A University of Chicago admissions department employee sent a TikToker a handwritten, illustrated note in response to a personal essay she wrote
A TikToker went viral showing off a handwritten note she received from UChicago admissions.
The letter came in reply to a personal essay she wrote about the meaning of "meep."
She said she was inspired to say "meep" by the Muppet Beaker when she was a child.
A TikToker said she received a handwritten note from the University of Chicago's admissions department because of a personal essay she wrote, and viewers are obsessed.
For the essay, which the creator shared in her slideshow video, she was asked to "describe something vestigial," which refers to how some attributes or structures (like the human appendix) are retrained through evolution despite losing most or all of their original purpose.
The TikToker wrote about the word "meep," which she said she began saying when she was four years old, inspired by the orange-headed Muppet Beaker, who uttered meep as a catchphrase.
In her essay, she described how the gibberish phrase became a "somewhat vestigial presence" in her life as she kept saying it throughout her childhood and adolescence, despite leaving other kid tendencies behind. But she says it's not fully vestigial because it's still very useful to her.
She never fully defined her version of "meep," but she explained it as a kind of meaningless exclamation she makes in certain silly or stressful situations, like when she's surrounded by grumpy students during AP studying season.
"In these moments I know that there is no form of human expression—no word, no gesticulation, no fake cough, no interpretive dance—that could better capture the feeling I wish to convey than meep," she wrote.
She went on to describe how she bonded with another girl in an AP Physics class who had a similar tic: saying "murp." She said the murper led her to probe the appeal of "meep" deeper, and she theorized that it's because saying this phrase appeals to a universal human desire to not think super hard sometimes, to just be like a child and "live by the rules of nonsense."
Insider reached out to the TikToker, @standout.search, for comment.
The handwritten note from the UChicago admissions department congratulated her on being accepted into the class of 2022, and said they were "so glad" she decided to attend the school. The letter included an illustration of the muppet Beaker saying "Meep!"
"I really loved your extended essay on the vestigial meep — and hope you don't mind my attempt at drawing Beaker myself!" the letter, which appears to be from former UChicago assistant director of admissions Eloise Hyman, reads. Hyman and UChicago did not respond to Insider's request for comment.
The video received over half a million views and was packed with comments saying this was the cutest thing they'd ever seen, and praising the TikToker's essay as the best they'd ever read. Responding to a comment, the creator said she spent months working on the essay.
"I usually cringe out at reading others' essays, including mine, but this one… this one hit the spot," one user said.
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