I kind of hate it. And you MUST attend ALL the classes - otherwise you fail. So I'm just sitting there wondering when I'll finally snap and start killing people.

Let me know when you think you might go postal and I'll fly over to help. That professor is MINE.

Cool. That would be fun! I swear, the next time I hear someone speak about 'adopting a teaching method to the needs of a class' I won't bite my tongue. That's probably why we have no tables, only chairs. You can't flip a table when you're royally pissed... Everything makes sense now.

Chairs make excellent weapons though...

Last year in History of the British Isles we had to choose a book about history or culture of UK (yes, a book about the Beatles qualified) and read... 100 pages of it! That's right! God forbid we'd read a whole book during one year!

And people still were moaning about it.

In Poland higher education is free ^^ Now they've actually limited it to one faculty (you have to pay for more) but even two years ago you could study as much as you want (funded from taxes). So it feels pretty good, actually.

I blame students that come to my teaching college. Teachers are mostly qualified, but I feel like murdering most of my peers. I used to study sociology (two years) and we had to read a shit-load-megaton of difficult, academic texts. I switched faculties and now can't believe how fucked up level we have there. It's ridiculous.

Ohhh gotcha. Now that make sense. Still, it seems like you would want to be challenged in class. I can slack off all on my own with no help from my professor;) My sister is getting her PhD and she says that the whining and student slackery is so prevelent, she often wants to scream at her students and even at other PhD students.

Because sometimes you just hate people - this is why I usually keep a book in front of me to fend off the unpleasant reality of rampant idiocy, growing illiteracy and aggressive inarticulate-ion.

I don't know how many we'll read this semester. Just that apparently two weeks aren't enough to get through Beowulf :/ I guess since students weren't reading it anyway, he wants us to at least get a feel of the story and remember something - and most people will remember a movie that they've watched better, than a book they haven't read.

I haven't read Beowulf before. I'm actually looking forward to this class ^^ Though an absolute lack of testing concerns me.

Hopefully you will get to read a lot of books this semester. I recommend Beowulf, it is soooooo good :)

Sure, thanks for a suggestion ^^ It's very much appreciated

I don't get this university either. I firmly believe my fellow students are inebriate lazy bums and I hate them more and more every day. A week ago one of them asked me what is a Saudi Arabia...

That wouldn't work with us XD Majority of student's doesn't speak English very well... Old English? Pff. That would be fun to watch.

Jesus. Well, Heany won the Nobel. His translation is amazing!

I was just thinking, that almost reads like a drunk 5 year old writing in swedish. At least if you say it out loud it does.

LOOOOOL XD

exactly! totally true. silly Scandinavian, for the win. and as for reading it out loud?
That is the ONLY WAY to read poetry in any language.

ha! thank you for that link! Ariosto is one of my absolute favorites, but I've never read him in English translation. This looks like a good one! I love it when I find Medieval nerds.
Ariosto? Was one of the very best comedians of his time. The Italian writer Italo Calvino does a brilliant resumé of the whole work, retelling the story in his own words. Brilliant people are brilliant.
I love literature. Especially when it draws swords and fights spirits. Literature isn't only dry old texts. It can mean traveling to the moon to retrieve a lost mind.

Wow, thank you for this :D It looks like heaps of fun (my to-read pile trembles)

Beats me. Apparently it's only a history of literature, and we'll read some later books. Just not Beowulf.

Depends how you define British - we go with British as in 'from the British Isles'.