The Land of the Free

The year-that-must-not-be-named; the shame of every senior; the year whose artifacts are permanently engraved on the cards of identification we carry:

Freshman year.

No one wants to think about it. Especially not me, a sophomore. (Seniors and juniors, look! I'm one of you now! You can stop bullying me now!) Especially since we’re almost as cool as the upperclassmen. Sure, we do SING! with the freshmen, but we all know that us sophomores carry it. And besides, sophomores are practically upperclassmen (10 is in the double digits; therefore, we are upperclassmen). Let’s make a sophomore SING! petition.

If it were up to me, I'd use the reality stone to erase all existence of my freshman year. Thanos, the lucky little brat, has never had to go through such a mortifying period of history. You all know how it was: the horrors of being awkward with your teachers, never knowing if you're acting too cool or too much like a nerd. The fear of joining clubs and talking to people who could help you because obviously you think, I can do it all on my own! (spoiler: you can't). The painfully heavy backpacks coupled with the 10-story school bring you into a new and unexplored world: a new pit of hell to enjoy. The agony of having to look up and bitterly reminisce about how, back in your eighth grade days, you could look down upon all the sixth graders. The miseries were endless.

But as a sophomore, that's all behind me! I can be both cool and a good student! I don't have to grasp for self-deprecating jokes every half-minute in a conversation to prove that I have fully integrated into Stuyvesant. I can look down my nose at anyone shorter than me! I can claim to be an upperclassman and watch as the freshies' eyes grow wide with awe (actually that's a lie; I haven't actually talked to any freshmen, but I’m sure that they would be impressed with my long list of achievements during my long stay at Stuy, which include being in The Spectator and not much else, tbh)!

I can claim superiority and a greater workload than any freshie out there. And even better, my mind has been freed of the insidious urge to wear my gym outfit 24/7. I have been enlightened about the benefits of other articles of clothing such as jeans and T-shirts that (shockingly!) aren’t the Stuyvesant gym shirts.

As a sophomore, Dobby is a free elf from the chains of freshman year!