The other night as I was having dinner with friends, my wife spilled the beans that a new short story of mine had been accepted for publication. Everybody congratulated me and seemed to think I’m experiencing some whiz-bang success as an author. What they don’t see, however, is the months of rejection letters upon which this single acceptance sits. It is essential, I feel, for us to tell the stories of the minefield of frustration that surrounds those moments of victory. With that in mind, let me share my rejection rates for each of my published works.
The strange beast that is our education system
The other day, I was explaining to my students the process profs use to grade research papers, and the more I explained, the more I kept thinking, “This is insane! This whole system is insane!”
Tales of your teacher’s failures
My first wall hit me in second-year university. It seemed as though every course was a “weeder” course. Organic chemistry, biochemistry, calculus—all these classes were utter beasts.
Idiot teachers and their idiot classes
Some years ago, I assigned a failing grade to a student's report. She was pissed.