By Bettina Juszak
Staff Writer

A series of musings on American culture by a German exchange student:

Midterms are coming up (yes, I know you’re probably already more than sick of that subject even though they haven’t even happened yet) and with that one more instance at school where virtually everyone will have to write at least some sort of essay.

A few months ago I still thought an essay is an essay. You come to school, get about one and a half hours to write in class and hand it in. Guess what: American schools apparently do it more complicatedly. Between take home essays, in class essays, in class essays with a prompt given the day before, research papers, and reflections (and I’m sure I forgot some on that list), it isn’t hard to feel lost in translation.

Now, if anyone thinks that in class essays sounds like what we have in Germany, I have to disappoint him. One: we have more time. Two: we do not get a prompt a day or more beforehand. Three: we do not get a specific prompt at all, but more of a ‘generally write about this book’ type of thing. Those essays happen two to three times during a semester and make up all of our quiz and test grades (meaning we don’t really have quizzes and tests) – at least in German and foreign language classes, where essays are an essential part of the curriculum.

The next really noticeable point of difference is the format. Before coming here I had never even heard of MLA format (since we weren’t typing our essays), and we only needed a general format like introduction, body paragraphs, conclusion anyway. Here teachers are sticklers for formatting. From thesis, to opening sentence, to clincher sentence, to transitions, there are dozens of instances where a poor unsuspecting student can easily lose points (and a lot of them, too, of you are unlucky).

And last but not least, the topic. A prompt might be something like ‘Analyze the use of a symbol/motif of your choosing throughout the poem’. In my class in Germany it would sound more like ‘Analyze this poem – period’. As you can well imagine that is a whole lot of work and really not to the students’ liking (either you get it ‘right’ (meaning how the teacher believes it should be interpreted) and you are fine, or you get it wrong (and then it is all wrong). Not very encouraging, is it?

Despite all the gloom and doom reflections; all the best of luck on midterms!