Nonattendance resulted in a series of F’s on my record. At the end of my senior year in 1923, after I had already been awarded a Phi Beta Kappa key and had paid twenty dollars for my diploma, I received a note from Dean Hawkes saying that I might attend the commencement exercises but that I would not get my bachelor’s degree because I had neither passed my swimming test nor fulfilled the physical education requirement for graduation. Having earned 135 points of credit (120 points sufficed for graduation), I was, however, permitted to enter the graduate school without a B.A. degree. Six years later, without having bothered to stop for an M.A. on the way, I received a Ph.D.—I say “received” rather than “earned” because the doctorate fell on me in spite of myself and what I did or failed to do. How that happened is a story to be reserved until later, but that it happened gives me the rare distinction, I believe, of being possibly the only Ph.D. in the country without a master’s degree, a bachelor’s degree, or even a high school diploma.