A-

“An easy final,” said Professor Polakiewicz Tuesday night at the beginning of the test period. Well, it certainly could have been harder. Two of the smartest students in the class (very bright, hard-working, and young) polished off the 6-page exam in an hour, perhaps less. I remained considerably longer with my “slower” comrades. I managed to answer, or otherwise respond to, every question, but my confidence level hovered at moderate. I remember thinking in the week prior to the final that I could be studying more, harder, more perspicaciously, but after two years, there was so much to recover, to refresh. How to choose? And really, I just wanted to be done. As it turned out (to okazało się), my final course grade was disproportionately high compared to the actual intensity of my final exam prep. I’m too old to cram. Jestem zbyt stary, żebym przepelnić.

A- showed up on my electronic transcript on Thursday. Generally speaking, A- is a lovely grade for me, because I consider myself an A- kind of guy, you know, reasonably intelligent, reasonably diligent, but not an academic stiff, and not that kind of old school scholar for whom the life of the mind is the fullest and most exclusive expression of humanity, for whom the library, the archives, or the lab form a sort of soft nest of intellection that enwombs them as they give birth to Thought and True Scholarship and Pedagogy: Like Robert Maynard Hutchins, who banished football from the University of Chicago and famously observed, “Whenever I feel the need to exercise, I lie down until it goes away.” I treasure them, but alas, I slink to the gym or to the courts.

With my A- in hand, I clicked on a Facebook link posted by a cousin of mine in Bydgoszcz, Natalia, on a Nickelodeon cartoon snippet with 1’40” of discourse in Polish. I caught three words. Of a cartoon.