17 ABOUT CAMPUS / JULY–AUGUST 2005 “I’m just kind of lost . . . as far as my friends, that’s all changing,my relationships with other people are changing, my family life is chang- ing, my major’s changed like five times.” —Melissa, twenty-year-old sophomore I SAT IN THE BACK OF THE ROOM as a large group of faculty and staff from across campus gathered to discuss academic excellence.We had just engaged in small- group discussions and were sharing our results.The topic at the moment was what we want entering sophomores to be able to do. One faculty member expressed her concerns:“By the end of the first year, they should really know why they want to be here and what they’re aiming for.They ought to have a major by the time they start the sophomore year. I know some students who don’t, and I feel like they’re kind of lost souls.Academically,we’re set up that they really are behind significantly in their majors if they’re just deciding on their majors by the end of the sophomore year.”This was a sentiment that I had heard many times from faculty and admin- istrators across the country.Is this a reasonable expec- tation for traditional-age sophomores? What do we know about sophomores, and how can we design campus environments and our interactions with them in ways that optimize their learning? Institutions across the country have designed and implemented first-year experience programs that have gone a long way toward affecting student suc- cess. Retention rates have increased at some institu- tions as a result of these interventions, and first-year students often get the support they need to negoti- ate the transition into college. Now many educators are wondering how students fare in the second year of college, what their needs are, and what responsi- bilities we have in designing environments to meet those needs.These are questions that I have been pondering for years, and other professionals across the country are grappling with them as well. B Y M OLLY A. S CHALLER The academy’s middle child, the sophomore, is beginning to earn the kind of attention that has been trained on first-year students for the past several decades. Molly Schaller shares insights on the stages she has found to exist in the sophomore year, arguably the rockiest of them all. W ANDERING AND W ONDERING : Traversing the Uneven Terrain of the Second College Year