Sophomore Slump

Sophomore Slump “I pulled a sophomore stupid” said my friend as we tried to finish up our last problem set of the year. I laughed, and felt my heart sink as I remembered what it really meant and how we all have done it. We all pulled a sophomore stupid.  I reached my limits, and I really think I learned a lot about what I am capable of. I pre-registered for six classes at the beginning of this semester. There was a CI-H, which I needed to take, but it was the same night as a Writing Science Fiction class that I wanted to take.  I showed up for Writing Science Fiction on the first day extremely excited. Science fiction is my favorite genre, and I would love to take a course from a real science fiction writer. However, the professor only took seniors and juniors, so my sophomore friend and I did not get in. So I was down to four technical classes. I e-mailed a professor about taking her 9-unit class as a fifth class so that I could get a HASS requirement out of the way, but I got no reply and heard from a friend that the class was full. The four technical classes were brutal ones. The first was 3.012, which is a 15-unit two-part class consisting of a structure of materials component and thermodynamics component. The professors were incredible, but the material was extremely frightening. I struggled through the semester, constantly feeling behind, especially after I got sick a few times. Once I started to get healthier, I finally accepted that there was no feasible way I could learn the material on my own and catch up with the class. I met with the TA’s and Student Support Services and I finally asked for a tutor in the class. My tutor was awesome and helped me through the material, and she helped me understand that what I am going through in the class is not just happening to me. Sophomore fall is the most difficult part of my major, and after this it gets a lot better.  I really do feel like I learned a ton in the class, and I have accepted that there was no way I could have tried any harder than I did. I now un derstand all about how materials function, and I feel like I can apply these to real life situations, like we did in my second technical class, 3.014. My second technical class was 3.014, which is a CI-M.  CI-M stands for Communication Intensive class for your Major.  The class involved writing papers and other writing assignments, which would get graded on a technical and writing scale. I did really well in the class, and even enjoyed it to a point. However, all of the assignments were due at the same times and the amount of work was extreme. The Monday of Thanksgiving break week we had 30% of our final grade due. It was an extremely time consuming class, but it definitely reinforced what I learned in 3.012. I am excited, however, to get away from 4-hour lab blocks for a month or two. Also, I got an A in the class. Thats right, I GOT MY FIRST A AT MIT!!! I am so happy!!  I actually never thought I could do it.  I thought that MIT didnt give As for classes.  Apparenlty professors have the option to put an A on our grade reports, and every once in a while they do it! My third technical class was 3.016, mathematical methods for materials. This class basically taught us how to solve really difficult problems using Mathematica. I am not a programmer, but I did learn some basic skills that were really helpful.  In the end, I made a really cool visualization modeling the Brownian motion of polymers. I definitely learned a lot in this class, and the instructor was really awesome. My last technical class was 5.12, organic chemistry.  This class was my sophomore exploratory.  Sophomore exploratory is a beautiful thing where the drop date for the class is extended until the next semester.  The sophomore exploratory option was perfect for me for this class because 5.12 would not actually count towards the requirements for my major, it was just a class that I really wanted to take because I am really passionate about polymer science. 5.12 ended up taking too much time away from my other classes, and I had to switch it to listener at the end of the semester.  Still, I feel like I now have a basic understanding of chemical reactions and definitely got a lot out of my experience in the class. So those were my classes that I did and did not take, and in the end I really have no regrets. Last semester I was pushed to and past my limits. I learned more than I ever had before about myself and about how to do MIT.  MIT truly is a place where you are forced to drink from the firehose, yet I somehow cannot picture myself anywhere else. And all of my friends are going through the same thing, supporting each other along the way. There are student support services, mental health, our parents, the Medlinks, UAAP, and so many other people around us making sure that we are staying healthy and getting through our sophomore slumps, and that is what gets us through it all in the end. There were a few others things keeping me busy in my very little free time this past semester. Medlinks I have been very involved in Medlinks here on campus. Medlinks is a student organization that helps students with all things health â€" from scrapes to gastroenteritis outbreaks to eating healthy.  I really enjoy being a Medlink and I recently got recognition for all my effort as Medlink of the Month! We even had a Meet the Medlinks event that was a real success last semester in East Campus. There was a lot of great food and there were a lot of great Medlinks! We also made goodie bags for all the residents of East Campus to help people get through finals! Associate Advising I am having a lot of fun being an associate advisor this year, and I really want to continue to do this during my time here at MIT!  Although I am still trying to figure out things for myself, I really want to offer whatever advice I can to freshmen and try to make their time at MIT the best it can be! At the end of last semester, the advisor for our group and I took our advisees out to Toscaninis, the best ice cream business in the Boston area.  Our advisor knows the owner of Toscis, and we got to sit around and talk about the ice cream business, creation process, and eat a bunch of really great samples! Additionally, I made our advisees care packages for finals week!  I hope they liked them! Pistol I have not been nearly as involved in pistol as I would have liked to be this semester, but our team did really well this year! I did get to go to one away match at West Point, and it was so much fun! I love going on away matches because I feel like I get to bond with the team and get to know them.  We also got to hang out with a bunch of the army kids, and we even took them out to get ice cream with us one night!  MIT also beat West Point in the Sport Pistol Event, and Yale in every event!  We have really been kicking butt this season. UPOP MIT has this really cool program called the Undergraduate Practice Opportunities Program, or UPOP, that helps sophomores practice professionalism and get an internship or other cool opportunity for the summer after their sophomore year.  Through UPOP, I got connected to an awesome company called TMK IPSCO, which is an industry leader in developing piping products for the oil and gas industry.  I went through multiple interview rounds, and finally received and accepted an offer to work at their Houston, Texas-based research and development center this summer! IAP I AM GOING TO BE AN EMT!  Since I was 16, I have wanted to train to be an EMT.  However, I was too young to begin training, so I became a firefighter instead.  I still got to ride in the ambulance on calls to help with carrying items and patients, but I am so excited to finally be able to help to a greater extent, as well as further help people on hall who get injured and have better judgement of when people need to go to the emergency room. The training is a lot of work classes 9am-6pm Monday to Friday plus extra trainings and tests but it is something that I have wanted to do for a really long time and I am so excited to help people.  I really do miss it, and I hope that I can make a difference. All in All Sophomore slump exists.  It is the awful truth that last semester was pretty sucky.  It was emotionally, physically, and mentally draining, but I learned so much and I am really excited for the future.  Next semester will really be awesome.  I am finally going to take some business classes, and I am considering changing my major slightly so that I can take a greater variety and quantity of business classes and take advantage of the incredible opportunities that MITs Sloan business school has to offer. The Future The future is looking brighter and brighter with each step I take and new thing I learn.  The journey there is really tough, but I am excited to see what comes next. And of course I will end this blog post with a cat picture!  This is Muffin, a recent visitor to hall!  An animal shelter found him in a bulldozer and now he lives with the sister of Lilika M. 16.  He is six months old and giant. Sophomore Slump My second year of college just ended. I’ve been trying to think of a good post to write on the occasion, or some significant reflection on my halfway point at MIT. Usually when I sit down to write a blog post, I like to have things sort of figured out in my mind, so I can say something profound or at least informative on the subject. But the truth is, as a student halfway through college, I still haven’t figured out most things, and in the last few months, I feel like I’ve lost my way more than I’ve found it. So instead I’m going to write about that. Last semester was pretty tough. I went through a rough breakup. I felt like my circle of friends was shrinking. Even though I was taking 51 units, my semester felt unusually lightâ€"probably because the variety in my classes (algorithms, software design, French, and costume design) helped avoid the sensation of burnout. I questioned if I was pushing myself hard enough or if I was doing enough things around campus. But at the same time, I didn’t feel inspired by the extracurriculars I was doing. Basically, I felt like I was stagnating. I’m writing about this because I know I’m not the only one who feels this way. I’m pretty sure everyone goes through something similar at some point. From talking to friends and other people at MIT, I know that “sophomore slump” is a real thing. In general, I think everyone goes through times where things don’t feel like they’re falling into place and you need to make changes to be happy with your situation. I think it helps a lot to know that there are other people in the same boat, and that feeling out of it sometimes isn’t a sign of failure or personal mismanagement. I’ve realized in the past semester that I can be really hard on myself. Sometimes I don’t give myself enough credit for the things I’m doing well, or I blame myself when stuff don’t turn out the way I intended. Obviously, beating up on myself just makes things worse. Sometimes the best thing to do is to cut myself a break and realize that it’s ok to feel uncertain and discouraged. And sometim es, the best thing I can do for myself is have enough faith in myself to move forward. I’ve been trying to keep myself really open to new opportunities and new friendships and I try to take chances to enjoy myself. I hope the main takeaway from reading this is that it’s common to feel stuck in a rut at times, and there are ways to get out of it. Even though I felt somewhat lost last semester, some new doors were opening. I got closer to some of my old friends and started making new ones. (It turns out, language classes are a great way to meet people.) There was one week where I had three in-depth, multiple-hour-long conversations with people I barely knew. It was awesome. I found a UROP for next year that I’m really excited about. Its in a lab that is a supportive community of collaborative, hardworking people, with a work culture that matches my style of getting things done in a way I haven’t encountered in other research projects. I’m really looking forward to diving deep into academic study in a way that goes beyond just taking classes. As the end of the semester neared, I couldnt wait to get started at my summer internship. I worked really hard during the fall to get a good job, and I found a position that matched the type of technical work I was looking for, in a company whose workplace culture was a great fit for my personality, with offices in New York City. I was really looking forward to the change of scene and meeting a class of interns from all over the country. Last week, I had just taken my final exam and packed up all my belongings into storage, and was preparing to get on a plane home (with a suitcase full of clothes suited for a New York summer), when I got a phone call. The company was cancelling its internship program because of financial duress. Two weeks before my projected start date, I suddenly had no job. The next week and a half was incredibly stressful but also unexpectedly exciting. I am really lucky that I had so many people willing to work with me at the last minute to find new placement for the summer, and I’m really thankful for those in the tech world who tried to find new positions for the displaced interns. I was really touched by the people who reached out to me and offered their support and advice. On the afternoon I received the call, I had no idea what I would do with my summer. Twenty-four hours later, I was in contact with over a dozen companies who were still looking for summer interns, from the enormous to the tiny, working in all sorts of industries with all kinds of technology. Suddenly, I was in a really interesting position: I had the opportunity to redo my entire internship search, with another semester’s wisdom under my belt to decide what I was looking for. But that’s exactly the question…what was I looking for? As any college student can tell you, that’s a really scary question. What do you want to do for the rest of your life? What kind of work do you want to dedicate yourself to, and with who? Where do you see your career heading, this summer, next summer, and for the next however many years? I don’t know. But I have some ideas. And that’s exactly what internships are forâ€"to test out visions of what you might want your career to look like, and to see how off the mark you are. So I took a stab at pegging my future, and tried out a couple of hypotheses. I looked into small, early-stage start-ups, because I’m excited by the fast-paced environment and ability to make an impact, and I could see myself starting a company someday. I focused on companies that are doing interesting things in an active field of research, because I want to get involved in areas that having an exciting intellectual and applied future. And, since I am a student after all, I looked for positions that would give me exposure to technical areas I haven’t seen before to provide a good engineering foundation. After a long week of interviewing, I accepted a position at a company that fits all these criteria. It’s something of a risk. It’s really different from my job last summer, which means I don’t know if I’ll like it…but I guess that’s the point. I start on Monday. :) Ultimately, getting dumped from my internship was probably a blessing in disguise. It was stressful and a disappointment at first, but it gave me the chance to think about my experience for this summer in a methodological way, and I ended up finding a job that will probably be better for my development than the one I had originally. I remember that right before starting sophomore year, I was really eager to go back to MIT because of new experiences I could see waiting there for me. My hope is to feel the same way as an incoming junior. I can already identify new opportunities for next school year and this summer that I’m really excited about. There are also some areas of uncertainty  and some things I am going to have to work on. Compared to the beginning of the school year, in some dimensions I’m closer to where I want to be, and in some places I’ve slipped. But that’s life. Hopefully in the long run I’ll come out better for my experiences last semester and in the ones that are coming. Post Tagged #sophomore year