Although the University of Chicago bears “Let knowledge grow from more to more; and so be human life enriched” as its official motto, a different slogan entirely has attained much wider fame. Thanks to long-cemented campus lore, the university is best known instead by the refrain of its student body: “Where fun goes to die.”

The slogan is spoken in weary, ironic tones, suggesting a strange marriage of acceptance and self-congratulation. Yes, life can be miserable, and yes, the vigor of UChicago’s curriculum is exactly what I came here for, and it will not break me. Stanford University and the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) have their own versions — “Duck syndrome” and “Penn Face,” respectively — the brave demeanor a student puts on to hide their stress. To suffer is a mark of virtue, and there is a perverse sense of pride that bleeds out of it — if a student is not suffering, do they truly belong at their institution?

Imani Wade, a college student beginning her fourth year at UChicago, told Jacobin that mutual misery seemed to be the point. “There was this kind of bonding over the fact that we’re all in the study room until 3 a.m., and we’re all sporadically crying at different moments, and then we all have 9:30s and 8:30s the next day that we’re going to still go to,” she said. “Even now, in my third and fourth year, I feel like there’s never a time when I should not have anything to do.”