College is one of those big life milestones that can really change how you see the world. For many folks, it’s their first taste of having a lot more freedom and responsibility, all while meeting new people and figuring things out as they go. And no matter how prepared you think you are, student life can still come with plenty of surprises.
One Redditor recently asked users to share their “welcome to college” moments, and they came through with plenty of memorable stories. From hilarious to downright wild, we’ve rounded up some of the best ones below. Scroll down to read them bored and upvote your favorites.
#1
On my first day of school it had just turned to dusk. My friends (well really only hall mates at this point) were coming back from some freshman event. As we are walking along a man pops out of the bushes wrapped only in a yellow sheet. And yells, “my metamorphosis is complete! I am a beautiful butterfly!” He then threw the sheet on the ground reveling the fact that he was completely bare underneath and ran off into the night.
Image source: AnAge_OldProb, Image generated using [Gemini] (not the actual photo)
#2
When I got the first bill.
Image source: Kmaun_Lee, Behnam Norouzi (not the actual photo))
#3
Probably the night we discovered that Pam + synthetic institutional carpet + duct tape = indoor slip n slide. Much awesome fun was had by all and a few socks were sacrificed in the process.
Even better was the campus policeman who told us to wait until he got off shift around 2AM. Turns out he’s a tuba player in band and had a ton of valve oil. We had an exceptionally long corridor in the basement that was linoleum and much slipping and sliding occurred. We even had the foresight to put the WET signs down after we were done.
Also rolling down the hall to my dorm room because I was too drunk to stand up and walk. Ended up sleeping hunched over my lofted bed because I couldn’t get in it.
Image source: pdxlimes, Charlie_Olliver
#4
It was a Saturday night, and I’d just been in my room for the most part, but around 2AM, one of my friends called me up and we decided to go hang out in another building.
I go downstairs and I see a body covered with a blanket, on the floor of the lobby. Right in front of the security desk (security guards need to check our ID before letting us into the dorms). There was also some kind of liquid mush staining the carpet near him. I’m a little freaked out at this point, thinking that someone had [passed away] and they had just covered the body… Nope, turns out the kid had stumbled into the lobby after a night of heavy drinking, then fell over and threw up while trying to give the guard his ID card. This had literally happened in the last 5 minutes, so the guard just threw a blanket over the kid while waiting for help.
Image source: your_backpack, Austin (not the actual photo))
#5
I was playing basketball for a D-1 school and I had come from a tiny high school. I was 6’4, and in HS that normally made me one of the 3 or 4 tallest guys on the court. Sometimes when we played small teams I was literally taller than the other teams center, even though I was a point.
Our first open run was in August. I was shorter than everyone on the team except two guys. The first time I took a ball to the basket it was like the sky closed up and slapped the ball right back into my face. I had a feeling my ceiling at that level might be limited at that point.
Image source: anon, Lan Gao (not the actual photo))
#6
My parents were moving me into my dorm freshman year the week before classes start. The dorm was a co-ed freshman dorm, 8 floors high and located in a residential area of town that was mainly populated by students. The house facing the front of the dorm (directly across the street) had 5 guys living in it. As we are moving my stuff to my room, the 5 gentleman who lived across the street displayed a banner that they had fashioned from an old white bedsheet. They unfurled it and hung it from the roof of their front porch. It read: “Fathers thank you for your daughters.” That’s when I knew I was in college.
Image source: xX_Justin_Xx, Image generated using [Gemini] (not the actual photo)
#7
Crazy cross-dressing dean made a paintball tournament that ended up as war. But hey, that’s community college.
Image source: anon, Patrick T’Kindt (not the actual photo))
#8
When the class size dropped to half the second week, but doubled on midterms and finals.
Image source: Rixxer, Giulia Squillace
#9
I go to college in a foreign country (American in Hong Kong). My plane landed around 9:30pm, and by 11pm I was moved in. I meet some of the older students and they tell me “get dressed, you’ve got 15 minutes.”
Less than an hour later we’re all doing shots in clubs and dancing on top of bars with people who’s names I can’t remember. The more time I spend here the more I hate the US’ drinking age.
Image source: SirryGweiLo, Long Truong (not the actual photo))
#10
I guess it was when I just left mid-day to hop on a train and go an hour away to another city for a BBQ. I mean, I had done that sort of thing before in HS, but I didn’t have to tell anyone I was leaving, I just…walked to the station and was gone for the day. Complete, 100% freedom.
Image source: TheDoktorIsIn, Getty Images (not the actual photo))
#11
My first semester at university, I was living on campus in a suite-style dorm. One of my suitemates decided she didn’t like the university housing, and she wanted to move out into private residence. How did she get out of her housing contract with the university? She married a guy she’d known for two weeks. Apparently there was a loophole in the contract that made marriage a legitimate way to get out.
**TL;DR my suitemate married someone she’d known for two weeks for convenience. Hello crazy times.**
Image source: anon, Sinitta Leunen
#12
Worst- freshman year, coming back late on a Sunday after visiting family, only to find all the dining halls closed. So I made bagel bites in my microwave alone (roommate went off to sleep with her SO) crying because I missed my mom and realized nobody would care for me the way she does.
Best- went to a house party that had a water slide, live music, mud pit, and alcohol abounding. Wrestled in the mud with my friends, and shot liquor into each other’s mouths with mini squint guns. Epic dance battle commenced. Realized I would never be able to experience such reckless abandonment outside of college.
Image source: Sarabi05, Lee Tianxian (not the actual photo))
#13
When a hundred students ran bare through campus the first time it rained that year. UCSC ftw!
Image source: anon, BARBARA RAMOS (not the actual photo)
#14
I had just moved in to my own apartment the summer before my freshman year, being a poor college student the best setup I could afford was an apartment sharing a room with two other girls. Time alone was scarce at night but once in a while the two other girls would go out and I would just hang out in the apartment with my SO…and by hang out I mean seize the opportunity to [be intimate] in peace. On one particular night my SO and I were in a bit of a rush because we didn’t know how long my roommates would be gone and it slipped my mind to do the usual ‘close the windows, lock the door’ routine. Considerably loud and dirty [time] ensues, and just as I let out that last satisfied moan I hear my neighbors on both sides (I had one window on either side of my bedroom windows, both apartments occupied by 2-3 college guys) start to cheer and clap for me. For a solid minute I lay frozen like a deer in the headlights as they applauded my grand finale. My SO thought it was most hilarious thing that had ever happened, and I just wanted to go hide.
Image source: anon, Marcus Loke
#15
Mine happened very quickly. It was the third day of orientation, and I got up early that morning. I decided, since I was up, I might as well go do something, and I left my dorm and wandered over to the nearby shopping street. I went to a Starbucks there and bought a cup of coffee. Then, I walked back to my dorm and sat down in one of the easy chairs in the common room, just sipping my coffee and waiting for everybody to get up. I don’t know why, but this all struck me as really awesome. I guess, until then, I’d been used to having my life controlled by other things, my parents, school, etc. In a weird way, this was the first action I’d ever made completely on my own, and it was amazing. Still one of the happiest moments I can remember.
Image source: CrazyPlato, AK
#16
In college, I lived in a dorm as a freshman, but moved off campus into an apartment the next year. One night, after getting completely obliterated and blacking out, I walked back to my old dorm room, (I assume) thinking that was where I still lived, climbed up onto the top bunk of a bunkbed, and went to sleep. I woke up the next morning, trying to figure out what happened and why I wasn’t in my own bed, looked around and saw a guy sitting at his computer. “Where am I?” I asked. He just turned and looked at me with a big smile on his face and said, “College, man. College.”.
#17
Failed my very first midterm because I tried to “study” like I did in High School.
Image source: AcousticPoontang, Wes Hicks
#18
I went from being able to cruise through exams/coursework to actually having to pay attention and work hard.
Image source: anon, Andrej Lišakov
#19
I was in college ~2 weeks before loosing my virginity. And then I woke up next to a different girl the next weekend, and so on…
Also, the first time me and my roomie met our RA was the week before classes started so we had nothing to do really. It was the middle of the afternoon, we were drunk and walking around inside of the building with a wild pigeon my roommate somehow caught with his bare hands, when we bumped into her…
Image source: Frozenshades, Vitaly Gariev
#20
On the first night we got called into one of the higher flats to play Kings cup. After every single person had whiteyed out the window (except me, actually, because I’m irish), one of the lads wondered if the scissors were sharp, cut his arm open and an ambulance was called while I held the muscle up.
He went to the club once his 15 stitches were sorted, pulled a girl from the building who punched him in the face, breaking his nose the following night.
He’s pretty much the best story guy ever.
Image source: Melivora, whereslugo (not the actual photo))
#21
I went to a small liberal arts college, needless to say the place was infested with children of rich people. We like to call those pseudo-hippies “trustafarians”. I’m standing in the smoking area my first week of college, listening to a chick talk about how chicken nuggets give you cancer. While she was smoking an American Spirit. Welcome to hypocrisy.
Image source: shashYEAH, Hatice Baran
#22
I skipped my first ever class. That pretty much set the tone of the next 8 years.
Image source: anon, Tânia Mousinho
#23
My mother INSISTED that we hit the road at 5:25am to “beat the traffic” nearing my campus. Ended up on campus at 7:45am, with move in to the dorms beginning at 9:00am. After carrying our first few loads of dorm supplies to the door until they unlocked it, I was approached by a lady resembling Veronica Corningstone. She approached me and asked if I was an incoming freshman, willing to interview. “Absolutely!” I say. It was aired all day on the local news, and people recognized me for the first week or so, especially the faculty and RAs living in my dorm. I was borderline famous, for a wee bit. Thanks Mom!
TL;DR Arrived prematurely… made the news!
Image source: copyandpasta, Yunus Tuğ
#24
I was always sort of an odd kid; in addition to being a long haired male, my wardrobe was almost 100% Mickey Mouse shirts.
About 3 days after I’d moved in to my dorm in college, I was walking back from some finance office next to a road, and as usual was donning the Mickey Mouse shirt. Without warning, I felt something whack me in the forehead. I was stunned at first; I eventually reached up and touched my forehead, and realized that I had been egged.
Image source: LanceWackerle, reddit
#25
A colleague of my dad recalls his first day in a high tier university.
his first class was physics, so he sits down with the other students in the lecture hall, waits a few minutes while the professor writes some points on the board and the professor turns to the class. the professor starts talking. “Hello, class,” he says dryly, “this is your first day of college. some of you might think you’re special. you might be a valedictorian of your high school, or had honors awards, or got perfect sat scores. look around you. there are 100 kids in this hall just like you. you’re not special. welcome to college.” and then he started the lecture.
Image source: orangegluon, Quilia
#26
One phrase was my welcome to college moment.
“You might want to get yourself checked out.”
Image source: AndroWanda, Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦
#27
I remember thinking it was weird that so many people were introducing themselves left and right. I don’t have any crazy stories, except that the walls were really thin and my neighbour was very popular with the ladies – and that I also kept getting my food stolen from the communal fridge so I spiked it with laxatives.
Image source: real-surreal, Darrien Staton (not the actual photo))
#28
The day I moved in was also the day that my mother had an emergency mastectomy for Stage IV triple negative breast cancer (2008). I was so scared, knew absolutely nobody, and my roommate was awful. My girlfriend was 100 miles away, and she was doubting the long-distance relationship would work.
Fast forward four years. I graduated, Mom is still fighting, and my girlfriend is now my fiancee, and we’re getting married in May.
College went by so fast.
Image source: bourschecorp, Bermix Studio
#29
The minute I stepped on campus. I realized I did not know one person within a thousand miles.
Image source: KweB, Wonderlane
#30
I’ll start with my first college experience which turned into a “I’m gonna like it here” moment. At my school orientation consisted of you staying overnight in one of the on-campus dorms. It was oven-like in the rooms so I decided to go down to the lounge, meet some people, and not even sleep. I found some people, socialized, shared stories and all of that. By the middle of the night we were playing NeverHaveIEver. Me and the other guys were saying some weird stuff just for some laughs…. but all of the girls in the group did them…. If there was a picture of my face that night it would be similar to a child on christmas.
Image source: KeithSkud, Yunus Tuğ
#31
When i [failed] my first midterm, realized all the girls weren’t in fact pleasure seaking women of loose morals, and that you should in fact have a good idea of what you want to do or you wont graduate on time.
Image source: anon
#32
Came to college with an anti-cigarette, anti-drinking mentality. First day, met my suite mate who was a dealer, my roommate who was an alcoholic, and all 5 of my suite mates had smoked cigarettes… Needless to say, every value had been desecrated.
Image source: jaxtis
#33
All my chemistry 101 exam scores were between 60% and 80%. First time it happened I was shocked, second time time I knuckled down and really studied for the third exam, and the third exam I barely broke 80%. I was convinced I would have to retake it. I passed the class with a solid A. Feels good man.
Image source: art_with_my_nerd
#34
I’m 18. I can do a shot of Jim Beam for every year I am old!
I was wrong.
My hair is in a toilet.
Welcome to college.
Image source: TTizzle
#35
I was in my dorm room trying to study neuroscience while the girls in the room on one side of mine were blasting rap and the girls in the room on the other side were blasting country. Next quarter when I moved to a quiet hall, they followed me, found my room, and started pounding on my door in the middle of the night because I’d had the nerve to ask them to be quiet during quiet hours.
Image source: MsConception69
#36
Moved into the “Party Dorm” on my campus the first day of frosh week. As I pull up there are guys on the front lawn doing beer funnels. I had never even been in the residence before, but I had heard stories. I walk into the building to find my room and meet my roommate. As I walk in the front door Im handed a cup of beer. I find my room, on the third floor, and my roommate was already passed out (3:30PM) on the floor, in nothing but his underwear. This was only 3 years ago.
TR/DR — I love college.
Image source: The-Angry-Bono
#37
Mine wasnt some raging party or walking in on a roommates 3some or anything….it was more of a epiphany the second I was dropped off by the parents…
*Some critical background*: I came from a Military Boarding School….i went from extreme supervision to bliss (with a summer in between). My parents dropped me off at 11th and High st, right next to the Panera at the Ohio State University. We moved in already, just ate, and done all the admin type stuff you do on the first day….i was truly being released. I grew up in a relatively strict family. My parents lived in Chicago, so they were leaving for home right after this. I gave them the epic “last time being under your wing” hug. My mom cried with deep passion. Dad and I hugged, chatted, fist bumped and that was it.
Many, many times I have reflected on the feeling inside me as I sauntered the 1/8 to 1/4 mile to my dorm, by myself, for the first time. I MADE IT! THIS IS IT! THIS IS COLLEGE….*looking around* THESE ARE MY PEERS AND FUTURE FRIENDS…**THIS IS GONNA BE AWESOOMMMMEEEE!!!** It was a picturesque day, 70 to 75 degrees, no clouds, such vibrancy about and so much ahead of me. I’ve written a handful of songs and poems about it….I finally had the freedom I had been yearning and painstakingly sticking it out for….as i reflect on it now the smile on my face is as wide as can possibly stretch….so fond.
Image source: MakeMoves
#38
During orientation week I had my first drink, a beer, and then spoke for two hours about the meaning of life with a boy I found mildly attractive. Hooray for liberal arts colleges!
Image source: Junekri
#39
Thought I didn’t need to study for anything, like high school. Got an A in high school biology when I was a sophomore.
Get to college, where all the professors have PhD’s and teach all of the introductory classes too. Tells us to study really hard so we’ll succeed.
I figured, “I’m smart enough.”
68%! Hello college.
Image source: anon
#40
When I started college, we went to have a campingtrip as an introduction. Nobody of the 150 people knew each other, including me of course. The weather from the first day on was BAD. So bad that after the second day, only 5 of the 150 tents stood upright. But it was great. It was helping and be helped. We suddenly became a family because of our common enemy (the weather). We helped each other holding tents, finding lost stuff, and drinking. After two years all of us 150 are still like a big family.
Image source: unknown772
#41
The day we decided to gave a backyard boxing match, complete with trainers and card girls.
Image source: kattrinee
#42
On my first day of college, everyone yelled at me and then continued to yell for the entire year. #militarycollegeproblems.
Image source: gibbypoo
#43
When I did the reading for my tutorial (all 16 pages of it) very drunk after a night out at 4am whilst eating a Peshwari naan, then getting up at 7.30am, eating the rest of the naan for breakfast and going to the tutorial at 9am. Funnily enough, I was the only person in my tutorial group of 8 who had done the reading, so had to brief everyone on the bus on the way there and effectively lead the discussion.
Image source: anon
#44
Walking down the hall to my dorm. A girl I never met before says “I like your sideburns.” We ended up [sleeping together]. Never got each others numbers. Never ran into each other again. College life.
Image source: BeatDigger
#45
Night before first day of class I went out drinking without a plan on how to get home. I got incredibly drunk, to the point of not being allowed into a cab. I passed out on some random persons couch near sunrise, woke up at 6 in the morning and cabbed it back to my house. I barely had enough time to grab my bag and make it back for my first class at 8:30. I attended all 5 of my classes despite being very hungover and tired. That was fun.
Image source: rawbamatic
#46
My welcome to college moment was more like a solid week straight. I go to a state school in upstate New York that’s known as a huge party school.
The first week of school consisted of drinking and hopping from frat parties to bars, coming home at 3am wasted out of my mind, waking up at 12, recooperating from the hangover, and doing it all over again for 6 days straight.
I would wake up with people’s numbers that I don’t remember getting, and people coming to me during the day who I didnt know asking me when we should party together again.
And then I nearly failed out of school the first semester and stopped going out as much.
Party, but not too hard.
Image source: anon
#47
My roommate was insulin dependent, wore a pump and everything. One night she drank so much she had to go to the hospital because her pump had stopped working and she was too drunk to notice.
Image source: anon
#48
Pretty typical, walked to a house party with my roommates, walked into a small run down house that was shoulder to shoulder jam packed, beautiful girls everywhere, plenty of booze, I even said to myself…”You made it Andrew, this is college.”
Image source: anon
#49
I was setting up my dorm room and I realized I had no idea how to put my sheet on the twin bed. I kept trying and trying but it was simultaneously too short for the length of the bed and WAY too wide for the width.
Yeah, I was trying to put it on sideways, but I had to call home before I figured that out.
Image source: cconstantine
#50
First night out with new flatmates…started casually enough with a few beers in the flat. Move to the SU, few more beers. Half of the group (pussies) went home, other half continued to nightclub. Now, I was the token Irish guy at a UK uni, so everybody starts playing a little game called “Get the Paddy Pissed”. One of my new flatmates starts buying me double tequilas… a lot of them. I loose track after the 5th. Apparently I then ran off (no memory of this) and got lost for a few hours. Somehow managed to make my way home where the party is still going on back at the flat. Someone hands me what I assume is a pint of water and I drink nearly half before realising that it is in fact vodka. Then the beer bong comes out and of course I have to do a few of those too. Then someone convinces me to eat one of the hottest chilli peppers commercially available in the UK…spend about an hour leaning my head out the window, using a can of beer as moutwash and spitting it out of a 4th floor window. Apparently at some point in the night, I also passed out standing up, just leaning against my bedroom door. Woke up the next day, and managed to make it to my 9 am lecture. Welcome to uni!!
Image source: future-madscientist
#51
When I got the score back on my first calc test… 32%.
Image source: Dubya09
#52
I was in the first wave of freshman to move into dorms. The first night I went out to a party, slept in some random guy’s room (on the floor. Lame.) The next morning I got lost trying to find my dorm, it started to rain and I was in a white shirt. Also other freshman and their parents were moving into their dorms. I finally found my dorm and puked in a trashcan in front of a bunch of people and parents. Hey, it’s college.
TL;DR Walk of shame.
Image source: anon
#53
My RA got completely wasted the first weekend, came back to the dorm and threw up all over himself in the hallway. He then preceded to spray his entire thrown-up-on shirt with spray fixative, and leaves it to dry on the balcony off the hall. Confused? I’ll explain.
It was an art school.
Image source: Clerk57
#54
I go to school in NYC and last year hurricane Irene was doin her bizniss, so of course we threw a “Hurricane Irene Party” during orientation week. Me and 2 guys trekked out into the storm to go buy more booze. When we got back the party had been busted by the RA (yeah, I know we were dumb), and I booked it with my huge backpack full of alcohol to my room.
Image source: anon
#55
A whole campus decided they wanted me to get drunk. At one point of my drunken escapades that night the campus convinced me that some poor girl who lived a few floors down from me had taken my ID. I chased her for five minutes round the student village (she was laughing, it was fine) I eventually rugby-tackled her to the ground. After picking her up we all went back to my flat’s kitchen. I don’t remember much after that.
I woke up in the morning in my own bed (which was a supprise in itself), I had mushrooms (of the non-magic varitity) in my mouth and I had more writing on me than a decent newpaper. This was the point I realised I was going to like uni.
Image source: dancing_raptor_jesus
#56
When I realized the beer flowed like water and the women were just as plentiful.
Image source: straightoutofjersey
#57
I walked into my first class. I sat down.
It was silent. No one was talking. Someone in the corner was playing music, but I could only hear it because of the silence in the room. No cliques full of girls screaming at each other about last night’s party, no packs of pretty boys calling each other bro.
No one CARED about each other.
I almost started sobbing with relief.
Image source: catcard
#58
The first time I got drunk/went out with my friends. I was like “Whoa, I don’t have to like, check in with my parents, this is awesome!”.
Image source: anon
#59
The first and only time I threw up from drinking too much.
Image source: anon
#60
Hearing my roommate lose her virginity ten minutes after she almost threw up on my laptop at a party.
She’s a riot.
Image source: electrifyyourlife
#61
When I was walking to class and there was a Bud Light trailer in my way.
Image source: mattsprofile
#62
My “Welcome to University” moment has to be when, during lunch, myself and a few friends went to a pub, got mildly drunk, then spent twenty minutes filling coke bottles with cider from the university bar so we can continue drinking during class.
That was a good first year of university.
Image source: maffls
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