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Our Brains Are Taking Us Back to High School
OMG, we’re all teenagers now
How’s your quarantine going? Have you noticed, in moments of solitude, a very particular brand of boredom? A dreamy, vaguely angry state marked by unexpected curiosity? Have you started writing in a journal again? Picked up the guitar? Busted out your old JNCOs and built a skate ramp in the driveway?
Dare I say it: Do you feel like you are back in high school?
While everyone’s quarantine experience is unique, I’ve noticed that this weird throwback emotion is a common one lately. It’s a feeling of limitless possibility, creativity, and anticipation — a sort of childlike wonder about what you’re capable of — tinged with existential sadness, impatience, and angst.
But why?
Laurence Steinberg, a Temple University psychology professor who studies adolescence, told me in an email that the high school era occupies a hegemonic space in memory — in the distribution of memories across the lifespan, the thickest concentration occurs between the ages of 10 and 30, a phenomenon psychologists call the “reminiscence bump.” Memories from that time are more vivid and appear in greater abundance in our overall recollections of our lives.
