After much teeth gnashing, below are my picks for the ten finalists in the Second Annual Work Stew Essay Contest.

I found all the submissions that I published very interesting, and choosing was hard. My main consideration was this: which entries really responded to the prompt by bringing us, the readers, deep into their world and enabling us to understand it in a way that we hadn’t before? In the end, I felt that these ten did that particularly well.

Entry #3: Connecting the Dots

Entry #7: Untitled (“In the cold dark before dawn…”)

Entry #8: Confessions of a Web Publisher

Entry #10: Untitled (“This is a confession…”)

Entry #11: Pattypan Dreams

Entry #13: Untitled (“It came as a surprise…”)

Entry #15: The Stork

Entry #16: Impermanent as Everything Else: A Day in the Life of an Adjunct Professor

Entry #20: Untitled “I cannot wait to drop off…”

Congratulations to the finalists, thank you to everyone who entered, and many, many thanks to those of you who took the time to write such thoughtful comments on the published submissions.

Next, I’ll send the finalists’ entries to our judge, Roman Krznaric, and the contest’s winners, which he will select, will be announced by September 15. Thanks to the contest’s generous patron, Steve Karan, the first prize winner will receive $1,000, the second prize winner will receive $400, and the third prize winner will receive $100. All of the finalists will receive a copy of Roman Krznaric’s book, How to Find Fulfilling Work.