The YUNiversity

🎓 We’ll help you perfect your college apps and get into your dream school—all while enjoying the process! 💫✨

[theyuniversity]

“Bang the drum” 🥁

(idiom) to speak loudly and passionately in support of something, i.e., to campaign, advocate, or champion a cause with energy and enthusiasm.

💬 Every chance he gets, Henry bangs the drum for local businesses, reminding his community to shop small and think big. 🛍️

Think of a drummer marching at the front of a parade or army: loud, leading, impossible to ignore. To bang the drum is to be THAT person for your cause. 📣

Some trace it back to 19th century political rallies in Britain and America, where literal drum-banging was used to draw crowds and stir up excitement for a candidate or movement.

Today it’s used in business, politics, activism: anywhere someone is passionately pushing an idea forward.

So whatever your cause is—your passion project, your big idea, your values—don’t be afraid to bang the drum. 🥁

The world needs more people who do.

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[mrlovenstein]

Secret Panel HERE 😌 patreon.com/mrlovenstein/posts/technique-25619742

[theyuniversity]

Penitent 😔🙏

(adj.) feeling or showing sorrow and regret for having done something wrong

Henry quickly forgave the penitent cat for scratching up the leather seats in his brand new car. 😿

“Penitent” comes from the Latin paenitēre, meaning “to repent” or “to feel regret.” Its present participle paenitēns meant “repenting” or “sorry for wrongdoing.”

That passed through Old French as penitent, then into English in the 1300s, meaning someone who feels genuine remorse and seeks forgiveness—often in a religious sense.

The same root gives us penitence and penitentiary.

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[theyuniversity]

Princeton doesn’t do fraternities the traditional way. Instead, upperclassmen eat, socialize, and basically live their social lives through 11 historic clubs lining “The Street” (Prospect Avenue), each with its own mansion-like clubhouse and century-old traditions. 🏰

There are two ways in:

Sign-in clubs (5 of them). Open admission, first-come-first-served, or lottery if oversubscribed. Low stakes, low drama.

Bicker clubs (6 of them). A multi-day selective process involving interviews, activities, and secret deliberations where members vote on who gets in. High stakes, real drama. 😬

The word “bicker” itself has become part of Princeton slang. Sophomores spend “Street Week” visiting clubs, then anxiously await results that can define their social scene for two years.

🧐 Fun fact: the clubs have long drawn criticism as elitist holdovers. Woodrow Wilson himself tried to abolish them while he was Princeton’s president, arguing they undermined academic life. He lost that fight, and the clubs are still going strong over a century later.

Would you bicker, or sign in? 👀

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[incidentalcomics]

[theyuniversity]

Recant

(v.) to formally take back a previously held belief or statement.

Galileo was forced to recant his belief that the Earth orbits the Sun … but science eventually proved him right. 🌍☀️

At first glance, “recant” sounds like serious legal or political language. But its roots are surprisingly musical.

The word comes from the Latin recantare—built from re- (“back”) and cantare (“to sing”). To recant, at its most literal, is to unsing something.

Some scholars believe it was first used in the context of reversing a magical charm or spell—the kind that would have been chanted or sung. A recantation wasn’t a casual takeback; it was a counter-ritual.

The word entered English in the mid-1500s, right in the heat of the Reformation, when people were routinely forced to publicly withdraw their religious beliefs under threat of severe punishment—giving the word the heavy, dramatic weight it still carries today.

So when Galileo was forced to recant his belief that the Earth orbits the Sun, he wasn’t just changing his story. He was, etymologically speaking, unsinging the truth. 🤯

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[theyuniversity]

Lev

📖 Origin: Latin levare, “to lift” or “light in weight”

Words with lev all share the idea of lifting, lightness, or rising. ⬆️

Examples:

Elevate: to lift up

Levitate: to rise or float in the air

Alleviate: to lighten or ease (pain or burden)

Leverage: the power to lift or influence

Relieve: to remove a burden or pressure

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[havingapoemwithyou]

The Suitor by Jane Kenyon

[theyuniversity]

Insinuate

(v.) to suggest or hint at something (usually negative) in an indirect, sneaky way without saying it outright

Henry didn’t say his coworker was lazy; he just kept insinuating that some people “take longer lunch breaks than others” while staring directly at him. 👀

It comes from the Latin “insinuare”: in- (“into”) + sinuare (“to curve, wind”), from sinus (“a curve, fold, bay”). It literally meant “to wind one’s way into” and originally described winding into someone’s favor or confidence.

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[theyuniversity]

We spend so much energy trying to engineer the perfect outcome: mapping every step, forcing every door, white-knuckling our way through uncertainty.

And yet … the moments that changed everything? They rarely came from control. They came from surrender.

Not giving up. Not being passive. But releasing the need to dictate exactly how things should go.

When you loosen your grip on the outcome, you free your hands to actually build something real. When you stop fighting the current, you finally start moving.

✨ Trust the process, even when you can’t see it working.

✨ Do the work … then let go of the result.

✨ Show up fully, without the weight of expectations.

The irony of life is that what you’ve been searching for often arrives the moment you stop desperately chasing it.

Flow over force. Always. 💙

[Image Source]

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[pusheen]

[theyuniversity]

Compunction 😔

(n.) a feeling of guilt or unease about doing something wrong; a pang of conscience that makes you hesitate before (or regret after) an action

Henry felt a twinge of compunction after canceling on his friend last minute, even though he had a good reason.

“Compunction” traces back to the Latin verb compungere, meaning “to prick sharply” or “to sting”—formed from com- (intensifying prefix) plus pungere ("to prick," the same root that gives us “pungent” and “puncture”).

The idea was that a guilty conscience literally “pricks” or “stings” you from within. The word entered English in the 1300s through Old French componction, originally used in religious contexts to describe the sharp sting of remorse for sin before broadening to any twinge of moral hesitation.

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[theyuniversity]

“Bite Your Lip” 👄

(idiom) to hold back what you really want to say, often out of restraint, politeness, or self-control while suppressing anger, criticism, or emotion

Henry told his finicky nephew: “No matter how terrible my food tastes, bite your lip and just eat it. It won’t kill you.” 🍛

This idiom comes straight from the literal physical act: biting down on your own lip is a natural human reflex when trying to stop yourself from blurting something out, whether that's a sharp retort, a laugh, or tears.

The phrase has been used figuratively in English since at least the 1500s, with early instances appearing in literature to describe characters suppressing anger or emotion in tense social situations. It’s closely related to (and sometimes used interchangeably with) “bite your tongue,” which carries the same meaning and shares the same literal-to-figurative journey.

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[titsay]

[theyuniversity]

Flaunt

(v.) to show off something (an ability, possession, or quality) in a proud, bold, or ostentatious way

Henry couldn’t resist flaunting his new watch every time he shook someone's hand. ⌚️🤝

“Flaunt” showed up in English in the mid-1500s, but its exact roots are a bit of a mystery, which is unusual for such a vivid word! One theory ties it to the Scandinavian word flanka, meaning “to walk with a swinging or swaggering gait.” Another connects it to the Old Norse flana, meaning “to rush around carelessly.”

Either way, the earliest uses of “flaunt” described dramatic, attention-grabbing movement (think fluttering flags or strutting peacocks 🦚) before the word settled into its modern sense of showing something off deliberately.

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[theyuniversity]

“I’ll start tomorrow …”

Sound familiar? 😅

When it comes to college applications, procrastination is almost a rite of passage. But here’s the thing: deadlines creep up faster than you think—and suddenly “tomorrow” becomes next week, then next month, and then … panic.

🎯 The truth is, you don’t have to do it all at once. Start small:

Spend just ONE hour a week on college research.

Break your to-do list into bite-sized tasks (e.g., look up majors today, check deadlines tomorrow).

Keep everything organized: create a separate email, a spreadsheet, or even just a notebook to track schools, requirements, and essays.

Think of it like training for a marathon: you don’t run 26 miles on day one. You build up gradually. And the earlier you start, the smoother (and less stressful) the finish line feels. 🏁

💡 So next time you catch yourself saying “I’ll start tomorrow,” remember: even 30 minutes of effort today puts you ahead of where you were yesterday.

Your future self will thank you! 🙌

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[myjetpack]

I will be signing at The ARC festival this Sunday from 1-2pm at the @goshlondon table. ARC is an exciting, new, free comics festival in London on the 11th and 12th of July. Come along! www.arc-london.uk