The Sophomore Year at Radcliffe: II

If freshman year is the one in which a Radcliffe student gets to know the University, sophomore year is the one in which she must get to know herself. "Sophomore year is a year without a compass," President Bunting says. "A girl has lost the bearings by which she was steering, and hasn't established new ones." If the choice of courses and a major is a difficult and important decision, the choice of values, friends, and even an identity is crucial.

The second year is often a time of extreme loneliness. During the first year, a girl frequently has a large group of friends, just as she had in high school. This stems partly from the necessities of life in a large dormitory. How alone can you be, if you study, eat, sleep, and set your hair surrounded by 95 other girls all carrying out the same rituals? Furthermore, many freshmen find they have several courses in common with their friends. This situation, almost unavoidable with the General Education requirements, can lead to a kind of academic communism which is very comforting to a frightened freshman. "All my friends were taking Nat Sci 5 last year," one sophomore said. "We studied, worried, and rejoiced together. The biggest problem was whom you were going to sit with in class."

Most Gen Ed and large survey courses have been left behind by sophomore year. Many students are taking upper level courses which have small enrollments. Now, the problem is not which friend to sit with, but whether there are any friends there at all. In addition, many girls move into small off-campus houses with populations only one-quarter the size of those of the brick dorms.

Thus, the large group of freshman friends often drifts apart in sophomore year, and unless new ones can be made, students feel alienated from their classmates. As one sophomore puts it, "Sometimes I feel as though I have no connection with the people--and even the whole structure--here. There's no one I feel I can really talk to about my thoughts and problems." Even the crutch of the freshman adviser has been pulled away. Girls feel they should be on their own now, and therefore hesitate to take their problems to administrative officials, such as their head residents. "Whereas the freshmen come to us as parents and the upperclassmen, as equals, we have very little conversation with sophomores," said Paul L. Nyhus, senior resident of Holmes Hall.

There are various ways in which girls show their feelings of estrangement. According to doctors at the University Health Services, for many girls the sophomore year is one of overeating, oversleeping, insomnia, and depression. Health Center statistics reveal that over a two-year period, 2.4 per cent of the sophomore class at Radcliffe was treated for insomnia, as compared with a maximum of one per cent in any other class. Four per cent of all sophomores were treated or hospitalized for anxiety and depression, a third more than any other class.

One University doctor reported that some sophomores find that they cannot bear to be alone, which may lead them to cling closely to one person. Often they try to escape loneliness by submerging themselves in a "cause," like disarmament, or an extra-curricular activity, such as the Loeb Drama Center.

As a girl withdraws from the closeness and sharing of secrets with girl friends, she often moves toward a new intimacy with a boy. A freshman dates many different boys, and the dates are primarily for entertainment. A sophomore, however, suddenly aware of the closeness of marriage, is forced to decide whether she wants to "commit herself" to going seriously with one boy. The pressures to do so are great. For one thing, going steady can be an easy way to appear mature, because of its parallel with marriage. For another, girls complain that they date much less frequently in their second year than they did in their first. "Except for two girls, no one in my dorm goes out regularly," remarked one Moors sophomore. "It gets pretty depressing having to write papers on Saturday nights." Thus, a girl who is going with a boy knows that she will at least get to a movie at the Brattle Theater over the weekend. Finally, by sophomore year girls are looking for affection--not entertainment--in a date.

The loneliness of the sophomore year may also force girls into sexual relationships for which they are not prepared emotionally or practically. For some, this is an agonizing decision, for it challenges long-accepted values. But for others, the decision is perhaps too easy. A native freshman who is shocked by the knowledge that an upperclass friend is sleeping with a boyfriend may, after a year, come to feel that an affair is natural or even desirable. Social pressure may also influence this decision. "Many girls are motivated more by a need to compete with other girls and even with the boys themselves than by a wish for serious emotional relationships," Dr. Carl A. L. Binger, a psychiatrist at the Health Services said.

Along with this questioning of moral values a sophomore often begins to consider her future goals. Often these are specifically related to the changing role of women in modern life. "Am I intellectual?" and "How can I manage a family and a career?" are among the questions which may bother a thoughtful sophomore. A student who is not excited by her academic work may wonder whether differential calculus can have any relevance to the problems before her.

Whereas the freshman often experiments with a number of self-images, the older girl can often feel pressured to define her own identity. She must decide who she is, where she is going, what sort of person she will become. For many girls these decisions are the real challenge of the sophomore year, and the conclusions, the real commitment in a year of commitments.