I hear you!
The first math lecture started out with binary maths and ended with being done with irrational numbers. And took up speed from there…
Getting through school without having to work on it really gets a downside when you start university.
Ah, we had it so much more leisurely here… Higher math for engineers, Germany. Basically about 3 weeks were spent mostly repeating the last 3 years of high school at a much more thorough and formal level. And then the pace kept up. High school did and did not prepare one for that. Basically the difference of getting hit with a brick wall while you are already in motion or while you haven’t learnt to walk yet.
Had the same pace in the US Naval Nuclear Power program…I lasted all of three weeks before I cracked and tried to use an old Asperger diagnosis to switch to a different program (got sent home instead).
When you’ve taken college courses in the past and your academic advisor runs the Math Honor Society and wants you to graduate with a double major, yeah, she’ll make you take her advanced math course that’s all about the friggin’ notation
I don’t think she’s that kind of depressed…she really does remind me of one of my roommates, just doesn’t give a damn about anything or anyone unless they get between her and her bottle-borne “friends”.
Now you’re just talking crazy talk. Dina’s Hat is destined for an eternity of happiness with Dina’s Scalp. That brief fling with Ethan’s head was nothing more than a passing whim, which Dina’s Scalp consented to out of respect.
Calculus isn’t the SAME as pre-calc, but it draws on a lot of stuff in pre-calc, borrowing from it, expanding on it, building on it…. it’s very derivative.
Derivatives were annoying. You spend the semester learning all sorts of complicated math & proofs to show you how they work and why. Then at the end they show you the tricks that make it easy to use them. 🙂
It was nonlinear partial differential equations that broke me, but that was a couple years down the line.
I bombed on Advanced Algebra because the teacher was a complete tool who couldn’t teach you how to count on your fingers. It completely confused math in my head, and I’ve had the devil of a time undoing it. As a result, I’m trying to re-teach myself math, along with electronics. I tend to buy or otherwise acquire books and hope osmosis brings understanding. Sigh…
My problem with calc was they only offered it at 7 AM, my brain doesn’t begin processing until 10 even if I’m up by 6. I took a 5 PM class that was translating the morning calc class into computer programs and got an A even though I was failing the morning class. You had to be understanding the morning class material to even get a passing grade in the evening class that I aced. I even wrote BASIC programs that parsed equations for integration or derivation. Couldn’t get either one in the morning class…
I took Calc 1 in my freshman year. It was right after lunch and the teacher made Ben Stein look like Richard Simmons. I’m lucky I never got a concussion from whanging my head on the desk when I fell asleep.
“Pre-Calculus” is also known as “College Algebra”. It, as the first name suggests, teaches the foundation for Calculus without, as the second name suggests, actually teaching you anything Calculus. I think your school would have called it “Advanced Algebra”.
In my school we had pre-calculus which basically prepared your for sciences math, foundations for the humanities/social science students, and Workplace and Applications math for the trades school kids. Pre-calc covered algebra, trig, some geometry, and a few things I’m forgetting now in one class
My high school was just switching over from an “integrated math curriculum” (a little bit of everything every year) to that when I was in the senior math class (as a junior)…yeah, Pre-Calc and Advanced Algebra are the same thing, and Calc was an AP option at my high school.
We had “Consumer Math” too, but that was actively discouraged for anyone who had any intention of going to college.
Now all she needs to do is change it to “Ah, I’ve been expecting you.”
Then, she can just sit in a room alone all day, and when someone comes in to see what she’s muttering about in there, she’ll have the perfect line ready for them.
In that case, the hypothetical period: “Post Apocalypse” would become: “Post Arithmetic” a time in which, if your number comes up, you’d never know it.
As I recall, everyone with a future in the sciences places into Lin Al – it’s not that hard in this day and age to learn enough calculus to pass a placement test, even if your school doesn’t teach it.
Well, that’s a given. But he also needs to induce some mind-shattering realisation, and no one is surprised by Mike’s nickeling at this point. If he doesn’t get the realisation, his contract will void.
Random randomness, but up until a couple days ago I read your name as Fart Compactor and then Fart Copter. Migraines make my vision suck but your name is funny no mater how I see it XD
*side note: Mine (which I have used for years) was inspired by Starry Night. It still looks funny following yours 😉
Haha, well ”Fart Captor” is just a very obtuse butt metaphor that either came up with or forgot the original source of (not sure which anymore). I can’t quite picture how a fart coptor or compactor would work, but they have a nice ring to them as well
I’m glad I’m not the only one who is amused by it, in any case. I hope a smile is some consolation for your aching head!
I’m guessing a Fart Copter would either be when you fart and it comes out sounding like a helicopter starting up or a copter that runs off farts. Fart Compactor would be when you are trying very hard not to fart and squeeze your butt cheeks. I figured Fart Captor was either a reference to butts or someone who captures farts via proton pack or something. 😉
Oh. I’ve seen it most used in reference to Billie, so I thought it might be some sort of slang for cheerleaders, possibly in reference to some movie I haven’t seen.
Willis turns the filter off every April 1st at update time, and sets it to automatically and retroactively resume after three people post that word. Just to confuse us.
Run with it, beat it to death, beat the corpse into a slimy paste, ground that paste further into the floor, burned the floor, resurrected it and beat it to death yet again.
A) A percussion instrument of Afro-Cuban origins, often associated with the Beatnik movement.
B) The son of Binky in Matt Groening’s cult comic strip Life in Hell, which predates the Simpsons.
C) A word used to substitute for a known profanity pertaining to women on this website, enforced via word-substitution filter by David Willis after certain commenters used it too much.
You know I never really realized Life in Hell was THAT Matt Groenig (the stress meter and emotions chart strips have been in my mom’s office staples for as long as I can remember), but that makes so much sense now.
Willis had a problem some time back with posters using the derogatory word that begins with b and rhymes with itches, so he set up a script that any use of that word would be replaced by the word bongo. Now some posters just write bongo instead.
Willis put up a filter to screen out the technical term for a female canine, replacing it with an enjoyable percussion instrument. The filter. Annoy be beaten. The drums may.
Some people type out ‘percussion instrument’ too. I know of five filters. Two being slurs for women, one of which replaces the word with ‘bongo’, and the other one just nullifies your comment. One is a Street Fighter quote that was overused when Sal/Amber/Amazi-Girl’s origin was shown, the quoted is just deleted, rest of post stays. Current political front runner names get switched out, and I’ve heard that ‘First’ posts in the first section get dumped.
And the acronym for one particular flavor of internet scum typically associated with tumblr used to autocorrect to ‘glistening phallus,’ but that filter seems to no longer be active.
Wooooow you think they were autocorrected because the people _being complained_ about are internet scum, rather than because the people who complain about them are obnoxious trolls. Yeesh.
To clarify, since that was a little harsh and different people have different experiences and definitions for labels:
That acronym makes me think of ‘die cis scum’ idiots and others who’re just one more flavor of bigotry and intolerance, not folks who just want to be treated as human beings and allowed to live their lives.
…well gee, if my girlfriend was currently hospitalized and suicidal, I might not be in the chipperest of moods either.
Like that was absolutely unnecessary of Billie to say, but calling depression and alcoholism “excuses” to be a [censored gendered slur] is pretty rude and unnecessary too.
In my experience, snark like that doesn’t require much thought; the roadblock is working up the courage to say it. And I usually don’t, down or no (and it’s harder when I’m down). In Billie’s case, I think she’s well practiced in the art of vicious snark – she is a former cheerleader after all.
Also, in this instance, I think there’s a bit of “kill me now” in that remark. She witnessed the Battening, remember? She knows just how violent Sarah can get.
Not excusing her behavior, mind you. That was a very low blow, even for Billie, and I would not called it “snark”. An opportunistic insult, maybe, but not snark.
Depression is soul cancer which no two people experience the same. When I got out of the hospital many years ago, I was out of my god damn mind and while I was having conversations and stuff like a normal human being, I also acted like an asshole and lashed out a lot when I wasn’t crying or too depressed to move. Did I have control over my actions? Not really considering that I only have tiny fragments of memory for like the first week or two out of the hospital.
@Bluewind THIS SO MUCH. I’ve got depression, and PTSD from Afghanistan, among other things. For years after I got out I struggled with nigh uncontrollable anger. I wasn’t ever violent, but I said things that were arguably worse than physical violence to people sometimes. Yet the truth was that I was keeping myself perpetually angry, or distracted by video games/media because I was soul crushingly depressed, and often times suicidal. It was like the worst kind of epiphany when I found myself alone facing my innermost demons. The anger left, and was replaced with sadness that felt all consuming. A lot of angry people are broken, and are too messed up to face their sadness without risking potential self harm. A lot of my old comrades have friends who went through this cycle, and ended up taking their own lives. I’m not that much better these days, but I have realized my shortcomings, and I’m taking medication for anger. I like to think it helps.
I’m really happy I could let you know that there are people out there who understand and I’m glad that you were able to get help. I hope you keep getting it even when it’s hard to do. I had PTSD from surviving an abusive childhood and I know it’s hard and won’t get better overnight. I hope that the meds are helping, but if you feel like they aren’t or like the side effects are getting to you, make sure to tell your doctor just in case they need to tweak your meds. If you feel suicidal, tell them that too because they need to know. They won’t hospitalized you unless you are an immediate risk right that minute, so hiding it hurts nobody but you. Believe me; I know. I’m much better than I once was. It just takes a while for everybody.
Have you heard about the studies into MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy? It’s showing a lot of promise for treating PTSD!
I’m mostly agreeing with this. Billy doesn’t need to actually give an excuse for this to be shitty behaviour, even though I understand that she’s in a bad depression- I’ve been there before.
Saying something cruel, a lot of times, can require intellectual thought to it – what can I say that would hurt this person most? She didn’t do something base, like call Sarah a bongo or some other name. She pointed out something deeply personal, and, I may add, she knows nothing the details about, despite her experiences with Ruth and the RAs.
And I say “mostly” because it is hard – where does the line get drawn between the person and the illness? Because illness can definitely make someone do and say awful things. Maybe it’s because as a society we don’t think of depression or anxiety the same way we think of schizophrenia. That being said, it doesn’t mean Sarah (or anyone else) has to tolerate Billie’s behaviour – that would be healthy for neither of them.
From what I gather, Billie is referring to Dana, from last semester. Billie is one of only three people (the other two being Joyce and Dina) who know Sarah’s side of that story. This of course makes it much worse. Sarah is now two for three on people who used Dana against her, and this one actually meant to hurt.
I’m not saying it’s not shitty behavior. It absolutely is.
But saying she’s using her depression as an excuse implies that she’s consciously using that to justify her behavior and she absolutely is not.
If they actually got her to explain why the hell she said that, “depression” and “alcoholism” would never come up. There would be an angry rant about how Sarah is horrible for calling Dana’s parents that would probably lead to another angry rant about how Carla is horrible for broadcasting Ruth’s situation because now Billie and Ruth have been separated and if Ruth loses her job she’ll have to go home to her abusive grandfather and then Billie and Ruth won’t die together like she wanted
Yeah, as someone back in The Pit, my meltdown lashouts aren’t reasonable, at best they’re internally consistent, but mostly I just want you to leave me alone (so I can curl up and die thanks) and am frustrated existence is continuing around me. Thanks for that one brain.
I think maybe the problem here is that Billie’s words are hurtful regardless of whether or not she’s “to blame” for them. Like, why she said them isntbnecessarily something Sarah needs to take in to account before deciding whether or not it sucks that Billie is saying them.
Or that it’s not okay to feel upset that Billie said them “because she’s depressed”.
But both things can be true. It doesn’t have to be Billie making a clear and weighted DECISION to be a jerk for Sarah to be owed an apology later… If I’m making sense.
Billie is not a w(b)itch. Never really was one. I think you have your horse before the cart here.
She is not ‘using’ her depression and alcholism’ as an excuse to be a w(b)itch: the depression and alcoholism is using her.
Walky might appreciate a math class I took in college: Chaos and Fractals. It dealt with the ways a seemingly simple logical system can STILL result in unpredictable results when iterated.
STEM student here (engineering, specifically). As a rule we tend to like the math, even though it does get a little overwhelming at times. Plus, you know how many foreign languages I had to learn? Zero. Differential equations I can deal with. Picking up Spanish quickly enough to keep up with a college course? Nope. No way. Not happening – and that’s by far my second best language.
Sarah’s roommate in her freshman year (Dana) was yanked from school after Sarah reported her (Dana’s) drug use to her (Dana’s) father. This did not go down well with Dana’s friends. Billie has heard about this and is using it to swipe at Sarah.
Joyce: My mother has often said to me: “A woman may not be too careful in her choice of enemies, for once she has chosen…she has forfeited a friend. These are words my mother has lived by, for she is Carol Brown and her life is her word.
That so many of her carefully chosen enemies should become my friends has shown to me that her life’s path is paved with evil, and that she is an enemy even to her friends…even to her daughter.
If anyone can actually tell me what I’m referencing here, I will draw whatever you want. (well, anything not creepy)
I’m one of the guys who took Calculus freshman year because I did so well in high school math. I failed, and stubbornly keep taking it every semester there after and failed every time until I dropped out of school in frustration after my junior year. I then went back home, finally learned my lesson that there are some things I’ll never be smart enough to understand.
Heh. Or the college wasn’t very good at teaching. I went from an F to an A in Algebra when I retook it at a college that focused on teaching instead of just assuming you were just there to go through the motions.
Eh. Took one semester of college Calc and switched majors, then switched them again. Dean’s List from there on. Differing talents rather than smarts. Most people can live productive and even number-informed lives without Calc.
Failing a class can be a sign that the class or the major is not for you. I personally don’t think it’s a matter of being “smart” so much as everyone on the planet doesn’t need to be talented at math, the same way many people won’t become doctors, etc. Like, I decided early on in college that I didn’t have the drive or the mental resilience to put myself through medical school. I had a lot of feelings of inadequacy, but I knew in my heart I just didn’t want to put myself through that.
And that’s okay – not eveyone is meant to be that – and, there are a million different things people can do. But, what schools have been promoting for the last 30 years is STEM, STEM, STEM, to the point where other professions become devalued.
Oh goodness, parents and pressure go together like macaroni and cheese. Some of the stories I heard in college, some of the experiences I had myself, I tell ya..
I don’t get it- since the beginning of evolution, the method of having offspring is to impart your emotional, intellectual, and biological knowledge onto your children, and then let them do their own thing as functional human beings. I’m not a parent, but if my hypothetical kids functioned as best they could I’d be happy. Some people cling to their children, it’s almost like they WANT them to live at home until they’re 60.
Actually, I’m happy I can’t get into the brain of people who think like that. It’s an awful world out there for a lot of kids. I wish I could be the person who says they don’t know what it’s like to live with someone like that, but unfortunately this isn’t the case.
It’s a pretty simple mindset to figure out when you realize they essentially want to see someone avoid making the mistakes – real or perceived – that they made, and become, do, or accomplish what they couldn’t or didn’t.
That’s an intimately familiar flavor of disappointment for many, many people.
Not interested in having my kids repeat my mistakes. They should make new and different ones. No point in parenting them otherwise. So far they are finding different and interesting ones.
Parental pressure is pretty much the only reason I even went to college. And I was miserable. To this day I’m convinced that it was the biggest mistake of my life, and I would have been better off just getting a job with a local contractor instead (there is still a big housing market out here in California for some reason, even though it’s a lot of the time people attempting to ‘flip’ a house for a quick profit).
Funny, mine encouraged me to take a lucrative welding job out of state building oil pipelines in Carolina, but noooo, I had to be like everyone else and go to college. Which worked out well until I Walky’d my way into just pretending classes where I did poorly didn’t exist, rather than formally dropping them so I wouldn’t get put on probation for failing classes by deluding myself into thinking they didn’t count if I didn’t go to class or show up for the final.
What? I typed welding, why’d it come out as kaineing? I know Willis has some filters running, but I have no idea why the word for joining pieces of metal together would come out as anything other than itself, itself being spelled by the initials of Walrus Elephant Lion Dromedary.
I’m not sure why We ld is censored. Odd…and perhaps unrelated fact: We ld is the name of the VP running with Gary Johnson, 3rd party. Kaine is the name of the Clinton’s VP.
It seems to be caused by the same issue that once had a censor replacing all instances of ass with butt, causing such things as “buttbuttin” or “clbuttification”
I Walky’d it up much in the same way. Crippling anxiety, PTSD and high functionality on the spectrum that were both undiagnosed, severe depression, jackass “American Pie” style roommates, and multiple family deaths during the period. Just made me Walky it up even worse, mainly through staggering amounts of procrastination and self-isolation.
I have two colleagues who are father and son. The son is nearly 40 years old, but he and his sister both still live at home with Mom and Dad. Neither seems to have any inclination to move out on their own. That seems pretty strange to me, I wanted to get out of the nest and live my own life as soon as I could.
… I took Calculus freshman year. Got an A. Took Calc 2 also. Also got an A.
I was an English major. I needed Calc for absolutely nothing.
Then took Discrete Math and it bent me over and wailed on my tender ass like my Junior year boyfriend. I think I managed a B- eventually.
The answer to your next question: because I had this idea about taking a computer science minor that crashed and burned because I sucked at programming.
I see. So then you dated a guy who wailed on your ass because you wanted to make it numb, so sitting in front of a computer for long periods writing code wouldn’t bother you. Clever.
No no no. I sucked at programming my sophomore year. I dated my Junior year boyfriend because he was incredibly sexy. With great hotness comes great… what was I just saying?
Just because you are hurting does not make it okay to try and hurt everyone else.
I’m glad it’s going this way. I’m glad her little threat last time isn’t being treated like she’s just angry and all acceptable. Joyce was just trying to change the subject since Billie didn’t want to talk about her problems.
Problem is, I’m not sure how the hell to deal with this. I know my first instinct, but that’s useless and would only make things worse.
They’re already doing all they can: Give her space and try not to take it personally.
Hopefully Billie’s first therapy session is today, because the longer the delay, the more things she’s going to need to apologize for later, and the harder it will be on the people trying to be there for her.
That’s strange because everyone I talk to all agree that college calculus, and even AP calc was 100% easier than high school precalc. But maybe because precalc at our HS was abnormally difficult. But usually the math/science track students like calculus more? That’s what I see the most anyway
I chalk (yay Latin puns!) their enjoyment of calculus up to incalculable masochism. That stuff derives me crazy, and lacks a way to integrate it into daily life. At least trig has some uses, if only tangentially.
Sines, sines, everywhere are sines,
Splitting up my memory, across from cosines.
I just want to hug Walky. He knows he is smart and a lot more of his self worth is tied to it than he let’s on, but he’s struggling and failing at something that has always been natural to him. He’s calling himself a shameful embarrassment because he can handle this class and refuses to admit he needs help much less that he could and maybe should drop the class. I wonder where all this negative self talk came from? Could it be because his feelings, how his parents raised him, or the pressure put on him from having a twin labeled as the troublesome one?
Agreed. Before, it was just cocky kid who didn’t have to work hard in high school comes to the realization that he needs to start actually trying (which was actually relatable to me, so I liked it). But this strip went a lot deeper into why this realization shakes him to his core so much- I’d wager the parenting situation was a big part. Just like their parents placed the “rotten child” title onto Sal, they played the “golden boy” title onto Walky. Walky wasn’t safe from his parents’ (specifically, mother’s) authoritative parenting, he just received it differently. That strip where his mom insists that he’ll be a pre-med major rather than communications really demonstrated her stance on her expectations for Walky. It’s also probably self-imposed to an extent, since he doesn’t want to be so neglected like Sal.
The only problem with that statement that last statement is, it’s not true. Walky and Sal had a couple scenes facing up to the fact that Walky was doted on by both parents and Sal was ‘invisible’. Walky could do no wrong, and Sal could do no right: she wasn’t mistreated, she was ignored.
After parents weekend at the dorm, Sal made Walky face up to that fact. And to the fact that he was favored because he looked more white than she did.
Walky knew all this but never really acted on it because he had no real clue how badly Sal was hurting, and he liked being special. He admitted all this, and then really felt bad for the treatment his sister had put up with all their childhood year.s
Right, but I’d argue that this is the first-ish time showing the negative impact on Walky. Clearly Sal’s situation is worth, but Walky has never expressed that his trouble with failing Calculus had to do with his parents’ expectations.
Oh Walky. Oh dear, dear Walky. The ‘crap I should’ve dropped this class there is no actual stigma to dropping classes WHY DIDN’T I DROP THIS CLASS’ Lesson is a really really sucky lesson to learn.
Well, he’d absolutely hate getting hugged by all these godless sodomites, but there’s no way he doesn’t have some weird, permeating odor when you get up close to him, so I think not
Sarah got her former roommate (can’t remember her name right now…) help when it was clear that she had a problem and Sarah wasn’t enough.
Billie tried to help Ruth, couldn’t, and didn’t take the next step. She either views Sarah’s actions as a personal failure — not trying hard enough, not caring enough, something like that — or is trying to convince herself to do so in order to feel like she did the right thing in not reporting Ruth’s situation.
I think also Billie is projecting Carla’s actions (re: Ruth) onto Sarah (re: Dana, who is Sarah’s ex-roomie).
Like, Sarah and Carla both exposed somebody’s not-so-functional depression, which torpedoed their person’s current life at school. For both, the depressed person was in a downward spiral and didn’t want to be outed (hell, they even both had an over-reliance on substances). We don’t know yet whether their exposure is for the better or worse, but it was against the person’s wishes.
Except there’s no evidence her home life is bad. It is definitely a possibility, yes.
But Dana’s current status is entirely unknown. The best we got is that, the last time Raidah talked to her, Dana may have implied that she wasn’t better off than she had been at school. When was the last time? A week? A month? Six months? We dunno! And that vague snippet of info comes from the most biased source: a person who has vested interest in making Sarah the villain, because it justifies her bullying campaign and assuages her guilt for failing to help her friend. How much of that is Raidah, who was entirely unaware of Dana’s actual emotional state prior to it being outed, reacting to the curtain being lifted?
Unless I missed an update on that situation.
Furthermore, Dana was depressed. Unless she got great treatment that was immediately effective, which is incredibly unlikely, it’s doubtful she’ll be rating her quality of life very high any time soon. I know there were numerous times while I was recovering from depression that I would have definitely preferred being mostly numb to everything than having to actually feel anything. Even though, in retrospect, even the terrible times of recovery were much better than the pre-treatment times.
Other commenters have noted there were a lot of warning signs that Dana’s home life was not great. It also explains why Raidah — who genuinely seems to have been Sarah’s friend at one point — would think Sarah is so horrible for getting Dana sent home. She knew about her situation at home, but couldn’t see the situation Sarah was seeing.
That’s not really the point, though. I think that both Sarah and Carla made the best decisions available to them. There might have been better ways, but immediate action was needed.
Billie, however, is not seeing things that way. Much like when Joyce made similar mean comments because she was worked up and defensive about Becky, Billie is frightened / angry about the possibility of Ruth being similarly taken away and put in a bad situation, which Sarah is an especially convenient target to project her anger on.
The bad home life could be true or not true. I’ll offer an alternative – often a university/college will force a student to take a leave of absence and or withdraw from school. When a student withdraws under circumstances of mental illness, rather than say, studying abroad, it is extremely difficult sometimes to matriculate again – how to catch up, will you graduate with your class, can you handle the rigors of academic life, these are reasons the school will keep a person from coming back. A lot of schools are simply terrible at handling it. It’s actually become quite a problem across the USA.
I propose that that may have something to do with why Dana is still at home, rather than at school. Additionally to the above, a lot of students leave without a treatment plan in place – they simple go home and “home” has to take care of it. One of the advantages of being on campus is the free/close by counseling.
Also: Dana’s use of drugs is probably a huge factor in why she left. It complicates her case, because most schools ban the use of drugs on campus. So now it’s a double whammy – the school wants her to leave to take care of herself, but also because it doesn’t tolerate drug usage.
Does the school know she’s on weed? Sarah only mentioned calling Dana’s dad, and he may have conveniently left that part out when he withdrew her from school.
BBCC – Could be- but I should add that taking a leave of absence, sabbatical, being abroad are all different from withdrawing. When you withdraw, that’s pretty much it, because your spot is actually gone and given to someone else who is transferring after you or whatever. And you’re still responsible for most of your tuition – that alone keeps a lot of people from going back as well.
After that if you want to get back in you actually have to apply all over again, with your probable suffering grades, and hope you beat out a bunch of other qualified people. I wonder if her dad actually withdrew her from school..
According to Sarah, her dad came and pulled her out of school after she told him from the situation. He may have either put her on leave for recovery or withdrew her, we’re not 100% clear on that situation. He may have done so on the grounds she was an emotional wreck.
Yeap. The abuse is speculation. All we know is that she had pretty moderate to severe depression, was trying to self medicate with weed, and it wasn’t working. And it was affecting Sarah. That’s not selfish of her at all to feel. That’s why I can’t blame Sarah for what she chose to do.
As a former RA, I’ve had to make similar choices. And I also had some people mad at me for a while because they felt it wasn’t my place to call the proper authorities (lol, that was literally my job). The fact is, you can’t deal with all everything, least of all mental illness, on your own. And if you ever get to a place where you can’t take care of yourself, someone has to make the call for you. And that’s not terrible. That’s lucky – many people don’t have anyone to truly care a lick about them when the shit finally hits the fan. What were Dana’s so called vigilant and devoted friends doing while she was holed up in her room smoking the days away anyway?
Calling for help. It’s not easy. It’s not simple. It’s not selfish. Everything doesn’t always have a happy result, but then again untreated depression doesn’t tend to have happy results either. Sarah’s ex-mates treat her badly, but they probably won’t understand until they get older/become in charge of a person they need to take care of.
You forgot the part where we know it was the loss of Dana’s mum that sent her spiraling into depression to start with. She originally used weed just for fun then it turned into a reliance after her mother’s death and Sarah did give her time to recover, she did tolerate crying, she did tolerate the drug use – she gave her a reasonable quantity of time to get better if it were just grief, and when she wasn’t recovering, Sarah did TRY to tell their other friends that she wasn’t as well as she tried to project BEFORE she ultimately made the call to Dana’s dad.
She only made that tough call because no one else was listening when she said ‘Dana’s not better’ and she couldn’t tolerate it any longer which is fair enough as it was not her job to sit quietly and tolerate someone’s untreated depression forever.
It also wasn’t her first idea – her first idea was a therapist. Which, even if it WERE simple grief and not dangerous, potentially escalating depression, they have therapists for that. They’re called bereavement counsellors and from what we saw, I think Dana certainly would have benefitted from one. Dana’s other friends disagreed and basically refused to help her convince Dana to see one (or even suggest one).
If you won’t make use of campus resources yourself, and Sarah can’t legally force her (for very good reason) what else can she do but seek help outside the campus from Dana’s family?
Drugs, and grief over her mother’s death. No suicidal ideation or physical danger, as far as anyone knows, and we don’t know whether all that pot was impacting Dana’s studies, which is why her friends don’t find it quite as clear-cut as Ruth’s situation.
It was horrifying, crippling depression that she hid from her friends and took refuge from in marijuana.
The drugs were part of the issue, but I’m not sure they were the main part.
Yes Dana’s was drugs, and depression. Her friends were ignoring the fact she was in trouble or just didn’t know what to do.
Sarah was afraid she was going to lose her scholarship if her roomie was busted they both would likely be. And she was afraid Dana was going to OD. So she wasn’t totally altruistic about it, she saved her life.
And she did not screw up Dana’s schooling, Dana did that all by
herself. Sarah called Dana’s father to come get her. The office admin. didn’t know about the drugs I think.
But Dana’s so called good friend Raidia made Sahara’s life miserable after that. And Sarah just shut them all out.
correction: the characters don’t know whether exposure was for the better or worse. I think it’s pretty clear to the all-seeing audience that Ruth’s situation was completely untenable, and that she really had to get professional attention sooner or later, ‘Sir’ be damned, or that depression was gonna eat her alive.
I think that Dana also needed to take a leave of absence, but her friends disagree, and I don’t think it’s quite as clear-cut as it is with Ruth.
Yeah. Even Billie, who knows as much as we do, isn’t willing to see that something else needed to be done. She thought that either they would get through it together, or definitively not get through it together, and she was okay with either as long as the “together” part was assured.
And that was the part that Carla’s intervention may have ruined. 🙁
For me the big failure class was Chemistry 110. The story was that was supposed to be pretty much like Grade 12 chemistry in high school. It wasn’t. Ended up taking Geology 100 in summer school to get my science requirement.
So she purposely avoided conversation with them just to jump in the middle of one to personally attack someone she rarely interacts with just tone take out her anger on something.
Okay I know she’s going through the stages of acceptance and she’s currently on anger but even I’m like “what the hell” !?
She and Sarah used to interact relatively regularly until the day Sarah told them part of her backstory, at which point Billie accused her of always wanting to contact parents and get rid of people she doesn’t like. Sarah smacked her lunch tray away and they didn’t interact again until Joyce’s dorm party.
This is shitty, but it’s hardly Billie’s first time hurling Dana in Sarah’s face.
On Billie: I genuinely don’t understand her comment – what is she referring to? Ruth, or Sarah’s old roommate? Or both? Either way, that’s not very kind.
On Walky: Basic math is not for embarassments. There are great disparities in the American Education System that lead to many kids coming to college without basic knowledge of all kinds of things, hence colleges will have basic classes to more advanced ones. Pre-calc is simply the class before calc.
Additionally, many schools still adhere to the “common core” logic of courses, which typically include mandatory requirements of at least one class in math, english, language, an elective (like PE or art), among other things. If I wasn’t a math major, I definitely would not want to waste my time and energy on a difficult course like calc.
It’s sad that he’s being so hard on himself for not knowing everything, even though it logically does not make any sense – that’s why he’s there, to learn, not to breeze through by magically knowing anything. Many of us have been there though – you’re special, and when you get to college, you’re simply one of many. This is the time where it’s crucial to do what you can to develop enough confidence that you belong there, so you don’t give up and fall by the wayside.
She is definitely referring to Dana. Sarah had nothing to do with Ruth, but Billie’s probably spent hours in bed before falling asleep, thinking and thinking and thinking. And at some point, she probably started seeing the parallels between Ruth and Dana’s situation at some point.
Since that’s the case, I wonder if Billie really understands at this point how INCREDIBLY (i don’t know how to use bold font!) difficult it is to ask for help in a situation like that. It takes such an emotional toll on a person, maybe she will realize this when she is healthier. I also think she is very young and when you’re in a relationship at that age, nothing else matters. Your life is that person. Even though in reality you have a long life ahead of you, where you will meet many other people and do lots of sutff. But that’s hard to see when you’re still 17/18, AND depressed to boot.
And then Sarah got ostracized by her former friends for it, which is really unfair. Dana needed help. Period. It might not have happened the way she wanted it to, but the alternative was succumbing to her depression, so what else what Sarah supposed to do? What if she had said nothing and Dana had hurt herself? Then they’d be giving her shit for not saying anything.
In short, Billie doesn’t know what she’s talking about.
An excess of that confidence can be a detriment. If one’s too confident, it can lead to refusing to seek help, preferring to lie to oneself and everyone one knows rather than accept that things have gotten bad and the pit is too deep to climb out of without help. If that goes on for too long, then by the time this hypothetical person accepts that they need to look around for someone to help them climb out of the metaphorical pit, they’re in too deep to even see out above the ground.
Ah, you are correct. I should elaborate – when you have no confidence, and you feel like you don’t belong or deserve to be there. By that I mean in school, taking advantage of the resources and all else it has to offer, which can include remedial classes or tutors.
It leads to cases like Walky’s where he immediately chalks his failures up to being stupid (an immovable personality trait) rather than something he has done wrong that he can actually work on. So he thinks he should just keep his head down and keep doing what he’s always been doing. He barrels towards failure in this way to “prove” his worth, meaning he can do it all on his own (without realizing he can’t), accepts his fate rather than seeking help, and then fails.
At the risk of sounding like a dick or subtly bragging- isn’t pre-calc regular level math for high schoolers? The way we did it at my high school, the normal approach was to go geometry -> Algebra II -> Pre-calc -> AP Calc AB/BC. If you were behind, you started at a more elementary math, and then went on to geometry for the next year. Taking pre-calc as a senior would mean you were behind the rest of your grade.
The sad thing is, outside the US, the standard is finishing calculus (out through 4, aka Differential Equations) by the end of high school.
Remember, if the students aren’t working hard enough in high school, just lower the expectations until everyone passes. Then universities can make extra money from students who have to take remedial math before they can move on to classes that actually count towards a degree.
Some of us did the AP Calc BC early and went on to diffyQ and then abstract algebra and advanced topics.
Then super-cranky first undergraduate college which shall not be named but is in the United States did not believe me and made me take Calc… III, I think, again? So I did no homework and no studying and sat in the front row correcting the teacher and just did tests and quizzes and still got a B, after which they said FINE DO WHATEVER YOU WANT which was apparently what they considered “graduate school level independent study” in differential equations but which seemed to me to be “diffyQ, but more, and at least I’m not bored now.”
In my high school, that was the “advanced” track–“regular” track started with some kind of general math and ended with pre-calc. If you needed something more advanced, you could take math classes through college, but you still had to pass the requisite high school classes… or at least, I assume that’s why our valedictorian was in my AP Calc AB class at the same time he was taking Calc III and DiffEq.
I would die. I have no head for math. I consistently failed Algebra I across three separate high schools. Chemistry was just math with symbols and concepts I could not understand.
Billie was there when Sarah talked about her old roommate (I just checked to make sure, by the way). And now Billie is throwing that back in her face. My reply to Mav and my own comment below has more text about this, so I won’t repeat it here.
In high school we got “Integral Calculus” and “Diferential Calculus”… I was kind of terrible in both but I saved the grade with tutoring help… no idea if I could have got better at it or not…
And once again, Billie shows that she cares about Ruth more than she does for herself. Three days ago, I thought she was still worried sick about Ruth and how Ruth is in big fucking problems right now, rather than simply withdrawal symptoms. And this strip provides more evidence for that. Anything that reminds her of how Ruth is in trouble will set her off just like that.
In a strange way, that is the cute part about this.
But on the other hand, seeing as how she’s so easily set off, she should -not- be where she is right now. Maybe she’s not as clearly suicidal as Ruth, but she’d nevertheless be far better off speaking to a professional right now, rather than forcing herself into this “normal” life. Then at least, whoever she’d lash out to would be someone who would (one hopes) be able to understand why and just let it fly by, knowing it’s not really personal.
That is the sad part about this.
And Walky… Man, this was me when I was 16. I took hard math in first year of “high school” even though I wasn’t going to keep up math in the next two years, and I did it only because I thought I’d ace it by definition.
And yeah, there was a certain bit of that type of “only dumb people do easy math” elitist toxicity too. Pity my first rude awakening of reality didn’t take.
Oh god. I thought I was the only fool who took calc as a first-year college freshman, even though I didn’t need to. I flunked it on my first semester, then flunked it again when I tried retaking it to replace the F with a higher grade to save my GPA. My spirit was crushed that year. 🙁
I’m sensing Linda’s (or maybe Charles’) words in those comments about success from Walky. Possibly both.
Interesting that both kids felt pressured to take a class neither enjoys nor is well suited for (sure, Sal’s figuring it out, but daaaamn these parents screwed their kids up).
I’ve heard stories like that and all I can summon is anger for it, but that doesn’t help, so again I am sorry and I hope you found something that worked for you.
Nope, unfortunately. Stuck in min wage work, cause the degree is worthless, plus I don’t care much for the field now. I want to start saving up to go back for child psych, though.
I’m the idiot who took advance math and science in senior year when I didn’t need them for my advance diploma and then almost lost said diploma because I almost failed both.
But that saved me doing it in college. Major just needs *a* math credit? Sure I’ll take an idiot’s guide to word problems 😀
At my school, psychology counted as a quantitative credit. I stupidly took calc, but there’s that I guess. I got a 1 on the AP exam and they still put me there.
Holy crap Billie, this one’s up there with Sarah’s ‘well you can’t be THAT torn up’ comment back in last storyline for uncalled-for asshatitude. Speaking of which, yet more evidence Sarah’s been dealing with low key constant depressive shit for the last year. Get these girls in therapy stat. Though hopefully the immediate show of Billie’s bad mental state means everyone’s keyed in on her now too, cause she needs it.
I have a weird feeling people didn’t catch the meaning behind the hover text. Either that, or I’m remembering it wrong. If so, then ignore the next sentence. We’re all better off for it.
Appropos of nothing related to this particular strip, but having been in a dastardly situation with a college-age person (I’m 13 years their senior), I just had a very, very special appreciation for your characterizations of you of characters, Willis.
Seriously, thank you. It doesn’t help me in my situation, but it does give me *hope* for the age group — that for all their missteps brought on for knowing it all yet knowing nothing at all, they’ll figure it out in time, after mistakes (benign or otherwise) have been made.
I’ve suddenly got the strange feeling that Walky didn’t have much input on his course choices. Maybe his parents were both so convinced that he’s some kind of genius that they insisted that he do it with some fairly strong and coercive terms.
She said she had to pass it to avoid a lecture about being a failure (yeah, super great mom and dad-ing, Walkertons).
I can imagine it being more about family image or pride – ‘You’re a Walkerton, Walkerton’s do well, you need to take this class and do well, Walkerton’s get A’s’ yada yada.
That’s possible, but I’ll point out that, even without parental pressure, Walky’s attitude is fairly common among “smart kids”. This is the one way in which all* gifted children are actually very, very stupid.
If they’re lucky, they hit the tough subject wall in middle school or high school and finally learn that they have limits too and that studying isn’t a crime. If they’re not, they hit it in college. I know of one person who hit it in law school, and I bet that wasn’t fun at all.
PreCalc senior year?! My school was MulitiVar and Stats senior year. Actually, most kids took stats Junior year because AP tests should be taken in 11th grade to apply to UCs. I took Calc, Stats, and Compsci Senior year.
I’m with Sarah, I tested out of 8 credits of Calculus, which satisfied my math requirements for my major (Biology), and never took a math course in college.
Somehow I ended up working for the math department throughout college. It wasn’t weird when I was TAing trig that I knew none of the Calc professors, but my Calc tutoring students found it a bit odd…
Setting aside my emotions, poor Walky’s plight reminds me of when I went through intro bio and intro chem in 1st year college, and suffering for it. And that was s’poseD to be my major.
Felt so down I took basic Spanish the next year even though I was fairly good at it already, just to boost my esteem again.
History had kinda been my thing for my whole life before college…then I got there and promptly failed my “through Reconstruction” US History class, which I wouldn’t have even had to take if the mid-sized state school I went to accepted AP credits at the time. Still ended up with it as a minor for four years (failed the post-Reconstruction class too before retaking and sailing through both), dropped it when I got it in my head that I had to change literally everything about myself when I started my transition.
Goodness, I hope it wasn’t too hard to cross over. Sounded like you had your whole life planned behind history and whatever job was linked to it. I just fancied the idea of biochem and never had any real forethought personally. Planning isn’t one of my strengths.
It’s amazing how Walky so Needs to talk about his problems with math that he (deliberately? unconsciously deliberately?) misreads Sarah’s “Is that why you’re here?” in order to start justifying his choices. Thinking about how much more effective neutral indifference like Sarah’s is in this situation as opposed to Dorothy’s active expressions of concern.
That was uncalled for. Just because Billie’s depressed and worried about her girlfriend (who is also depressed) doesn’t mean she should treat other people like shit.
You’d be surprised how little that line of thinking matters to someone who is depressed and worried about a loved one.
She shouldn’t, but she’s also not in her right mind.
So I’m pretty snarky and sarcastic but what is Billie on about? Even if its a referance to the time Sarah ratted some one out its not making much sense in my sleep addled sickly mind. Any one care to explain, please?
I think Billie’s referring to Sarah reporting Dana’s drug use to the school. Billie is saying that Sarah decided she didn’t need Dana, thus it was easier to ‘get rid of her’ (by trying to get her the help she desperately needed) than put in the hard work of saving Dana herself.
So… Anyone think that Billie wants someone to hit her? She hates herself right now for her perceived failure of Ruth so she wants to be punished; talking someone into beating her up fills that need quite nicely.
I really know that math feel…tested out of 6 math credits with my ACT score, jumped straight into “pre-calc” my first semester in college and got a C- (on a curve, thank the gods)…didn’t take another math class until my fifth year, when I thought I was switching to psychology and signed up for a stats class (D-, that was the spring semester that my mental health started sliding toward the cliff it would fly off of that fall).
Yeah I basically did the same mistake Walky did in my freshmen year. I needed one math credit and I had taken Calc 1 in high school. I was SUPPOSED to take Calc 2 in high school as well, but my school dropped it as a pre-college class.
So Freshman year I take Calculus 2. I ended up with someone from Vietnam for a teacher, which…did not help things. Basically if I wasn’t tripping over how fast he was teaching everything, I was tripping over his heavy accent.
I passed with a decent grade but man is it painful to try and grasp concepts when you can barely get beyond the teacher’s accent. Also he had a habit of starting every explanation with “I’TS SO SIMPLE” which when you’re struggling just is like rubbing salt into wounds.
I had to take Statistics because it was required for my Poli Sci major (although that stuff pretty much never came up, even in the class I took about polling). But I actually understood it better than I had any of my high school math classes, and I ended up with a B-.
I should’ve gone with that honestly. Unfortunately the culture at my school taught me Statistics was the “dumb” math class so I never considered it. Now I’d say it would’ve been a more useful class to take.
Congrats on the B- though! Getting anything above a B is a struggle, I found, for most of my non-major required classes. It’s hard to work all those in when you’re trying to learn what will get you a job first.
Billie’s just punching for what is Sarah’s most vulnerable spot: Dana and the slander that she once tossed a friend in need under a bus because dealing with it in a constructive way was just too much effort.
Bottom line is that Billie is going to be hard to be around for a while with her hostility transfer set on ‘Full Auto’.
I did really well in high school math but I placed in pre calc my freshman year in college. I thought I’d do well but was completely overwhelmed, but I managed ti get a C+. Thankfully I didn’t have to take any more math after that quarter.
I’m so with Sarah on this. I’ve been on both sides, and in neither situation is it a good idea to take a tougher course than you have to take. My senior year of high school, all of my friends and math teachers expected me to take advanced Calc, but I already know I wouldn’t need it for my college major, so I “only” took regular Calc. My friends all struggled and dropped their GPAs in Advanced Calc while… I didn’t exactly skate through regular Calc (Calc was very difficult for me), but I had a much less stressful senior year than they did).
On the other hand, my senior year of college my advisor told me that in his opinion (which I found out too late was meaningless), I should take a second English class instead of using my AP English credit, and my English major friend convinced me that it would be sooooo fun if we took a course together. That course was hell for me, and I just barely passed it. And then I found out that I really could have used my AP English credit, dammit. :-/
I was kinda Walky-ish freshman year. I took the most complicated, high-level, difficult math class I could find because I got a 5 on my BC calc AP exam and thought I was hot shit. Half the class dropped in the first couple of weeks. By the end, there were 12 of us and the professor invited us over to his house for dinner. There were a bunch of jokes among a small group of us about being The Disciples and this being The Last Supper. We also called the course “math without numbers” because it was exclusively theoretical. I was the only non-math or physics major in there. I refused to drop strictly out of pride. But man, did that SUCK.
She’s seeing parallels between Sarah telling Dana’s father about her problems and Ruth getting turned in to the campus authorities. It’s a sore subject and she’s not being rational about it.
Does anyone check Willis’s DoA tumblr? His latest preview has Mary looking genuinely happy, like, smiling and shit, and not in a way that indicates she just screwed someone over. I don’t know how to feel about it…
For folks in south…eastern? US, good luck for the oncoming hurricane. Stay safe.
It’s Mary so chances are she’s just happy Ruth is gone and bragging about it.
Though, real talk? I wouldn’t mind a Mary redemption arc. What is it going to mean to her that she contributed to what could have easily been Ruth’s suicide? That, and I’m really curious as to why she won’t be ratting Becky out to the campus like she threatened to.
Or at least I want her and Carla to have wacky slapstick wars that don’t end in hate speech. That was nice.
The problem with people like Mary is that their quirks & prejudices are set up to constantly reinforce each other. She’s a Fundie Christian, a sect that believes wholeheartedly that being/supporting LGBTQ people is wrong, thus she is deeply transphobic and homophobic.
Joyce was the same way, but she inherently believes the best in people and changed because she found people she loves who challenge her. Mary only inherently believes in her own superiority over “sinners”, something her faith also enables. Mary can only change if something makes her question either her ego or her faith.
TLDR: In order for a Mary redemption arc to happen, at least one of the core tenants of who she is as a person would have to come crashing down in flames.
Frankly, I don’t think Joyce was that different from Mary from the start of the comic, she just dressed it up in infectious cheerfulness and triangle grins, and as you note, she was willing to learn.
But she still ran with every horrible thing she grew up with. She believed that Dorothy’s atheism made her a bad person and that she was throwing herself into the cragged shame pits of the lustwolves. That Ethan’s sexuality was wrong and needed to be fixed. Is it really that outrageous to suggest that if Joyce found out Carla was trans that she’d treat her in some equally horrible way?
I mean, Mary isn’t the first person this series to be a horrible person at some point. My favourite character just had a brief stint as a violent stalker.
I think Joyce, and Mary are vastly different. When you’re raised a fundie. . . you run with what you grew up with. Unless you have something about your own core identity that clashes with how you were raised, like Jocelyn, or in my case me. Even then that’s not a guarantee as we all know there are a ton of toxic self hating gay pastors/republican congressmen.
But back on topic. Joyce genuinely is a compassionate person. She’s no longer as upbeat, and chipper, but that’s because she’s having a serious crisis of faith. Which I can personally relate to in so many ways…dammit I’m rambling again. . . Joyce tried to help Ethan, even though she was horribly misguided in thinking that helping him was even necessary. Given how quickly she turned around though, I think it’d be a very safe bet that if Joyce learned about something as horrible as say…Conversion “Therapy”? Imagine an even worse timeline with Becky, where she was sent to a camp, yelled at for hours while being forced to stand at attention, being given SHOCK “THERAPY”, witnessed several of her lesbian friends at this gitmo for LGBT American teenagers hanging from the ceiling… What would Joyce say, or do faced with such abhorrent crimes against humanity being revealed to her via PTSD laced memories from her best friend?
Now contrast with Mary. Marys holier than thou attitude is laced heavily with violent subtext, and disdain. I don’t have proof, but I just get the feeling when I see any of her facial expression, or read any of her dialogue that she’d probably think conversion “therapy” was a great thing.
The key difference between them is Joyce is a genuinely kind, caring person. Once outside of the sheltered, controlled environment that raised her to believe so many horrible things, those horrible things have been falling away.
When Joyce is confronted with evidence that one of her beliefs is cruel and harmful to others, her underlying kindness has won out every time. Not all at once, but it always puts a crack in the ugliness her parents encased her in, and eventually it falls away. There’s definitely been some growth needed beyond shedding her ignorance, but that’s been more on par with other characters.
If she’d found out about Carla, I would fully expect at least one or two cringe-worthy missteps, but never anything as intentionally awful as deliberate misgendering.
It’s theoretically possible that Mary might also be a good (or at least decent) person underneath the crap she’s been encased in. Her parents may simply have been better at layering it on there. All evidence (true, there isn’t a lot of it) of who she is seems to indicate she runs into the real-life people she’s supposed to hate, she hates them. She doesn’t even attempt the “love the sinner, hate the sin” cop-out that Joyce did initially. Mary seems completely okay hating both.
It’s possible Mary might still not be a lost cause, but her redemption arc would require breaking through not just her upbringing, but parts of her personality that prevent her from questioning it the way Joyce has.
On Billie….I was thinking this was because of Ruth. At first. Then I saw a pattern.
“Don’t hang around me Walky.” “I was a special because I was a cheerleader” “I don’t hang out with nerds.” “I’m toxic, stay away from me.” And now “You don’t understand how I feel, and I will hurt you if you try to get close”
She’s constantly trying to isolate herself. Sometimes its acting high and mighty as if the concern of mere mortals do not trouble her. Sometimes its by building up how awful she is and how other people she just avoid her before she ruins their lives. Even Ruth, who she arguably has been most open with, noted that Billie’s entire attitude was “drinking is your problem and I don’t need to stop”. And, btw, excessive alcohol is another way one can isolate oneself from life and other people.
And now its just general abuse, trying to drive people away by being ugly to them.
I’m not saying Billie isn’t an alcoholic or that her drinking isn’t in and of itself a serious problem she is laboring under and hopefully does try to correct…eventually. I am saying we don’t really know why she started drinking in the first place, but we’re seeing hints that she’s frequently trying to wall herself off (unconsciously as often as deliberately) and drinking helps her accomplish this.
As for my theory of why she’s doing it? I dunno. I just continue to remember that her dad and mom didn’t show up for the parents day and Billie and Walky and Sal have all noted with varying levels of sincerity and snark that Billie is sort of the Walkertons unofficial daughter because of how much time she spent with their family versus her own.
On the other hand, given how the general exchange of insults and threats of violence was a weird kind of mating dance between her and Ruth, maybe Billie is just trying to flirt with Sarah?
…Y’know I was considered a “whiz kid” in public school, too. A part of me wants to smack Walky upside the head and tell him that anyone who bothers to do their work regularly can graduate pretty high on the list, especially in the South-Midwest. (Barring people with disabilities, ofc.)
But then I remember that I had the same struggle not long after I graduated. The problem with fawning over the smart kids in class is that it makes things very difficult for them when they leave school; their identity is now tied up in their intelligence. The moment something you’re normally good at tests you, you immediately blame yourself and think that maybe you were dumb all along.
I am having serious trouble parsing that insult. Is she saying that *when* Sarah has someone unimportant she does the easy thing or is she saying that because Sarah had someone unimportant recently, she now always does the easy thing?
And I do realize that this is about the suicidal roommate, I just can’t make this sentence make sense for some reason.
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What the hell, Billie.
That was pretty much my reaction.
What sharp ears you have!
All the better to have great timing to make snarky comments.
And what biting wit!
And what a sharp tongue!
Am totally not snake. Come closer, my dear.
It must be elf blood. How many of her ancestors never had beards and hide their ears in photos?
For the beards, It’s pretty safe to assume that at the very least half of her ancestors didn’t grow any. For the ears, though, it’s a lot hazier.
He does raise a good question.
I know, right? What kind of person does take advanced math freshman year?
The kind who took the Advanced Placement math classes in high school and got all “A”s without having to work hard at it. Y’know, like Walky or me.
Rude awakenings suck, though at least I didn’t get hair malfunctions.
I hear you!
The first math lecture started out with binary maths and ended with being done with irrational numbers. And took up speed from there…
Getting through school without having to work on it really gets a downside when you start university.
Ah, we had it so much more leisurely here… Higher math for engineers, Germany. Basically about 3 weeks were spent mostly repeating the last 3 years of high school at a much more thorough and formal level. And then the pace kept up. High school did and did not prepare one for that. Basically the difference of getting hit with a brick wall while you are already in motion or while you haven’t learnt to walk yet.
Had the same pace in the US Naval Nuclear Power program…I lasted all of three weeks before I cracked and tried to use an old Asperger diagnosis to switch to a different program (got sent home instead).
Someone who likes to save the easiest for last?
Engineers.
Wooo calc 3 in my first semester. 3D vectors are fun.
Also the kind of freshman forced to due to having ridiculously high maths scores in high school.
I didn’t choose the honours life; the honours life chose me.
And the American education system of course.
*raises hand*
I got a whole degree in it, though, so I’m not exactly Joe Everyman here.
Same.
Likewise. Took the four semesters of calculus in three semesters option for my mathematics courses, before I changed my major to mathematics.
When you’ve taken college courses in the past and your academic advisor runs the Math Honor Society and wants you to graduate with a double major, yeah, she’ll make you take her advanced math course that’s all about the friggin’ notation
Billie I know you are sad and all, but you can’t just pick on people like that.
The evidence says that she can.
She can. But she shouldn’t, sooner or later she’ll aim a comment at someone she shouldn’t and there will be consequences.
But if she is suicidal, maybe she’d welcome those consequences.
I don’t think she’s that kind of depressed…she really does remind me of one of my roommates, just doesn’t give a damn about anything or anyone unless they get between her and her bottle-borne “friends”.
Like someone with a baseball bat. -wink-
Willis has decided to have his characters point out his own plot contrivances. That kinda takes the fun out of it.
Yeah, what’s the comments section for if we can’t do that? I mean, I guess we can still come up with new and exciting shipping combinations.
I am shipping Sarah’s headscarf thing with Walky’s left backpack strap and none of you can stop me!!
You shut your face, peasant. Everyone knows Left Backpack Strap has eyes only for Leafs Jersey.
Blasphemy! Leaf’s Jersey and Dina’s Hat are OTP!
Now you’re just talking crazy talk. Dina’s Hat is destined for an eternity of happiness with Dina’s Scalp. That brief fling with Ethan’s head was nothing more than a passing whim, which Dina’s Scalp consented to out of respect.
However, Dina’s Scalp took the opportunity to have a sexy fling with Tricera-Top.
And after their mutually consensual flings, the two were reunited with great vigor.
Dina’s Hat only has eyes for the Red Undercut!
Sarah would be great at CinemaSins™.
Cue inevitable “strap-on” joke in 5… 4… 3…
Remember, Joyce is a size six.
……inches
what is the plot contrivance here?
Having to retake calc is awful, but I wouldn’t call it not basic math considering what actual math majors take.
Pre-calc ≠ calc
Pre-calc is okay. Calculus derives me crazy.
Calculus isn’t the SAME as pre-calc, but it draws on a lot of stuff in pre-calc, borrowing from it, expanding on it, building on it…. it’s very derivative.
I see what you did there. But I think you forgot to put on your sunglasses before that last word.
get out
Indeed. Someone who succeeds at pre-calc will integrate well in a calc class.
Derivatives are child’s play. Undoing them is where things get ugly, like when resolving differential equations.
Derivatives were annoying. You spend the semester learning all sorts of complicated math & proofs to show you how they work and why. Then at the end they show you the tricks that make it easy to use them. 🙂
It was nonlinear partial differential equations that broke me, but that was a couple years down the line.
I bombed on Advanced Algebra because the teacher was a complete tool who couldn’t teach you how to count on your fingers. It completely confused math in my head, and I’ve had the devil of a time undoing it. As a result, I’m trying to re-teach myself math, along with electronics. I tend to buy or otherwise acquire books and hope osmosis brings understanding. Sigh…
Osmosis does kinda work but you have to read bits of it first.
Woops, sorry, I was projecting
My problem with calc was they only offered it at 7 AM, my brain doesn’t begin processing until 10 even if I’m up by 6. I took a 5 PM class that was translating the morning calc class into computer programs and got an A even though I was failing the morning class. You had to be understanding the morning class material to even get a passing grade in the evening class that I aced. I even wrote BASIC programs that parsed equations for integration or derivation. Couldn’t get either one in the morning class…
So…. you failed early math but passed BASIC math.
I took Calc 1 in my freshman year. It was right after lunch and the teacher made Ben Stein look like Richard Simmons. I’m lucky I never got a concussion from whanging my head on the desk when I fell asleep.
More importantly, what the hell is “Pre-Calc”??
I just remember going from Algebra and Trig to Algebra II to Advanced Algebra to Calc. I could have used some of that calc prep
“Pre-Calculus” is also known as “College Algebra”. It, as the first name suggests, teaches the foundation for Calculus without, as the second name suggests, actually teaching you anything Calculus. I think your school would have called it “Advanced Algebra”.
The whole name of the class is usually written as Pre-Calculus Algebra on course listings and textbooks, but Pre-Calculus is just faster to say.
We just called it “Algebra” until it was Calculus, then we called it “Calculus”
In my school we had pre-calculus which basically prepared your for sciences math, foundations for the humanities/social science students, and Workplace and Applications math for the trades school kids. Pre-calc covered algebra, trig, some geometry, and a few things I’m forgetting now in one class
My high school was just switching over from an “integrated math curriculum” (a little bit of everything every year) to that when I was in the senior math class (as a junior)…yeah, Pre-Calc and Advanced Algebra are the same thing, and Calc was an AP option at my high school.
We had “Consumer Math” too, but that was actively discouraged for anyone who had any intention of going to college.
I like it when people bond over getting dissed
Billie didn’t overhear them. She’s just reading the version of DoA’s cast page that exists in her head to her imaginary tiger Hobbes.
…Delirium Tremens is an ugly thing.
She’s been saying it every ten seconds, and it’s just the first time they’ve heard her.
Now all she needs to do is change it to “Ah, I’ve been expecting you.”
Then, she can just sit in a room alone all day, and when someone comes in to see what she’s muttering about in there, she’ll have the perfect line ready for them.
“Holy, shit! Somebody actually… aww, dangit, I fucked up!”
…wait, I thought he was still in Calc?
He is. Pre-calc is for… before calculus.
Ah yes, BC, or Before Calculus, the earlier period of the Newtonian calendar.
AD naturally stands for After Derivatives.
In that case, the hypothetical period: “Post Apocalypse” would become: “Post Arithmetic” a time in which, if your number comes up, you’d never know it.
I took beginning Calc in high school, but that only meant I was taking Calc 102 the first term of my freshman year instead of Calc 101.
They gave us Multivar Calc and Real Analysis in High School.
Walky’s…if he’s still in Calc he was never the math wiz he thought he was.
Plenty of schools don’t offer Calculus 1.
As I recall, everyone with a future in the sciences places into Lin Al – it’s not that hard in this day and age to learn enough calculus to pass a placement test, even if your school doesn’t teach it.
I find myself wondering how many different colors of head scarves Sarah HAS.
Hey! Now what’s Mike going to contribute to the conversation!?
A tangent about your mom and a nickel?
Well, that’s a given. But he also needs to induce some mind-shattering realisation, and no one is surprised by Mike’s nickeling at this point. If he doesn’t get the realisation, his contract will void.
Conversations with him can turn on a dime, or perhaps a small pebble.
That would be a sine of trouble.
Mike’ll find an angle of attack no doubt.
Thank you.
Gettin’ real tired of your shit, Billie.
Seriously, Billie, where the hell did that come from?
She’s comparing Sarah’s actions to Carla’s as they may end up having similar long-term results.
From the part of her that wants everyone else to feel as hurt and miserable as she does.
Aww, Billie. 🙁
The next few days (their time) of Billie detoxing, getting professional help, and waiting to hear about Ruth will be long ones for us huh FC?
Yeah. We’ve never seen her be anywhere near this angry or nasty, and it’s just so clear how torn up she is inside.
Why can’t all of these characters that I love so much just be happy all of the time and interact exclusively through hugging?
*gives Fart Captor a hug*
*gets farted on*
Jailbreak!
[distant sirens, dogs barking]
This universe’s Drama Tag got pulled early.
Random randomness, but up until a couple days ago I read your name as Fart Compactor and then Fart Copter. Migraines make my vision suck but your name is funny no mater how I see it XD
*side note: Mine (which I have used for years) was inspired by Starry Night. It still looks funny following yours 😉
Haha, well ”Fart Captor” is just a very obtuse butt metaphor that either came up with or forgot the original source of (not sure which anymore). I can’t quite picture how a fart coptor or compactor would work, but they have a nice ring to them as well
I’m glad I’m not the only one who is amused by it, in any case. I hope a smile is some consolation for your aching head!
I’m guessing a Fart Copter would either be when you fart and it comes out sounding like a helicopter starting up or a copter that runs off farts. Fart Compactor would be when you are trying very hard not to fart and squeeze your butt cheeks. I figured Fart Captor was either a reference to butts or someone who captures farts via proton pack or something. 😉
Great so Billies in a pick a fight mood because shes a general bongo but will use her depression and alcoholism as an excuse, nice one
What is this bongo thing I keep seeing in these comments?
It’s a censor for the slur for women that rhymes with witch.
Oh. I’ve seen it most used in reference to Billie, so I thought it might be some sort of slang for cheerleaders, possibly in reference to some movie I haven’t seen.
A certain word got overused a while back, Willis decided to replace it with “bongo”. The comments section has since run with it.
Willis turns the filter off every April 1st at update time, and sets it to automatically and retroactively resume after three people post that word. Just to confuse us.
Run with it, beat it to death, beat the corpse into a slimy paste, ground that paste further into the floor, burned the floor, resurrected it and beat it to death yet again.
Bongos are for beating.
….. by which I mean actual bongos, and not those people that bongos are a codeword for.
A) A percussion instrument of Afro-Cuban origins, often associated with the Beatnik movement.
B) The son of Binky in Matt Groening’s cult comic strip Life in Hell, which predates the Simpsons.
C) A word used to substitute for a known profanity pertaining to women on this website, enforced via word-substitution filter by David Willis after certain commenters used it too much.
You know I never really realized Life in Hell was THAT Matt Groenig (the stress meter and emotions chart strips have been in my mom’s office staples for as long as I can remember), but that makes so much sense now.
D) A comic book company Matt Groening owns that publishes comics based on The Simpsons and Futurama, named after B.
Willis had a problem some time back with posters using the derogatory word that begins with b and rhymes with itches, so he set up a script that any use of that word would be replaced by the word bongo. Now some posters just write bongo instead.
Willis put up a filter to screen out the technical term for a female canine, replacing it with an enjoyable percussion instrument. The filter. Annoy be beaten. The drums may.
The filter cannot be beaten. Darn autocorrect.
Hey now, I thought you had the first three lines of a decent slam poem there.
Some people type out ‘percussion instrument’ too. I know of five filters. Two being slurs for women, one of which replaces the word with ‘bongo’, and the other one just nullifies your comment. One is a Street Fighter quote that was overused when Sal/Amber/Amazi-Girl’s origin was shown, the quoted is just deleted, rest of post stays. Current political front runner names get switched out, and I’ve heard that ‘First’ posts in the first section get dumped.
And the acronym for one particular flavor of internet scum typically associated with tumblr used to autocorrect to ‘glistening phallus,’ but that filter seems to no longer be active.
Wooooow you think they were autocorrected because the people _being complained_ about are internet scum, rather than because the people who complain about them are obnoxious trolls. Yeesh.
Like many terms for human filth, it’s often applied unjustly.
To clarify, since that was a little harsh and different people have different experiences and definitions for labels:
That acronym makes me think of ‘die cis scum’ idiots and others who’re just one more flavor of bigotry and intolerance, not folks who just want to be treated as human beings and allowed to live their lives.
…well gee, if my girlfriend was currently hospitalized and suicidal, I might not be in the chipperest of moods either.
Like that was absolutely unnecessary of Billie to say, but calling depression and alcoholism “excuses” to be a [censored gendered slur] is pretty rude and unnecessary too.
She’s not using anything as an excuse right now. She’s torn up inside and lashing out.
If they call her out on it and she responds with “Well, I’m depressed and detoxing, so it’s okay”, THAT would be using them as an excuse.
I disagree. You still have to give yourself permission to do things that you think are wrong.
I’ve been depressed. None of it makes you act like this. You get angry, but it doesn’t make you attack people.
Snark like this requires thought. It’s not something you can do automatically.
In my experience, snark like that doesn’t require much thought; the roadblock is working up the courage to say it. And I usually don’t, down or no (and it’s harder when I’m down). In Billie’s case, I think she’s well practiced in the art of vicious snark – she is a former cheerleader after all.
Also, in this instance, I think there’s a bit of “kill me now” in that remark. She witnessed the Battening, remember? She knows just how violent Sarah can get.
Not excusing her behavior, mind you. That was a very low blow, even for Billie, and I would not called it “snark”. An opportunistic insult, maybe, but not snark.
Depression is soul cancer which no two people experience the same. When I got out of the hospital many years ago, I was out of my god damn mind and while I was having conversations and stuff like a normal human being, I also acted like an asshole and lashed out a lot when I wasn’t crying or too depressed to move. Did I have control over my actions? Not really considering that I only have tiny fragments of memory for like the first week or two out of the hospital.
I like that description. ‘Soul cancer’.
That’s a good song title!
Emo, alternative, or metal?
Hell, that would make a good band name.
Agreed to both!
I know! Let’s have Willis make them an in universe college band.
@Bluewind THIS SO MUCH. I’ve got depression, and PTSD from Afghanistan, among other things. For years after I got out I struggled with nigh uncontrollable anger. I wasn’t ever violent, but I said things that were arguably worse than physical violence to people sometimes. Yet the truth was that I was keeping myself perpetually angry, or distracted by video games/media because I was soul crushingly depressed, and often times suicidal. It was like the worst kind of epiphany when I found myself alone facing my innermost demons. The anger left, and was replaced with sadness that felt all consuming. A lot of angry people are broken, and are too messed up to face their sadness without risking potential self harm. A lot of my old comrades have friends who went through this cycle, and ended up taking their own lives. I’m not that much better these days, but I have realized my shortcomings, and I’m taking medication for anger. I like to think it helps.
I’m really happy I could let you know that there are people out there who understand and I’m glad that you were able to get help. I hope you keep getting it even when it’s hard to do. I had PTSD from surviving an abusive childhood and I know it’s hard and won’t get better overnight. I hope that the meds are helping, but if you feel like they aren’t or like the side effects are getting to you, make sure to tell your doctor just in case they need to tweak your meds. If you feel suicidal, tell them that too because they need to know. They won’t hospitalized you unless you are an immediate risk right that minute, so hiding it hurts nobody but you. Believe me; I know. I’m much better than I once was. It just takes a while for everybody.
Have you heard about the studies into MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy? It’s showing a lot of promise for treating PTSD!
I’m mostly agreeing with this. Billy doesn’t need to actually give an excuse for this to be shitty behaviour, even though I understand that she’s in a bad depression- I’ve been there before.
Saying something cruel, a lot of times, can require intellectual thought to it – what can I say that would hurt this person most? She didn’t do something base, like call Sarah a bongo or some other name. She pointed out something deeply personal, and, I may add, she knows nothing the details about, despite her experiences with Ruth and the RAs.
And I say “mostly” because it is hard – where does the line get drawn between the person and the illness? Because illness can definitely make someone do and say awful things. Maybe it’s because as a society we don’t think of depression or anxiety the same way we think of schizophrenia. That being said, it doesn’t mean Sarah (or anyone else) has to tolerate Billie’s behaviour – that would be healthy for neither of them.
If it’s not actually brain cancer or something that removes their agency, that’s where the line is.
As long as they’re choosing to say it, responsibility’s on them.
From what I gather, Billie is referring to Dana, from last semester. Billie is one of only three people (the other two being Joyce and Dina) who know Sarah’s side of that story. This of course makes it much worse. Sarah is now two for three on people who used Dana against her, and this one actually meant to hurt.
I’m not saying it’s not shitty behavior. It absolutely is.
But saying she’s using her depression as an excuse implies that she’s consciously using that to justify her behavior and she absolutely is not.
If they actually got her to explain why the hell she said that, “depression” and “alcoholism” would never come up. There would be an angry rant about how Sarah is horrible for calling Dana’s parents that would probably lead to another angry rant about how Carla is horrible for broadcasting Ruth’s situation because now Billie and Ruth have been separated and if Ruth loses her job she’ll have to go home to her abusive grandfather and then Billie and Ruth won’t die together like she wanted
Yeah, as someone back in The Pit, my meltdown lashouts aren’t reasonable, at best they’re internally consistent, but mostly I just want you to leave me alone (so I can curl up and die thanks) and am frustrated existence is continuing around me. Thanks for that one brain.
Agreed.
I think maybe the problem here is that Billie’s words are hurtful regardless of whether or not she’s “to blame” for them. Like, why she said them isntbnecessarily something Sarah needs to take in to account before deciding whether or not it sucks that Billie is saying them.
Or that it’s not okay to feel upset that Billie said them “because she’s depressed”.
But both things can be true. It doesn’t have to be Billie making a clear and weighted DECISION to be a jerk for Sarah to be owed an apology later… If I’m making sense.
Billie is not a w(b)itch. Never really was one. I think you have your horse before the cart here.
She is not ‘using’ her depression and alcholism’ as an excuse to be a w(b)itch: the depression and alcoholism is using her.
Fourth panel Walky: “You what.”
Walky might appreciate a math class I took in college: Chaos and Fractals. It dealt with the ways a seemingly simple logical system can STILL result in unpredictable results when iterated.
Some people are just sponges when it comes to math like that.
Seriously, I’m decently good at math, but you better believe I never pursued more than I needed for my degree.
I do not envy STEM students who must take up that burden.
But…. but… but…
… but math is FUN!
Seriously! Orders of infinity! MIND-BLOWING!
o hello are we considering talking about abstract algebra and number theory? we like abstract algebra and number theory.
TRIED TO MAKE A MATHS SYSTEM WHERE THE SQUARE ROOT OF -1 IS A RATIONAL NUMBER ROLL CALL
i don’t think that’s natural.
I see what you did there.
I’m glad you did. Took like three hours…
*Ponders a pencil & paper RPG where Mathematician is a class, and one might roll a natural 20 for “Make a Maths System.”
But it is rational.
Well, I never tried that but I have tried to come up with a base pi system.
_Also_ very cool. 😀
STEM student here (engineering, specifically). As a rule we tend to like the math, even though it does get a little overwhelming at times. Plus, you know how many foreign languages I had to learn? Zero. Differential equations I can deal with. Picking up Spanish quickly enough to keep up with a college course? Nope. No way. Not happening – and that’s by far my second best language.
I’m a little confused; to what exactly is Billie referring?
Sarah’s roommate in her freshman year (Dana) was yanked from school after Sarah reported her (Dana’s) drug use to her (Dana’s) father. This did not go down well with Dana’s friends. Billie has heard about this and is using it to swipe at Sarah.
Joyce: My mother has often said to me: “A woman may not be too careful in her choice of enemies, for once she has chosen…she has forfeited a friend. These are words my mother has lived by, for she is Carol Brown and her life is her word.
That so many of her carefully chosen enemies should become my friends has shown to me that her life’s path is paved with evil, and that she is an enemy even to her friends…even to her daughter.
If anyone can actually tell me what I’m referencing here, I will draw whatever you want. (well, anything not creepy)
Wilde story, man.
Born To Be Wilde?
Oscar?
Yup.
Dont even walk on that side.
FU MANCHU (or shang-chi)
marvel knowledge is actually useful, huzzah!
I wasn’t sure if you wanted the original dad, or the character who said it SO.
you win!
What do you want!?
KKoro, you can have a drawing as well.
pls draw me a sal/joyce picture. Something cute/fluffy possibly. c:
http://marvel.wikia.com/wiki/Giant-Size_Master_of_Kung_Fu_Vol_1_3
Why is your comment moderated so much faster than mine is?
To my knowledge, DYW only manually comments with two or more links to them (or if it’s a new commenter).
I’m one of the guys who took Calculus freshman year because I did so well in high school math. I failed, and stubbornly keep taking it every semester there after and failed every time until I dropped out of school in frustration after my junior year. I then went back home, finally learned my lesson that there are some things I’ll never be smart enough to understand.
Heh. Or the college wasn’t very good at teaching. I went from an F to an A in Algebra when I retook it at a college that focused on teaching instead of just assuming you were just there to go through the motions.
Eh. Took one semester of college Calc and switched majors, then switched them again. Dean’s List from there on. Differing talents rather than smarts. Most people can live productive and even number-informed lives without Calc.
But what about the odd numbers?
Failing a class can be a sign that the class or the major is not for you. I personally don’t think it’s a matter of being “smart” so much as everyone on the planet doesn’t need to be talented at math, the same way many people won’t become doctors, etc. Like, I decided early on in college that I didn’t have the drive or the mental resilience to put myself through medical school. I had a lot of feelings of inadequacy, but I knew in my heart I just didn’t want to put myself through that.
And that’s okay – not eveyone is meant to be that – and, there are a million different things people can do. But, what schools have been promoting for the last 30 years is STEM, STEM, STEM, to the point where other professions become devalued.
But Walky is going to be Pre-Med, even if he doesn’t know it yet.
Oh goodness, parents and pressure go together like macaroni and cheese. Some of the stories I heard in college, some of the experiences I had myself, I tell ya..
I don’t get it- since the beginning of evolution, the method of having offspring is to impart your emotional, intellectual, and biological knowledge onto your children, and then let them do their own thing as functional human beings. I’m not a parent, but if my hypothetical kids functioned as best they could I’d be happy. Some people cling to their children, it’s almost like they WANT them to live at home until they’re 60.
An awful lot of parents don’t want children, they want clones of themselves, but turned up to 11.
Actually, I’m happy I can’t get into the brain of people who think like that. It’s an awful world out there for a lot of kids. I wish I could be the person who says they don’t know what it’s like to live with someone like that, but unfortunately this isn’t the case.
It’s a pretty simple mindset to figure out when you realize they essentially want to see someone avoid making the mistakes – real or perceived – that they made, and become, do, or accomplish what they couldn’t or didn’t.
That’s an intimately familiar flavor of disappointment for many, many people.
They want them to succeed where they failed, and live vicariously thru them.
Not interested in having my kids repeat my mistakes. They should make new and different ones. No point in parenting them otherwise. So far they are finding different and interesting ones.
Parental pressure is pretty much the only reason I even went to college. And I was miserable. To this day I’m convinced that it was the biggest mistake of my life, and I would have been better off just getting a job with a local contractor instead (there is still a big housing market out here in California for some reason, even though it’s a lot of the time people attempting to ‘flip’ a house for a quick profit).
Funny, mine encouraged me to take a lucrative welding job out of state building oil pipelines in Carolina, but noooo, I had to be like everyone else and go to college. Which worked out well until I Walky’d my way into just pretending classes where I did poorly didn’t exist, rather than formally dropping them so I wouldn’t get put on probation for failing classes by deluding myself into thinking they didn’t count if I didn’t go to class or show up for the final.
What? I typed welding, why’d it come out as kaineing? I know Willis has some filters running, but I have no idea why the word for joining pieces of metal together would come out as anything other than itself, itself being spelled by the initials of Walrus Elephant Lion Dromedary.
I’m not sure why We ld is censored. Odd…and perhaps unrelated fact: We ld is the name of the VP running with Gary Johnson, 3rd party. Kaine is the name of the Clinton’s VP.
Ok, I cracked the code. Type John son, see Clinton, type W eld, see Kaine.
Its political.
What happens when I write the GOP ticket? Trump Pence?
It seems to be caused by the same issue that once had a censor replacing all instances of ass with butt, causing such things as “buttbuttin” or “clbuttification”
The primordial example of this is the administrative centre of the North Lincolnshire unitary authority.
I Walky’d it up much in the same way. Crippling anxiety, PTSD and high functionality on the spectrum that were both undiagnosed, severe depression, jackass “American Pie” style roommates, and multiple family deaths during the period. Just made me Walky it up even worse, mainly through staggering amounts of procrastination and self-isolation.
I have two colleagues who are father and son. The son is nearly 40 years old, but he and his sister both still live at home with Mom and Dad. Neither seems to have any inclination to move out on their own. That seems pretty strange to me, I wanted to get out of the nest and live my own life as soon as I could.
… I took Calculus freshman year. Got an A. Took Calc 2 also. Also got an A.
I was an English major. I needed Calc for absolutely nothing.
Then took Discrete Math and it bent me over and wailed on my tender ass like my Junior year boyfriend. I think I managed a B- eventually.
The answer to your next question: because I had this idea about taking a computer science minor that crashed and burned because I sucked at programming.
I see. So then you dated a guy who wailed on your ass because you wanted to make it numb, so sitting in front of a computer for long periods writing code wouldn’t bother you. Clever.
Comfortably Numb?
Rule 51?
Reward anyone who adds to your profits so they will continue to do so.
Internet, not Aquisition.
Those don’t sound like The Happiest Days…
No no no. I sucked at programming my sophomore year. I dated my Junior year boyfriend because he was incredibly sexy. With great hotness comes great… what was I just saying?
Just because you are hurting does not make it okay to try and hurt everyone else.
I’m glad it’s going this way. I’m glad her little threat last time isn’t being treated like she’s just angry and all acceptable. Joyce was just trying to change the subject since Billie didn’t want to talk about her problems.
Problem is, I’m not sure how the hell to deal with this. I know my first instinct, but that’s useless and would only make things worse.
They’re already doing all they can: Give her space and try not to take it personally.
Hopefully Billie’s first therapy session is today, because the longer the delay, the more things she’s going to need to apologize for later, and the harder it will be on the people trying to be there for her.
That’s strange because everyone I talk to all agree that college calculus, and even AP calc was 100% easier than high school precalc. But maybe because precalc at our HS was abnormally difficult. But usually the math/science track students like calculus more? That’s what I see the most anyway
I chalk (yay Latin puns!) their enjoyment of calculus up to incalculable masochism. That stuff derives me crazy, and lacks a way to integrate it into daily life. At least trig has some uses, if only tangentially.
Sines, sines, everywhere are sines,
Splitting up my memory, across from cosines.
I think we’ve reached our limit when it comes to your puns. They’re like an insidious inflection.
I feel like they’re more dry, yet well seasoned.
Discrete mathematics and linear algebra have actually made engineering really easy.
…dear god
I just want to hug Walky. He knows he is smart and a lot more of his self worth is tied to it than he let’s on, but he’s struggling and failing at something that has always been natural to him. He’s calling himself a shameful embarrassment because he can handle this class and refuses to admit he needs help much less that he could and maybe should drop the class. I wonder where all this negative self talk came from? Could it be because his feelings, how his parents raised him, or the pressure put on him from having a twin labeled as the troublesome one?
That Perfect Boy?
Agreed. Before, it was just cocky kid who didn’t have to work hard in high school comes to the realization that he needs to start actually trying (which was actually relatable to me, so I liked it). But this strip went a lot deeper into why this realization shakes him to his core so much- I’d wager the parenting situation was a big part. Just like their parents placed the “rotten child” title onto Sal, they played the “golden boy” title onto Walky. Walky wasn’t safe from his parents’ (specifically, mother’s) authoritative parenting, he just received it differently. That strip where his mom insists that he’ll be a pre-med major rather than communications really demonstrated her stance on her expectations for Walky. It’s also probably self-imposed to an extent, since he doesn’t want to be so neglected like Sal.
The only problem with that statement that last statement is, it’s not true. Walky and Sal had a couple scenes facing up to the fact that Walky was doted on by both parents and Sal was ‘invisible’. Walky could do no wrong, and Sal could do no right: she wasn’t mistreated, she was ignored.
After parents weekend at the dorm, Sal made Walky face up to that fact. And to the fact that he was favored because he looked more white than she did.
Walky knew all this but never really acted on it because he had no real clue how badly Sal was hurting, and he liked being special. He admitted all this, and then really felt bad for the treatment his sister had put up with all their childhood year.s
Right, but I’d argue that this is the first-ish time showing the negative impact on Walky. Clearly Sal’s situation is worth, but Walky has never expressed that his trouble with failing Calculus had to do with his parents’ expectations.
Oh Walky. Oh dear, dear Walky. The ‘crap I should’ve dropped this class there is no actual stigma to dropping classes WHY DIDN’T I DROP THIS CLASS’ Lesson is a really really sucky lesson to learn.
Some of us never manage to internalize it.
Unless you live in a contry where education wors differently and dropping classes is not a thing you can do 😀
Stupid typos.
Tell you what, let’s just hug everyone.
Even Ross?
Well, he’d absolutely hate getting hugged by all these godless sodomites, but there’s no way he doesn’t have some weird, permeating odor when you get up close to him, so I think not
Okay, I think I get what’s going on here —
Sarah got her former roommate (can’t remember her name right now…) help when it was clear that she had a problem and Sarah wasn’t enough.
Billie tried to help Ruth, couldn’t, and didn’t take the next step. She either views Sarah’s actions as a personal failure — not trying hard enough, not caring enough, something like that — or is trying to convince herself to do so in order to feel like she did the right thing in not reporting Ruth’s situation.
Tl;dr: yikes, Billie.
I think also Billie is projecting Carla’s actions (re: Ruth) onto Sarah (re: Dana, who is Sarah’s ex-roomie).
Like, Sarah and Carla both exposed somebody’s not-so-functional depression, which torpedoed their person’s current life at school. For both, the depressed person was in a downward spiral and didn’t want to be outed (hell, they even both had an over-reliance on substances). We don’t know yet whether their exposure is for the better or worse, but it was against the person’s wishes.
I thought Dana was less depression and more drugs.
Its more about how the problem was solved and the unintended consequences resulting from being sent back to bad situation at home.
Except there’s no evidence her home life is bad. It is definitely a possibility, yes.
But Dana’s current status is entirely unknown. The best we got is that, the last time Raidah talked to her, Dana may have implied that she wasn’t better off than she had been at school. When was the last time? A week? A month? Six months? We dunno! And that vague snippet of info comes from the most biased source: a person who has vested interest in making Sarah the villain, because it justifies her bullying campaign and assuages her guilt for failing to help her friend. How much of that is Raidah, who was entirely unaware of Dana’s actual emotional state prior to it being outed, reacting to the curtain being lifted?
Unless I missed an update on that situation.
Furthermore, Dana was depressed. Unless she got great treatment that was immediately effective, which is incredibly unlikely, it’s doubtful she’ll be rating her quality of life very high any time soon. I know there were numerous times while I was recovering from depression that I would have definitely preferred being mostly numb to everything than having to actually feel anything. Even though, in retrospect, even the terrible times of recovery were much better than the pre-treatment times.
Other commenters have noted there were a lot of warning signs that Dana’s home life was not great. It also explains why Raidah — who genuinely seems to have been Sarah’s friend at one point — would think Sarah is so horrible for getting Dana sent home. She knew about her situation at home, but couldn’t see the situation Sarah was seeing.
That’s not really the point, though. I think that both Sarah and Carla made the best decisions available to them. There might have been better ways, but immediate action was needed.
Billie, however, is not seeing things that way. Much like when Joyce made similar mean comments because she was worked up and defensive about Becky, Billie is frightened / angry about the possibility of Ruth being similarly taken away and put in a bad situation, which Sarah is an especially convenient target to project her anger on.
The bad home life could be true or not true. I’ll offer an alternative – often a university/college will force a student to take a leave of absence and or withdraw from school. When a student withdraws under circumstances of mental illness, rather than say, studying abroad, it is extremely difficult sometimes to matriculate again – how to catch up, will you graduate with your class, can you handle the rigors of academic life, these are reasons the school will keep a person from coming back. A lot of schools are simply terrible at handling it. It’s actually become quite a problem across the USA.
I propose that that may have something to do with why Dana is still at home, rather than at school. Additionally to the above, a lot of students leave without a treatment plan in place – they simple go home and “home” has to take care of it. One of the advantages of being on campus is the free/close by counseling.
Also: Dana’s use of drugs is probably a huge factor in why she left. It complicates her case, because most schools ban the use of drugs on campus. So now it’s a double whammy – the school wants her to leave to take care of herself, but also because it doesn’t tolerate drug usage.
Or the school wants her to leave so anything bad that happens to her won’t cause them adverse publicity.
True or not, Billie’s aware that’s what Raidah thinks, and that’s the narrative that lets her lash out at Sarah.
Anger isn’t really big on fact-checking.
Does the school know she’s on weed? Sarah only mentioned calling Dana’s dad, and he may have conveniently left that part out when he withdrew her from school.
SB – that, too. Many schools won’t deal.
FC – that is also true.
BBCC – Could be- but I should add that taking a leave of absence, sabbatical, being abroad are all different from withdrawing. When you withdraw, that’s pretty much it, because your spot is actually gone and given to someone else who is transferring after you or whatever. And you’re still responsible for most of your tuition – that alone keeps a lot of people from going back as well.
After that if you want to get back in you actually have to apply all over again, with your probable suffering grades, and hope you beat out a bunch of other qualified people. I wonder if her dad actually withdrew her from school..
According to Sarah, her dad came and pulled her out of school after she told him from the situation. He may have either put her on leave for recovery or withdrew her, we’re not 100% clear on that situation. He may have done so on the grounds she was an emotional wreck.
Yeap. The abuse is speculation. All we know is that she had pretty moderate to severe depression, was trying to self medicate with weed, and it wasn’t working. And it was affecting Sarah. That’s not selfish of her at all to feel. That’s why I can’t blame Sarah for what she chose to do.
As a former RA, I’ve had to make similar choices. And I also had some people mad at me for a while because they felt it wasn’t my place to call the proper authorities (lol, that was literally my job). The fact is, you can’t deal with all everything, least of all mental illness, on your own. And if you ever get to a place where you can’t take care of yourself, someone has to make the call for you. And that’s not terrible. That’s lucky – many people don’t have anyone to truly care a lick about them when the shit finally hits the fan. What were Dana’s so called vigilant and devoted friends doing while she was holed up in her room smoking the days away anyway?
Calling for help. It’s not easy. It’s not simple. It’s not selfish. Everything doesn’t always have a happy result, but then again untreated depression doesn’t tend to have happy results either. Sarah’s ex-mates treat her badly, but they probably won’t understand until they get older/become in charge of a person they need to take care of.
You forgot the part where we know it was the loss of Dana’s mum that sent her spiraling into depression to start with. She originally used weed just for fun then it turned into a reliance after her mother’s death and Sarah did give her time to recover, she did tolerate crying, she did tolerate the drug use – she gave her a reasonable quantity of time to get better if it were just grief, and when she wasn’t recovering, Sarah did TRY to tell their other friends that she wasn’t as well as she tried to project BEFORE she ultimately made the call to Dana’s dad.
She only made that tough call because no one else was listening when she said ‘Dana’s not better’ and she couldn’t tolerate it any longer which is fair enough as it was not her job to sit quietly and tolerate someone’s untreated depression forever.
It also wasn’t her first idea – her first idea was a therapist. Which, even if it WERE simple grief and not dangerous, potentially escalating depression, they have therapists for that. They’re called bereavement counsellors and from what we saw, I think Dana certainly would have benefitted from one. Dana’s other friends disagreed and basically refused to help her convince Dana to see one (or even suggest one).
If you won’t make use of campus resources yourself, and Sarah can’t legally force her (for very good reason) what else can she do but seek help outside the campus from Dana’s family?
Nope, kinda wrong there.
Drugs, and grief over her mother’s death. No suicidal ideation or physical danger, as far as anyone knows, and we don’t know whether all that pot was impacting Dana’s studies, which is why her friends don’t find it quite as clear-cut as Ruth’s situation.
It was horrifying, crippling depression that she hid from her friends and took refuge from in marijuana.
The drugs were part of the issue, but I’m not sure they were the main part.
Yes Dana’s was drugs, and depression. Her friends were ignoring the fact she was in trouble or just didn’t know what to do.
Sarah was afraid she was going to lose her scholarship if her roomie was busted they both would likely be. And she was afraid Dana was going to OD. So she wasn’t totally altruistic about it, she saved her life.
And she did not screw up Dana’s schooling, Dana did that all by
herself. Sarah called Dana’s father to come get her. The office admin. didn’t know about the drugs I think.
But Dana’s so called good friend Raidia made Sahara’s life miserable after that. And Sarah just shut them all out.
correction: the characters don’t know whether exposure was for the better or worse. I think it’s pretty clear to the all-seeing audience that Ruth’s situation was completely untenable, and that she really had to get professional attention sooner or later, ‘Sir’ be damned, or that depression was gonna eat her alive.
I think that Dana also needed to take a leave of absence, but her friends disagree, and I don’t think it’s quite as clear-cut as it is with Ruth.
Yeah. Even Billie, who knows as much as we do, isn’t willing to see that something else needed to be done. She thought that either they would get through it together, or definitively not get through it together, and she was okay with either as long as the “together” part was assured.
And that was the part that Carla’s intervention may have ruined. 🙁
For me the big failure class was Chemistry 110. The story was that was supposed to be pretty much like Grade 12 chemistry in high school. It wasn’t. Ended up taking Geology 100 in summer school to get my science requirement.
Geology is nice. It’s intuitive, it makes sense, it’s not always clear-cut but the rules are generally logical.
Chemistry is none of those things.
Hoo boy, here we are in lash-out central.
Beware low-flying quips.
So she purposely avoided conversation with them just to jump in the middle of one to personally attack someone she rarely interacts with just tone take out her anger on something.
Okay I know she’s going through the stages of acceptance and she’s currently on anger but even I’m like “what the hell” !?
She and Sarah used to interact relatively regularly until the day Sarah told them part of her backstory, at which point Billie accused her of always wanting to contact parents and get rid of people she doesn’t like. Sarah smacked her lunch tray away and they didn’t interact again until Joyce’s dorm party.
This is shitty, but it’s hardly Billie’s first time hurling Dana in Sarah’s face.
On Billie: I genuinely don’t understand her comment – what is she referring to? Ruth, or Sarah’s old roommate? Or both? Either way, that’s not very kind.
On Walky: Basic math is not for embarassments. There are great disparities in the American Education System that lead to many kids coming to college without basic knowledge of all kinds of things, hence colleges will have basic classes to more advanced ones. Pre-calc is simply the class before calc.
Additionally, many schools still adhere to the “common core” logic of courses, which typically include mandatory requirements of at least one class in math, english, language, an elective (like PE or art), among other things. If I wasn’t a math major, I definitely would not want to waste my time and energy on a difficult course like calc.
It’s sad that he’s being so hard on himself for not knowing everything, even though it logically does not make any sense – that’s why he’s there, to learn, not to breeze through by magically knowing anything. Many of us have been there though – you’re special, and when you get to college, you’re simply one of many. This is the time where it’s crucial to do what you can to develop enough confidence that you belong there, so you don’t give up and fall by the wayside.
She is definitely referring to Dana. Sarah had nothing to do with Ruth, but Billie’s probably spent hours in bed before falling asleep, thinking and thinking and thinking. And at some point, she probably started seeing the parallels between Ruth and Dana’s situation at some point.
Since that’s the case, I wonder if Billie really understands at this point how INCREDIBLY (i don’t know how to use bold font!) difficult it is to ask for help in a situation like that. It takes such an emotional toll on a person, maybe she will realize this when she is healthier. I also think she is very young and when you’re in a relationship at that age, nothing else matters. Your life is that person. Even though in reality you have a long life ahead of you, where you will meet many other people and do lots of sutff. But that’s hard to see when you’re still 17/18, AND depressed to boot.
And then Sarah got ostracized by her former friends for it, which is really unfair. Dana needed help. Period. It might not have happened the way she wanted it to, but the alternative was succumbing to her depression, so what else what Sarah supposed to do? What if she had said nothing and Dana had hurt herself? Then they’d be giving her shit for not saying anything.
In short, Billie doesn’t know what she’s talking about.
To get bold text do it like this:
[b]stuff you want bolded[/b]
Except that instead of square brackets you use angle brackets (“greater than” and “less than”)(shift-, and shift-. on a QWERTY keyboard).
Italics are the same, except [i] and [/i]
This will be on the final!
testing.
For the record you can use & lt ; and & gt ; like so < and > to show someone the angle brackets in regards to html. Now watch me mess this up…
obviously (or not so obviously really) without the spaces between the letters and the & and ; &letters;
An excess of that confidence can be a detriment. If one’s too confident, it can lead to refusing to seek help, preferring to lie to oneself and everyone one knows rather than accept that things have gotten bad and the pit is too deep to climb out of without help. If that goes on for too long, then by the time this hypothetical person accepts that they need to look around for someone to help them climb out of the metaphorical pit, they’re in too deep to even see out above the ground.
Ah, you are correct. I should elaborate – when you have no confidence, and you feel like you don’t belong or deserve to be there. By that I mean in school, taking advantage of the resources and all else it has to offer, which can include remedial classes or tutors.
It leads to cases like Walky’s where he immediately chalks his failures up to being stupid (an immovable personality trait) rather than something he has done wrong that he can actually work on. So he thinks he should just keep his head down and keep doing what he’s always been doing. He barrels towards failure in this way to “prove” his worth, meaning he can do it all on his own (without realizing he can’t), accepts his fate rather than seeking help, and then fails.
At the risk of sounding like a dick or subtly bragging- isn’t pre-calc regular level math for high schoolers? The way we did it at my high school, the normal approach was to go geometry -> Algebra II -> Pre-calc -> AP Calc AB/BC. If you were behind, you started at a more elementary math, and then went on to geometry for the next year. Taking pre-calc as a senior would mean you were behind the rest of your grade.
Same.
The sad thing is, outside the US, the standard is finishing calculus (out through 4, aka Differential Equations) by the end of high school.
Remember, if the students aren’t working hard enough in high school, just lower the expectations until everyone passes. Then universities can make extra money from students who have to take remedial math before they can move on to classes that actually count towards a degree.
Same here.
Some of us did the AP Calc BC early and went on to diffyQ and then abstract algebra and advanced topics.
Then super-cranky first undergraduate college which shall not be named but is in the United States did not believe me and made me take Calc… III, I think, again? So I did no homework and no studying and sat in the front row correcting the teacher and just did tests and quizzes and still got a B, after which they said FINE DO WHATEVER YOU WANT which was apparently what they considered “graduate school level independent study” in differential equations but which seemed to me to be “diffyQ, but more, and at least I’m not bored now.”
In my high school, that was the “advanced” track–“regular” track started with some kind of general math and ended with pre-calc. If you needed something more advanced, you could take math classes through college, but you still had to pass the requisite high school classes… or at least, I assume that’s why our valedictorian was in my AP Calc AB class at the same time he was taking Calc III and DiffEq.
I would die. I have no head for math. I consistently failed Algebra I across three separate high schools. Chemistry was just math with symbols and concepts I could not understand.
I’m not sure what Billie is referring to with Sarah? Do you?
Billie was there when Sarah talked about her old roommate (I just checked to make sure, by the way). And now Billie is throwing that back in her face. My reply to Mav and my own comment below has more text about this, so I won’t repeat it here.
Billie fails small talk forever.
NOT SMALL ENOUGH!
Heh. Given an archaic definition for ‘mean…’
In high school we got “Integral Calculus” and “Diferential Calculus”… I was kind of terrible in both but I saved the grade with tutoring help… no idea if I could have got better at it or not…
So HEY how about Mike and Joyce! She’s slamming him alright, right?
Oooooooh, drama upcoming!
And once again, Billie shows that she cares about Ruth more than she does for herself. Three days ago, I thought she was still worried sick about Ruth and how Ruth is in big fucking problems right now, rather than simply withdrawal symptoms. And this strip provides more evidence for that. Anything that reminds her of how Ruth is in trouble will set her off just like that.
In a strange way, that is the cute part about this.
But on the other hand, seeing as how she’s so easily set off, she should -not- be where she is right now. Maybe she’s not as clearly suicidal as Ruth, but she’d nevertheless be far better off speaking to a professional right now, rather than forcing herself into this “normal” life. Then at least, whoever she’d lash out to would be someone who would (one hopes) be able to understand why and just let it fly by, knowing it’s not really personal.
That is the sad part about this.
And Walky… Man, this was me when I was 16. I took hard math in first year of “high school” even though I wasn’t going to keep up math in the next two years, and I did it only because I thought I’d ace it by definition.
And yeah, there was a certain bit of that type of “only dumb people do easy math” elitist toxicity too. Pity my first rude awakening of reality didn’t take.
But…you aced it, right?
Heh… Hehe… Hahaha…
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Oh, Orion Fury, your optimism is almost as endless as Bagge’s and Fart Captor’s.
(And yeah, I know you weren’t serious.)
You’re as wise as you are generous, sir.
….maybe everyone will get a hug and a free puppy today?
For a puppy to truly be free, no one must get it.
Sarcastically literal philosophical nonsense aside, free puppies for everyone!*
*This offer only valid where local puppies are being given freely to good homes, check your local listings.
Sign in my local pet store:
Unattended children will be given an espresso and a free puppy.
We usually threaten to teach them LARP.
“Congratulation, parents. Your kids now have an awesome hobby and you have run out space in your garage”
Oh god. I thought I was the only fool who took calc as a first-year college freshman, even though I didn’t need to. I flunked it on my first semester, then flunked it again when I tried retaking it to replace the F with a higher grade to save my GPA. My spirit was crushed that year. 🙁
I’m sensing Linda’s (or maybe Charles’) words in those comments about success from Walky. Possibly both.
Interesting that both kids felt pressured to take a class neither enjoys nor is well suited for (sure, Sal’s figuring it out, but daaaamn these parents screwed their kids up).
I got a degree that I didn’t want cause of my mother. Wrap your mind around that.
Yeowch, that had to suck. I’m sorry to hear that.
I’ve heard stories like that and all I can summon is anger for it, but that doesn’t help, so again I am sorry and I hope you found something that worked for you.
Nope, unfortunately. Stuck in min wage work, cause the degree is worthless, plus I don’t care much for the field now. I want to start saving up to go back for child psych, though.
Ugh, that’s the worst. I’m sorry to hear that and wish you luck on your child psych endeavours.
Thank you.
You know usually I don’t suggest breaking out the big guns like this but drastic times call for drastic measures… let Mike talk to her.
Mike here seems less ‘big gun’ and more ‘chemical weapon in violation of the Geneva Codes’.
Hey, when a situation calls for destruction anything that gets the job done will do.
Dang straight!
I can’t decide if that would be a really good idea or a really, really bad one.
There’s a quick and easy way to find out.
I’m the idiot who took advance math and science in senior year when I didn’t need them for my advance diploma and then almost lost said diploma because I almost failed both.
But that saved me doing it in college. Major just needs *a* math credit? Sure I’ll take an idiot’s guide to word problems 😀
Kudos on the ‘almost.’
At my school, psychology counted as a quantitative credit. I stupidly took calc, but there’s that I guess. I got a 1 on the AP exam and they still put me there.
Holy crap Billie, this one’s up there with Sarah’s ‘well you can’t be THAT torn up’ comment back in last storyline for uncalled-for asshatitude. Speaking of which, yet more evidence Sarah’s been dealing with low key constant depressive shit for the last year. Get these girls in therapy stat. Though hopefully the immediate show of Billie’s bad mental state means everyone’s keyed in on her now too, cause she needs it.
Ouch. The mirth is just spreading today.
I have a weird feeling people didn’t catch the meaning behind the hover text. Either that, or I’m remembering it wrong. If so, then ignore the next sentence. We’re all better off for it.
Appropos of nothing related to this particular strip, but having been in a dastardly situation with a college-age person (I’m 13 years their senior), I just had a very, very special appreciation for your characterizations of you of characters, Willis.
Seriously, thank you. It doesn’t help me in my situation, but it does give me *hope* for the age group — that for all their missteps brought on for knowing it all yet knowing nothing at all, they’ll figure it out in time, after mistakes (benign or otherwise) have been made.
I’ve suddenly got the strange feeling that Walky didn’t have much input on his course choices. Maybe his parents were both so convinced that he’s some kind of genius that they insisted that he do it with some fairly strong and coercive terms.
That wouldn’t surprise me.
Sal strongly implied she was in a similar situation wrt course choice.
I’m not sure what it means, beyond narrative convenience, that Sal’s in the same class with Walky.
Well, there’s usually only a few sections for each course – it wouldn’t be difficult for them have ended up in the same one.
Alternatively, their parents may have had them sign up for the same section when they were, ahem, “recommending” classes.
Not the section, but the actual course.
More that Walky’s the “brilliant” one and Sal’s the troublemaker.
I’d expect the Walkerton’s to have pushed Sal towards the basic class if anything.
She said she had to pass it to avoid a lecture about being a failure (yeah, super great mom and dad-ing, Walkertons).
I can imagine it being more about family image or pride – ‘You’re a Walkerton, Walkerton’s do well, you need to take this class and do well, Walkerton’s get A’s’ yada yada.
That’s possible, but I’ll point out that, even without parental pressure, Walky’s attitude is fairly common among “smart kids”. This is the one way in which all* gifted children are actually very, very stupid.
If they’re lucky, they hit the tough subject wall in middle school or high school and finally learn that they have limits too and that studying isn’t a crime. If they’re not, they hit it in college. I know of one person who hit it in law school, and I bet that wasn’t fun at all.
* If you’re the exception, good for you.
It could also be a bit of both. It’s a common ‘smart kid’ attitude, but I will bet cash Internet money that his parent’s attitudes did not help.
PreCalc senior year?! My school was MulitiVar and Stats senior year. Actually, most kids took stats Junior year because AP tests should be taken in 11th grade to apply to UCs. I took Calc, Stats, and Compsci Senior year.
I was a year behind on math. I should have taken Calculus junior year but I failed Algebra 2. 🙁
Ugh… Billie is tearing me apart right now. ;-;
Do you still have your arms? Can you still type comments?!
Also, when she exited through the fourth wall, did she leave it open?
I tried using my nose to type “No, I’m using my nose to type this” but… it didn’t work out.
That’s what lies are for.
I’m with Sarah, I tested out of 8 credits of Calculus, which satisfied my math requirements for my major (Biology), and never took a math course in college.
Somehow I ended up working for the math department throughout college. It wasn’t weird when I was TAing trig that I knew none of the Calc professors, but my Calc tutoring students found it a bit odd…
Yeesh, everyone’s saying awful stuff to each other.
That’s some low crap, Billie – Sarah didn’t even let out your secrets. Watch out for her bat.
Setting aside my emotions, poor Walky’s plight reminds me of when I went through intro bio and intro chem in 1st year college, and suffering for it. And that was s’poseD to be my major.
Felt so down I took basic Spanish the next year even though I was fairly good at it already, just to boost my esteem again.
History had kinda been my thing for my whole life before college…then I got there and promptly failed my “through Reconstruction” US History class, which I wouldn’t have even had to take if the mid-sized state school I went to accepted AP credits at the time. Still ended up with it as a minor for four years (failed the post-Reconstruction class too before retaking and sailing through both), dropped it when I got it in my head that I had to change literally everything about myself when I started my transition.
Goodness, I hope it wasn’t too hard to cross over. Sounded like you had your whole life planned behind history and whatever job was linked to it. I just fancied the idea of biochem and never had any real forethought personally. Planning isn’t one of my strengths.
It’s amazing how Walky so Needs to talk about his problems with math that he (deliberately? unconsciously deliberately?) misreads Sarah’s “Is that why you’re here?” in order to start justifying his choices. Thinking about how much more effective neutral indifference like Sarah’s is in this situation as opposed to Dorothy’s active expressions of concern.
That was uncalled for. Just because Billie’s depressed and worried about her girlfriend (who is also depressed) doesn’t mean she should treat other people like shit.
You’d be surprised how little that line of thinking matters to someone who is depressed and worried about a loved one.
She shouldn’t, but she’s also not in her right mind.
So I’m pretty snarky and sarcastic but what is Billie on about? Even if its a referance to the time Sarah ratted some one out its not making much sense in my sleep addled sickly mind. Any one care to explain, please?
I think Billie’s referring to Sarah reporting Dana’s drug use to the school. Billie is saying that Sarah decided she didn’t need Dana, thus it was easier to ‘get rid of her’ (by trying to get her the help she desperately needed) than put in the hard work of saving Dana herself.
I am clearly a tragic person, but I have to beg that someone makes Walky tie up his shoe-laces.
I enjoyed Sarah’s reference to Walky’s “crush.” Like Walky, I have a bad habit of teasing people I like.
So… Anyone think that Billie wants someone to hit her? She hates herself right now for her perceived failure of Ruth so she wants to be punished; talking someone into beating her up fills that need quite nicely.
That is exactly what I think she wants. It’s why I said I would have to leave not to make things worse.
I really know that math feel…tested out of 6 math credits with my ACT score, jumped straight into “pre-calc” my first semester in college and got a C- (on a curve, thank the gods)…didn’t take another math class until my fifth year, when I thought I was switching to psychology and signed up for a stats class (D-, that was the spring semester that my mental health started sliding toward the cliff it would fly off of that fall).
Yeah I basically did the same mistake Walky did in my freshmen year. I needed one math credit and I had taken Calc 1 in high school. I was SUPPOSED to take Calc 2 in high school as well, but my school dropped it as a pre-college class.
So Freshman year I take Calculus 2. I ended up with someone from Vietnam for a teacher, which…did not help things. Basically if I wasn’t tripping over how fast he was teaching everything, I was tripping over his heavy accent.
I passed with a decent grade but man is it painful to try and grasp concepts when you can barely get beyond the teacher’s accent. Also he had a habit of starting every explanation with “I’TS SO SIMPLE” which when you’re struggling just is like rubbing salt into wounds.
I had to take Statistics because it was required for my Poli Sci major (although that stuff pretty much never came up, even in the class I took about polling). But I actually understood it better than I had any of my high school math classes, and I ended up with a B-.
I should’ve gone with that honestly. Unfortunately the culture at my school taught me Statistics was the “dumb” math class so I never considered it. Now I’d say it would’ve been a more useful class to take.
Congrats on the B- though! Getting anything above a B is a struggle, I found, for most of my non-major required classes. It’s hard to work all those in when you’re trying to learn what will get you a job first.
Damn, Billie!
Did I miss or forget something? Did Sarah do something to or fail to do something for Ruth or Billie, or is Billie just lashing out?
Billie’s just punching for what is Sarah’s most vulnerable spot: Dana and the slander that she once tossed a friend in need under a bus because dealing with it in a constructive way was just too much effort.
Bottom line is that Billie is going to be hard to be around for a while with her hostility transfer set on ‘Full Auto’.
Thanks! Damn, the Dana thing! That’s a low blow!
I did really well in high school math but I placed in pre calc my freshman year in college. I thought I’d do well but was completely overwhelmed, but I managed ti get a C+. Thankfully I didn’t have to take any more math after that quarter.
I’m so with Sarah on this. I’ve been on both sides, and in neither situation is it a good idea to take a tougher course than you have to take. My senior year of high school, all of my friends and math teachers expected me to take advanced Calc, but I already know I wouldn’t need it for my college major, so I “only” took regular Calc. My friends all struggled and dropped their GPAs in Advanced Calc while… I didn’t exactly skate through regular Calc (Calc was very difficult for me), but I had a much less stressful senior year than they did).
On the other hand, my senior year of college my advisor told me that in his opinion (which I found out too late was meaningless), I should take a second English class instead of using my AP English credit, and my English major friend convinced me that it would be sooooo fun if we took a course together. That course was hell for me, and I just barely passed it. And then I found out that I really could have used my AP English credit, dammit. :-/
I was kinda Walky-ish freshman year. I took the most complicated, high-level, difficult math class I could find because I got a 5 on my BC calc AP exam and thought I was hot shit. Half the class dropped in the first couple of weeks. By the end, there were 12 of us and the professor invited us over to his house for dinner. There were a bunch of jokes among a small group of us about being The Disciples and this being The Last Supper. We also called the course “math without numbers” because it was exclusively theoretical. I was the only non-math or physics major in there. I refused to drop strictly out of pride. But man, did that SUCK.
Dang the tension is high
Wait, does Billie actually know Dana’s friends or any of that stuff that happened? This sounds like a dog she doesn’t have a fight in.
I think Billie’s currently looking for fights to throw a dog into. Even odds that right now she’d fight anyone for saying the sky is blue.
She’s seeing parallels between Sarah telling Dana’s father about her problems and Ruth getting turned in to the campus authorities. It’s a sore subject and she’s not being rational about it.
Does anyone check Willis’s DoA tumblr? His latest preview has Mary looking genuinely happy, like, smiling and shit, and not in a way that indicates she just screwed someone over. I don’t know how to feel about it…
For folks in south…eastern? US, good luck for the oncoming hurricane. Stay safe.
It’s Mary so chances are she’s just happy Ruth is gone and bragging about it.
Though, real talk? I wouldn’t mind a Mary redemption arc. What is it going to mean to her that she contributed to what could have easily been Ruth’s suicide? That, and I’m really curious as to why she won’t be ratting Becky out to the campus like she threatened to.
Or at least I want her and Carla to have wacky slapstick wars that don’t end in hate speech. That was nice.
The problem with people like Mary is that their quirks & prejudices are set up to constantly reinforce each other. She’s a Fundie Christian, a sect that believes wholeheartedly that being/supporting LGBTQ people is wrong, thus she is deeply transphobic and homophobic.
Joyce was the same way, but she inherently believes the best in people and changed because she found people she loves who challenge her. Mary only inherently believes in her own superiority over “sinners”, something her faith also enables. Mary can only change if something makes her question either her ego or her faith.
TLDR: In order for a Mary redemption arc to happen, at least one of the core tenants of who she is as a person would have to come crashing down in flames.
Frankly, I don’t think Joyce was that different from Mary from the start of the comic, she just dressed it up in infectious cheerfulness and triangle grins, and as you note, she was willing to learn.
But she still ran with every horrible thing she grew up with. She believed that Dorothy’s atheism made her a bad person and that she was throwing herself into the cragged shame pits of the lustwolves. That Ethan’s sexuality was wrong and needed to be fixed. Is it really that outrageous to suggest that if Joyce found out Carla was trans that she’d treat her in some equally horrible way?
I mean, Mary isn’t the first person this series to be a horrible person at some point. My favourite character just had a brief stint as a violent stalker.
I think Joyce, and Mary are vastly different. When you’re raised a fundie. . . you run with what you grew up with. Unless you have something about your own core identity that clashes with how you were raised, like Jocelyn, or in my case me. Even then that’s not a guarantee as we all know there are a ton of toxic self hating gay pastors/republican congressmen.
But back on topic. Joyce genuinely is a compassionate person. She’s no longer as upbeat, and chipper, but that’s because she’s having a serious crisis of faith. Which I can personally relate to in so many ways…dammit I’m rambling again. . . Joyce tried to help Ethan, even though she was horribly misguided in thinking that helping him was even necessary. Given how quickly she turned around though, I think it’d be a very safe bet that if Joyce learned about something as horrible as say…Conversion “Therapy”? Imagine an even worse timeline with Becky, where she was sent to a camp, yelled at for hours while being forced to stand at attention, being given SHOCK “THERAPY”, witnessed several of her lesbian friends at this gitmo for LGBT American teenagers hanging from the ceiling… What would Joyce say, or do faced with such abhorrent crimes against humanity being revealed to her via PTSD laced memories from her best friend?
Now contrast with Mary. Marys holier than thou attitude is laced heavily with violent subtext, and disdain. I don’t have proof, but I just get the feeling when I see any of her facial expression, or read any of her dialogue that she’d probably think conversion “therapy” was a great thing.
The key difference between them is Joyce is a genuinely kind, caring person. Once outside of the sheltered, controlled environment that raised her to believe so many horrible things, those horrible things have been falling away.
When Joyce is confronted with evidence that one of her beliefs is cruel and harmful to others, her underlying kindness has won out every time. Not all at once, but it always puts a crack in the ugliness her parents encased her in, and eventually it falls away. There’s definitely been some growth needed beyond shedding her ignorance, but that’s been more on par with other characters.
If she’d found out about Carla, I would fully expect at least one or two cringe-worthy missteps, but never anything as intentionally awful as deliberate misgendering.
It’s theoretically possible that Mary might also be a good (or at least decent) person underneath the crap she’s been encased in. Her parents may simply have been better at layering it on there. All evidence (true, there isn’t a lot of it) of who she is seems to indicate she runs into the real-life people she’s supposed to hate, she hates them. She doesn’t even attempt the “love the sinner, hate the sin” cop-out that Joyce did initially. Mary seems completely okay hating both.
It’s possible Mary might still not be a lost cause, but her redemption arc would require breaking through not just her upbringing, but parts of her personality that prevent her from questioning it the way Joyce has.
It angers me already, but who knows? There are several months of buffer, maybe Mary will become a bearable chara-pfft, I doubt it.
Much obliged.
It’s always possible she’s just happy in order to more completely catch her off guard. If she’s smiling, she’s not expecting a secondary attack.
What they don’t tell you is that you don’t even get to actual math until Differential Equations.
Of course, they also don’t tell you that Differential Equations is about 10x easier than the entire calc series.
Wait, are we calling intro to calc advanced math?
Only since he took it in high school
Ah, yeah
I’ve been Walky when it comes to education my whole life, and I don’t think I’ll ever stop.
If Walky’s so smart why was he taking pre-calc in senior year? Did his high-school not offer regular calc?
That seems like the implication.
On Billie….I was thinking this was because of Ruth. At first. Then I saw a pattern.
“Don’t hang around me Walky.” “I was a special because I was a cheerleader” “I don’t hang out with nerds.” “I’m toxic, stay away from me.” And now “You don’t understand how I feel, and I will hurt you if you try to get close”
She’s constantly trying to isolate herself. Sometimes its acting high and mighty as if the concern of mere mortals do not trouble her. Sometimes its by building up how awful she is and how other people she just avoid her before she ruins their lives. Even Ruth, who she arguably has been most open with, noted that Billie’s entire attitude was “drinking is your problem and I don’t need to stop”. And, btw, excessive alcohol is another way one can isolate oneself from life and other people.
And now its just general abuse, trying to drive people away by being ugly to them.
I’m not saying Billie isn’t an alcoholic or that her drinking isn’t in and of itself a serious problem she is laboring under and hopefully does try to correct…eventually. I am saying we don’t really know why she started drinking in the first place, but we’re seeing hints that she’s frequently trying to wall herself off (unconsciously as often as deliberately) and drinking helps her accomplish this.
As for my theory of why she’s doing it? I dunno. I just continue to remember that her dad and mom didn’t show up for the parents day and Billie and Walky and Sal have all noted with varying levels of sincerity and snark that Billie is sort of the Walkertons unofficial daughter because of how much time she spent with their family versus her own.
On the other hand, given how the general exchange of insults and threats of violence was a weird kind of mating dance between her and Ruth, maybe Billie is just trying to flirt with Sarah?
Tie yer damn shoes, Walky!
…Y’know I was considered a “whiz kid” in public school, too. A part of me wants to smack Walky upside the head and tell him that anyone who bothers to do their work regularly can graduate pretty high on the list, especially in the South-Midwest. (Barring people with disabilities, ofc.)
But then I remember that I had the same struggle not long after I graduated. The problem with fawning over the smart kids in class is that it makes things very difficult for them when they leave school; their identity is now tied up in their intelligence. The moment something you’re normally good at tests you, you immediately blame yourself and think that maybe you were dumb all along.
“..basic math is for shameful embarrassments.”
Why do I get the darnedest feeling that’s his mom talking?
My thoughts exactly. Dammit Walkerton parents, stop sucking so much!
MEOW!!! Jeez.
I am having serious trouble parsing that insult. Is she saying that *when* Sarah has someone unimportant she does the easy thing or is she saying that because Sarah had someone unimportant recently, she now always does the easy thing?
And I do realize that this is about the suicidal roommate, I just can’t make this sentence make sense for some reason.
Oh, FFS, this wasn’t supposed to be a reply to anything. How did that even happen?