a) Are they worn loosely over the legs and pelvic region?
b) Do they cover the legs individually to or nearly to the ankles?
If yes to both, they are likely pants.
Pajama jeans ain’t jeans, but they’re pants.
Oh, so that’s why she wants to take it for a ride so badly (hurr hurr hurr). That way when she gets off (before she actually has to get off, if you know what I mean) it’s not because she was doing anything sinful, it was just a fortunate side effect.
As someone who coasted though school until collage then failed out, it’s hard to do that if you don’t have study skills. Walky is like me, he never picked them up and doesn’t know HOW to study. He’s never needed to.
I was the same way, though I failed out earlier (HS) for a number of reasons. I’m now learning study skills at 35 while I prepare to take a professional exam (the SE).
Pretty much. It doesn’t help that most US school systems are rather poor at teaching study skills and often don’t start until it’s much too late. It’s actually bad enough that some colleges have been introducing a course to teach them as a required course for incoming freshmen first term course load.
I wish my college had that… I also coasted through school until I hit college. I paid attention in class and wrote down anything I was told to and did well. That same approach did diddly-squat in college, especially when there were no notes to copy down, just lectures to listen to… A class on writing papers would have helped, too. Apparently the way I learned in high school was not the way either college I attended wanted it done.
Never studied or took notes a day in my life, HS or college. Graduated college Cum Laude with a 3.6 GPA. Sometimes it’s not a matter of study skills, sometimes it really is either a) the person or b) the previous school was just really lax.
“Study skills”… Yeah. I was just like walky too. Didn’t drop out but had a 1.7 Gpa my first semester? Pulled out of it through a mix of buckling down and changing my major. Was not easy.
The thing about study skills is its true I didn’t know how to study but also techniques others use don’t work for me. I don’t learn well by repetition and my eyes just glaze over if I keep reading the same notes. I had to figure out my own methods which have a lot of drawing and colors. If that sounds weird it probably is.
My biggest motivation for failing out wasn’t a girlfriend (didn’t have one then) but the total fear of having to go back to the awful town I grew up in. That was the fire under my butt n
It’s the same for me, and I actually can’t take notes. I can either pay attention, or take notes, not both – learning/memorizing information and writing things down are mutually exclusive brain functions. While I know that I’m atypical in my ability to learn by listening alone, I wonder how many people have this problem and aren’t able to learn because they’re too busy trying to take notes.
This is why a lot of people use a recording device or their phone to record the lecture while they are taking notes so they can go back and listen to the recorded lecture later
Probably a fair amount. And it’s pretty hard to raise your hand and ask for clarification on something in your notes in those giant auditorium college classes.
My public education, on the other hand, pushed study skills to the exclusion of actual knowledge. Which might not have been so bad if they hadn’t insisted that everyone study the same way; I hate Cornell-format notes with a furious intensity.
I didn’t know what that system is, so I looked it up now and man, it’s unnecessarily overcomplicated. I just take notes by organising things as I go into main points and subpoints and to be able to keep up, I use a crapton of abbreviations. I prefer to take notes in the old fashioned way, as in with pen and paper, since it’s easier to add in things, link things together and draw figures. And it also allows me to doodle, if I’m bored. 😛 Of course after a busy lecture, my notes are messy, so after classes I sit down in front of my laptop and type the entire thing in, clear it up and format it nicely. Doing this makes me memorise which subpoints belongs under which main points, so I have a good grasp on the structure of the material. And that’s all I need. Once I have the basic structure and the most important keywords down, I can formulate my own answers. All I do before exams is reading through my notes a few times and I’m good to go. Writing questions, summaries and overthinking stuff would be a colossal waste of my time. But then again, each to their own.
Sounds like we operate similarly, then – I take notes on binder paper & transcribe it into a notebook for neatness and memorization. I have a hard enough time repeating something I already did without the temptations of the internet 2 clicks away.
Yeah, as a teacher, I have a special type of disdain for programs that teach one “method” of doing things that they try and make everyone do by rote instead of teaching how to find the mix that works for them. Math classes are usually the worst for this these days as a lot of the formalized standards emphasize teaching methods over concepts even if those methods are not working for or making sense for the students.
I still remember being docked points for not “showing my work” in subtraction problems in elementary school. I’m not 100% sure, obviously, but I think I wasn’t even using that “borrow the one” method in my head to begin with — I certainly don’t use it in mental arithmetic as an adult.
I never had to study, from grade school to bachelor’s degree. I picked up what they put down on the first try the vast majority of the time, and even when I didn’t, they always presented it two or three times anyway, so I never really had to go out of my way to learn in school. I’m not trying to be a braggart, just pointing out that his initial assumptions weren’t entirely implausible, it worked just fine for me.
Some subjects work fine with that, but there *are* memorization-heavy subjects — or sometimes more accurately, memorization-heavy testing formats — that need some kind of review, regardless of whether it’s a traditional kind of study method or something entirely unique and individual. Mathematical, grammatical, and scientific principles — fine! Principles are fine and dandy! But the specifics of Attic Greek declensions, conjugations, and vocabulary? Eh… probably want to go over the paradigms and exceptions before you sit down with that translation exam.
Or, if Walky plays MMOs and does any regular raiding, a lot of the skills needed to complete current-tier raids reliably are basically study skills as applied to video games.
I’m 100% serious there. It was indeed my approach to developing college study skills. “I know how I learned to beat the hell out of the Lich King in WoW, so I know how I can learn to pass this class.”
I’m not sure “Fail 500 times before succeeding” is an option in real life.
…but I assume you actually mean doing the same thing over and over until you have mastered it to start the next phase where you continue doing the first phase each time while mastering the second phase, and onward until you have the whole thing on farm.
Basically that, yes. Read up on what you need to know/do, and keep practicing over and over until you can accomplish your goal without even actively trying.
Actually it is. It’s pretty much the central theme of research science in fact. So anything R&D related or research science is all about failing and failing and failing and learning from each subsequent failure to gain more information.
Actually, a lot of things in life are about failing and trying again, getting better each time. Relationships, career paths, writing, game design…
Which makes it so bass-awkwards that one of the major places where failure is punished the most harshly is in education even though learning often involves a lot of experimentation and potential for failure.
Honestly, we would do better as a society to associate less value judgments for failure and to encourage failure as a good thing in society. I mean, failure usually comes from trying new things and that’s a key component for growth and development. Failure is a good thing, which is why personally I grade homework assignments for effort not quality, as it pinpoints what needs to be gone over again and which concepts for students are particularly sticking*.
*This is especially true for math and why Walky is probably floundering right now. Most math builds on previous concepts, so the first concept that doesn’t make intuitive sense, often creates a waterfall effect where you start failing on everything afterwards. Sadly, the lesson people often learn from this isn’t to pinpoint that one concept that isn’t clicking, but rather that they are just “bad at math”. This is especially true if the person is a woman as we have so much cultural baggage surrounding women and math. It’s a lot harder to get someone to reengage and learn they are good at something when they’ve convinced themselves they are “terrible at it”.
So… kinda like Dark Souls? Failing a few times before you remember that one trap that one shots you everytime and remembering to side step it so the monsters chasing you eat it instead?
They can have sharpish claws, but they don’t bite too hard. Geese are much more threatening, and even adult humans would do well to fear strikes from a swan’s wings.
See, this is exactly why properly feathered dinosaurs are scary. Lizards and crocodiles are usually perfectly willing to leave you alone as long as you don’t pretty much offer yourself to them, but birds are aggressive, paranoid and complete and utter assholes.
I’m goddamn thirty years old, WHY do I still dream that I’m in high school and late for a test I didn’t study for?
Never dream I’m late and unprepared for work, even though that’s something that might have actual consequences. It’s never college either, too laid back. Something about the hell that is high school becomes a permanent part of our neuroses.
I also still have those dreams in my thirties. Also, dreams when something is stopping me from getting my homework done, or there’s a class I’ve been forgetting to attend all semester, or I can’t find my schedule and don’t know what class I have, or I have my schedule, but it’s written in some obscure code I can’t crack, or the class is located in some part of the building I’ve never been to, and don’t know where it is. Or maybe I realize I was supposed to be in school hours ago, or I was walking to school, and accidentally wandered into some completely unfamiliar streets, and can’t find my way to school, or anything familiar. I could go on. Anxiety dreams are fun!
Oh gosh yes, a class I’ve been forgetting to attend — sometimes it’s high school, more often it’s college, but either way it’s “choose-your-own-schedule and you’ve been in bed/going to lunch/going home at x o’clock every day when you should have been going to this morning/noon/afternoon class”. That is the WORST dream. I am fine with tests for which I’m unprepared. I have dealt with those in plenty. But forgetting to attend a class… that’s happened to me once or twice, one missed session each, and it was horrible. Even during college and grad school, it was already one of my anxieties.
I don’t get those. I’m more likely to dream a 3-year campaign of resistance against extraterrestrial invasion, or collusion with the aliens in a similar scenario. It’s amazing what kind of grand, sweeping conspiracies the brain can cram into as little as a couple hours of sleep.
And deceive as well. Ever had that dream in which you found a suitcase full of cash,put it under your bed and after you woke up,checked under and then hit your head on the wall?
I have them, but rarely. Usually, if I have the school panic thing, it’s a “I can’t finish this in time! I have no idea what to doooo!” sort of thing. About three quarters of the way through that, I tend to realize that I’m dreaming, and when I finally get control over the dream at the end of that phase, I move to the sort of ridiculous dream that I usually have.
It doesn’t go away with age, either. I’m SIXTY, and I occasionally wake up after a very vivid dream about missing a class or forgetting to show up for a test or some such…
Every once and awhile, I have a dream that I forgot to attend my Intro Philosophy lecture for so long, I straight-up missed exams.
I don’t understand. I took that class in my last semester of undergrad, twelve years ago. I skipped a lot of lectures because I took a writing option and going to small group twice a week made lecture redundant. I didn’t miss any exams. I did fine.
I never had any nightmares about skipping that class when I was actually skipping the class!
Walky best fess up to someone soon, maybe Dorothy, about this. Being super smart in High School doesn’t guarantee that you’ll be super smart in college.
If they can both get past each other’s dating of Dorothy, that could actually be a great friendship.
…hopefully Danny doesn’t have a thing for sculpted caramel.
I think a lot of the problem is he’s associating “doesn’t have to study” with “super smart” and is loathe to let go of his “super smart” identity by giving in to the need to study or “worse” to ask for help from someone for whom the concept has clicked.
Ironically enough, being “smart” usually just means the accumulation of knowledge and a lot of that is based on curiosity specifically caused by being thirsty for knowledge and going above and beyond rather than having a learning pace that is above what high school teaches at. But that’s a whole ‘nother debate entirely.
Overall, I think we could deemphasize “smart” as a statement of ease with concept a lot more than we do. It’s why when a student tries to put themselves down by emphasizing how “smart” I am on a concept, I’m quick to follow up with how I’ve had X years of experience with said concept and they are just encountering it for the first time and ease just follows from familiarity and practice. It seems to be working so far so I’m keeping it up.
Walky’s problem is that he has no study skills. He never needed them before, because he was always able to do well without studying. Now the work is at another level, and he needs to study, but he has no clue where to start. His earlier attempts at studying failed, because studying is a skill, and it’s one Walky never mastered. If Walky hopes to stop failing, he needs to learn study skills. I don’t think Walky can do that without help, so he needs to swallow his pride, and admit to *someone* he is struggling.
doesn’t work everytime: in dream, you can turn around and see that everything in the room was in it, even if you can’t remember ever being in the room before, or even if they have changed form and that the former clock is now an orange rabbit that you always knew to be a rabbit even in the clock form.
I’ve also seen people propose stuff like “can you close your eyes or turn off the lights” (basically, stopping vision) or “can you read stuff” or “can you feel pain/taste food”. None of these work 100% of the time either. The only real test for whether something is a dream is doing something physically impossible in real life, such as flying, punching through a window without pain, or breathing underwater without equipment — none of which I would advise you actually try if there’s a chance that it’s real life…
I was lucky, I got out of the system before they decided that students didn’t need to read books that weren’t written by the HS instructiors., didn’t have to write term papers, and could take tests that only were made up of multiple choice. Who needed to exert themselves with that system?
If Walky is as smart as he thinks he is, he will get help tutoring NOW. Unless he lets his macho get in the way, he can turn himself around.
When I get to a point where I think there is hope for Joyce, and start to even like her a bit…she does something like this!
Winsome is not a word you should use to describe yourself, imo. Especially when you are trying to hard to be ‘cute’.
He thinks he is smart as in “learns everything without effort”, not “good at planning and strategizing” (like Dorothy, who actually IS smart). It will take him a lot of effort to re-calibrate that self image.
That went completely over my head. What is wrong with winsome?
As someone who didn’t have study in high school it was very hard to ask for help. I was lucky in that a good friend forced me to sign up. But the idea of getting a tutor made me feel like a failure, it was very demoralizing. I was embarrassed and my reaction to that is generally to double down on my old behavior.
Not saying this was good, I am glad I had the support to change this behavior but it is understandable. His identity was connected to being the one who was able to do well without effort. Having that ripped away is painful.
And Idon’t, I have no clue where you are getting your info about high school from. I am only 3ish years out and trust me. We had term papers, we had plenty of written tests and we had a lot of reading in English classes. Actually I took more multiple choice tests during the science courses in college than I did in high school.
Yup. We put way too much value in things being or appearing easy, which makes it hard for people who need help to ask for it. This gets disturbingly tragic in cases like when men are socialized to believe they don’t need emotions or emotions are weakness and thus don’t seek out emotional help and therapy when they need it.
We could do better as a culture (I’m specifically from a united states culture) to encourage asking for help and cooperation and to not associate that with failure or weakness.
That’s the thing; I don’t think that Joyce is trying to do anything! This is 100% her normal behavior patterns when communicating! She just doesn’t realise just how abnormal and annoying that it sounds!
I doubt it. Sal’s earned her good grades after failed attempts, seeking help, and busting her ass trying to improve. Walky’s just been assuming he’ll casually pass every class with flying colours.
Yeah but WHY has he assumed he’ll casually pass it? You don’t just go this long with just blind luck and then suddenly start to have shit grades, just as you don’t just suddenly have amazing grades after having a string of nothing but shit.
Of course this is a slice of life comic so I shouldn’t be looking THAT deep into it, but still.
For some people that is the case. They can go through the majority of their school years without expending much effort to get a good grade. Then they reach university (the first major difficulty upgrade in life), and their grades plummet because now they actually have to make an effort to pass, and they have none of the skills and habits that other people do who had to make that effort earlier.
It’s not that Walky was passing through blind luck; he is naturally gifted, it’s just that he doesn’t know how to actually apply effort when he falters.
Sal, meanwhile, does have difficulty with the course material, but she’s taken extra steps to make up for them, gone through two different tutors, and now has a better understanding of what she needs to do. She put effort towards getting better at something she wanted to succeed in, which Walky has never really had to do.
He assumed he would casually pass until Friday of last week when he first got that 26 back. In this strip it doesn’t seem like he assumed he would casually pass it. He’s looking at his grade while he’s telling Joyce that he did just fine, and he visibly looks freaked out over it.
Alternatively (assuming that there’s been some test mixup going on…) what if their tests were getting mixed up since the beginning, and they’re only now being handed back correctly? That would mean that Sal’s been on her game since the very beginning, and Walky was getting credit for work he wasn’t doing.
It’s not like they’re just getting papers back that say “you passed” on them. If their papers were mixed up, Sal and Walky would both have noticed things like “someone else’s handwriting” and “this isn’t the answer I put down”.
Well, with math at least, it can be easy to get in a groove where everything makes sense and builds off what you’ve previously learned. But then there is a concept that doesn’t make intuitive sense and which you need to learn to approach in a different way.
So for someone that everything has been clicking for, the first confusing concept is going to be a giant monkey wrench in what they assumed were “inherent smarts” and that tends to have a cascade effect in math.
Overall, Calculus is a really good point for that to occur as the new concepts at the beginning of Calculus are radically different than what students encounter in the Algebras or Geometry and require a different sort of spatial perspective to graphs and functions. As such, it’s a perfect time for a student for whom the expansions of algebra and geometry made perfect sense to hit their first stumbling blocks.
Especially as the early parts often focus on constructing the logic for the theories that come later and so often are the most likely to be confusing for new learners who don’t understand where it’s leading and most likely to be taught poorly as often the teacher gets perfectly where its leading but doesn’t fully remember what it was like to encounter things for the first time.
Honestly, it makes perfect sense that Walky has hit the wall at full force. It probably also doesn’t help that college courses are often faster paced and involve much less review, so the first point that things don’t make sense tends to be where everything flies off the rails and it’s difficult to go back and catch up.
Which isn’t to say that isn’t often true of most classes in college. There’s such a shift in dynamic between how high school classes operate and what formulas of learning they expect versus college. As such, a lot of things become new (how research papers work, how class discussions work, how we approach different subjects) and that cultural shift can leave a lot of students that had great high school methods of learning behind.
This is such a little thing but I love how nice Joyce is. She knows how much a good math score means to Sal so she lifts it up.
That’s right, Joyce! You were the one coaxing Sal into the first step of a road that led to premartial hanky panky and slipshine. Here’s to hoping you don’t find out…
Also, it’s clearly a hog.
Silly Walky, in your nightmare you would have a pink mouse costume.
My thoughts exactly. Some folks like a little choking during sex, as the added pressure and shortness of breath trick the brain into being appealed to somehow, and with the addition of Mike and the subtraction of pants, I can only think of some sort of pornographic fantasy here.
Hmmm… I think that what Mike is saying here is that Walky going naturist in class would lead to violence (from Mike at least)!
Joyce’s girl-crush on Sal and her bike remains adorable, as ever. Y’know, Sal, the only way that you’re going to end this is to give her a ride! She’ll either be so terrified that she’ll never ask again or she’ll like it so much, that she’ll end up getting one of her own!
As for the grade issue, I’m wondering how much of this is the fault of the Walkerton parents. They seem to have spoilt Walky and left him less able to work when he’s out of his comfort zone. Sal might resent the way that they treated her but it has at least developed in her a willingness to work to achieve her goals; after all, no-one was going to do it for her in the past.
Honestly this one is not really anyone’s fault so much as a consequence of being smart enough to cruise through school without any effort. Which means that he never developed any [good] study habits since he never needed them. Speaking from experience this is a pretty devastating wall to hit in college and is likely something he is going to be dealing with for the lifetime of this series.
I super feel Walky here right now. I was that smart kid who knew everything and never studied in High School, and now I’m in college and I’m taking this class where I just don’t understand anything and none of it is in the book and the teacher won’t talk to me (because apparently I’m somehow still getting A’s. I’m not convinced he reads my homework…). Good thing I have 0 desire to do the job this class is teaching us about anyway.
Is your teacher a grad student or an actual professor? Here’s the deal. When you were in high school, you had no traction. Your education was being paid for by the taxpayer or parents and you were being babysat with benefits. In college you are an adult paying for the privilege of being there. The teacher can damn well answer your questions and give explanations at the time in class when you don’t understand something. It doesn’t matter if it makes you feel stupid, you’re paying for it and you have a right to understand. But you have to be proactive. If you sit there like a bump on a log and just let stuff you don’t understand roll right past over your head then you can rapidly reach the point where you can’t realistically catch up and you have no choice but to drop the class and try again. Maybe with a tutor next time. But generally speaking tutors need to be paid for extra.
You’re the only one in class asking questions? Tough.
If the class is a huge freshman flunkout class you may not be able to realistically interrupt with questions, but in cases like that there are usually labs or study sections where grad students are available. They have to understand their subject on an undergrad level to even be able to get into grad school — many times better and more recently than the prof who has other fish to fry and may be going through the motions.
The teacher doesn’t talk to you during office hours because you’re not getting A’s, the teacher talks to you because you want something explained. Make your questions specific if you can because that works better. I don’t understand any of this is a general statement not a question. Why this, what do you do when, and how do you know if – these are all questions.
You don’t know that! Mike’s a lot smarter than we are – he may be helping, in his own, unique way. Then again, he may simply be indulging in his sadistic tendencies. We just don’t know!
I hit the same wall Walky hits. In school, just sitting there and listening and mostly doing the required homework was enough to be on top.
The first maths class in univsity covered anything from the dual number system to irrational numbers (the latter were not part of my school maths) and suddenly I felt like the dumbest person ever.
Actually, it took until my second degree for me to learn study skills. And I’m still much more effective in learning stuff that is interesting and I just happen to find than stuff I know a need to learn for any formalized reasons.
If iTunes U lectures are a measure of how lectures in the US work, they are better structured and less boring then mine were, but maybe its just the selection.
It can be really hard when you’ve costed along with minimum effort then suddenly you hit a wall where you need study skills you never developed. I ended up failing a course over that and having to take it again over the summer. Walky studying with Dorothy could be a solution, if he’s honest with her about the situation… wow it’s been a while since Dorothy has been in the strip.
this takes me back to Sal not getting the understanding of derivatives by way of her first tutor, which made me wonder just how you’d explain them to someone who can’t grasp the concept
“Sal, do you see that function plot?
Now don’t think of it as a function plot, see it as a race course”
Rotates page, so that right side is up.
“However in this race game you want to stay on the road, because you’re much slower when you’re off the road.
Wiggler here asks himself: How much do i have to turn my steering wheel so that i stay on the road?
Let’s see, if i look where the road is 100m before me, i can see it is 60m to the left. So if i drive a straight line to that point, i will be on the road again, but as it has curves, i will be off the road most of the time!
What if i look only 10m before me? The road is 2m to the left and i was not so much off the road! Maybe i can make my estimate even better when i check the point 1m before me?
So this is what this is about: dx is how much Wiggler looks in advance, dy is how much to the left or to the right the road is, and the derivative tells Wiggler how much to turn the wheel!
The smaller dx is, the better is the estimate, so when you make dx infinitesimally small, you get the correct value and will never be off the road (even when it’s a very small road).
I like to think that’s how Danny actually taught her. We know just trying to explain it in rote detail didn’t work, so maybe he got creative.
Real talk: “I’ve spent the last few days feeling useless, and so I’d really be grateful for a chance to solve a problem for somebody” is one of my favourite Danny moments in the series.
Yup, that’d be a really good way to connect it. Any time you build off existing interests and engagements is pretty much golden. The dirty little secret to teaching is that you can’t actually teach anyone anything if they don’t want to learn. But if the student is interested, they’ll go out of their way to learn and even seek out outside information. So a lot of teaching is creating a culture of learning as a worthwhile pursuit in and of itself. And rephrasing things a lot.
To be honest? I don’t think Mike intentionally bullying. He’s a jackass, that’s his personality. He’s sarcastic, cocky, and blunt. I’m the exact same way.
An interesting thing about learning is often how important the method of learning is. Sal has already discovered this and has found a decent teacher who is willing to find the approach that works best for her (not Jason, good Bob, not Jason). Walky is still learning this lesson and he’s going to be hampered by his association with school being easy with himself being “smart” and “having all the answers”.
Everyone has different learning methods and study skills that work best for them. The main trinity of styles tends to be auditory, visual, and kinesthetic. I.e. people who learn better from listening to a lecture, people who learn from written information (on the board, written down as notes, from the book, or from powerpoints if those are used), and people who learn best from doing or can relate it to a physical memory.
In that realm, there’s a lot of spectrum and notes, some finding it helpful to have very organized and color-coded notes, others just having a few brain words to try and trigger a memory, and some who genuinely find it easy to memorize and sort data in their head (this last one gets more difficult the more dense the material is, which is usually where the HS–>college “I used to not even need to study” often peeks its head).
On top of this, different teachers work better with different students. So, someone who just writes notes on the board will work well with a visual student, someone who makes engaging lectures but doesn’t write anything down will work better with an auditory student and so on. And there’s variability there. It’s always easier to pay attention to something and remember it if it’s engaging or interesting and if it’s explained in a way that doesn’t rely on higher understanding of the central concepts.
Another issue that usually pops up in college is that the teachers aren’t always picked for their teaching ability. This is especially true if it’s a research university, as many of the professors are researchers first and teachers second and some view the teaching responsibility as an unfortunate obligation and so don’t take honing their craft seriously. TAs also tend to be PhD students in that, which would partially explain why Penny and Jason are so impressively bad at their teaching obligations as they probably see it as a necessary evil to fund their real interests.
On top of this, first year freshman classes tends to be given to the lowest ranking teacher (usually new adjuncts or bitter older types who just want to reuse notes they made years ago) as most of the competition for teaching is over the upper division classes where you can focus more on your main interest or speciality. As such, there’s often a giant disconnect between senior and junior year high school where you usually have the more interesting and invested teachers to college where you might have someone relatively new to teaching or someone who could not possibly give less of a shit about honing their craft. Combine that with the density of information increase and potentially different classroom styles, and you’ve got a recipe for situations like Walky’s where he’s “good” at a very particular type of learning, but no longer has access to it anymore, and as such, needs to develop learning habits he’s never had to before (writing down some form of actual notes to make it easier to retain, reading the textbook (it’s clear this is out as he’s just not a visual learner), and seeking out a tutor (like his sister has). That last one would help him the most as he seems to be either a majoritally auditory or kinesthetic learner, but he’s going to be very loathe to pursue that as he has some pride in being a “natural good student” and associates tutoring and studying as something “not smart” or “boring” people need to do. As such, he’s in for continued rude awakenings until he realizes that he’s going to have to start adapting a style that works better for him.
Fun fact, initially the hover text was covering the rest of mike’s speech bubble and I was left with “lemme put my hands around” right after walky talked about taking off his pants.
None of this is helped by the fact that the current slipshine image is easily mistaken for mike and walky.
Loading ...
yeah, Joyce, pretty sure Sal’s bike is stock
also, pants are for SUCKAHS
Didn’t expect that this would come back to bite Walky– but then again, this is DoA. Who am I kidding?
Do pajama jeans count as pants?
I guess so,since you can use them as pants and pajama.
a) Are they worn loosely over the legs and pelvic region?
b) Do they cover the legs individually to or nearly to the ankles?
If yes to both, they are likely pants.
Pajama jeans ain’t jeans, but they’re pants.
Sal’s bike is a crotch-rocket….. not that Joyce would even have a passing familiarity with that term.
Oh, so that’s why she wants to take it for a ride so badly (hurr hurr hurr). That way when she gets off (before she actually has to get off, if you know what I mean) it’s not because she was doing anything sinful, it was just a fortunate side effect.
Like sitting on a washing machine? Gotta make sure no one runs off with her clothes…
Wait, that’s actually a thing people do?
Screwball refers to this Sarah and Joyce pinup.
And it sure looks as if Joyce gets off!
Walky, from one person-who-thought-they-were-too-smart-to-do-actual-studying to another, take my advice:
GET. HELP. Tutoring, I mean.
That might take a while.
Eh, I think all he needs to do is pay attention in class and study. That’ll still be worlds more than he’s doing now…
As someone who coasted though school until collage then failed out, it’s hard to do that if you don’t have study skills. Walky is like me, he never picked them up and doesn’t know HOW to study. He’s never needed to.
I was the same way, though I failed out earlier (HS) for a number of reasons. I’m now learning study skills at 35 while I prepare to take a professional exam (the SE).
Pretty much. It doesn’t help that most US school systems are rather poor at teaching study skills and often don’t start until it’s much too late. It’s actually bad enough that some colleges have been introducing a course to teach them as a required course for incoming freshmen first term course load.
I wish my college had that… I also coasted through school until I hit college. I paid attention in class and wrote down anything I was told to and did well. That same approach did diddly-squat in college, especially when there were no notes to copy down, just lectures to listen to… A class on writing papers would have helped, too. Apparently the way I learned in high school was not the way either college I attended wanted it done.
Never studied or took notes a day in my life, HS or college. Graduated college Cum Laude with a 3.6 GPA. Sometimes it’s not a matter of study skills, sometimes it really is either a) the person or b) the previous school was just really lax.
“Study skills”… Yeah. I was just like walky too. Didn’t drop out but had a 1.7 Gpa my first semester? Pulled out of it through a mix of buckling down and changing my major. Was not easy.
The thing about study skills is its true I didn’t know how to study but also techniques others use don’t work for me. I don’t learn well by repetition and my eyes just glaze over if I keep reading the same notes. I had to figure out my own methods which have a lot of drawing and colors. If that sounds weird it probably is.
My biggest motivation for failing out wasn’t a girlfriend (didn’t have one then) but the total fear of having to go back to the awful town I grew up in. That was the fire under my butt n
It’s the same for me, and I actually can’t take notes. I can either pay attention, or take notes, not both – learning/memorizing information and writing things down are mutually exclusive brain functions. While I know that I’m atypical in my ability to learn by listening alone, I wonder how many people have this problem and aren’t able to learn because they’re too busy trying to take notes.
This is why a lot of people use a recording device or their phone to record the lecture while they are taking notes so they can go back and listen to the recorded lecture later
Probably a fair amount. And it’s pretty hard to raise your hand and ask for clarification on something in your notes in those giant auditorium college classes.
My public education, on the other hand, pushed study skills to the exclusion of actual knowledge. Which might not have been so bad if they hadn’t insisted that everyone study the same way; I hate Cornell-format notes with a furious intensity.
I didn’t know what that system is, so I looked it up now and man, it’s unnecessarily overcomplicated. I just take notes by organising things as I go into main points and subpoints and to be able to keep up, I use a crapton of abbreviations. I prefer to take notes in the old fashioned way, as in with pen and paper, since it’s easier to add in things, link things together and draw figures. And it also allows me to doodle, if I’m bored. 😛 Of course after a busy lecture, my notes are messy, so after classes I sit down in front of my laptop and type the entire thing in, clear it up and format it nicely. Doing this makes me memorise which subpoints belongs under which main points, so I have a good grasp on the structure of the material. And that’s all I need. Once I have the basic structure and the most important keywords down, I can formulate my own answers. All I do before exams is reading through my notes a few times and I’m good to go. Writing questions, summaries and overthinking stuff would be a colossal waste of my time. But then again, each to their own.
Sounds like we operate similarly, then – I take notes on binder paper & transcribe it into a notebook for neatness and memorization. I have a hard enough time repeating something I already did without the temptations of the internet 2 clicks away.
Yeah, as a teacher, I have a special type of disdain for programs that teach one “method” of doing things that they try and make everyone do by rote instead of teaching how to find the mix that works for them. Math classes are usually the worst for this these days as a lot of the formalized standards emphasize teaching methods over concepts even if those methods are not working for or making sense for the students.
I still remember being docked points for not “showing my work” in subtraction problems in elementary school. I’m not 100% sure, obviously, but I think I wasn’t even using that “borrow the one” method in my head to begin with — I certainly don’t use it in mental arithmetic as an adult.
I have a back-asswards way of thinking about math, so “Show your work” stuff is hard for me.
preach!
Ain’t our education “system” wonnerful?
It’s got me awestruck, at least.
I never had to study, from grade school to bachelor’s degree. I picked up what they put down on the first try the vast majority of the time, and even when I didn’t, they always presented it two or three times anyway, so I never really had to go out of my way to learn in school. I’m not trying to be a braggart, just pointing out that his initial assumptions weren’t entirely implausible, it worked just fine for me.
Some subjects work fine with that, but there *are* memorization-heavy subjects — or sometimes more accurately, memorization-heavy testing formats — that need some kind of review, regardless of whether it’s a traditional kind of study method or something entirely unique and individual. Mathematical, grammatical, and scientific principles — fine! Principles are fine and dandy! But the specifics of Attic Greek declensions, conjugations, and vocabulary? Eh… probably want to go over the paradigms and exceptions before you sit down with that translation exam.
That’s not being a braggart, you’re just an auditory learner. Which is great for absorbing lecture style lessons as becomes more common in college.
Or, if Walky plays MMOs and does any regular raiding, a lot of the skills needed to complete current-tier raids reliably are basically study skills as applied to video games.
I’m 100% serious there. It was indeed my approach to developing college study skills. “I know how I learned to beat the hell out of the Lich King in WoW, so I know how I can learn to pass this class.”
What a fortunate combination of Gravatar and comment.
Yes, I’m slowly picking up good habits from FFXIV…
I’m not sure “Fail 500 times before succeeding” is an option in real life.
…but I assume you actually mean doing the same thing over and over until you have mastered it to start the next phase where you continue doing the first phase each time while mastering the second phase, and onward until you have the whole thing on farm.
Basically that, yes. Read up on what you need to know/do, and keep practicing over and over until you can accomplish your goal without even actively trying.
Actually it is. It’s pretty much the central theme of research science in fact. So anything R&D related or research science is all about failing and failing and failing and learning from each subsequent failure to gain more information.
Actually, a lot of things in life are about failing and trying again, getting better each time. Relationships, career paths, writing, game design…
Which makes it so bass-awkwards that one of the major places where failure is punished the most harshly is in education even though learning often involves a lot of experimentation and potential for failure.
Honestly, we would do better as a society to associate less value judgments for failure and to encourage failure as a good thing in society. I mean, failure usually comes from trying new things and that’s a key component for growth and development. Failure is a good thing, which is why personally I grade homework assignments for effort not quality, as it pinpoints what needs to be gone over again and which concepts for students are particularly sticking*.
*This is especially true for math and why Walky is probably floundering right now. Most math builds on previous concepts, so the first concept that doesn’t make intuitive sense, often creates a waterfall effect where you start failing on everything afterwards. Sadly, the lesson people often learn from this isn’t to pinpoint that one concept that isn’t clicking, but rather that they are just “bad at math”. This is especially true if the person is a woman as we have so much cultural baggage surrounding women and math. It’s a lot harder to get someone to reengage and learn they are good at something when they’ve convinced themselves they are “terrible at it”.
So… kinda like Dark Souls? Failing a few times before you remember that one trap that one shots you everytime and remembering to side step it so the monsters chasing you eat it instead?
Huh. I see Walky’s gotten his hair under control this time around.
fweep
Joyce, you’re supposed to call it her “hog”!
Doesn’t look like a Harley… more like a Honda?
Crotch rocket?
(Must not make terrible pun):CROCKET! ,,dodges bullets”
A crocket, as everyone knows, is a rocket dealing critical damage.
Barbarians. /sniff
Being naked in public wasn’t my worst nightmare.The worst was when i got jumped by a duck…..WTF brain?!
I don’t have naked nightmares either. It’s more like “Yeah! I’m NEKKID!!!”
The anxiety dreams I have are of being late for something and getting later.
According to the late Lewis Grizzard, NAKED means you ain’t got no clothes on.
NEKKID means you ain’t got no clothes on … and you’re up to somethin’.
You learn something every day…
…Or night in this case…
In my naked dreams, no one even notices I’m naked.
Same. I’m usually wearing the old clichéd barrel or something, and no one notices.
Ducks are scary. Fowl in general are, but ducks get up to some really nasty stuff.
They can have sharpish claws, but they don’t bite too hard. Geese are much more threatening, and even adult humans would do well to fear strikes from a swan’s wings.
See, this is exactly why properly feathered dinosaurs are scary. Lizards and crocodiles are usually perfectly willing to leave you alone as long as you don’t pretty much offer yourself to them, but birds are aggressive, paranoid and complete and utter assholes.
I know exactly what you mean.
I carry a pocketknife, and not in case I get mugged: it’s so I can stab divebombing birds.
Not to mention what a pissed-off ostrich or emu can and will do to you.
And the Cassowary. Comes from North-Eastern Australia as well as Papua New Guinea, 2nd biggest bird, quite vicious & potentially fatal.
Damn Australia has some lovely creatures. Still, I love the place…
Heck, even blackbirds are a menace. Getting dive-bombed while walking around is annoying at the very least.
It’s magpies Down Under. Black & white dinosaurs swoop down if you’re not careful…
Aww, Mike wants to help.
And to think we all thought he was mean!
Mike is always helpful for some value of helpful. But this is for SCIENCE.
How can Mike ‘help’ Walky the most?
…
My GOD.
What if Mike volunteers to TUTOR Walky?
I’m goddamn thirty years old, WHY do I still dream that I’m in high school and late for a test I didn’t study for?
Never dream I’m late and unprepared for work, even though that’s something that might have actual consequences. It’s never college either, too laid back. Something about the hell that is high school becomes a permanent part of our neuroses.
I hear from folks in my family all the time that those dreams never go away no matter how old you get. shudders
I also still have those dreams in my thirties. Also, dreams when something is stopping me from getting my homework done, or there’s a class I’ve been forgetting to attend all semester, or I can’t find my schedule and don’t know what class I have, or I have my schedule, but it’s written in some obscure code I can’t crack, or the class is located in some part of the building I’ve never been to, and don’t know where it is. Or maybe I realize I was supposed to be in school hours ago, or I was walking to school, and accidentally wandered into some completely unfamiliar streets, and can’t find my way to school, or anything familiar. I could go on. Anxiety dreams are fun!
Oh, and my Mom’s in her sixties. She says she *still* has anxiety dreams about high school. Apparently, they don’t end!
Still, there are worse dreams to be had. Dreams of being chased, of teeth falling out, of body hair falling out, etc, etc, etc.
You think the subconscious in Inside Out is scary? Mine is worse.
Yeah, well, Riley hadn’t hit puberty yet. Or high school. Give it time.
Oh gosh yes, a class I’ve been forgetting to attend — sometimes it’s high school, more often it’s college, but either way it’s “choose-your-own-schedule and you’ve been in bed/going to lunch/going home at x o’clock every day when you should have been going to this morning/noon/afternoon class”. That is the WORST dream. I am fine with tests for which I’m unprepared. I have dealt with those in plenty. But forgetting to attend a class… that’s happened to me once or twice, one missed session each, and it was horrible. Even during college and grad school, it was already one of my anxieties.
I don’t get those. I’m more likely to dream a 3-year campaign of resistance against extraterrestrial invasion, or collusion with the aliens in a similar scenario. It’s amazing what kind of grand, sweeping conspiracies the brain can cram into as little as a couple hours of sleep.
And deceive as well. Ever had that dream in which you found a suitcase full of cash,put it under your bed and after you woke up,checked under and then hit your head on the wall?
No, but I have dreamed 3 months of school, then woken up an found that I still need to write an essay I thought I’d already turned in.
I have them, but rarely. Usually, if I have the school panic thing, it’s a “I can’t finish this in time! I have no idea what to doooo!” sort of thing. About three quarters of the way through that, I tend to realize that I’m dreaming, and when I finally get control over the dream at the end of that phase, I move to the sort of ridiculous dream that I usually have.
It doesn’t go away with age, either. I’m SIXTY, and I occasionally wake up after a very vivid dream about missing a class or forgetting to show up for a test or some such…
Fifty-two, and same here. WTF brain, indeed.
Every once and awhile, I have a dream that I forgot to attend my Intro Philosophy lecture for so long, I straight-up missed exams.
I don’t understand. I took that class in my last semester of undergrad, twelve years ago. I skipped a lot of lectures because I took a writing option and going to small group twice a week made lecture redundant. I didn’t miss any exams. I did fine.
I never had any nightmares about skipping that class when I was actually skipping the class!
Walky is me
Walky is proving to be eerie levels of me when I got to college…. kinda unsure how to feel about that….
Walky best fess up to someone soon, maybe Dorothy, about this. Being super smart in High School doesn’t guarantee that you’ll be super smart in college.
Nice avatar!
He should ask Sal about it. She can refer him to her tutor who helped her out so much!
If they can both get past each other’s dating of Dorothy, that could actually be a great friendship.
…hopefully Danny doesn’t have a thing for sculpted caramel.
Don’t you remember? Seeing Walky is how Danny learned he was bi in the other verse! He’s definitely got a thing for sculpted caramel, male or female.
I think Spencer meant Jason. *bow chicka wow wow*
I think a lot of the problem is he’s associating “doesn’t have to study” with “super smart” and is loathe to let go of his “super smart” identity by giving in to the need to study or “worse” to ask for help from someone for whom the concept has clicked.
Ironically enough, being “smart” usually just means the accumulation of knowledge and a lot of that is based on curiosity specifically caused by being thirsty for knowledge and going above and beyond rather than having a learning pace that is above what high school teaches at. But that’s a whole ‘nother debate entirely.
Overall, I think we could deemphasize “smart” as a statement of ease with concept a lot more than we do. It’s why when a student tries to put themselves down by emphasizing how “smart” I am on a concept, I’m quick to follow up with how I’ve had X years of experience with said concept and they are just encountering it for the first time and ease just follows from familiarity and practice. It seems to be working so far so I’m keeping it up.
Is Mike actually in that class with them or is he sitting in just to harass the group like he did in Gender Studies?
If memory serves, he does actually have calc with the rest of the group.
Does Mike even take classes, or does he just like to harass people?
Both,but I think he goes mostly for harrassing people.
He’s majoring in Trolling
With a minor in Psychology.
Dear Bob no. There is nothing good that can come from Mike with a psychology degree.
Wonder if this is going to end with Walky asking for help from Sal?
Get to da choppa!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs_OacEq2Sk
Oddly enough, my fist reaction to “chopper ride” was, “Where would they get a helicopter?”
Walky’s flopping is just about the single most relatable thing in Dumbing of Age thus far.
And it even started around the time I began failing classes.
Oh Walkey, if only you had cocain.
Walky’s problem is that he has no study skills. He never needed them before, because he was always able to do well without studying. Now the work is at another level, and he needs to study, but he has no clue where to start. His earlier attempts at studying failed, because studying is a skill, and it’s one Walky never mastered. If Walky hopes to stop failing, he needs to learn study skills. I don’t think Walky can do that without help, so he needs to swallow his pride, and admit to *someone* he is struggling.
I really hope Dorothy is leading Walky to a tutor here. http://dumbingofage.tumblr.com/post/126035355597/november-14
Skills and discipline, also, that you also lack if you never had to study before.
The discipline is a lot tougher than the skills, in my opinion.
“Winsome”? Joyce, no matter how many ten-dollar words you hurl at Sal, you’ll never get to stroke that chocolate waterfall.
You winsome, you losesome.
Object Permanence, Walky! Turn around and see if everything that was in the room before is still in there now. That’s how you know if it’s a dream.
doesn’t work everytime: in dream, you can turn around and see that everything in the room was in it, even if you can’t remember ever being in the room before, or even if they have changed form and that the former clock is now an orange rabbit that you always knew to be a rabbit even in the clock form.
I’ve also seen people propose stuff like “can you close your eyes or turn off the lights” (basically, stopping vision) or “can you read stuff” or “can you feel pain/taste food”. None of these work 100% of the time either. The only real test for whether something is a dream is doing something physically impossible in real life, such as flying, punching through a window without pain, or breathing underwater without equipment — none of which I would advise you actually try if there’s a chance that it’s real life…
Ah, the look of a man who is watching his reality start to crumble around him.
Mike is being unexpectedly helpful here 😀
He always is.
Perhaps I’m the exception to the rule, but the dreams where I’m naked aren’t nightmares.
Nightmares usually involve someone I love demanding I kill myself, and I’m fully clothed.
Welp, I’m not getting to sleep now. 🙁
Ouch. O_o
I was lucky, I got out of the system before they decided that students didn’t need to read books that weren’t written by the HS instructiors., didn’t have to write term papers, and could take tests that only were made up of multiple choice. Who needed to exert themselves with that system?
If Walky is as smart as he thinks he is, he will get help tutoring NOW. Unless he lets his macho get in the way, he can turn himself around.
When I get to a point where I think there is hope for Joyce, and start to even like her a bit…she does something like this!
Winsome is not a word you should use to describe yourself, imo. Especially when you are trying to hard to be ‘cute’.
He thinks he is smart as in “learns everything without effort”, not “good at planning and strategizing” (like Dorothy, who actually IS smart). It will take him a lot of effort to re-calibrate that self image.
That went completely over my head. What is wrong with winsome?
As someone who didn’t have study in high school it was very hard to ask for help. I was lucky in that a good friend forced me to sign up. But the idea of getting a tutor made me feel like a failure, it was very demoralizing. I was embarrassed and my reaction to that is generally to double down on my old behavior.
Not saying this was good, I am glad I had the support to change this behavior but it is understandable. His identity was connected to being the one who was able to do well without effort. Having that ripped away is painful.
And Idon’t, I have no clue where you are getting your info about high school from. I am only 3ish years out and trust me. We had term papers, we had plenty of written tests and we had a lot of reading in English classes. Actually I took more multiple choice tests during the science courses in college than I did in high school.
Yup. We put way too much value in things being or appearing easy, which makes it hard for people who need help to ask for it. This gets disturbingly tragic in cases like when men are socialized to believe they don’t need emotions or emotions are weakness and thus don’t seek out emotional help and therapy when they need it.
We could do better as a culture (I’m specifically from a united states culture) to encourage asking for help and cooperation and to not associate that with failure or weakness.
All of this. Of course you’re going to be bad when you first start at it! Sucking is the first step to being great at something!
I managed to coast in my undergrad, but I failed more than one class, and I only passed things I was intimately interested in with flying colors.
That’s the thing; I don’t think that Joyce is trying to do anything! This is 100% her normal behavior patterns when communicating! She just doesn’t realise just how abnormal and annoying that it sounds!
is this going to be the beginning of a plotline where walky goes to danny for tutoring too because id be here for that
Oddly enough, I can see him asking Joyce.
Why am I getting the horrible feeling that their tests have been getting mixed up for some stupid reason the last few weeks?
I doubt it. Sal’s earned her good grades after failed attempts, seeking help, and busting her ass trying to improve. Walky’s just been assuming he’ll casually pass every class with flying colours.
Yeah but WHY has he assumed he’ll casually pass it? You don’t just go this long with just blind luck and then suddenly start to have shit grades, just as you don’t just suddenly have amazing grades after having a string of nothing but shit.
Of course this is a slice of life comic so I shouldn’t be looking THAT deep into it, but still.
For some people that is the case. They can go through the majority of their school years without expending much effort to get a good grade. Then they reach university (the first major difficulty upgrade in life), and their grades plummet because now they actually have to make an effort to pass, and they have none of the skills and habits that other people do who had to make that effort earlier.
It’s not that Walky was passing through blind luck; he is naturally gifted, it’s just that he doesn’t know how to actually apply effort when he falters.
Sal, meanwhile, does have difficulty with the course material, but she’s taken extra steps to make up for them, gone through two different tutors, and now has a better understanding of what she needs to do. She put effort towards getting better at something she wanted to succeed in, which Walky has never really had to do.
He assumed he would casually pass until Friday of last week when he first got that 26 back. In this strip it doesn’t seem like he assumed he would casually pass it. He’s looking at his grade while he’s telling Joyce that he did just fine, and he visibly looks freaked out over it.
Alternatively (assuming that there’s been some test mixup going on…) what if their tests were getting mixed up since the beginning, and they’re only now being handed back correctly? That would mean that Sal’s been on her game since the very beginning, and Walky was getting credit for work he wasn’t doing.
It’s a long shot, but a fun one.
It’s not like they’re just getting papers back that say “you passed” on them. If their papers were mixed up, Sal and Walky would both have noticed things like “someone else’s handwriting” and “this isn’t the answer I put down”.
Well, with math at least, it can be easy to get in a groove where everything makes sense and builds off what you’ve previously learned. But then there is a concept that doesn’t make intuitive sense and which you need to learn to approach in a different way.
So for someone that everything has been clicking for, the first confusing concept is going to be a giant monkey wrench in what they assumed were “inherent smarts” and that tends to have a cascade effect in math.
Overall, Calculus is a really good point for that to occur as the new concepts at the beginning of Calculus are radically different than what students encounter in the Algebras or Geometry and require a different sort of spatial perspective to graphs and functions. As such, it’s a perfect time for a student for whom the expansions of algebra and geometry made perfect sense to hit their first stumbling blocks.
Especially as the early parts often focus on constructing the logic for the theories that come later and so often are the most likely to be confusing for new learners who don’t understand where it’s leading and most likely to be taught poorly as often the teacher gets perfectly where its leading but doesn’t fully remember what it was like to encounter things for the first time.
Honestly, it makes perfect sense that Walky has hit the wall at full force. It probably also doesn’t help that college courses are often faster paced and involve much less review, so the first point that things don’t make sense tends to be where everything flies off the rails and it’s difficult to go back and catch up.
Which isn’t to say that isn’t often true of most classes in college. There’s such a shift in dynamic between how high school classes operate and what formulas of learning they expect versus college. As such, a lot of things become new (how research papers work, how class discussions work, how we approach different subjects) and that cultural shift can leave a lot of students that had great high school methods of learning behind.
This is such a little thing but I love how nice Joyce is. She knows how much a good math score means to Sal so she lifts it up.
That’s right, Joyce! You were the one coaxing Sal into the first step of a road that led to premartial hanky panky and slipshine. Here’s to hoping you don’t find out…
Also, it’s clearly a hog.
Silly Walky, in your nightmare you would have a pink mouse costume.
Nightmare checklist, or school-themed porn checklist?
My thoughts exactly. Some folks like a little choking during sex, as the added pressure and shortness of breath trick the brain into being appealed to somehow, and with the addition of Mike and the subtraction of pants, I can only think of some sort of pornographic fantasy here.
Slipshine!
Walky noo.
Don’t be like me 😐
Hmmm… I think that what Mike is saying here is that Walky going naturist in class would lead to violence (from Mike at least)!
Joyce’s girl-crush on Sal and her bike remains adorable, as ever. Y’know, Sal, the only way that you’re going to end this is to give her a ride! She’ll either be so terrified that she’ll never ask again or she’ll like it so much, that she’ll end up getting one of her own!
As for the grade issue, I’m wondering how much of this is the fault of the Walkerton parents. They seem to have spoilt Walky and left him less able to work when he’s out of his comfort zone. Sal might resent the way that they treated her but it has at least developed in her a willingness to work to achieve her goals; after all, no-one was going to do it for her in the past.
Honestly this one is not really anyone’s fault so much as a consequence of being smart enough to cruise through school without any effort. Which means that he never developed any [good] study habits since he never needed them. Speaking from experience this is a pretty devastating wall to hit in college and is likely something he is going to be dealing with for the lifetime of this series.
I super feel Walky here right now. I was that smart kid who knew everything and never studied in High School, and now I’m in college and I’m taking this class where I just don’t understand anything and none of it is in the book and the teacher won’t talk to me (because apparently I’m somehow still getting A’s. I’m not convinced he reads my homework…). Good thing I have 0 desire to do the job this class is teaching us about anyway.
Is your teacher a grad student or an actual professor? Here’s the deal. When you were in high school, you had no traction. Your education was being paid for by the taxpayer or parents and you were being babysat with benefits. In college you are an adult paying for the privilege of being there. The teacher can damn well answer your questions and give explanations at the time in class when you don’t understand something. It doesn’t matter if it makes you feel stupid, you’re paying for it and you have a right to understand. But you have to be proactive. If you sit there like a bump on a log and just let stuff you don’t understand roll right past over your head then you can rapidly reach the point where you can’t realistically catch up and you have no choice but to drop the class and try again. Maybe with a tutor next time. But generally speaking tutors need to be paid for extra.
You’re the only one in class asking questions? Tough.
If the class is a huge freshman flunkout class you may not be able to realistically interrupt with questions, but in cases like that there are usually labs or study sections where grad students are available. They have to understand their subject on an undergrad level to even be able to get into grad school — many times better and more recently than the prof who has other fish to fry and may be going through the motions.
The teacher doesn’t talk to you during office hours because you’re not getting A’s, the teacher talks to you because you want something explained. Make your questions specific if you can because that works better. I don’t understand any of this is a general statement not a question. Why this, what do you do when, and how do you know if – these are all questions.
NOT HELPING, MIKE.
You don’t know that! Mike’s a lot smarter than we are – he may be helping, in his own, unique way. Then again, he may simply be indulging in his sadistic tendencies. We just don’t know!
I hit the same wall Walky hits. In school, just sitting there and listening and mostly doing the required homework was enough to be on top.
The first maths class in univsity covered anything from the dual number system to irrational numbers (the latter were not part of my school maths) and suddenly I felt like the dumbest person ever.
Actually, it took until my second degree for me to learn study skills. And I’m still much more effective in learning stuff that is interesting and I just happen to find than stuff I know a need to learn for any formalized reasons.
If iTunes U lectures are a measure of how lectures in the US work, they are better structured and less boring then mine were, but maybe its just the selection.
You didn’t learn about irrational numbers until university? Please tel me you mistyped, because that makes no sense.
It can be really hard when you’ve costed along with minimum effort then suddenly you hit a wall where you need study skills you never developed. I ended up failing a course over that and having to take it again over the summer. Walky studying with Dorothy could be a solution, if he’s honest with her about the situation… wow it’s been a while since Dorothy has been in the strip.
this takes me back to Sal not getting the understanding of derivatives by way of her first tutor, which made me wonder just how you’d explain them to someone who can’t grasp the concept
>thing not go
>thing start go fast
>thing start going fast faster
>find how fast thing is going faster
(that was how a teacher explained it to juniors at my high school)
(and also a lot of graph jokes)
“Sal, do you see that function plot?
Now don’t think of it as a function plot, see it as a race course”
Rotates page, so that right side is up.
“However in this race game you want to stay on the road, because you’re much slower when you’re off the road.
Wiggler here asks himself: How much do i have to turn my steering wheel so that i stay on the road?
Let’s see, if i look where the road is 100m before me, i can see it is 60m to the left. So if i drive a straight line to that point, i will be on the road again, but as it has curves, i will be off the road most of the time!
What if i look only 10m before me? The road is 2m to the left and i was not so much off the road! Maybe i can make my estimate even better when i check the point 1m before me?
So this is what this is about: dx is how much Wiggler looks in advance, dy is how much to the left or to the right the road is, and the derivative tells Wiggler how much to turn the wheel!
The smaller dx is, the better is the estimate, so when you make dx infinitesimally small, you get the correct value and will never be off the road (even when it’s a very small road).
I like to think that’s how Danny actually taught her. We know just trying to explain it in rote detail didn’t work, so maybe he got creative.
Real talk: “I’ve spent the last few days feeling useless, and so I’d really be grateful for a chance to solve a problem for somebody” is one of my favourite Danny moments in the series.
Yup, that’d be a really good way to connect it. Any time you build off existing interests and engagements is pretty much golden. The dirty little secret to teaching is that you can’t actually teach anyone anything if they don’t want to learn. But if the student is interested, they’ll go out of their way to learn and even seek out outside information. So a lot of teaching is creating a culture of learning as a worthwhile pursuit in and of itself. And rephrasing things a lot.
Make that a naked chopper ride and I’ll be happy.
Yes, Joyce, for gods’ sakes, don’t call it a chopper. It’s likely to get her beat up by people who really do have choppers.
Oh hey Panic-fetti. I STILL make that when I get fliers about weird shit going on in my mail.
More hands thirst for necks? Wow.
To be honest? I don’t think Mike intentionally bullying. He’s a jackass, that’s his personality. He’s sarcastic, cocky, and blunt. I’m the exact same way.
So all the nasty stuff he’s done to others was by accident? I’m confused by what exactly you mean here.
How To Learn From Your Mistakes:
-Eat your mistakes
-Turn your mistakes into confetti
You’re nailing it, Walky!
An interesting thing about learning is often how important the method of learning is. Sal has already discovered this and has found a decent teacher who is willing to find the approach that works best for her (not Jason, good Bob, not Jason). Walky is still learning this lesson and he’s going to be hampered by his association with school being easy with himself being “smart” and “having all the answers”.
Everyone has different learning methods and study skills that work best for them. The main trinity of styles tends to be auditory, visual, and kinesthetic. I.e. people who learn better from listening to a lecture, people who learn from written information (on the board, written down as notes, from the book, or from powerpoints if those are used), and people who learn best from doing or can relate it to a physical memory.
In that realm, there’s a lot of spectrum and notes, some finding it helpful to have very organized and color-coded notes, others just having a few brain words to try and trigger a memory, and some who genuinely find it easy to memorize and sort data in their head (this last one gets more difficult the more dense the material is, which is usually where the HS–>college “I used to not even need to study” often peeks its head).
On top of this, different teachers work better with different students. So, someone who just writes notes on the board will work well with a visual student, someone who makes engaging lectures but doesn’t write anything down will work better with an auditory student and so on. And there’s variability there. It’s always easier to pay attention to something and remember it if it’s engaging or interesting and if it’s explained in a way that doesn’t rely on higher understanding of the central concepts.
Another issue that usually pops up in college is that the teachers aren’t always picked for their teaching ability. This is especially true if it’s a research university, as many of the professors are researchers first and teachers second and some view the teaching responsibility as an unfortunate obligation and so don’t take honing their craft seriously. TAs also tend to be PhD students in that, which would partially explain why Penny and Jason are so impressively bad at their teaching obligations as they probably see it as a necessary evil to fund their real interests.
On top of this, first year freshman classes tends to be given to the lowest ranking teacher (usually new adjuncts or bitter older types who just want to reuse notes they made years ago) as most of the competition for teaching is over the upper division classes where you can focus more on your main interest or speciality. As such, there’s often a giant disconnect between senior and junior year high school where you usually have the more interesting and invested teachers to college where you might have someone relatively new to teaching or someone who could not possibly give less of a shit about honing their craft. Combine that with the density of information increase and potentially different classroom styles, and you’ve got a recipe for situations like Walky’s where he’s “good” at a very particular type of learning, but no longer has access to it anymore, and as such, needs to develop learning habits he’s never had to before (writing down some form of actual notes to make it easier to retain, reading the textbook (it’s clear this is out as he’s just not a visual learner), and seeking out a tutor (like his sister has). That last one would help him the most as he seems to be either a majoritally auditory or kinesthetic learner, but he’s going to be very loathe to pursue that as he has some pride in being a “natural good student” and associates tutoring and studying as something “not smart” or “boring” people need to do. As such, he’s in for continued rude awakenings until he realizes that he’s going to have to start adapting a style that works better for him.
“Uhh… that’s my neck, Mike. Mike?”
TO BE CONTINUED ON SLIPSHINE
Fun fact, initially the hover text was covering the rest of mike’s speech bubble and I was left with “lemme put my hands around” right after walky talked about taking off his pants.
None of this is helped by the fact that the current slipshine image is easily mistaken for mike and walky.
Walky and Mike: the fanfic (slashfic?) just writes itself.