40 Hilarious Yearbook Photos That’ll Make You Wonder How These People Graduated

Something tells us that Alice, Kim, Theresa and Vivian Nguyen were tired of being mistaken for quadruplets during their high school years. Knowing that their yearbook photos would be positioned together in alphabetical order, the students decided to offer just one word underneath each. Alice and Kim opted for “We” and “Are,” respectively, while Theresa and Vivian neatly finished things off with “Not” and “Related.”

“High school was easy, it was like riding a bike,” commented Randey Chung in a relatively common turn of phrase. But then things take a dark turn – suggesting that the teen was super relieved he no longer had to walk the school corridors. He added, “Except the bike was on fire and the ground was on fire and everything was on fire because it was hell.”

Lauren Powell proved that when it comes to throwing shade, sometimes twins do it best. As you’d expect, the student’s photo was placed alongside her sibling Allison. While the latter acknowledged their sisterhood with the quote, “I’m only 3.5 minutes younger,” Lauren responded, “Best 3.5 minutes of my life.”

Self-deprecation is a surprisingly popular approach for those who want to go against the high school yearbook norm. Take Segun Akigbogun, for example. Referring to the scam that once flooded everybody’s inboxes back in the ’00s and his African heritage, the student wrote, “I’m that Nigerian prince [who] keeps emailing you.”

Will Smith, Adam Driver and Michael Phelps are just a few of the major stars who have proved that possessing big ears is no barrier to success. And student Jaume Mendoza showed in his yearbook photo that he was perfectly at ease with his own pair. The student quipped, “I hear everything,” underneath a smiley pic showing his lugholes in all their glory.

“It’s hard being a single mother,” Zachary Chastain began his yearbook photo quote. Perhaps he was about to honor his own mom with a heartwarming line or two? Nope. The eccentric student then continued, “Especially when you have no children and are a teenage male.” Well, the guy has got a point.

You get the feeling that poor Joe McDonald certainly never wants to hear the phrase “Ee-i-ee-i-o” ever again. The student wearily stated under his tuxedo-clad high school yearbook photo. “No, I did not have a farm.” He was, of course, referring to that famous nursery rhyme, “Old McDonald Had a Farm.”

Jessica Enciso didn’t appear to be the most romantic of students judging by this high school yearbook quote, although we can’t exactly fault her reasoning. She wondered aloud, “Why fall in love when you can fall asleep?” Perhaps Enciso put napping on her resume under the category of extra-curricular activities?

File this particular yearbook quote under, “What the heck are they on about?” This student admitted, “Sometimes when my neighbor is gone, I roll around in her garden and pretend I’m a carrot.” It’s the kind of surreal one-liner that the late great comedian Mitch Hedberg would have been proud of.

We don’t exactly know what this seemingly fed-up student was expecting to receive when she finally got to graduate high school. But her math teacher must have still been proud of her use of calculations. The teen jokingly moaned, “I spent 113,880 hours of my life for a paper and handshake.”

Ankit Jain obviously wanted to get one particular thing off his chest with these parting high school words. And they ensured that his fellow students knew exactly why they never saw him tucking into a hamburger. He wrote, “I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; I am a vegetarian because I hate plants.”

We can’t imagine a career in stand-up comedy awaited any of siblings Kassidy, Keaton and Kylee Durham. But you have to applaud them for at least trying in their side-by-side yearbook photo quotes. After Kassidy set up the joke with “Knock Knock,” and Keaton responded, “Who’s there?”, Kylee got to deliver the punchline, “Not the triplets. We graduated.”

Jaylen Moore must have been feeling brave when it came to penning his high school yearbook quote. Not only did the teen jokingly admit to a felony but he also risked offending any churchgoing reader. Moore wrote, “I asked God for a bike. But I know God doesn’t work that way, so I stole a bike and asked God for forgiveness.”

You can certainly tell that this graduation yearbook quote was penned in the smartphone era. Before adding a variety of emojis, a student named Paige wrote, “Bet you didn’t know this was even an option.” We’d like to know how pandas and penguins relate to her high school experience, though.

Forget Twitter’s 140-character limit: try summarizing the high school experience in just 100. Aditya Tammana certainly didn’t appreciate such restrictions, although sadly he never got to finish his impassioned protest. The graduate cleverly wrote, “One-hundred character-limit for our senior quote? That seems unfair. We refuse to be constrained by these ru…”

A glittering career as a full-time life coach surely lay ahead for high school student Mitchell Wieland. In his yearbook quote the plaid shirt-wearer advised his fellow classmates, “Remember to always be yourself,” but it came with one crucial caveat. Wieland added, “Unless you suck, then pretend to be someone else.” Wise words, indeed.

Seth Egan appeared to believe that his later teenage years would be an all-singing, all-dancing, all-basketball playing experience. Sadly for the aspiring Zac Efron, the Disney Channel’s biggest tween phenomenon essentially sold him a lie. A disappointed-looking Egan wrote in his yearbook, “That wasn’t like High School Musical at all.”

It turns out that Tony the Tiger really was telling the truth in those old commercials! One long-haired student remarked in their yearbook quote while enjoying a bowl of Frosted Flakes, “Wow, they are great.” The perfectly-placed box of Kellogg’s finest also helped to make this graduation photo look more like an official commercial.

High school can be a traumatic experience capable of emotionally scarring you for life. So most of us can probably relate to Batter Lukman’s farewell message to his fellow classmates. In a slightly dark look ahead to his future, he wrote, “Goodbye everyone, I’ll remember you all in therapy.” You might not know that Lukman borrowed the quote from Spongebob Squarepants!

We doubt the likes of MAC, Maybelline and Estée Lauder will be adopting this particular student’s yearbook quote as a slogan any time soon. The unnamed graduate wrote, “Make up looks pretty on the outside,” before adding, “But it doesn’t help if you’re ugly on the inside. Unless you eat the make up.”

Who knows how Stephanie Flores would have coped before the days of the world wide web? The student appeared to admit that she essentially plagiarized all of her homework from the internet in her yearbook quote. And she was proud of the fact, too. Stephanie wrote, “I want to thank Google, Wikipedia and to whoever invented copy and paste. Thank you.”

Sooner or later we all have to realize that chart-topping, globe-trotting superstardom is out of reach. Luckily, for one particular student, this acknowledgement spurred her on to complete her education. The unnamed teenager, “The only reason I went to school all this time is to distract myself from the fact that I’ll never be Beyoncé.”

We doubt that this particular student’s high school has ever used her yearbook quote in any of their promotional material. “Four years later and I’m still an idiot,” she claimed below her smiley photo before adding, “Thanks for nothing.” Not exactly the most gracious parting words, but you have to admire her honesty.

Most high schoolers can’t wait to be free from the shackles of home and live it up at college. Alas, this guy had different ideas. The dejected and dreadlocked student appeared to just suddenly realize at the time of his yearbook quote, writing, “Bruh, we graduated just to go to school again.” He’s not wrong, though.

Let’s hope that teen Orry Lornson really was just being a little bit goofy. Otherwise there was one heck of an unfortunate mishap before his high school’s graduation souvenir went to print. The jokester wrote alongside his sweater-clad photo, “Trapped in yearbook factory. Send help.”

Hell hath no fury like a constantly obstructed high school graduate scorned! Yes, Maggie McLeod used her yearbook quote to go on the warpath against those who often thwarted her very own path. She wrote, “I hope natural selection takes care of people who block the hallways.” Don’t hold back there, Maggie.

Surely a frontrunner for his school’s best-dressed graduate, Boula Rami attempted to expand his fellow students’ vocabulary with his yearbook photo. He wrote, “Bow ties make everything look prepossessing,” before admitting, “I Googled that word.” According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, prepossessing can mean either “creating prejudice” or “tending to create a favorable impression.”

Keegan Large was obviously the number-one smooth talker in his high school year. The student poetically wrote, “You can catch flies with honey, but you can catch more honeys bein’ fly.” It’s the kind of line that even LL Cool J at his peak would be proud to call his own.

It looks as though Morgan Waller may have had a bit of trouble finding someone to take her to the graduation ball. In her yearbook quote, the self-deprecating student borrowed a quote which read, “Morgan is my girlfriend.” Unfortunately for the unlucky in love Waller, the quote is attributed to “Nobody.”

If Jordan Nero learned anything during his high school years, it was how to self-promote. The student told his fellow classmates, “Don’t follow your dreams… follow my Twitter.” Nero even managed to sneak in his handle into the yearbook photo. And as of July 2021, more than 1,600 people have decided to take his advice.

It seems fair to say that no one in the entire world would have the same life motto as Colby Cravens. The student wrote in his yearbook, “Goats are like mushrooms, if you shoot a duck, I’m scared of toasters.” Perhaps this was some kind of secret code or more than likely, Cravens was just trying to think of the most random sentence known to man.

Damenian Sparks is the kind of name you can quite easily imagine appearing in a Harry Potter novel. And the student appeared to be quite the fan of the J.K. Rowling books judging by his yearbook quote. The fantasy rebel wrote, “I got kicked out of Hogwarts for using black magic.”

It seems unlikely that Nick Jenkins forged a career in greeting card writing judging by his high school yearbook photo. The student began rather conventionally with the familiar phrase, “Roses are red, violets are blue.” But then he threw in a curveball by cutting short the familiar poem with just two words, “I’m black.”

If The Apprentice ever makes a comeback, then Kevin Chang should be first in line for an audition. His high school yearbook quote is the kind of ruthless one-liner that the Donald Trump reality show candidates used to thrive on. Chang wrote, “It’s not enough that I succeed. Others should fail.”

Eric Gomez appears to be one cool dude. As well as sporting an impressive high top fade for his school yearbook photo, the student also managed to throw in a clever joke which played on his apparent lack of spelling abilities. Gomez wrote, “Education is important but big biceps are more importanter.”

Darwin and Dollar Bunait had an ingenious way of celebrating their twin brotherhood in their high school yearbook photo. The former appeared first under the caption, “Ctrl + C” – aka the computer shortcut for Copy. And to finish the joke, his sibling then used the shortcut for paste: “Ctrl + V.”

Agboke Toluwalope didn’t ask for much in her high school yearbook photo. After presumably years of her classmates and teachers getting it wrong, she pleaded, “Just give me my diploma and pronounce my name correctly.” To highlight that this wasn’t just a one-off problem, Toluwalope also jokingly attributed the quote to “Every African kid ever.”

Max Crankshaw admitted to several things about himself in his pithy yearbook statement. Firstly, the student revealed that he’s unlikely to be a Starbucks regular thanks to a strong dislike of coffee. And secondly, Crankshaw confirmed that he probably won’t be showing up to any future high school reunion with a wife in tow.

Daniel Zhang’s father obviously expected big things from his son at a very early age. In fact, the man appeared to hope that his offspring would become the real-life Doogie Howser M.D! The yearbook quote that Zhang attributed to his apparently very disappointed dad read, “Why you no doctor yet?”

We can imagine that Amberlyn Murray was already an openly proud member of the LGBTQI+ community before her yearbook photo quote. If not, then the student sure chose an unforgettable way to come out to the world. Murray quipped, “I started high school with straight A’s, now I’m not even straight.”