Sophomore year is one of those in-between years. You have your friends, and yet social dynamics are still shifting. You know the campus, but maybe you haven’t found where you want to dedicate your time. You know what parties you enjoy attending, and yet you still might drink too much alcohol, doomed to spend your night over a trash can.
In the name of honesty, I fell into a bit of a sophomore slump. However, I was not alone in facing this classic and well-known phenomenon. Many of my friends in my year also fell into this slump at least once. In part, I think it’s because the shiny, exciting atmosphere of freshman year is wearing off. I could list all the reasons why it was a hard year and sit in the slums of my emotions, but I’ve decided to shift the focus and change the narrative. When I look back on this year, the moments I remember are the random side quests, escapes off campus and the reminders that there was more to my year than the slump itself.
This year at CC began in its usual fashion. Classes started, time was spent reuniting with friends, and the leaves were a deep, gorgeous green. It was an early September weekend when my friends and I packed up the car and headed to the Union Peak Festival at Copper Mountain. It was chilly for camping, in the way it tends to be as summer comes to a close. And yet, the spot we found offered some much-needed solace away from campus.
On Friday night, we saw Third Eye Blind perform. Our night ended with hums of “How’s It Going to Be” playing in the back of our minds. I remember waking up on Saturday morning to the soft sound of my friend snoring, only to realize I couldn’t feel my toes. That morning, we sat around the fire, eating peaches and cheese, since no one thought to bring any breakfast foods.
It was one of those moments where everything seemed to come together, despite the bad sleep, dirt on our feet and homework awaiting us upon our return. While most of the time, I really do like being on campus, there is something to be said about getting away for the weekend. It allows me to press the refresh button and take some time back for myself.
In the name of getting off campus, one of the best parts of my year was going on runs in Cheyenne Canyon with my dear friend Ava Lerner-Sprunt ‘28. Neither of us were big runners before this year, and I still wouldn’t consider myself one. Yet the escape to the Canyon was something we both needed. On a recent run, we reminisced on how much we’ve changed due to the shifting circumstances of life, and yet the Canyon has stayed the same. It has been a constant source of comfort, despite the rocky terrain. We can put our phones away, tie up our tennis shoes and forget the issues of our small worlds for an hour.
Winter felt a bit slow this year. As we all know, the snowfall was dreary. Over winter break, I spent the month at home with family, old friends and baking out of sheer boredom (I am the first to admit that I’m not great with anything related to the kitchen). When I returned to campus, I was ready to get back into the swing of things. When I’m at home for too long, I start to crave the bustling energy of a campus.
February was spent in a random sort of way. In early February, my friend Julia and I randomly headed to Pueblo to judge a high school debate competition. With no prior experience, we made the most of it with our humor, the free food and the fact that we were making $15 per round. At the end of the day, we returned to campus with $75 in our back pockets and a memory of walking into a high school classroom as judges, yet we were mistaken for the students competing.
Not only were side quests in the air during February, but so was love. Two of my friends planned a blind date party. Excitement was felt, and I was not exempt from it. The party was great, and the conversation was entertaining, but more than that, it reminded me that love is truly all around me. It is in the room where my friends and I all got ready, in the random voicemails my parents leave me and in the echoes of every hall and building on this campus. I think a lot of us at CC tend to take ourselves very seriously, which is not necessarily always to our detriment, but the blind date party reminded me to just have some fun.
As spring approached, I left campus for San Francisco, where I spent Block 7 taking a Career Catalyst course, The Judiciary. I could fill entire notebooks with everything I learned, but what I’ll remember most are the people I spent those two weeks with. We went to Baker Beach, bought overpriced sandwiches, watched trials and spent just a few of our nights out. San Francisco was a beautiful city, and as I boarded the plane back to Colorado, I listened to Frank Sinatra sing that he had left his heart there. I think a small part of me did too. The experience as a whole made me truly grateful to attend an institution that prioritizes experiential learning.
For the last block break of the year, I traveled to Taos, N.M., with a group of friends from my time spent on the third floor of Loomis last year. While in Taos, we stayed at an old river house owned by Mabel Dodge Luhan, a patron of the arts who brought the Florence art scene to Taos. We spent our nights roasting s’mores and playing our favorite music. In an unfortunate incident, we flipped a canoe and splashed into the frigid water of the Rio Grande. After the shock wore off, I didn’t feel that cold. In fact, I felt cleansed from the burdens of the past year. A figurative weight really did feel lifted off my chest
As the year comes to a close, my eighth block has felt different than last year’s, I think, in part due to the copious amounts of rainfall. On a recent phone call with my dad, I was telling him about this article when he said to me, “It’s always amazing how we look back on times of our lives with nostalgia when actually in the moment it wasn’t really that nostalgic or romantic or all that we sometimes remember… the human ability to create memories and meaning to fit perceptions is pretty interesting.” So in a way, this article is my way of attempting to find the meaning in a year that taught me so much more than I anticipated.
Growth and change come in many forms and in different ways throughout our lives. This year, my intellectual growth in classes was aided by the experiences of life that can’t be measured by letters and hard data. Camping with friends, a good iced latte in SF and the excitement of a blind date combined to create a year that I will reminisce about with my future children, as I tell them tales from my college days. As of now, I enjoyed the moments, but they have not yet faded into the receding distant past. I’m still young, and I have too much ahead of me to get too nostalgic about anything. I do feel bittersweet as the year comes to a close, but I am incredibly grateful to have lived it.