It is the sequel to Diary of a Short-Sighted Adolescent (Romanian: Romanul adolescentului miop), which is based on Eliade's time in high school.

[2] As Bryan Rennie writes in the foreword of the 2018 English edition: "Mircea Eliade’s Gaudeamus, written between February and March of 1928, is a coming-of-age novel based on his undergraduate years at the University of Bucharest (1925 to 1928).

His earlier novel, Romanul adolescenului miop (Diary of a Short-Sighted Adolescent, Istros Books, 2014) had focused on the final years of his Liceu (high school) education and had been serialised in its entirety in the Bucharest periodicals Cuvântul, Viața Literară, and Universul Literar in the ’20s, but the manuscript of Gaudeamus had a different trajectory.

Eliade attempted without success to place the manuscript with the publisher, Cartea Românească, but the novel was to wait more than fifty years to appear in print.

It was not until 1981 that a high school teacher and Eliade enthusiast, Mircea Handoca, along with the philosopher, essayist, and poet, Constantin Noica, were given access to Alexandrescu's attic and recovered the manuscript.