one year later <3

so i know that i do my best thinking in the shower. and this was just too good to not write.

the halloween dance is in two hours-ish and i feel like last year's halloween dance was...erm, yesterday. that led me to thinking about the past year...and actually, a little bit before that.

i'm a SOPHOMORE in college. good grief. a sophomore means, at least at Salve, bringing your car on campus or in my case bumming rides off my friends who didn't have cars last year. it means getting to live in mansion dorms or in cottage dorms and not stupid Miley. it means that you know the trolley schedule by heart and know the bus routes. it means that you have a better chance of being an officer or a leader in a club because you've been at it for a year already. it means thinking about studying abroad. it means no more NSS. it means deciding who you want to live with instead of who you're assigned to live with. it means that you realize that about half of your class is noticably absent...as lots of people transfer after their freshman year. it means that you can be a mentor or an RA. but most of all, it means...you're not new here anymore.

you go past the trolley stop on friday afternoons and see about a dozen freshmen, at any given time, with their bags packed. and you remember when that was you...homesick, missing your friends from home, wondering if it will ever be the same again. you see their naive faces walking around town, having no idea where the hell they're going. they usually travel in gaggles and you know that they've made real friends when the group reduces to just two or three instead of eight or nine. and then, you, the sophomore, the 'upper classman' now, hears someone scream your name and it fills your heart. you pray for that freshman because their day will come.

you also understand their pleas because one thing about college is that you're always missing someone. when you're at school, you miss your family and your friends at home. when you're at home, you miss your friends at school. and wherever your significant other is, you miss him or her whenever you're not in the place that he is. if he/she's from home, he/she comes to visit you at school on the weekends, and if he/she's from school, he/she comes home with you for a weekend and then you go to his/her place for another. but one thing that's good about it is that missing people forces you to keep in touch with them. thank the good Lord for Facebook...because sometimes you just don't have time for a long chat on the phone, whether you're at school and you just give a quick Hi! to a friend from home, or vice versa when you're at home. because there is time for that.

but one thing that you don't come to realize until after the summer between your freshman and sophomore years is that in both cases...if you're as good of friends as you say you are, you just pick up where you left off. when you go home in May, you are out so much that first week that you barely sleep. there could be a drama going on with your friends from home and while you might hate drama, you're so happy just to be in the loop. when you go back to school in September, there is no breathing that first weekend back. you've all missed each other too much...you survived your freshman year together, how could you not love each other? and in my own case it's not just the people in my own year...it's my upper classman friends, and i love making friends with new freshmen. provided that no one lives too far away, you can visit friends from home at other schools, and your school friends can visit over the summer. or you can visit them. but when you're a freshman, you get scared that it won't be that way anymore...and then, when you go home for such a long time like the summer is, your relief is contageous.

essentially, you come to realize how lucky you are to have people who love you, wherever you go, no matter where you are. gone temporarily does not mean gone forever. your freshman angst is over. and that's what being a sophomore is all about.