College Gameplan: Sophomore Year Guide

On behalf of the RateTheCoach, congratulations on getting through freshman year. You’ve weathered the storm of uncertainty and came out unscathed. Now that you’re comfortable in your surroundings it is time focus, to dig in, and get yourself headed on the right track to a successful future.

So let’s talk about your future. You need to set your sights on something. That is where your major comes in to play. If you have not yet done so, you need to decide on a major. Even if your college/university does not require you to make a choice during your second year, it would be beneficial to take it upon yourself and choose a career path. Learning career matching curriculum and developing particular field related thinking skills should be priorities during your second year of schooling.

Some Other Focal Points:

Here are a few ideas to think about:

Strengthen the relationship with your coach:

At this point you should have some sort of relationship with your coach. Whether it’s good, bad, or otherwise, develop it further. Open up further to your coach. Reveal any problems you may be having. As stated before, a strong working relationship with your coach is an important pat of having a successful college experience.

Do yourself a favor and stay on campus:

Contrary to popular belief, there is little to no benefit to living off campus. Grocery shopping, cleanliness, the politics of housemates, and paying rent are just a few pieces of baggage that come along with living in an off campus house.

Note: On the subject of the late night party, all of the freshman year hall monitoring that occurs is for show. Sophomore year is a totally different story. It’s a lot like the army with a don’t ask don’t tell policy. As long as you keep your door closed you shouldn’t encounter any problems (But keep all this on the DL).

Meet different, successful people, and learn from them:

This is really quite self explanatory. Whether it is a professor, an older student, or speaker brought to campus to address the student body, network with this person, become friendly, ask questions, and let them be a mentor to you. You can become accomplished in your field of study, by learning from successful people.

Note: These days, any person who has had success in their field has usually written a book on how they obtained that success. Do not be afraid to do a little reading. I have read more books as a leisure time activity in college than I ever read in high school. Why? Because as a college student you are able to read what interest you. The amount of students that are turned off from reading due to their high school curriculums is staggering. A Tale of Two Cities, The Grapes of Wrath, Billy Budd: who the hell wants to read those? In college reading can be fun, and because it is fun, it can be a useful learning tool.

Join college groups:

Build up that resume` by joining some extracurricular programs, employers will love it.

Start making a career plan:

Junior and senior year is when you really want to start looking into an internship, so plan ahead and begin your search this year.