{"id":4819,"date":"2015-07-21T16:03:04","date_gmt":"2015-07-21T16:03:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/?p=4819"},"modified":"2016-02-09T21:15:16","modified_gmt":"2016-02-09T21:15:16","slug":"commencement-memories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/2015\/07\/21\/commencement-memories\/","title":{"rendered":"Commencement memories"},"content":{"rendered":"

Augsburg College held back-to-back Commencement ceremonies May 2-3. The College welcomed nearly 4,000 people to campus who celebrated the achievements of the Class of 2015, gathered as family and friends, and participated in Augsburg\u2019s unique approach to the centuries-old tradition of graduation.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
\"Bridget<\/a>
Bridget Robinson-Riegler
Augsburg professor and cognitive psychologist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As one of life\u2019s \u201cbig days\u201d alongside events like a wedding or the birth of a child, it\u2019s common for a commencement to be a memorable experience that people can recall for years\u2014and even decades\u2014afterward. Yet, of the thousands of attendees at this year\u2019s ceremonies, it is unlikely that any two people will retain exactly the same event details in the same way.<\/p>\n

Why is that? Naturally, it\u2019s due to the fact that each person\u2019s process of making and recalling memories is complex. Augsburg College professor and cognitive psychologist Bridget Robinson-Riegler<\/a> helped illuminate how and why people remember the standout days in their lives in accurate\u2014and inaccurate\u2014ways.<\/p>\n

What makes a commencement day memorable?<\/h2>\n

Uniqueness.<\/h3>\n

Cognitive psychologists have found that the most distinctive life events also are the most likely to be remembered. For many people, participating in a commencement ceremony is the type of occasion that only happens a few times over the course of their lives, such as when they complete high school, college, a graduate program, or attend a graduation event for a child or loved one. The event as a whole is unique and so are particular elements of the day.<\/p>\n

\"Commencement-Photo-1\"<\/a><\/h3>\n

For instance, contemporary Augsburg graduates process to the commencement ceremonies by walking down 7 \u00bd Street, which is lined with faculty members applauding the graduates\u2019 achievements. This type of event is so unique that the experience likely will form a memory that persists over time, according to Robinson-Riegler.<\/p>\n

Emotion.<\/h3>\n

Just as distinctive events are more likely to be remembered, occasions that are laden with emotion also make their mark. The two parts of the brain that serve in memory-making include the amygdala, which is responsible for the emotion of a memory, and the hippocampus, which is responsible for creating the coherent story of a memory. People are likely to remember many of the feelings they experienced on a commencement day because it\u2019s a time of high emotion and maybe even some stress.<\/p>\n

While graduation is not stressful in a traumatic sense, there\u2019s a lot of excitement associated with the event, which accentuates the activation of the amygdala. Then, because the amygdala is functioning at a relatively high level, a person remembers much of the emotion of a commencement.<\/p>\n

\"Commencement-Photo-2\"<\/a><\/h3>\n

\u201cTen or 20 years into the future, you remember some of the day\u2019s details\u2014some of the big things about it\u2014but it may be easier to remember how you felt,\u201d Robinson-Riegler said.<\/p>\n

Timing.<\/h3>\n

When an event occurs also affects a person\u2019s ability to remember it. For many traditional undergraduates, graduation falls at a time in life known as the \u201creminiscence bump,\u201d the period that spans approximately from age 10 to age 30 when things are most remembered.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs we age, things become more routine, so what stands out are things that are distinctive in your life,\u201d Robinson-Riegler said. \u201cThe things that you talked about, that you spent a lot of time rehearsing or explaining\u2014the events like graduations and weddings\u2014those are things that are better remembered.\u201d<\/p>\n

What affects the accuracy of memory?\"Commencement-Photo-4\"<\/a><\/h3>\n

Despite the memorability of unique and emotional moments, the accuracy of our memories is not always reliable. One of the reasons memories change over time is that people come into contact with new situations that shape their recollection of the past.<\/p>\n

\u201cNone of us really should trust our memories as much as most of us do; the gist of our memories is often accurate, but the details of exactly what happened are often inaccurate,\u201d Robinson-Riegler said.<\/p>\n

Graduation is an interesting event to recall because there\u2019s not a lot of \u201ccross-contamination\u201d of memory from the event happening repeatedly, but there are disturbances in memory caused by outside influences.<\/p>\n

For instance, people have what\u2019s known as \u201cschematic knowledge\u201d about what graduations entail. Due to popular culture, a person who has never attended a graduation may be able to explain what happens at the celebration because the event typically follows a formulaic structure that includes listening to speeches, watching graduates walk across a stage, and so on. In addition, people\u2019s memories about past events can become skewed by the individuals they interact with later and the discussions that follow. Graduations might spur conversations with friends and family that help a person \u201cfill in the gaps\u201d where their own memories have faded, according to Robinson-Riegler.<\/p>\n

\u201cThink about how easy it would be for someone to infuse a memory from what someone else said about graduation, and suddenly it becomes your memory so you have no idea what the reality is,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

In addition to pulling outside comments into your memory pool, commencement recollections can be influenced by the photos and other artifacts from the day that a person comes across later.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you see pictures of the graduation ceremony, those things get into your head, so to speak, as you reconstruct your memory based on several different components,\u201d Robinson-Riegler said.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, when Auggies of all ages think back on their commencement experiences, those memories are shaped by myriad factors, but it\u2019s the outcome of the education that persists over time and can be counted upon for the remainder of their lives.<\/p>\n

And, while college memories may fade and change over time, they still serve several purposes\u2014one of the best being to make us smile.<\/p>\n

\n

WEB EXTRA:<\/strong> See photos from the May 2 Commencement<\/a> and May 3 Commencement<\/a>\u00a0on Flickr.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Augsburg College held back-to-back Commencement ceremonies May 2-3. The College welcomed nearly 4,000 people to campus who celebrated the achievements of the Class of 2015, gathered as family and friends, and participated in Augsburg\u2019s unique approach to the centuries-old tradition of graduation. As one of life\u2019s \u201cbig days\u201d alongside events like a wedding or the <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":4829,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[30],"class_list":["post-4819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured-stories","tag-summer-2015"],"wps_subtitle":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4819"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4819\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5205,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4819\/revisions\/5205"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.augsburg.edu\/now\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}