35 Student Memes That Show What Life Is Like At A University

Bored Panda contacted the co-founder of "College Confessions" to ask a few questions about the page and the student memes themselves. Despite being aimed particularly at campus life, a decent segment of the page's followers were not actually in any form of higher education. "About 60-70% of students are in college, and the rest are either finished or about to enroll," he said, based on their user statistics. The page's main focus is posting anonymous confessions alongside memes for students, so we were curious if they had any rules for what people can submit. The answer was simple, "no rules at all."

Any discussion of campus life with a student or ex-student will inevitably stumble into discussions of what their experience was like as a freshman versus, say, a junior. The American high school experience also uses these terms. Despite how common they are, many people don’t even stop to think about why they exist. So, like many elements of “American” culture, the origin is actually British.

To start, the freshmen are a needlessly gendered denominator. This one is pretty straightforward, as the term comes literally from older students calling newer ones fresh, i.e. simply new. Since the 17th-century education system was generally male-dominated, at the time, it made sense to follow “fresh” with men, though they could have referred to them as boys if they really wanted to drive home the idea of new, novice students. 

The sophomore is an immediate level up, as it utilizes Greek words to add some weight to the concept, something a sophomore might think is cool and relevant. However, the meaning is actually quite clever, combining the concepts of intelligence (Sophos, or “wise”) and foolishness (moros,) which perfectly encapsulates most sophomores. They are smart enough to know a handful of things and have survived year one. But they still lack any true wisdom despite their own thoughts on the matter. And we have tons of relatable memes for students to prove it.

The last two terms used to be longer, junior sophister and senior sophister (meaning expert), though now we mostly just keep the first part of the whole phrase. These terms do appear somewhat ridiculous when we think about applying them to high schoolers, who are unlikely to be wise at any point in their education. If that offends you, you are probably still in high school and came to look at these student memes to learn what to expect later on. I would recommend waiting a year or two and coming back to see if you feel the same way.

Of course, actual student life isn’t just academics unless the student prefers it to be that way. College and University are times of active social encounters, growing up and often causing mayhem. However, student pranks that are often turned into memes about university life later on aren’t just some modern outpouring of youth that has lost all its morals; rather, they have existed as long as Universities have been around, going back to the Middle Ages.

Like all things Medieval, the jokes and japes were generally more cruel and often ended in more violence. The St Scholastica’s Day Massacre occurred in 1355 in Oxford, where disgruntlement at watered-down wine spilt over into a pitched battle between students, a tavern keeper, and other guests. The final death toll (when have you last heard that in reference to University misbehavior) stood between forty and sixty-three.

If fraternity and sorority are now the main dividers of groups in campus life, Medieval universities had their own divisions, mainly based on fraternal associations of scholars drawn from similar regions. As usual, these groups might battle each other, normally leaving injured scholars in the streets. A few times, blood would be spilt, which would lead to another cycle of violence as the losing party would no doubt seek revenge.

Fortunately, modern college life will unlikely require a pitched street battle just to protect oneself. In some cases, students might have to organize themselves to protect their rights or to promote other causes. Students have long been politically active, either demanding justice in the case of racial discrimination or promoting student loan debt forgiveness in the United States. International Students' Day marks the suppression of anti-Nazi students in occupied Czechoslovakia in 1939, where nice students and professors were executed. If you want to see more student memes and tales, click here, here, and here.