Not long ago I noticed an odd mood hanging over my thoughts as I walked around campus. Now, I’m a sophomore, so I thought to myself, “oh, damn, it must be the infamous sophomore slump, right?” That period of numbness in the center of the college experience that kills passions and triggers transfers. But I’m not very smart, so I thought that nobody else could possibly be feeling this way. I thought it must be all in my head. It must be a weird social placebo or something. I kept thinking that I’d heard that I’m supposed to be fatigued around this time of my academic career, so it’s happening.
I went to a few older folks to see how they’d fared during this academic time, and I heard a lot of non-stories about how they had non-feelings second semester during their first and second years. A few of these old folks dismissed the feeling as adjustment pain, a few others talked about seasonal depression and a few other assorted causes. The prevailing belief is that this feeling will have faded by junior year and will be replaced by potent I.S.- fueled anxiety by senior year. So, fear not, control of the slump comes with time. Calls for advice led to monologues amounting to cacophonous silence. No overarching cause or explanation, even though there seemed to be a pattern — even among the well-adjusted — of this casual numbness. So, what is to be done about this slump, and where might it come from?
I think it’s proof of our collective empathy.
Perhaps (combined with tougher classes) the slow yet noticeable turn toward the start of the hard half of our academic career — with junior I.S. and then real I.S. cresting the hill — we’re realizing that our classes are about to become more interesting and we’re about to become more sleep deprived, but because we’re not there we feel anxious and unproductive. This numbness is filling in for the anxiety that the other three quarters of campus is experiencing — first years with their adjustment, juniors facing the looming threat of senior year, and seniors faced with I.S. and graduation.
We want to relate to the stress of the other three quarters of campus, but those of us who are privileged enough not to live with mental illness aren’t living with the same external pressures, so we collectively and unconsciously become generally anxious or numb in order to relate better to our peers and help them through solidarity. To be clear, I think that if I am right, and that the slump is a form of empathy, that we still desperately need to cure ourselves of it. We shouldn’t have to relate to one another through mutual pain, and instead through mutual pleasure. The slump is a terrible coping mechanism. It’s time for us to have a breather, not time to self-flagellate. You’re okay, chill.
Max Gregg, a Contributing Writer for the Voice, can be reached for comment at MGregg21@wooster.edu.