Freshman year had been marked by youthful idealism. There was talk among our circle of friends of changing the world, of ambiguous hopes for the future that bonded not only our little group, but the entire freshman class. We were going to be world-shakers, revolutionaries, and the complacency that marked our upper-classmen would never touch us!
Apparently, it’s a pretty common freshman thing and we weren’t nearly as extraordinary as we thought we were.
If freshman year was the year of innocence and hope, then sophomore year was the year of seasoned cynicism that was not merely jaded, but actually reveled in its jadedness. Humph! All of those little freshmen, they were mere children! What did they know of the world? Gosh, they looked young, and boy! were they immature! I mean, what was with all that smiling and laughing and stuff? Don’t they know reality from this little bubble they’re in? Geez, we were sure glad that we knew better by now.
Come to find out from our academic predecessors, the same cycle happens every year. Doe-eyed freshmen come in, it’s their first extended time away from their parents, they’re reveling in the new-found freedom, the mature distinction of being in college among fellow college students, and nothing will stop them now! Then comes sophomore year, when all that new sense of freedom has worn off and reality and responsibility have settled in. You realize that you’re almost done with your general eds and you still haven’t figured out what you want to be when you grow up. Your parents have gotten used to not having you around and have started buying riding lawnmowers for themselves instead of buying you new school clothes and paying your car insurance. You’re so over the college cafeteria experience. And you realize that those college courses aren’t teaching you how to think or live or start your own business or anything you expected – they’re teaching you how to get a job as someone else’s employee for a salary that’s a quarter of what you’re paying for school and that you easily could have learned to do with two weeks of on-the-job training.
But the real learning happens outside of class. As everyone gripes about what a fraud it all is then the real questioning begins. Like the world-changing freshman, this too is an accurate college cliche, a necessary one, even if it is on the dark side. We questioned authority, shook our hands at expectations and conventions, and fueled each other’s anger at “The Man”.
It didn’t help that our beloved campus pastor, friend and advocate of the plebians and proletariat student-body against the dictatorial administration, was wrongfully fired. Or that our favorite church’s pastor was caught in unsavory conduct. Or that there were more and more crazy evangelists speaking at chapel who were trying to guarantee us that God would give us sports cars, jet planes and plush jobs if we would give our paltry college wages to their ministry. Our heroes were falling like flies as the vultures came swooping in.
Lukus and Brenden’s band reflected this shift in mood. Their lyrics were a little more cynical. Their music a little more full of angst. My editorials for the school paper got a little more honest and prickly. Lukus, Brenden, Renee and I started working at the local pizza joint and took a bit of solace in what we considered “the real world”. Though Lukus and I were quite steady in our relationship, neither one of us could wait for the school year to be over. We knew our relationship could withstand another summer of being apart, but we weren’t sure if our own souls could stand much more of the toxic atmosphere that defined the “Sophomore Slump.”
