Everything has its halfway point.
The linear nature of time means that everyone must cross a point where the past begins to gain on the future. Where the number of possibilities begins to hurdle rapidly toward zero. Where “beginning something” crosses over the central marker and becomes “finishing something.”
Songs have second refrains, baseball games have a fifth innings and college has sophomore year.
It sounds dramatic, and that’s because it is. The move from high school to college is a quantum shift, sure, but even then a student can tick off the “undecided” box.
You can be in college and still have time to decide what you are going to do for the rest of your life.
But when sophomore year comes around, the walls start to feel like they’re closing in. You have less time to switch majors than you did before. From a freshman perspective, the next three years feel like they’re chock-full of possibility and serendipitous experiences.
From a sophomore’s perspective, all you can see is the next step after the terrible halfway point: graduation.
It isn’t as if we weren't informed as freshmen that this was going to happen. Even if you go into college without a clear idea about your potential interests, you know that the big choice is coming one way or another.
But expecting something and experiencing it are two entirely different things. As freshmen, you have an entire slew of advisers and administrators willing to put in the time to acclimate you to your new surroundings.
Now that we’re used to where we are, it’s up to us to decide where we go.
And that’s the way it should be. Having an extensive support system is all well and good, but the training wheels have to come off eventually.
In a general sense, college is about spending your time planning — as much as possible — what the rest of your life is going to be.
And we feel we can speak generally about this, since it's relatively common. We won't tell you how to get past this — it's a personal choice and besides, we're still trying to figure how to do it ourselves.
It's daunting looking into the future, thinking through the possibilities of where your life may end up. If things feels crushingly important, it's because they are.
It seems like a lot, but these are solvable problems.
Break from the paralysis of uncertainty. It's better to look at these things than keep them in the back of your mind. Songs and baseball games all have ends, and trust us, so does sophomore year.