GUEST COLUMNIST: OPINION: Sophomore slump

I'm going to be a sophomore.

Even writing it, seeing it in print before my very eyes, doesn't make it seem any more real. Frankly, I'm scared.

Yes, to echo the words of far too many, my freshman year at Penn flew by at lightning speed. Whoosh.

After everything -- after the first overwhelming days of freshman orientation, after a year of frat parties, hall meetings and early-morning discussions on religious doctrine -- it's over.

Last semester, as the year came to a close, I started to panic. Like a mid-life crisis visiting a few years too soon, it hit me: come September, I would no longer be the coveted freshman. In coming back to Penn, I feared that everything would not be full of the same wonder and excitement that had characterized my freshman experience.

What could I do to recapture the feeling of freshman year? I made a decision -- I would become a peer advisor.

Being a peer advisor would help me maintain that now-weakened link with the freshman experience, to recapture the magic in a Walt Disney sort of way, I theorized. In its most primitive, primordial inklings, being a peer advisor would allow me to satisfy my innate urge to pass down knowledge I had acquired to the next generation, to perpetuate the success of the gene pool, so to speak.

After applications and training sessions, the package finally came. It was a large white envelope, delivered express mail, reminiscent of the one I received more than one year ago notifying me of my acceptance to Penn. But this time, the letter held almost a greater significance, it entrusted to my care 10 delicate freshmen lives. I had been named their peer advisor -- their guide. Call me Sacajawea.

Ok, so maybe I got a wee bit carried away with my new responsibility. But I hesitated to take this role lightly. I spent hours agonizing over the introductory letter I would send to my advisees. Proofread first by my mother, and then by the critical eyes of my friend and fellow advisor, I wanted to ensure that the tone was friendly and approachable, the instructions clear and the advice sound.

Even at the post office, when confronted with a choice of stamps, I deliberated, and with the clerk's eyes rolling, finally opted for the traditional flag.

Did I mention that I included a Penn decal in each envelope? Did I hear somebody say "overkill?"

I waited anxiously for the first call, first e-mail, first contact with these impressionable young minds entrusted to my care. In my mind, I constructed imaginary phone conversations where, sage-like, I divulged to them the great truths of college life. I advised them on courses, on social life, on dormitory living and wowed them with my overall comprehensive knowledge of Penn.

Though I knew so little about them, like a proud mama I boasted to my friends of my ten wards, and willingly endured -- relished, actually -- their teasing at my over zealousness.

When the calls and e-mails started to flood in, I'm afraid my advice and answers were far less glamorous than I had imagined.

I tried to convince them that registration through PennInTouch was not nearly as frightening as it sounded on paper, and that they would not be doomed to sit in classes they despised with teachers that droned on like insects. I rifled through the freshmen course timetable and read class ratings in the course review book. It was just like last summer.

But mostly, through our brief telephone conversations and hastily typed e-mails, through the nerve racking course selection process and never-ending stream of questions, I tried to convey to them my genuine love of Penn, and the excitement waiting for them in their freshman year.

Mission accomplished.

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