Unachieved professional identity of the school leaver as a predictor of the "sophomore slump"

The article contains analysis of the issues associated with the process of personal self-determination on different stages of professional formation and the description of various approaches to understanding the phenomenon of «sophomore slump» which is considered as one of the phases of a regular age-related identity crisis emerging within specific conditions of the subject's academic adjustment. The results of the empirical research oriented towards exploring professional identity statuses of high-school graduates followed by sophomores' experiences in the second year of studying are presented. Professional identity statuses at the time of entering university were identified by using content-analysis procedures for analyzing essays representing re spondents' retrospective self-reports describing the process of the major and future profession choice and subjects' feelings related to that process. It is found out that at the time of taking a decision on entering higher education institution half of the respondents were in the moratorium status that took two forms: the lack of clearly defined professional visions and the modification of professional visions forced by external circumstances. The second half of the research sample was characterized by developing clear and steady interests, intentions and goals that defined their ability and commitment to implement their independent and deliberate choice of the university higher educational establishment and their future profession. The specificity of experiencing the crisis associated with the «sophomore slump» was researched with the involvement of reliable and valid psychometric techniques (The Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF) and The Self-Evaluation Questionnaire). Statistical processing of the empirical data using open and professional software packages (MS Excel and IBM SPSS Statistics) showed that unachieved professional identity at the time of university entrance could be considered as a predictor of more intense development of «sophomore slump» symptoms. The same tendencies were detected during the analysis of the essays representing sophomores' ideas and perceptions of the crisis they had to cope with in the second year of their studies.