My senior year of college (undergrad) I took a "cross-curriculum" class on The Study of Irony. I was excited about the class after having done some nerdy research of my own for an After Dinner Speech, 'Is Our Society Becoming Too Ironic?' (It didn't do as well as my competition speech the year before, 'Is Our Society Becoming Too Paranoid?')

The class itself was easy, which is good when you're a senior checking off the last of your required credit hours, but beyond that it was a disappointment. It was cross-curricular only in the sense that it was taught by a French teacher. He was a nice enough guy, but he taught us in the call and response manner of a remedial language class. After reading aloud, say, a passage from a Shell Silverstein poem, he'd ask the class, "Was that ironic?" We'd answer yes or no and he'd move on to the next example. A Dilbert cartoon. "Is this ironic?" Yes. "Is this ironic?" Yes. (Hint: They were pretty much all ironic)

Further discussion or probing questions weren't so much discouraged as met with an awkward silence from the teacher and the class. I quickly got tired of being the annoying guy in class who would say things like, "I read about a psychological study on irony, or more specifically sarcasm, that when people use sarcasm they often really do mean the surface meaning. Instead of there's a surface meaning in quotation marks but the real meaning is the hidden meaning underneath. It's the opposite. We use the irony to say things that are too dorky or too sincere. So the hidden meaning is actually hiding the fact that we really mean the surface meaning but can't allow ourselves to just say those... things... which is... kind of interesting, right? Maybe we could... I don't know... is that something we could.... discuss? Anybody? No? Okay. Then yes, I do think this Dr. Seuss story is ironic."

A girl I was kind-of-almost-dating had her own senior year cross-curriculum class at the same time. Her's was on Existentialism. We'd run into each other in the halls after our respective classes.

Me: How's Existentialism?
Her: Better than I expected. How's Irony?
Me: Not as good as you'd think.