Acceptance Letters

I have written here about how lovely it is to find personal letters in one’s mailbox. Lately I have been thinking about the importance of another kind of letter: acceptance letters. For example, each spring millions of young (and sometimes not so young) people receive, if they are fortunate, acceptance letters from schools, colleges, graduate schools, law schools, and medical schools. Other people receive acceptances for internships, clerkships, fellowships, project proposals, and jobs. Writers are thrilled to get letters of acceptance for their submitted books, stories, poems, and articles. For academics, one of the most prized types of letters is those from academic journals accepting their articles for publication. A few days ago I received one of these (well, in this case it was an email, but the genre and the excitement were the same!). An article that, although brief, I had been working on for some time, will go out into the world and be read by others! Although I have had many academic articles published over the years, acceptances are still far enough apart that each time it happens is a special occasion, a bit of a relief, and a pleasure.