, right?