Just under the wire, all original work is graded in my winter classes. Whew.

Well, I promised students in my composition class that they'd have their grades by Monday morning at 8 am, and I literally submitted the last score at 7:58 am. Sunday and Monday combined, I rewrote an extensive rubric for the assignment (a Toulmin model argument/research paper) and graded 13 papers. 

This morning I've graded the few smaller assignments due in Week 10, and now, Final Exam Week is officially underway for my students. That prep work was done last weekend, so it's been nice to feel a bit of weight lift from my shoulders this morning. Still many, many revisions to grade before end of day Friday, but I am confident I'll get it done AND be able to reclaim a bit of my Monday to make up for the weekend I sacrificed. 

I have another twenty minutes in office hours, and I'll be able to spend a few hours outside in the garden again--rain off and on yesterday and overcast skies have given way to some blue sky and white puffy clouds today, and I am ready for it. 

I received a rejection letter this morning from Rubbertop Review, out of University of Akron. It is a small journal, and frankly, I regretted submitting to them as soon as I recorded it on Duotrope. Apparently, they're still reading submissions as if nothing is outdated, but their website is a year or more out of date, and their submission period didn't open when it was supposed to open in February. This happens every once in a while--I look at the publication's website and not notice that it has 2019 dates all over the place. Duotrope pays a lot of attention to this, and I just forgot to look up Rubbertop at Duotrope before submitting. Regardless, they didn't select any of my poems. I did get an invitation to submit again, so encouragement, too.

I think the selection of poems was fairly strong--I swapped two out for other works, and I submitted a new selection to Quarterly West this morning. 

In other news, Rattle apparently did a mass rejection of a ton of poetry submissions in the last week or two, and they've not yet rejected my submission from last July. I'm hoping that this means my work is in the final cuts for an upcoming issue. They have an issue on Appalachian poets coming up, and I am hoping I have a real shot at being included. They reject 99% of what they read, so it would be huge.