Graduation Day, Part Two: Last Friday I left the bambina home with my mother, who was visiting for the week, and drove in to Boston with my wife. She was going to work; I was headed to B.U. for one last bit of unfinished business. Although I'd already graduated in May and picked up my diploma in June, my advisor nevertheless encouraged me to take the one M.A. exam left that I hadn't passed when I took it back in 1997. If I couldn't pass it, no biggie. But if I could, he would help me fish the combined degree that I'd earned out of the clutches of Boston University's monstrous bureaucracy, replacing the newly-minted (but oldly-earned) Bachelor of Arts diploma that was sitting on the floor of my bedroom.

I was cramming for the test - which covered the History of Greek Literature - on the commute into the city, and then a little more at the Espresso Royale coffeehouse across the street from the Classics Department, where I'd spent three years planted in a chair translating Latin and Greek to the tune of a jukebox whose collection is still burned into my brain. By a few minutes before nine o'clock, I realized that I was as prepared as I was ever going to be. I left the coffee shop, crossed Commonwealth Avenue through the already sticky humid morning air, and took the elevator up to the departmental headquarters, where the administrative assistant was waiting for me. She took my bag and handed my a manila envelope with my name on it, then sat me down in an empty professor's office that back in my day had been the graduate student lounge. Whenever I wasn't in class or at the coffeehouse, I was hanging out in this room, banging out papers on one of the two computers or slumped in one of the soft leather chairs, making small talk with the other Classics folks.

I took this as a good sign, an indication that I'd come full circle at last. The administrative assistant left me alone to begin the exam. I opened up the manila envelope and gave the test a quick once-over... and laughed. There was no way in Hell I was going to pass it. Just like last time. I guess I had come full circle, after all. Without even putting my name on either of the blue books that had come with test, I packed up my things and returned the envelope to the departmental headquarters, thanked the assisant for her time, and headed back to the car, a smile on my face.

I was finished with B.U. at last.