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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   2552 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 8, 2026

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I feel like the way the brain encodes memories just means that the adolescent years that coincide with high school tend to produce a lot more formative memories good/bad that are very available. Maybe I'm unusual since I lived at home for my university period but I feel like my 5 years of bachelor's + masters produced like a quarter of the core memories that my high school days did

Total opposite for me. High school feels like a blur in comparison to undergrad. High school me feels largely remote and unimportant, closer to kindergarten than to today, where freshman to junior years of undergrad there's hardly a month that didn't hardwire an important part of me through some experience or other.

So I don't think it's just that. Rather peaking in high school is a useful insult because someone who peaks in high school doesn't do anything high status or interesting (to writers), where peaking in college you probably move on to something more high status. Perhaps, like Stoner you become a professor, the guy who peaks in high school and now coaches the high school wrestling team is historically regarded as less than the guy who peaks in college, hangs around to get a phd, and becomes a professor, even though it's much the same behavior.

I had a reasonably successful collegiate experience it just didn't leave much of a mental imprint. IMO cultures/countries where you move out of home to go to college probably more likely to have a bunch of associated big memories, since I didn't move out till like 2 years after finishing university and have way more memories from that first 6 months than like all of college

I think it varies person to person, not just culturally or on a biological clock. People mature at different rates, hit important milestones at different times, have particular peak experiences at different times. For some people it's high school, for some it's college, for some it's serving in the military, for one of my second cousins he talks the same way about the time he spent working as a milkman.

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