When most people hear “Lucky Charms,” they probably picture the cereal in the dining hall—a favorite between-class snack, a nostalgic breakfast, and a last-minute meal before a late-night study session in Lamont. But lucky charms—beyond the colorful marshmallows—have existed in cultures worldwide for centuries. From four-leaf clovers to rabbit’s feet, people have long sought symbols of luck to help them through life’s challenges. And as college students amid midterm season, who’s to say a little extra luck wouldn’t help?
Whether it’s facing a tough exam or getting through an all-nighter, midterms bring a level of stress that makes students eager for any advantage—even if it’s just a superstition. That’s why many turn to their own lucky charms, clinging to objects that bring them comfort.
We all know someone who is obsessed with a good luck charm: a childhood stuffed animal, a stained baggy sweatshirt, or the gum wrapper your friend has carried around every day since they won their 6th-grade spelling bee with it in their pocket. Regardless of the sentimental value of a crumpled-up gum wrapper, I’ll admit there’s something oddly impressive about the commitment. These objects can be hard to part with, especially when they remind us of a moment of past success or comfort.
Personally, my good luck charm is a necklace my sister gave me. If I don’t have it, I’m 99% sure disaster will strike—I’ll submit my draft instead of my final essay, sleep through a midterm, or Andrew Berry will throw the microphone cube at me during an LS1B lecture. Is there any actual logic behind this? Absolutely not. But in a place where juggling ten extracurriculars, midterms, and two papers in a week is considered normal, I’ll take all the luck I can get.
And I know I’m not alone. Harvard students could be a case study in superstition. Have you seen the way people swerve to avoid the main entrance of Johnston Gate? Even though we pretend not to believe in the “fail-your-exams” curse from walking under the famous archway, few are willing to take the chance. And with Housing Day coming up, we all know people who have turned to lucky socks and last-minute prayers desperately hoping to secure a spot in the River Houses rather than the Quad.
Even tourists seek a bit of Harvard luck, lining up to rub John Harvard’s foot, blissfully unaware of what else has touched it.
Many people swear by their ride-or-die good luck charms and superstitions, but most of us don’t believe they’re the real reason we ace our classes. If that were the case, Harvard students wouldn’t spend their weekends cramming for tests and writing papers.
So if we don’t believe they’re the reason why we’re passing our classes, why do we keep them around? The answer is simple—it’s all in our heads.
Good luck charms give us a sense of control in high-stakes situations, like midterms, by helping our brains feel more stable. For thousands of years, people have trusted that good luck tokens protect them from evil, misfortune, and sickness.
For college students, our biggest threats may not be curses or plagues—unless you consider math problem sets a form of evil. Instead, many of us rely on lucky charms to help us survive our academic lives at Harvard.
Believing you have some luck on your side going into a test makes you less likely to panic, second-guess yourself, or spiral into the kind of test anxiety that turns multiple-choice questions into an out-of-body experience. So while your friend’s “lucky” gum wrapper probably isn’t whispering the answers to them, the psychological power it provides just might be the reason they breeze through their exam—while the rest of us break into a cold sweat over question two.
Good luck charms tend to have a placebo effect—the psychological event where something works simply because you believe it will. Researchers at the University of Cologne investigated this relationship and found that when participants were given a “lucky golf ball” while putting on a green, they sank 35% more of their shots than those who were told nothing about their ball.
That stained sweatshirt your friend insists will help them ace their physics exam? It’s probably not the sweatshirt that’s helping them—it’s their confidence (or maybe delusion) fueled by the belief that their lucky charm has their back.
So if lucky charms are so helpful, don’t be embarrassed to have one. Walk into your midterm clutching the stuffed animal you’ve had for the last 18 years. Write your final paper while wearing the pair of socks you had on when your high school soccer team won states. Do whatever you need to do (except borrow your roommate’s lucky underwear—it won’t go over well). We’re all just trying to make it through the semester without accidentally submitting the wrong draft or getting pelted by a rogue microphone cube during lecture. If your lucky charm saves you from having a full-on midterm meltdown, embrace it.
Whether you consider it superstition or you’re a true believer in good luck charms, we can all agree on one thing: when it comes to Harvard, a little extra luck, magically delicious or not, never hurts.
Olivia Lunseth ’28 (olivialunseth@college.harvard.edu) has accidentally walked through Johnston Gate twice this year.