Sunday, February 16Royal Holloway's offical student publication, est. 1986

A lack of discernment made me vain

Ruby Saggers – Associate Creative Writing Editor

I believe I deserve to be vain.

After years of misfortune and tribulation.

To be seen by your seniors as a worthless

Horrid

Mess of a

Girl from a

Low-income house-

Hold. They held onto that.

I held onto it.

The contention that I could not achieve because I did not have a warm space to ruminate on my future, my education, my vision as an academic.

Though I knew what I wanted.

Being forced into bottom sets as a result of the preconceived notion that I cold not – would not – meet the same end goal as my peers made me… it made me.

It made me want more.

And so, I did more.

Now I sit in nineteenth century elation

Staring at the dust on books I used to dream about having access to.

Those words are now mine to read.

To be vain has never been an act of self-absorbedness, of ego weighing down the successful essays I write.

It has been an act of steadfastness to the impression that I – someone so dreadfully unlucky, a little girl brought up by a dedicated mother and a cancer-fighting father – could not achieve.