I am familiar with the habit of nonchalant, horror-story-spilling. By this, I mean, the act in which you tell someone about a future event in your life that may be difficult to handle, and they meet you with an abundance of personal anecdotes about the topic that edge on fear-mongering. I experienced this drastically before the start of my sophomore year.

I heard that, as a journalism major, the dreaded Gateway to Media class would be the cause of death written on my academic gravestone. Others worried that my incoming role as a resident assistant would rob me of my beloved sleep schedule. One of the scariest phrases dealt to me was, “Oh, I hated my sophomore year.”

I’m not sure if it was the symphony of cautious voices concerned with the success of my second year or my own circumstances that led me to the collegiate void of stress, but by winter break, I reached a breaking point — which happened much more quickly than many of the horror stories warned.

My family’s cats gathered in the living room around me as I began to reveal the near-constant stressors my sophomore year had dealt me. Stress from my job as an RA, slogging through sleepless on-call shifts. Stress from my upcoming classes in the honors college, dumping hours of extra work into my already-packed schedule. And stress from reckoning with the amount of enjoyment I actually obtained from my social groups at school.

However, through my head ran a much simpler, much more dire phrase: “I still have two and a half years left.”

In the horror stories I had heard, I was warned about the increasingly difficult coursework, the pressure to have a large resume and the impending decision of what career I may someday want. But, no one had told me exactly what I was feeling.

I’m not here to describe a story of my own that may leave you, or others, dreading your sophomore year. But, during my tumultuous time, I reminded myself that these are normal fears to have, especially when the intensity of academics prods each fear along.

While the sophomore scaries might look different for each person, in its most simple form, I believe it is the inability to continue the high expectations that are carried over from freshman year. First-year students experience an impetus with relatively assisted academic and social experience. The excitement of beginning college motivates them while dorm life and multiple dining halls give them a small sense of independence — in reality they may not experience this full independence until the following year.

Jakob Salao, a recent graduate of UO and a previous RA said, “Some residents I talked to told me that when they moved out of the dorms, one of the hardest things was how ‘real’ everything felt.”

Salao said that, being in the dorms, freshmen tend to have a wide array of resources that help them plan their lives such as roommates, individuals on their floors in search of new friends and meals provided upon demand.

“But when you move out into your second year, now you have to pay for groceries, now you have to cook,” Salao said. “And it can be hard having to find a job or balance that job with classes.”

Salao mentioned the increase in responsibilities sophomores face and, combined with the usual stress of college, these equate to my feeling of the scaries.

In my sophomore year, I was learning much more about my major but, at the same time, I felt vastly distant from knowing what I’d need to know going into a workplace. I began worrying about careers even though I was more than two years away from applying to them.

According to University Business, eight out of 10 college students are worried about getting a job post-college. During my sophomore year, I especially felt my resume lacked professional experience and I doubted my ability to someday secure meaningful opportunities.

And, in the creaky, old recliner in my parents’ living room, I cried about the pressures I had been facing throughout the year. After some consolation and laughter — directed at the grouchy meow of my now rather old family cat — I learned that many of the expectations I felt were set by myself.

Now, entering my senior year, I have practiced a gentler approach while setting my goals. I’ve recognized my small achievements, such as finally doing my laundry or cooking a good meal, and I’ve looked for more laughter in moments — especially with my cats. More than anything, however, I haven’t been scared off by the warned experiences of others. I’m a lot more scrappy than their stories expect me to be.