A Four-Year Portrait of a Reluctant Hawkeye

PHOTO: JOHN EMIGH University of Iowa senior Ellen Yandel reflects on the people, places, and programs that made her college experience memorable.

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I didn’t want to go to Iowa. The day I toured—less than a week before the pandemic shut down the world in March 2020—it was about 30 degrees, with spitting rain and wind gusts exceeding 20 mph. The tour guide lied and said the weather was unusual, but I was too cold and wet to believe it, and by the end of the day Iowa was firmly at the bottom of my college list.

The only reason I even applied was to humor my favorite teacher, Mitch Martin (90BA), a graduate of Iowa’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication and the adviser for my high school newspaper, which took up most of my free time for 2½ years. Knowing I wanted to write—and generally knowing more than me—he would lean back in his office chair, hands behind his head, and repeat, “You’re going to Iowa.”

I thought I was going to some tiny, fancy liberal arts college on the East Coast, but competitive admissions and uninspiring financial aid offers had their way with my options until only Iowa was left. I committed on the last possible day and pretended I was happy about it. After all, the writing program was unbeatable, and that gave me a stock line for friends and family until I arrived on campus in the fall—so nervous I couldn’t even finish my Asiago bagel, purchased at the World’s Largest Truck Stop. This time, the weather offered some variety by being 90 degrees and impossibly humid, and I didn’t like the city any better under the blazing sun.

The writing, I reminded myself. I was there for the writing.

The writing did not make me any less lonely. I had no friends from high school on campus and no one close enough to visit. COVID-19, though easing, made socialization nerve-wracking, and the masks most people still wore to class rendered everything slightly impersonal. My roommate and I were friendly but hadn’t had time to become close yet. I circled from classroom to dorm room, dutifully finishing homework and searching for part-time jobs.

I don’t remember when the shift came; I think it was so gradual I couldn’t possibly have noticed until it had already happened. Suddenly, my roommate and our neighbors were playing card games and watching stupid reality TV together nearly every night. Suddenly, I landed a job at the University of Iowa Center for Advancement as a student writer for this magazine. Suddenly, I found myself falling in love with a class on creative nonfiction writing, a genre I had only ever encountered through journalism that now seemed filled with possibility. Suddenly, my promise to myself that I could look at transferring if the first year at Iowa stayed terrible was just ... forgotten. Unneeded.

“I'm anchored here, like I'm anchored to my hometown, and little pieces of me will remain: in my apartment, on the walk to class, in my favorite chair at the library.” —Ellen Yandel

There were still things I hated: the 25-mph winds over the river on my way to work, for one, or the fact that the hall lights in Stanley Residence Hall, where I lived my sophomore year, turned back on at midnight on Thursdays and glared directly through the crack in the door and into my lofted bed. The sand that we tracked everywhere in the wintertime. The ice that we tracked everywhere in the wintertime. The mortifying experience of seeing a TA in the downtown Target.

But I don’t think you can really belong anywhere until you can pinpoint exactly what it is about that place that drives you crazy—how else are you supposed to create lifelong bonds of mutual irritation? It wasn’t even a full semester before I discovered my favorite chair in the Main Library, hidden in the stacks, or the wonders of the public library downtown. With my friends, I quickly picked sides in the most important debates of Iowa City: Teamo or La Tea for boba (Teamo) and Formosa or Sumo for sushi (Sumo). I learned the best places to thrift, the best places to dance, and the best campus events with free food.

And I did learn a little about writing somewhere in there—or so the 17 workshop-style classes would seem to indicate, not to mention my job. I’ve never been particularly nervous about getting feedback, but Iowa Magazine brought with it the much deeper terrors of conducting interviews and seeing my work in print, no longer fixable. But it was only a few issues before the fear faded, replaced with excitement for unique stories about fascinating people.

I already can’t remember a good chunk of my classes, though some stand out: a seminar on personal writing with nonfiction professor Melissa Febos, who had us writing thousands of words a week and digging deep into our stories, all while remaining kind, approachable, and insistent on loaning out books. The Undergraduate Playwrights Workshop, where for three-hour sessions each week we dove into live readings and critiques of each other’s plays, bonding over shared excitement and snacks. And both classes I took with Nonfiction Writing Program grad Gabriela Tully Claymore (22MFA), including the one my first semester that opened my eyes to nonfiction writing in the first place.

It was in one of her classes, the second semester of my sophomore year, that I started to consider what might come next. By this point, I’d helped write about dozens of successful graduates from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and had revelatory classes with many of its faculty and students. I was starting to feel comfortable as a writer in multiple genres, learning how to question and push at a draft until it became something more than a series of words in a Google Doc. And I’d always known I wanted to write, so why not try to follow in those writers’ footsteps?

I spent my junior year finding every possible reason not to follow them. Juggling high-level classes, independent study, and a series of increasingly involved profiles and features in the magazine, I occasionally carved out a few minutes to discover exactly what the acceptance rates of prestigious nonfiction MFA or English MA programs are and how involved the application processes can become. The sheer exhaustion brought on by that year gave me some of the best sleep of my life.

It also gave me something else. When I first moved to Iowa, I learned to love it—slowly and begrudgingly—out of necessity. But by the time I hit the halfway mark of my time here, I figured out how to love it on purpose. I moved into an apartment with two of my first friends from freshman year and decorated my room just the way I liked it. I started going to Prairie Lights. Alone, I joined the local swing and social dance group, where I quickly made even more friends.

It wasn’t just Iowa, though. It was more like my whole life. The bravery to join clubs and overcome interview anxiety became the bravery to study abroad all summer in Ireland and travel the country solo, which became the bravery to take on a research fellowship, which became the bravery to actually apply for all those intimidating grad schools.

I even applied to the Nonfiction Writing Program here, thanks to encouragement, advice, and a million letters of recommendation from my professors and Shelbi Thomas (05BA), editor of Iowa Magazine. To get in would be a dream—I could learn from one of the most renowned writing programs in the world, and I could stay. Past me would never admit it, but I want to stay.

But if I do leave, to follow some other adventure, I won’t leave entirely. I don’t think I could. I’m anchored here, like I’m anchored to my hometown, and little pieces of me will remain: in my apartment, on the walk to class, in my favorite chair at the library. Or maybe it’s that those places will remain in me. Iowa, anywhere I go.

Ellen Yandel is a fourth-year English and creative writing major and theatre arts minor at Iowa. Originally from the Chicago suburbs, she has worked as a student writer for Iowa Magazine since 2021. She will graduate in May.