Write This 2014

For the past couple of weeks I have been feeling occasionally distressed that I had not yet announced the theme of the annual Academic Writing Contest , and then I noticed the date on last year's announcement -- December 22. So now I feel better, though only if I don't think too much about what that means about the past two years.



A summary of the themes of the last six (6) contests:

• 2008: The Statement of Purpose;


• 2009: Letters of Reference;


• 2010: Why I Missed the Final Exam;


• 2011: The Cover Letter for academic positions;


• 2012: The CV


• 2013: The Review (of a paper or proposal)

And now, to celebrate the end of 2014 and get everyone in a festive mood for 2015, the theme for this year's writing contest is: The Rejection Letter .



The rules are simple:



- Write a brief rejection letter that exemplifies whatever interests you most about this type of communication -- how awful they can be, how insincere, how kind, how bizarre, how cryptic, or whatever.



- Entries can be made up or can be (anonymized) real ones that are somehow noteworthy for their awfulness, awesomeness, bizarreness etc.



- Email entries to femalescienceprofessor@gmail.com, and as usual I will arbitrarily post some or all of them whilst the FSP family makes its annual expedition to somewhere interesting.