'Summer break is over': 28 schooling memes welcoming back the chaos of class

Giuliana Tiscioni • Writer

Sep 2, 2026 2:00 PM EDT

Summer is ending, school is back, and every student wants to crawl back into bed…

Kids, we completely understand. We were children once before (no matter how long ago), and we still remember that bittersweet feeling of going back to class after an endless summer. It was fun to see all our friends again and tell each other all about our summer adventures. But we also had to get up early and sit there for hours listening to a bunch of things we didn't particularly care about. The life of a student never changes. Time passes, years go by, and history repeats itself: no one really likes to go to school.

We still have to admit that we learned at least a few interesting things. We made friends for life, and from time to time, we came across a really nice teacher whom we remember fondly. Those were the best and the ones that made us learn the most. Besides, there were tons of extracurriculars to spend our time on. A personal favourite was putting on the school plays. And we had prom, and all the football matches to go see and cheer for our school. We could still have fun back then. Yes, we also had to go to class, do homework, and study for midterms and such, but it wasn't that bad. At least we had some spare time and energy to spend in whatever way we wanted. We miss that, having time and energy.

All those nights we spent trying to figure out what the heck algebra was, or writing that paper on the French Revolution, or reading that verse of Shakespeare for the hundredth time to write a report on the whole play… Those were exhausting, and we most likely don't remember half of what we wrote, but we remember the effort. We remember the discipline. We remember learning how to deal with frustration when we had to do things we didn't like. We might think that we learnt nothing in school, but we most certainly did. We're fully functional human beings now, kind of, and part of that we owe it to spending all those years in school learning skills we didn't know we were learning. Could school improve and teach more useful things? Yes, of course it could. Many of us still have issues understanding how to pay our taxes, and class never helped with that. But at least we gained a handful of skills for everyday life.

For those of you still enduring it, here you have a list of memes to laugh at and enjoy the teenage years you still have ahead of you!