#essays

Vesper Flights by Helen Macdonald

Ugly, Bitter and True by Suzanne Rivecca

Ugly, Bitter and True by Suzanne Rivecca

Ugly, Bitter and True by Suzanne Rivecca

Ugly, Bitter and True by Suzanne Rivecca

Ugly, Bitter and True by Suzanne Rivecca

yearly reminder that if anyone needs personal statement advice i’m happy to help! i’m going into my third year of undergrad politics and history joint hons, and am more than happy to help out with any history/social sciences/humanities related statements. if anyone needs grammar checks or help cutting down statements for any other subjects i’m happy to take a look at them too! feel free to message x

summer holidays are for iced coffee and modern classics

ive had a nice little break between deadlines which has given me a chance to really focus on my last exam of the year, for my soviet experiment module. i’d always take a coursework style essay over an exam (even open book like this one will be), but at least getting a choice of questions means i get to pick the areas to focus on in revision. as you can tell (if you can read my handwriting), i tend to be drawn to social histories more than anything else, so i’m hoping some good questions come up!

my 48 hours us gov and pol exam starts in 20 mins!! ive been nervous for it because with other deadlines so close together it’s been tricky to give it as much time as i’d have liked, but this morning i’ve gotten up, done some pilates, showered, had a nice bowl of porridge and read thru my notes, and i’m ready to take my best shot at it. wish me luck!!

got a big day of essay writing today, determined to do well on this one so i’ve spent what feels like forever planning it and now i’m finally ready to write it all up!

I need some advice! Does anybody run/contribute to an online blog? Me and a friend are thinking of putting something together for mini essays/articles/thoughts, but honestly I don’t have a clue where to start and any tips would be amazing!

back at my uni house! so good to be back and getting lots more work done, which is a relief since exams are nearly here! newcastle weather means blue skies one minute and heavy rain the next, but i’m enjoying being able to go for walks more often than last term now the evenings are warmer and lighter

module selection for stage three is creeping up, so i spent most of yesterday trying to wrap my head around the very specific regulations and pick modules to balance my credits properly! finally managed to put together a balance that will work and i’m so excited for preregistration to go ahead, there are some great options that i’m so excited to take!!

exams are coming up!! spent most of today enjoying the sun (16° and sunny in england in april?? practically barbecue weather) and drawing up a plan of the next few months until the end of the semester to help visualise how long i have until deadlines. naturally this stressed me out so i spent an hour or two looking at past papers and guidance for one of my exams to feel a bit more prepared! how are other people feeling about exams?

When “Santa Claus” handed me a present at my father’s annual office
Christmas party, I could tell it was a book. Though books lack a
certain holiday pizzazz, I wasn’t disappointed because I spent most of
my free time with printed copy way too close to my eyes. It was when I
slipped off the wrapping paper that the disappointment came.

The book was titled A Girl From Yamhill and much thicker than what I
was used to reading. Though it was by Beverly Cleary, one of my
favorite authors (I routinely camped out in the sublime corner of the
library where her catalogue and Judy Blume’s collided), it was
subtitledA Memoir. I spent the rest of the party trying to ignore
the book and its butter-yellow cover, framing a black-and-white photo
of a 6-year-old Cleary in an organza party dress. When I accidentally
sat on it, I gave it the stink-eye.

Non-fiction meant schoolwork, the drying out and curing of facts until
nothing remained but a jerky to be gummed and swallowed. A memoir
would surely be the same, with the added torture of recounting the
boring life of someone my great-grandmother’s age.

On the car ride home from the party, I cracked open Yamhill, mostly so
my parents would think I liked the gift.

It begins with Cleary’s oldest memories, snapshots really—her mother
packing her farmer father’s lunch in a tobacco tin, young Beverly
dipping her hands in ink and going “pat-a-pat” all over a white damask
tablecloth.

On the second page, Cleary describes a chilly morning:

Suddenly bells begin to ring, the bells of Yamhill’s three churches
and the fire bell. Mother seizes my hand and begins to run, out of the
house, down the steps, across the muddy barnyard toward the barn where
my father is working. My short legs cannot keep up. I trip, stumble,
and fall, tearing holes in the knees of my long brown cotton
stockings, skinning my knees.

‘You must never, never forget this day as long as you live,’ Mother
tells me as Father comes running out of the barn to meet us.

Years later I asked Mother what was so important about that day when
all the bells in Yamhill rang, the day I was never to forget. She
looked at me in astonishment and said, ‘Why, that was the end of the
First World War.’ I was two years old at the time.

With that, I realized non-fiction wasn’t what I’d thought. Someone’s
life could be interesting, even the mundane parts–after all, wasn’t
that what I was reading about in Blume and Cleary’s fiction ventures?
Drama that was not rooted in mythology and heroic sagas (though they
had a place on my library wishlist too) but in the universal feeling
of inevitable change, in first periods, in fights with one’s mother,
in new schools and old friends, in the dubious mixture of excitement
and apprehension with which children view the future?

From there it was a short leap to realizing my life could be
interesting, if I was willing to observe and faithfully recount and
wasn’t too afraid or too bashful to share pieces of myself. Yamhill
spurred me to start keeping journals, a venture that I remember
largely as revolving around remembering what I ate for breakfast and
recording it. Though the journals were no great success, my worldview
had fundamentally shifted. Sure, no one was going to care about my
preference for Lucky Charms, but someday, I was going to write about
other things that happened to me and someone was going to read my work
and recognize something of herself.

Later in Yamhill, Cleary describes how a poor grade on a lavishly
descriptive essay turned her off from writing description for years.
In a lesson I unknowingly internalized for a very long time, criticism
wounded her but she never let it stop her from writing. I can’t say
for sure what Cleary’s stripped-down, no-nonsense style owes to that
early failure, but I like to think she exhumed the kernel of truth in
that criticism and used it to develop her economy with language, which
she employs like a released arrow: sharp, streamlined and always
focused on a single point.

I never particularly aspired to write “plain” or “to the point”
stories and essays, but several readers have told me they appreciate
those qualities in my work. I will admit to bristling at these
compliments before I remember that “plain” is a code word for writing
like Cleary’s: writing that trusts its story to be big enough,
meaningful enough (no matter how personal or quotidian, as women’s
stories are often labeled) to hook an audience without a sideshow of
technical fireworks.

Despite our rough introduction, A Girl From Yamhill now sits, or
rather, slumps, on my bookshelf with a broken spine, dog-eared pages
and all the other markers of a book well-loved. I have re-read it
regularly over the past 18 years to get another taste of
Depression-era Oregon, to laugh at young Beverly’s exploits and to
read about another woman who knew she wanted to tell her stories and
never wavered in her pursuit of that goal, despite the obstacles. I
will be forever grateful to Beverly Cleary for giving one skeptical
little girl that gift.

Meghan Williams is a writer living in Austin. Her writing,
primarily personal essays, has been featured on The Toast,The Hairpin
andArchipelago.