I've Been Published!

I have been published! Unfortunately, that announcement cannot actually be followed by a story regaling my readers with my lofty scholastic achievements. Instead, it is more of a meek, inconsequential kind of publishing that will likely never be mentioned in any sort of professional development sense. It all starts a couple years ago when I was on my work term. Working is quite different from school. While school tends to consume one's life utterly, work seeks to regulate ones productive hours (whether or not there is anything to do during those hours). During a particularly dry spell at work (my workday pretty much consisted of me watching a machine run for eight hours and noting any faults that occurred), I was feeling quite starved for intellectual stimulation. Listening to podcasts and free lectures offered online helped somewhat, but I also sought creative outlets in addition to absorbing input. One such manifestation of my energies was a logic puzzle (the kind where one is given a series of clues and must sort out all the relationships), which I sent to Penny Press on a whim. At the time, they told me it didn't fit all their submission guidelines and therefore wasn't suitable to print (I had too much information provided in the clues making it too easy). Today, however, my mom sent me a confused email reporting that apparently my parents just received a cheque addressed to me for an amount of $25 from Penny Press for a "Logic Problem (Easy)". So, either their standards changed and there is an easy logic problem that I wrote printed in some random puzzle booklet, or someone made a mistake. Either way, I'm $25 richer and quizzically amused. Maybe once my final project report is done I'll take a break and write another logic puzzle. Exams don't really need to be studied for, do they?