In the weeks leading up to course registration, especially after Lou’s List had been published, walks between buildings or class changeovers with peers are often spent answering the same question — what are you taking next semester? The 15 minutes before my 4000-level seminar on memory distortions last week were no exception. About 20 psychology majors were frantically discussing how we were planning on spending our last academic credits now that we had essentially completed our majors.
Our professor, upon entering the classroom and hearing our discussion, was delighted.
“This is perfect,” he said as he said up his laptop and projector. “You’re all signing up for your last semester of college — I could not image a better real life application of today’s topic.”
He was referring to the peak-end effect, a psychological heuristic in which people form memories of an experience by averaging how they felt at the “peak” as well as the end. It was classically demonstrated through an experiment in which participants either dipped their hands in ice water for a minute, and then for a minute and half, during which the temperature of the water was raised one degree for the last thirty seconds. When asked which task they would prefer for a third trial, most responded that they would prefer the 90-second condition — even though it involved a longer period of discomfort, the average pain they felt at “peak” and end was lower.
While my professor was generalizing the results from painful memories to pleasant ones, and from a bucket of ice water to an entire college experience, he did make a compelling argument — as we prepare for the last semester of our undergraduate careers, we have the opportunity to set up a strong “end” for ourselves.
As a psychology major, I’m used to life imitating academia. However, I typically find myself recognizing psychological phenomena in my life as those events occur, rather than attempting to live my life by psychological principles. The idea of constructing my final semester around the peak-end effect gave me pause. I found myself asking whether our actual experiences, or our memories of them, are more important. If this scientific finding suggests that sometime down the road, my overall impression of college is going to be based on how I felt at my low point and how I ended the run, what happens to all those other memories in between? And what if I don’t enjoy myself enough in this last lap to make up for the bad stuff?
It’s not uncommon for students to enter college with the expectation that these will be the best four years of our lives. As my time at the University draws to a close, I find myself reminded of the familiar pressure to really make these days count. But in the face of this realization, now supported by science, I find myself wanting to use a different strategy.
Actively trying to orchestrate some kind of show-stopping finale for my final semester at the University is most likely going to end in disappointment. In my experience, trying to live up to such high expectations is as exhausting as it is fruitless. Instead, I’m learning to enjoy the little moments more — the unplanned, pleasant surprises, like movie marathons with my roommates that never begin before 11 p.m. or the spontaneous after-school snack I shared with a friend after we ran into each other on 15th St.
Hopefully, by living more presently in these in-between moments, I’m not only going to graduate with more memories — these four years are also going to have a pretty strong ending.
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