How quickly a week can pass! Fear not, though - after a week of distraction, the Jersey Exile is back in business. The business diverting me away from the blog was worth the worry and effort, I think, as I've spent most of my mornings scurrying over to my old alma mater (the illustrious and oh-so-international Boston University) in hopes of finally salvaging my college degree. Although I completed all of the coursework necessary for a Bachelor of Arts in the Fall of 1997, a combination of unforseeable circumstances and a lack of funds has been preventing me from enjoying the fruit of my labor or even feeling slightly good about the fact that I'd spent the lion's share of my young adulthood toiling over myriad musty Latin and Greek tomes. Well, at last the worm has turned, and this week I managed - with my wife's tireless moral support - to screw up my courage and confront the beast that is BU's administration, in hopes of convincing them that my time served was indeed just that; and to my utter astonishment, they agreed with me! So once more my name has been placed on the graduation list, and this time I believe I've gotten all the requisite signatures, waivers, and petitions lined up to get me that diploma in January, a mere 13 years after first setting foot in an institution of higher education, way back in 1990. The whole story is probably too long-winded to narrate here, but let it suffice to say that my college education wasn't exactly an "A to B to C" kind of affair. And despite the fact that I seem to have turned out fine without the degree, the nasty particulars of my ins and outs with the university scene were sufficiently traumatic to make me always look back on the whole sorry mess with mixed emotions at the very least, and nothing but regret on a bluesy day. Now, improbably at the threshold of completion, I feel like a character in a Stephen King novel, who's somehow managed after all these years to confront the ancient malingering evil that's plagued him since time out of mind and send it back to the pit it came from, once and for all. Or, to put it into Buffyspeak, I feel like I've finally sealed up the Hellmouth.

On top of the feeling of personal exorcism empowerment, though, is the fact that I can now proceed with my graduate education, if I so choose. The more I teach Ancient Greek, the more I'm convinced that teaching Greek is what I'm meant to be doing with the rest of my life, and a Ph.D. in Classics would doubtless go a long way in getting me to such a goal. The sticking point here is that very few universities offer fully-funded doctoral programs for Latin and Greek, so if the missus and I wanted to stay local (and we do), the possibilities are even more limited. Right now I think Harvard, Brown, and the aforementioned Hellmouth (a.k.a. Boston University) are the only schools offering the Ph.D. in Classics within comfortable commuting distance (and Brown, located in Providence, more than an hour away by train, is already stretching that), and who wouldn't be intimidated at the prospect of applying to Harvard for anything? Even after working at Harvard's Medical School for the past four years, the place still retains a daunting aura about it. Well, I guess I'll never know if I don't try, and the deadline for next Fall is fast approaching... may Fortune favor the foolish!