geekosystem

You know how when you send your friend an instant message sometimes, he or she immediately signs off after receiving it? Or how when someone tries to open your locked bathroom stall, you freeze like a deer caught in headlights? Or how when you're walking down the street and realize you're going the wrong way, you pretend to pat your pockets and pretend you forgot something so you can turn around without alerting strangers that you were just really walking in the wrong direction? Or maybe how you make plans with your friends for the weekend, but secretly hope they fall through the night before? Well, this penguin knows your pain.

We don't write about every image macro trend to come along -- there are far too many, really -- but we're really big fans of Freshman Ferret, a fellow we've been seeing a lot lately on the Tumblrs and such as the back to school season kicks in. Whereas a character like the more familiar Socially Awkward Penguin is marked by mere social ineptitude, Freshman Ferret's is of a more specific and more painful variety: The awkwardness of being a freshman. The subtler and more painful varieties of Freshman Ferret aren't merely about things like walking into the wrong class, staying for 10 minutes and not knowing it's the wrong class, and then staying to the end because you don't want to walk out (although those are good too): The most spot-on Freshman Ferrets do things like failing to follow up with a cool and interesting person they met early on in the schoolyear because they couldn't remember that person's name. Remember, first-year students, everyone is a Freshman Ferret sometimes, and knowing that fact will help you transcend your own Freshman Ferretdom. Below, 15 of our favorites: