In mid-June, a strange feeling settles over Cambridge. Finals are over, the sun is no longer a stranger, and May Week arrives in all its sleep-deprived, champagne-stained glory. It’s that feeling of the final supervision, the final formal, the final afternoon on Jesus Green – ordinary moments made poignant by the knowledge that they’re ending. Across cultures, humans have tried to give this ache a name. But where does it come from?

“Not all time is emotionally equal”

Japanese aesthetics has a name for this: mono no aware (物の哀れ), often translated as “the pathos of things”. Articulated by the eighteenth-century scholar Motoori Norinaga in his readings of The Tale of Genji, it captures the ache of transience: the way ordinary things become poignant when we know they cannot last. It is why every final thing feels different from all the others – nothing about the grass, the gowns, or the lukewarm prosecco has necessarily changed – what has changed, though, is our sense of time.

Psychology offers another vocabulary for the same shift. Socioemotional selectivity theory suggests that when people perceive time as limited, their priorities shift: they become less interested in abstract future goals and more drawn to emotionally meaningful experiences and relationships. Cambridge, in June, is full of these small countdowns; their scarcity deepens our appreciation of them. As mono no aware suggests, not all time is emotionally equal. The end of term feels precious because it makes everyday moments feel numbered.

“We are not just celebrating the end of the year; we are making the memories that will outlast it”

By June, Cambridge friendships have acquired their own strange shorthand: the person who saves you a seat in the library without asking, the friend who knows your coffee order, the group chat that becomes increasingly unhinged after midnight. Shaped by Confucian ideals and Korea’s emphasis on social bonds, jeong (정/情) describes the affection that forms through repeated shared experience. It is the bond of having been there, again and again, for the same small rituals. Sociology offers another account of this shared intensity: collective effervescence, the heightened emotion and sense of unity that can arise when people gather around a shared event. The end of term hurts not only because time is running out, but because it reveals how much of Cambridge has been made meaningful by other people.

Sung at graduation ceremonies across Europe, ‘Gaudeamus igitur’ – “so let us rejoice” – originates in a Latin manuscript from 1287 and belongs to the old tradition of carpe diem: an entreaty to enjoy life while we can. This is not joy in spite of transience, but joy because of it. There is a cognitive reason this kind of joy endures. Emotionally heightened experiences are more likely to be encoded as lasting memories, partly because activation of the amygdala can strengthen the consolidation of salient events.

At the end of term, those conditions are everywhere: relief after exams, novelty after routine, social intensity after weeks of private revision, and the awareness that the moment is finite. This helps explain why endings linger so vividly. As we throw ourselves into May Balls, late-night walks across the city, and the questionable decision to do it all again on far too little sleep, we are not just celebrating the end of the year; we are making the memories that will outlast it.

No single word or psychological theory can quite claim this feeling: relief, exhaustion, joy, longing, nostalgia. But whether you’re a fresher watching your first Cambridge year slip away, or a finalist counting your lasts, take comfort in knowing you are not alone in it. Across cultures and centuries, humans have tried to name the ache of endings. In the meantime, this May Week, let’s make memories that will stay.