Humor & Satire | Surviving the sophomore slump (or at least trying to)

Have you ever thought that there might be more to life than getting biddies (is there)? Is your bed a nest of last week's clothing, Retreat receipts and 40s bottles? Are you finally feeling the white guilt mentioned in your Gender, Race and Sexuality in Post-Colonial [insert Third World country here] class? Well, congratulations. You might be a jaded sophomore.

I've been told that sophomore year is the most grueling part of our Vassar careers. Every morning, I spend a good 10 minutes asking myself why I get out of bed, and most of the time the answer is so I can get unlimited Diet Coke at the Deece. As sophomores, many of the things we've previously held dear have lost their luster. No longer are we graced with the blissful ignorance and pleasure of drunkenly stumbling into a random senior's TH and being forced to chug the 40 she's been keeping in her coat pocket since last weekend. We're old news. We're like Villard Room parties.

Now, we could probably drown small children in the amount of reading and applications we have to do. JYA applications, picking a major, summer internships have become the very bane of our existence. These summer applications bring a new meaning to "desperaternship" (not to be confused with "desperationship," another defining term of sophomore year) as we scavenge our contact lists to connect with our long-lost rich uncles in hopes of spending the summer fetching coffee and getting shat on by everyone.

Sophomore year is the year of the pretentious email signature. It's basically a mini resume, and an even more desperate proclamation of our feeble daily lives. We just want everyone to know that we're co-president of a million clubs and doing an independent major on "existence." Bonus points if your signatures are longer than the majority of your emails.

The most satisfying part of our days is to complain about all the work we have to do. These days, people who "work hard play hard" actually "work hard and spend their spare time telling everyone how tired they are." On weekends, you either enter a fierce competition for the title of Drunkest Bitch at the Party, or you're cooped up in your dorm room playing countless hours of Words With Friends. The walk to the THs felt so much shorter freshman year, and now the only way you can get me to walk over there is if you bribe me with a paper extension or a slice of Bacio's.

Keep your head up, sophomore. Soon you'll be going abroad to Europe or to some obscure Third World country that still hasn't discovered utensils. And for those who are staying, you'll no longer have to see that annoying girl in your economics class that spends the whole period shopping for Victoria Secret lingerie. There's a light at the end of the tunnel. Oh, wait. Not really. That's just the dimly lit campus shuttle leaving the TH path. Let's get it together, guys. Rail that last line of emergency Adderall and finish those last million pages of reading, right in time for your 9 a.m.