The first seminar I sat in on, I answered two questions and then realised nobody else had spoken. I assumed I had misread the room. I had, but not in the way I thought.
Discussion here is not the performance it is at Kenyon. The professor asks something, there is a pause long enough to feel uncomfortable if you are used to American seminars, and then someone answers carefully, having actually thought about it first.
Adjusting
I have learned to sit in the pause instead of filling it. My contributions are fewer and considerably better. Whether that survives the flight home is another question.
The silence is not empty. It is everyone composing a sentence they are willing to be held to.
Written work is different too — one long essay at the end rather than weekly response papers, which means the reading piles up quietly until it doesn't.