mimsy and outgrabe

This week has not. been. great. I was wait-listed by one of the residencies I applied to --  which is not the best outcome, obviously, but not the worst. They can accept 40 artists for residency and they had 285 applicants. So I suppose to have made the waiting list when they have a 14% acceptance rate is pretty good. (I did the math there correctly, right? Remember, I'm a poet. Numbers are not my language.) But the next day I was rejected by another residency I was really hoping to get . . . because they offer a family-friendly option, where you can bring your partner and kids. The kids are occupied from 9 to 4 in a kind of summer camp, your partner gets to do whatever he or she wants during that time, and the artist gets to go their studio for those hours and work on their project(s). It sounds like heaven. But heaven said get the hell out of here, Sarah Kain. So . . . no summer residency in Vermont. (Insert sadface emojii.) These rejections, while naturally disappoin...

I feel as though I have run out of steam, although this really isn't a convenient point to have run out of steam, considering I have a full week of final grading ahead of me. Thankfully, though, there are no more classes to teach. I will have to meet with my students in my comp and developmental writing classes for a final time on Wednesday, but my literature classes on Tuesday/Thursday are simply dropping final assignments off in my mailbox and office this week, up until a 3 p.m. deadline on Thursday. And that feels kind of strange, because I enjoyed those classes a lot and it would be nice to see them again and wish them luck in the next semester -- but none of us really want the commitment of meeting as a group again when we have so many other things to do. This has been such a strange semester. Last night I evaluated developmental writing portfolios and I'll begin those again in a short moment. This morning I felt the need to weigh down the blogosphere with more end-o...