Classical Conditioning: How I Tried To Tame My Roommate by Wildie

Classical Conditioning: How I Tried To Tame My Roommate by Wildie - August 2013 Scholarship Essay

I was sitting in Psychology class. It was a class of 400, luckily only 389 were there…so it only peaked 97 degrees in that room. We were learning about classical condition. Now for those who don’t know what it is, it’s not an old-fashion way to used TRESemme.  Classical conditioning is a process of behavior modification by which a subject comes to respond in a desired manner to a previously neutral stimulus that has been repeatedly presented along with an unconditioned stimulus that elicits the desired response. For example, an owner rings a bell right before serving a dog food, and then the dog starts drooling. After months of doing this every time the dog hears the bell, it starts drooling because it’s expecting food. Well, I sat in my seat and then it came to me in a crudely drawn animated thought bubble: I can condition my roommate.
                My roommate is cool… BUT she’s not the cleanest person in the world. So me being the type of person I am, I set up a test with my roommate. She loves snacks and she loves to eat. So every time she would clean up, I would offer her some of my snacks. “Hey, your side of the rooms looks nice, you want some of my fruit snacks?” The answer was always yes. But During the times where her side was a mess, I didn’t offer her anything. I started off by offering her some whenever she would pick up small messes, then when that became a habit I began offering her some snacks for cleaning her bed or taking out the trash. It worked for a while because some of her things that used to be on the floor of our dorm weren’t there anymore. I could finally convince myself that there wasn’t anything living under her side of the bed.
                Of course this wasn’t the end to my little experiment. I wanted to know if she got the message. Whenever she did clean up her side now, I didn’t offer her the snacks I used to. I did not even acknowledge the fact that her side of the room was even clean. I simply went about my day watching MTV and wondering why I didn’t have my own comedy show. There would be times where she would finish cleaning, look around and then ask me if I had any snacks. I’d look over my shoulder and say “Nah, I just ran out. I think I need to go to Wal-Mart…” “Oh, okay”.  At first, I felt bad then I realized it was just gas and got over it. I actually classical condition my roommate. I felt like the smartest person within 4 feet radius.
                Then I snapped back from my crudely drawn thought bubble and realized I was still in my psychology class. None of that ever happened but the thought of classical conditioning someone sounded pretty cool. That had to be the most interesting thing I learned in that class.