I'm not new to game development, or C++... but I am new to game development with C++. I've been using Multimedia Fusion 2 prior to this, and have spent about a year in college learning C++ now, so I'm hoping to ditch MMF2, and move onto some real game coding. Which libraries would you recommend I get started with?(Specifically for 2D games at this point.) We don't start using them in school until next fall, so I haven't used a library with C++ before.
A few popular ones I've heard of (but honestly know nothing about) are Allegro, OpenGL, SDL, and of course DirectX. I'd probably be more interested in something that could simplify things for me a bit to get started with, which I imagine would be none of these. Any ideas along those lines?