Sophomore retreat is a time to reflect on friendships, interactions on social media, and the situations that teenagers are put in. Friendships have changed from grade school to high school. As freshmen, the class was thrown into a whole different world called high school. Friendships have changed because friends did not go to the same high school as all their other friends from grade school. Friendships even changed from the beginning of freshman year to the beginning of sophomore year. The interactions on social media affect the way teenagers think and act towards others. The class mostly talked about subtweeting and how people do not know what is really meant when reading a tweet. Other topics  included: doing the right thing or getting a good grade, telling little lies, or even rejecting a cute boy.

The sophomores broke into their assigned groups when they got to the church. The reason the teachers do not let them pick their groups is because they will never get to know the other girls in their grade if they do not venture outside their friend group. The first thing the class talked about was friendship and friend groups. In freshman year, some people started out their time here at Padua with friends from their grade school or even with girls in most of their classes. Some friends changed by the beginning of sophomore year. This is because a girl might not have classes with the girls that was in their class last year. This does not mean that they are still not friends with the girls they were friends with in freshman year. It just means that they might not be as close as we were. Not only friends changed, but also friend groups changed. Some people leave a friend group to join others.

The next topic was about the pros and cons of social media. Talking about how others do not know the tone of a tweet because the conversation is not face-to-face. They learned that instead of subtweeting they should talk to them in person.The final topic was about the situations the class is put in as teenagers. One of the situations was about forgetting to do the rest of their homework. They had two choices: do they ask a friend to copy her homework but forget to give her homework back to her before class so she is penalized or do they show the teacher the homework they have done. Another situation was going to an end of the year party, and not telling their parents since they are going to sleep at their friend’s house or to hang out with a small group of friends. The last situation was being at a party, and being asked if they wanted a drink by the boy they liked. Now they do not want to turn down the boy they liked who offered a drink, but they also do not want that drink to be alcohol and they do not want any other things slipped into their drink. These were some of the challenging situations discussed on Sophomore retreat.