Freshman year is remembered by moving to a new school. Scared kids not knowing where to go on the first day of school, in a place that is two times bigger than their old middle school. Junior year is known as the hardest year of high school. Filled with World Civilizations, Trigonometry, Chemistry and more. There’s not much time left for anything after you’re done studying. If you’re in activities too, forget about sleep. Then, there’s senior year. One last sports season, one last year of school, one last everything. So many memories were made that you probably won’t remember them all. But what’s special about sophomore year? Absolutely nothing.
What’s there to look forward to? You’ve already been to Homecoming before and aren’t old enough to go to prom without people who are older than you. You aren’t an upperclassman, so you don’t have any authority in the school. DC classes won’t be available until next year either, so don’t even think about getting an extra head start on your future unless you took the Pre-ACT in your freshman year. Teachers have begun talking to you about college, but it’s not like you can do anything about it until sophomore year is already complete. This past year has just kind of… been there.
Going into sophomore year, I had no expectations, and this past year has definitely lived up to that level. Don’t get me wrong, it was fun at some points, but nothing stood out to me as “special”. There were no new experiences, no new friends, the classes weren’t any harder than last year. So to find meaning in this past year, I didn’t look at these big, socially memorable things that EVERYONE remembers. I looked at the little things that not everyone is as lucky as I am to experience.
From game days in government to hanging out with some of my closest friends in a trailer at a band competition, little moments were what pushed me through the year. Not every day was a huge deal, and that’s okay. Yeah, plenty of days dragged along with nothing to look forward to, but I didn’t know that until the end of the day when it was already over. Because there were no big moments, I never knew what was going to happen in a day.
For example, one day, when I was in my language class. Nothing had happened that day that hadn’t happened before. The teacher had become a lot more relaxed since we only had three weeks left at that point. One of my friends went up to her and said, “Can I teach the class today?” and she let her. So for that entire class period, she got in front of the class and went through the lesson plans and everything. I will always remember that day being filled with laughter, watching her, and seeing her help the teacher grade us on an activity.
Yeah, this past year has kind of just “been there.” Yeah, nothing stood out as “special” either. If you look at the surface level of this year, there’s nothing memorable like the other grades in high school. It’s a forgettable grade. If you take the time to look at the little things, though, and really think about what happened in the past year, it might just become one of the best experiences in all of high school, with memories that will last a long time.
