On the last day of classes I found myself noting every action I took with a sense of finality. It’s the last day of class, the last day of class of the fall semester, the last day of class of the fall semester of senior year. This is the last analysis I will write, this is the last paper I will edit, this is the final paper I will turn in. Even my triple-shot latte was not excused from this exhaustive examination in the terminal. I suffered through tepid caffeine just so the last sip would survive the last fifty minutes of the Latin seminar. My final Latin seminar.
I noted this as I entered the classics library, to which a classmate said, “sine fine”: without a limit, without an end, a phrase originally intended for Aeneas’s future empire, one which would extend from Iberia all the way to Anatolia. I thought it a fairly appropriate response considering my sentimental approach to this ultimate, penultimate day of undergrad. There is something seriously alarming when sentiment encompasses both drip coffee and library cubicles; my emotions truly knew no bounds.
On that morning I heard the familiar iPhone “marimba” sound-off at 8 a.m. I then hastily prepared for my final trip to Mugar. I sat at a fourth floor cubicle. I did a final sweep of my three papers still due. I felt my contacts clinging for dear life to my irises, made glossy by endless hours before the vacillating brightness of a laptop screen. I suffered the long line at the print center. I sat down at my desk. I filled out one more course evaluation. I clung perilously to the coffee in my tumbler. I refueled at Starbucks immediately after. (My caffeine intake, too, clearly knows no bounds.)
3 p.m. finally rolled around, the time for Latin and for the final lines of Virgil’s Aeneid. My cold latte only rivaled the hero’s bitterness in his final, murderous actions as I took my fatal, last sips. We concluded the epic, translating round-robin. And then everything was over. I felt like someone should have handed me my diploma as I exited out onto Comm Ave. And yet, I was only delivered a cold gust of wind, provided by the heavy doors of STH.
I tossed my coffee cup into the trash. No one patted me on the back or said good job for getting through three papers all due on the same day, a task which included thirty pages of writing. Yet still energized and still seeking my gold star, I walked to the bookstore. I made a Christmas list for my demanding mother. I contemplated a frilly seasonal drink. I thought better of it.
I thought more about the last ninety minutes. Sine fine. Imperium sine fine. I was still sentimental about one forty-five minute class because I realized, after ten years of taking Latin classes, I could no longer claim my status as dilettante classicist. This career did have a limit, and I involuntarily approached it. My jolted self departed the building, a facsimile of the shade of Turnus fleeing for the underworld, driven unwillingly from this familiar Earth, as I was from this familiar study.
A new phrase popped into my head–studium sine fine, a study without bounds, an eagerness which knows no limit. I decided that I would tackle ancient Greek next semester. The Classics Department could never get rid of me so easily.
My familiar text alert sounded, interrupting my chaotic, espresso-ridden contemplation. I briskly walked to meet a friend for dinner, where I celebrated the life of my Latin career the only way I know how–with a cappuccino stout.
