We enter college with a slight awareness of the years to come. We have an idea of what each year brings, but we never fully know until we experience it. During freshman year, the year dedicated to making horrible and crazy mistakes, is when your grades may suffer and your friends will constantly change. Junior year is the year when your workload is out of control, your social life takes a beating, and your future becomes relevant. Senior year is the year when the realest memories are made, the fun is outrageous, your classes are winding down, and you (despite your hardest attempts not to) become an adult. However, what about your sophomore year?

Finishing my sophomore year has made me reflect on my time at college thus far. As I pulled away from my house just a week ago to come home for the summer, I began to think about what made my sophomore year the amazing one that it was.

Sophomore year is an interesting time for everyone. It’s a year filled with familiarity, yet various transitions. It's one with concrete habits and routines, yet spontaneous decisions. It's one where the people you meet and the places you go to truly become your family and your home. Freshman year is difficult in the sense that you arrive knowing nothing. You know no one, you’re a stranger to the surrounding campus, and you’re struggling to find yourself. Sophomore year is special in the sense that it makes those feelings more concrete, but you’re still not set in stone in any way.

I came into sophomore year feeling just as nervous as I did when I walked into my dorm on my first day of freshman year. I was moving into a house of 60 girls, many of whom I barely knew when I started. I reluctantly signed up for some really difficult classes and I still felt like I was waiting for that “ah-ha!” moment when I suddenly and completely realized my potential. I was, honestly, a wreck.

As the year went on, my feelings of “freshmanitis” quickly dissolved as I found myself immersed in an amazing year. Throughout the eight months of working hard and playing harder, I finally figured out the question mark that had originally been “sophomore year.” Sophomore year is the year for challenges to friendships, to academics, and to real-life issues that you never thought that you’d face. It’s the year for trying out classes that may be a little too tough, but that, consequently, make you persevere and study harder than you ever thought that you could. It's the year that makes you finally realize the value of a good grade over that extra night of going out. It’s the year of struggling to make time for your friends and the people who matter, but reminding them that you’re still there and learning to make that time. It’s the year for taking those relationships that seemed like nothing and finally making them into something meaningful and amazing. It's the year for realizing that burning bridges will get you nowhere and that meeting new people will always get you somewhere. It’s a year for learning, but in a more responsible and rewarding way. You will work, you will cry, and you will absolutely fall down, but that’s sophomore year and, more importantly, sophomore year is about picking yourself back up when you fall.

I’m sure that, when I arrive in August for my junior year, I will have a whole new host of challenges that will arise. However, I know that sophomore year has prepared me for the others to come. As cheesy as it sounds, I did have my “ah-ha” moment, but it happened on my very last day as I drove those long 11 hours home to New York. I finally figured out what these past months at school have been about. Although we all make mistakes, test our limits, and attempt to find ourselves, it’s sophomore year that truly allows us to do these things and to learn from them. To those who just finished their sophomore years, congratulations on surviving one of the most challenging, but rewarding, years yet. To those entering it in the fall, I wish you the best of luck through one of the most memorable years of your life.