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Todays guest blogger is Dan Reimold, an assistant professor of journalism at the University of Tampa who maintains the student journalism industry blogCollege Media Matters.

Over the past academic year, there has been an explosion of new or renewed campus activities, pop culture phenomena, tech trends, generational shifts, and social movements started by or significantly impacting students.Most can be summed up in a single word.

What did college students do this year? They imitated memes, pinned away, got shmacked and reminded each other, YOLO. (Kevork Djansezian - Getty Images) As someone who monitors student life and student media daily, Ive noticed a small number of words appearing more frequently, prominently or controversially during the past two semesters on campuses nationwide.Some were brand-new.Others were redefined or reached a tipping point of interest or popularity.And still others showed a remarkable staying power, carrying over from semesters and years past.

I've selected 15 as finalists for what I am calling the 2011-2012 College Word of the Year Contest. Okay, a few are actually acronyms or short phrases.But altogether the terms whether short-lived or seemingly permanent offer a unique glimpse at what students participated in, talked about, fretted over, and fought for this past fall and spring.

As Time Magazines Tour confirms, The words we coalesce around as a society say so much about who we are. The language is a mirror that reflects our collective soul."

Let's take a quick look in the collegiate rearview mirror. In alphabetical order, here are my College Word of the Year finalists.

1) Boomerangers: Right after commencement, a growing number of college graduates are heading home, diploma in hand and futures on hold. They are the boomerangers, young 20-somethings who are spending their immediate college afterlife in hometown purgatory.A majority move back into their childhood bedroom due to poor employment or graduate school prospects or to save money so they can soon travel internationally, engage in volunteer work or launch their own business.

Grads at the University of Alabama in 2011. (Butch Dill - Associated Press) A brief homestay has long been an option favored by some fresh graduates, but its recently reemerged in the media as a defining activity of the current student generation.

Graduation means something completely different than it used to 30 years ago, student columnist Madeline Hennings wrote in January for the Collegiate Times at Virginia Tech. At my age, my parents were already engaged, planning their wedding, had jobs, and thinking about starting a family.Today, the economy is still recovering, and more students are moving back in with mom and dad.

2) Drunkorexia: This five-syllable word has become the most publicized new disorder impacting college students. Many students, researchers and health professionals consider it a dangerous phenomenon. Critics, meanwhile, dismiss it as a media-driven faux-trend. And others contend it is nothing more than a fresh label stamped onto an activity that students have been carrying out for years.

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College Word of the Year Contest contenders: Drunkorexia, shmacked and FOMO