And now here’s an overview of my homework. Specifically, it’s just half of my homework: I’m not listing all of the work I produced – the papers I wrote, the tests I took, or the online ‘discussions’ I was involved in. Instead, I’m only going to list the half I consumed.

First, the books. Here’s every book assigned in my classes, along with notes, where applicable:

As you can see, I didn’t read everything that was assigned. But I read most of the books and, even those I didn’t finish, I still read large swaths of them. Every class assigned critical essays, articles, or short stories, too, and I usually read those. All together, my readings represented around 15,000 pages.

And here are the films – including a couple TV miniseries – that I was assigned to watch for class:

A few were viewed in class, there was one I saw at the theater (The Lovely Bones), two of them I had to show up on campus at special times to watch an out-of-class viewing, and the rest I watched at home. Of the four films on the list here that were assigned and that I had seen before, but that I didn’t watch again, two of them I had seen so recently that I felt I didn’t need to take time out for a second viewing (Twelve Years a Slave and This Film is Not Yet Rated), and two I didn’t like enough to want to sit through again (There Will be Blood and Beasts of the Southern Wild).

So now that the old college career is officially in the can, I am going to give an overview of the three biggest factors in my education: money, homework, and classes.

First, money: How much did it cost to get a Bachelor’s Degree from Hamline University?

I was a transfer student. Specifically, I attended Century College from 2000-2002, where I earned an Associate’s Degree. So when I walked into class at Hamline on that first day in September 2009, I was, essentially, already half done. I was more or less a Junior. Thus, the numbers that follow are really only half the story.

Back in 2009, Hamline charged $869.71 per credit. Since I was in a four-credit class, the bill for the class alone was $3,478.85. But as a new student, there were additional fees, such as the cost of transferring in my credits and other filing fees. These totaled over $250. Also, since my employer would be reimbursing me for the course, I delayed payment until the end of the semester, though this generated a monthly fee of around $15 a month. And once I finally did pay, there was an additional “convenience” fee that cost me around $40.

Most classes also required the purchase of books. As an English major/History minor, I was lucky to be involved in two disciplines with relatively cheap books. The most any class cost me for books was $116.95. In fact, the books for my first class at Hamline, which was a History class, only cost me $32.95. In contrast, the books for one Chemistry class back at Century were over $240…and that was nearly a decade earlier.

All told, that first course at Hamline cost $3,860.95. My employer paid for the tuition and the books, so I was only on the hook for the fees and interest. I thus received a check from my employer for $3,511.80, and I paid $349.15 out-of-pocket.

That was almost the most I ever paid for a class. Subsequent classes were less pricey. They did not have all those “new student” fees. I also took a couple summer courses, which didn’t accrue as much interest (since they were shorter), and were only half the cost of fall/winter/spring courses. When I could, I paid for the courses using my savings account, which didn’t extort a “convenience” fee. And for ten of my eighteen courses, I was able to use Federal and/or State grants. All of this reduced my costs. For example, a summer course I took in 2014 only cost me $45.61 total.

But Hamline increased the cost of their credits every single year I was there. What cost $869.71 in 2009, was up to $1,040.00 by 2012, and $1,190.00 by 2016. Generous as my employer was, they only reimburse up to $8,000 per year – a benefit that did not increased a single cent during my eight years of using it. Thus, during my last three years at Hamline, my costs exceeded the reimbursement cap. I was able to mitigate these increasing costs for a while, thanks to government grants, but those decreased every year.

By my final school year, my last two courses were $4,760 each. The first one was, of course, reimbursed, but the one was not, leaving $1,664.48 (including interest and books). A government grant brought my total down to $373.48, making it the most expensive class I took while at Hamline. It’s a good thing I finished when I did: a class this fall would have cost me over $4,100 out-of-pocket.

All told, the 69 credits I accrued at Hamline cost $65,394.85.  Then there were $1,034.80 for books and $1,728.83 for interest and various fees. This brought the grand total to $68,158.48. The Federal and Minnesota governments footed the bill to the tune of $12,424.00. My employer reimbursed me $53,676.74, meaning that my total cost was $2,057.74, an average of $29.82 per credit, or $257.22 for every year I attended.

Not a bad price, really. Especially in America.

There was a time when what stood in between me and a Bachelor’s Degree were 65 credits, nearly $70,000, and eight years.

After dropping a class that didn’t fit in with my budget, then another class that didn’t fit in with my schedule, taking off one semester after my daughter was born, then taking off another semester when we moved into a new house, then taking off another semester when Emmett was due to be born, then showing up for class even though I had hand, foot, and mouth disease, showing up for class about 12 hours after I was discharged from the ER, finding out I had to take four more credits than I thought because I needed another Fine Arts credit, finagling with my professor to have her teach me a course independently of the rest of the class so that it fit my work schedule, showing up in the morning for early classes before work – while wondering how I’d get in my 40 hours of work that week – and showing up late in the evening, after dinner, because that was the only time I could fit in a class, and not being able to say goodnight to my kids that night, worrying that my dying Chevy Cavalier wouldn’t get me from my job to my class, answering my phone during class because my wife was worried about our sick child, or because a coworker had a question, studying late at night, on vacations, and during breaks at work, strategically arranging my course schedule to maximize my tuition reimbursement from my employer, and going through the annoyance of having to submit just the precise documentation on a user-unfriendly site needed to get said reimbursement, I slowly chiseled away at everything that stood in between me and a 4-year degree.

Now all that stands in between me and my degree is clicking this submit button, which will upload my final paper for my final course to my final professor, and which I plan to do promptly…

The graduation ceremony is Saturday.

My sister came over to cut my hair today. She does that once in a while. While under the electric razor, I made tentative plans for her to come over and dye my hair one month’s hence so that I have no grays. I told her I was again attending the National Conference of Undergraduate Research and, unlike last time, I was going to put forth an effort to not look like the oldest student in attendance. “I don’t want to be the senior senior,” I put it succinctly.

I asked her if she’d heard from our dad or any Floridian relative lately, and she said she hadn’t. “I’m just wondering how Papa’s doing,” I added.

“I think he’s just the same. Still moving along.”

“Man, he just keeps going. I thought he was gonna die back in September.”

“I know, me too. Now it’s getting close to his birthday. He’s gonna be 90.”

After Diane left, I again commented on my grandfather’s unexpected robustness, and Jennifer asked if I had decided whether I will go to his funeral. I reiterated my general distaste for the Sunshine State. Coupling that with our impending vacation there in December, I’m not sure I can stomach two trips there in a single year. After not stepping foot in Florida for over a decade, I’ve just about recovered. All this would suffice in itself, but then there’s the whole matter of how I’ll be treated – if complete shunning can even be considered “treatment.”

“I’ll probably just celebrate his life in my own way,” I concluded. For the moment.