In My Mailbox: Something I'm In Edition

So, this arrived today:

Want a copy of this book? It's really quite good as a reference,
even without my essay in it. Get it on Amazon here. And if you
want to shop Amazon Smile supporting the Texas Bicycle Coalition,
that'd be okay, too. 

It's a college textbook. To be more specific, it's the latest edition of a textbook that was required for a class I took at my final semester at UT, and the major difference between this edition and the edition I was supposed to buy in the spring of 2012 (totally didn't buy it. I borrowed a classmate's all semester long) is this: I HAVE AN ESSAY IN THIS BOOK.

Yep, after the assignment that's in here, my instructor (John J. Ruszkiewicz, the first name on the cover there) said he thought my essay was better than the one that was in that edition of the textbook and asked if he could use mine in the next edition. I managed not to shriek, "YES! ARE YOU KIDDING? OF COURSE!" when I agreed. I just didn't expect the next edition to come out this fast.

I admit I did wait until used copies appeared on Amazon before I bought a copy, because textbooks are freakishly expensive (sorry, Dr. Ruszkiewicz). And after my initial shrieking and jumping up and down and posting on Facebook that I did earlier, I took a closer look at the index & saw that some of my classmates are also in this edition, which of course makes me all kinds of happy. I already read one of their essays and will eventually make my way through the others.

If you want to read the essay without buying the book, you can read it on Google books here (click on the top result). It's about women running marathons. I know, I know, big surprise.