About

University of Waterloo Student ID refers to a photo of two college student IDs belonging to University of Waterloo engineering undergraduate Arman Alam showing that he is smiling in his first year and looking withered in his second year. The side-by-side comparison, which alluded to his struggles in college, went viral online in the early 2020s. It became a meme template used by others to represent a transition that leaves someone jaded. The original photo was posted by Alam on Twitter / X in late July 2022.

Origin

On July 31st, 2022, X^[1] user @416naru, Arman Alam, tweeted a photo of his student IDs from the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario from his "2nd year vs. 1st year." The photos looked drastically different with Alam smiling in the first and looking jaded and darkened in the second. His ID showed that he was an engineering undergraduate, inferring that he lost his innocence after one year of studying engineering. The tweet gained over 119,000 likes in two days (shown below). It has since been deleted.

Spread

On April 8th, 2023, X^[2] user @OvOBrezzzy reposted the original image, captioning it, "LMAOOOOOO WTF they do to my boy 😭😭," receiving over 154,000 likes in two years (shown below).

On April 11th, TikToker ^[3] @iamfivehead posted a clip of himself reacting to the abovementioned tweet, gaining over 11,200 likes in two years (shown below).

On January 1st, 2025, Instagram^[5] user @yungbooks reposted the original image, gaining over 12,000 likes in two months.

On January 8th, TikToker^[4] @princerai4017 posted a video that compared the University of Waterloo meme to the Smiling and Unsmiling Seong Gi-hun format, gaining over 3,300 likes in two months (shown below).

On February 13th, 2025, X^[6] user @InternetH0F tweeted two side-by-side comparisons of University of Waterloo student IDs in which both men look exhausted after studying there, captioning it, "What the hell is Waterloo University doing to its students 😭 😭." The tweet received over 218,000 likes in a month (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References