The weirdness of soph year

1. Part of what’s really weird this year, is the fact that I’ve already been here. Especially with taking the bus back home when I would need to go home last year, at a certain point when we started driving into the city, I recognized it. How many times did I drive past them same city, sit by the window, and see the exact same sights?

2. Or when we started driving by campus, how many hundreds of times did I walk those streets? Could’ve been different days, different times, different weather, with different groups of people, and for different reasons. Like on the way to class, or on the way to a restaurant to get dinner with a friend. Very different atmosphere and feelings.

3. Same dorm, like same building, and almost exact same room too!

4. What was really weird was walking through those hallways again, and remembering where all the old people (from last year) used to live. The rooms they used to live in, and unintentionally comparing them with the new people from this year. Comparing their dynamics, the types of people, how they acted. Imaging how they were tending and adjusting, what they were doing, just like we were doing last year.

5. Dining halls. Again, new people. But not even just that. Also that looking around, feeling like an outsider or imposter (not even in the progression sense now only, which I didn’t plan this out or expect to feel like an imposter not one but two ways lol) because you’re a sophomore whereas everyone else is almost certainly a freshman. And comparing that new generation, just like each generation of high school (and by generation I mean grade/graduating class/year lol). So feeling like I don’t fit in but at the same time can pass as a freshman because I look younger than that anyway (according to many many of the population).

6. Both 4 and 5, it’s weird seeing everyone experience it all for the first time. Or walking by and hearing comments and bits and pieces of conversations. Or just guessing if someone is a freshman by the look in their eyes, their dress? Their walk?

7. And in certain things then, feeling more confident than the freshman, yet feeling tied down to having to see them experience it all for the first time too.

8. Like…that was me last year? Weird.

9. And there were some sophomore living in my dorm last year too. Unless I’m really weird, and only if they can relate, now I know how they felt? And it sure is weird.