I've been "verbed".

It's happened. I've been verbed by an Irish classmate.

At this point in the semester, I've had around 6 weeks of classes... which means I've had plenty of time to familiarize myself with the striking differences between the Irish and American school systems - or at least the differences between NUI Galway and Macalester (I'll try not to generalize here).  While I've gotten used to not having any written assignments to turn in every day (it's still weird, but I suppose it's nice to have a break), I'm still not really accustomed to the whole hyper-casual attitude toward academics. For example, I don't think I'll ever get over the fact that students rush the College Bar and start putting back pints at 2 in the afternoon... even when they still have classes later in the day.

One of the main differences seems to come from the fact that the Irish students grew up in strictly lecture-based classes that discouraged asking questions or contributing their own opinions... which is about as opposite as you can get to my own school experience growing up. It doesn't really matter in my lecture-based classes, but it's definitely noticeable in the smaller seminar courses (around 10-15 people): from what I've seen in my own seminar (Milton's Paradise Lost) and from what my friends say of theirs, it's like pulling teeth to get any of them to say anything about the reading, let alone even doing all of the reading. I mean, my instructor asks us at the beginning of each class how far we are in Paradise Lost and she's actually happy if they're only 2-3 books behind! Their concept of in-class presentations is also so radically different from ours. My friends who are taking different English seminars have told me about the presentations they've seen so far: they've all said that the Irish students just sit in their chair and speed-read a preprinted summary of the reading. For a 10 minute presentation, they often only get to 2 or 3 minutes.

Well, last night I had to give a 10-15 minute in-class presentation on Book IV of Paradise Lost, and I was the first person in our class scheduled to go. (I just wanted to get it over with and they all had midterms due this week, which the visiting students don't have.)  When I was preparing for it over the weekend, I kept wanting to put together handouts or something but I had been told that it's really not necessary or expected, so I resisted. I definitely did not plan on pre-writing a speech that only summarized Book IV though, even if that is the apparent norm. I went into class with a rough outline of notes and line references for myself, and just started talking. I offered a brief synopsis, but then spent the rest of the time analyzing Satan's character development and the portrayal of Adam & Eve and gender dynamics. I thought Book IV was an especially interesting part of the poem, so I really enjoyed analyzing it and talking about it.

At the end of the class, the two students who are scheduled to present together next week were asking how long each of them would have to talk for. They were told between 10 to 15 minutes each, to which one of then responded, "I can probably manage 10 minutes... but I definitely won't be pulling a Chelsea or anything." I said I didn't think I had talked for that long, but they just laughed and said no, it was a good presentation (the teacher agreed, so yay) but now they'd have to work harder to make their presentation like mine.

So, I guess it's nice that they were impressed by the presentation, but also supremely embarrassing. Because I mean really... I've already been turned into a verb!