The “sophomore slump” phenomenon has received a lot of social media attention on platforms like tiktok and has been written about from a variety of different sources including Harvard. What is it? Sophomore slump is a common occurrence for sophomores where they begin to lack motivation in school which affects grades, sports and social life.
The general consensus from many students we have interviewed has been that sophomore slump usually happens because of the awkward time that sophomore year is. You feel more grown up than you did as a freshman but you aren’t an upper classman yet. Maize South sophomore Erica Marshall talks about this.
“I think just because you aren’t a freshman so you’re not like getting that like new energy to go to high school, like you’ve been through it before so you kind of know what the teachers expect of you and you just get bored.” Marshall says.
Experts say, sophomore year is typically when kids tend to start taking harder classes. Many students, at this point, have gotten their required and baseline classes out of the way and can start taking more interesting electives and college level classes. It is also the last shot students get before junior year to balance out their GPA and start pressing for the ACT, SAT, etc. Maize South junior Cody Montano discusses these academic changes.
“Because classes are easy, but they get tougher and you don’t realize it,” says Montano. “I feel like freshman and sophomore years you don’t realize how much your GPA and your ACT prep actually matters until junior year, so I feel like they don’t really care about it freshman year and then it’s a big fall off.”
Balancing both school and sports is a common struggle for students. This can definitely contribute to the sophomore slump. An overall lack of academic motivation alongside sports or other extracurriculars can be extremely draining and hard to manage. Maize High varsity cheerleader, junior Reese Botts, talks about her experience with lacking motivation.
“I think I experienced it a little bit but not to its full extent,” says Botts. “Because I didn’t lose all my motivation but I definitely went to the point where I usually get all A’s but I was okay with getting a B.”
Though many students we talked to unanimously agree that the sophomore slump is real and affects students, when talking to Maize High School’s attendance officer, Christine Lawson, we learned that some adults may have a different definition of the sophomore slump.
Lawson claims that the sophomore slump is a phenomenon that only affects college sophomores, not high schoolers. Full interview quotes can be seen in the attached video.
While the lack of balance is a major cause of the sophomore slump, there are ways to avoid it. It is important to not put too much pressure on yourself to be perfect all the time in your academic, athletic and social lives. Botts tells us her advice to sophomores who may be falling into a slump.
“I would say one thing you can do to help yourself during sophomore slump is to balance your life out,” Botts says. “Don’t put so much effort into school like balancing out sports and friends because I didn’t do that sophomore year but I feel like that’s what keeps you going.”
