Sophie

I know this is abrupt but I'm now a space unicorn ranger, aka a submissions editor for Uncanny Magazine! I did my first round this morning. The most stressful part was that I was locked out all of yesterday and my panic button was hit, hard. I was sure I would have to quit because I couldn't access the program used for sorting the hundreds of submissions they receive. Then I talked it through with the editor team on Discord and came up with the plan of one of them filling out a bug report form for me (since I could not even access that). Bingo. They said my IP had been banned. *sighs* I nearly swooned with relief.

This job is very like marking papers, in many ways. In some ways it is easier because we are not allowed to personalize comments on rejections, as much as the teacher/coach in me wants to step in and guide since most of the rejections so far have clearly been earnest amateur attempts that need more time cooking rather than just terrible writing.

I like my new job. It is volunteer, of course, but I don't mind that.

And my fellow editors are great. We passed around some cat pictures in the Discord...