Normally I don’t correct typos, but lots of readers won’t know what you mean and it’s hard to search a misspelling. I’ve only seen it spelled “dually” (plural “duallies” apparently) and it refers to a pickup truck with two wheels on each side of the back axle. (I only know it because Monty Roberts named one of his horses Dually because of its powerful back legs. IIRC that’s the horse he taught to compete in two different kinds of events in the same competition.)
He’s bright enough he was able to coast, never challenged, never having to focus or study. So he’s in college completely unprepared for academic challenges or having to focus on things/pay attention. If he has ADHD (which is p heavily implied) nobody noticed bc of that brightness which provided a cover.
Yeah I figured he had ADHD as soon as he started talking about that, because, well, same. I was and still am really ambitious though so I’ve been learning how to study a couple years younger than him…. I’m currently 17
Oh, good. Reach out for all the support you can, now, while you’re young. I wish I had known at your age. I might have prevented so muçh pain. Then again, maybe not, because HEY WHAT KIND OF BIKE IS THAT?!?
Because it doesn’t necessarily have to be ADHD per se.
See, Walky once basically said that knowledge used to just settle into his brain automatically. He never had to work for it to stick, it just happened. And so, he did not learn how to work to learn. He did not learn the discipline of learning. And you may be able to get all the way through high school on that, but when you get to college/university, you’re almost guaranteed to hit a brick wall.
And when the “Walky hit the brick wall” storyline first started, the comment field got flooded with “Oh yeah, that totally is/was me!” comments. It’s a fairly common issue with kids that have it easy in school; that they don’t get challenged. And then their teachers and parents don’t try to challenge them, and then this happens.
Well, that and theories that someone switched his and Sal’s grades, but yeah, this is a super common issue. People tend to have issues when they don’t have to study. I was a bit of a Walky in high school but even I noticed that when I read through my notes I still got even better grades than if I didn’t.
Not so sure about the switch… But I wouldn’t be surprised if they delivered homework that had basically the same answers (just worded a bit differently) and Walky got better grades than Sal.
My at-grade-level science teacher in Sophomore year, (I had to retake a semester of Freshman Science on top of the At-level-course) loved to use me as an example, as anytime I couldn’t hand in an assignment, he challenged me to re-do the work and sent me out of the room with a blank worksheet. I was back in before the class had finished grading the assignment.
that doesn’t work so well in Eastern Religion and Education courses…
People actually thought Walky and Sal’s grades were switched? That doesn’t make much sense, considering that Sal spent the last few years at a completely different school. If Sal had been the (conventionally academic) ‘bright’ one, that would have been found out way before this comic started. Sal’s grades would’ve shot up in boarding school and Walky’s would’ve plummeted after she left.
What was really fun for me is-most people hit the “Oh, I actually have to learn to study now. Fuck.” wall in college.
I didn’t hit it until graduate school.
In PHYSICS.
Yeaaaah that was a rough patch.
This is me. Coasted through college reading anything I liked and acing tests, applying to gradschool now and it strikes me that I don’t know how to study.
Same, but math. And, like, I knew all through college this was going to be a problem, so I made myself ‘study’ really hard anyway… turns out, striving to get perfect scores on everything isn’t really at all the same kind of hard work as struggling to understand anything that’s going on in the course… wheeee
I made it all the way through undergrad with decently good grades, mostly by torturing myself and padding my GPA with very easy classes!
But yeah I’m looking at grad school now and christ almighty I dunno how I’d do that without adderall. I actually thought it was like a myth that people were able to sit and write for more than 20 minutes without crawling out of their skin, and, presumably, everyone who’d ever written anything for longer than that was a wizard.
True story: due to the low standards of literacy, (widely varying) spelling, etc, for much of the Middle Ages, the ability to read silently – without sounding out every word and/or tracing the line with a fingertip – was considered similarly unnatural.
Due to the non-standardised spelling (and a fab for spelling things fancifully) I certainly sound out some words in pre 19th century Swedish, I guess it is the same in other languages …
My wife earned a PhD with untreated ADHD and struggled for years after with doctors who thought her academic success disqualified her diagnosis and she only wanted meds as a performance enhancer. Characterizing ADHD as ‘ooh shiny!’ or ‘hey a bicycle!’ is damaging and disrespectful of those who have it. Its more complex than being a dog at the park.
Having ADHD doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t graduate high school or whatever but it can make certain things more difficult when it comes to tedious focus.
I excelled at math for most of my grade school years because I found it to be so easy that I didn’t even have to try. It was around when I got to Algebra II and Pre-cal that I had a very hard time keeping up. It wasn’t that the subject material was difficult for me to grasp but it was so tedious and required so much attention that I just couldn’t make any meaningful progress in it. Math became a struggle because of that, but subjects I had intense interest in like history came very easily to me.
I’m thinking since Sal told him he was a bad one. That actually shook him. I think post her he’s been making an actual effort that he wasn’t willing to before. I know this won’t be clear until we see some results but I think Walky is getting a much better teaching experience than Sal did. He’s absolutely getting more patience. It’s also possible though that Jason’s particular style of teaching might just work better for Walky since teaching isn’t really a one size fits all thing. But this won’t be clear until we actually see Walky learning from Jason. Right now Walky is just desperate and trying to appeal to Jason’s ego but again Jason is definitely being more patient with Walky then he ever was with Sal and Walky is the one crossing the lines of what’s appropriate in a student/teacher relationship. Super not okay to stalk people on their day off (or ever).
Its also why I dislike Walky so much, he just wants everything done for him and won’t put any work in himself
I actually think him crashing and burning in this paper and having to either redo it or change papers would do him a world of good, like humble him a bit
Ehhh, kid’s 18, he’s been out of high school for like four months. Find me a smart college freshman who DOESN’T want everything done for them and who doesn’t want to put in any work.
Hell, I’d be pretty happy if I never HAD to put in any work into things again. That sounds so chill. So I have a lot of sympathy for Walky for that.
Well presumably the rest of the cast that hasn’t been shown to be struggling or needing tutoring.
The point being that Walky knows hes struggling but I’m guessing because of his easy grades, wealthy up bringing and parents he doesn’t feel as if he needs to work
Or it could kick him into the sort of spiral of shame and self-doubt I ended up in the first time I got a D on an exam.
I think I follow your point that sometimes consequences are what is needed, but as someone who coasted in high school and had been told repeatedly that my academics were the most important talent I had, when I got to college and I wasn’t prepared, my first thought was not ‘I need to get my shit together and work harder’, my first thought was ‘there has to be some way to get my grades back up before anyone finds out that I’m not as smart as they think I am, oh god, no one will ever respect me again’. I got lucky and had a genuinely good professor in that course, who helped me build my grades back up by scheduling extra office hours with me and making sure I really understood everything (small college), but in this situation I’m not sure Walky has the sort of support structure that would give him the tools to bounce back from that. Dorothy would try, but she’s burning herself out already, and to me it seems pretty clear that Walky’s problem goes beyond not wanting to do the work, he doesn’t even know how to start (from bitter personal experience: if you’re one of the smart kids, high school teaches you jack shit about how to study or self-teach effectively).
So yeah, I don’t think Walky bombing this assignment will improve the situation, even in the long run, unless something drastic about the rest of the situation changes.
Maybe that’s more the local culture than my own merit, but I love to work and earn keep for myself and my peeps.
The same is true for the majority of people I know where I live, so the people ‘who does want to put in any work’ at least includes ‘a small section of Eastern European countryside’.
I don’t think it’s as much that he doesn’t want to, it’s that he’s never learned how. He’s got bad habits and he’s never had to develop the discipline to push through them. He may also have some level of ADHD.
Part of the problem here is that he doesn’t really need tutoring in math – though it might be useful to catch the parts he missed, he needs more basic tutoring in how to study at all.
It’s easy to say he doesn’t want to work and he just needs to buckle down and put the work in, but he doesn’t have any real idea of what to do if he did.
He’s already freaked out enough about it. Getting an F isn’t going to help. And more practically probably pushes this storyline out decades of real time.
I’m not sure what you mean by “wants everything done for him”. Part of the arc here has been that he’s struggled to admit that he needed help at all. He is demanding it of Jason here, but that’s really a first.
Does he actually want to be a good teacher, or does he just want to be considered a good teacher as is? Honestly he’s not that different from Walky in that sense: both have their identities wrapped up in a certain image that they are good at this thing, and both struggle between actually making efforts to improve themselves vs just lashing out against the assorted proof that there is room for improvement.
The way I read him, he wants to be a good teacher but he doesn’t know how to. He would probably settle for being considered a good teacher if he could get away with it, much like Walky would settle for keep getting good grades without knowing how to study if HE could get away with it, because real change is haaaaaaaard.
I can’t decide whether I’m amused or pissed that the snooty math TA has my name and kind of my attitude and would have a sexier accent than me in real life.
Fortunately, I was an English major and never even finished college, so there!
And that is one of Walky’s scarier traits – he is smart enough and good enough at reading people to being quite capable of figuring out weak points like that.
…. aaaand that is how you treat a teacher like an object and not a human being. Turn it on at your leisure, “multitask”, expect instant positive results!! (Yeah, I’m a teacher…) I have had more than one that call the lecture to stop because they “don´t get it, help me Teach, please..!!” And when i come to their side and take a look at their work, they would disconnect and turn to their phones while “the Teach solves the problem…” right by my side, under my very nose. Just ten years ago, i would have had the freedom to shout like a drill sargeant until everybody marches like clockwork. Now, it will led to me being in the unnemployed line faster than you tweet: “i hate the Teach”.
I’m a TA for an intro Computer Science course and one of the students would call me over for help, I would help him figure out what he needed to do, leave him the next step to figure out himself, walk away, turn and see him raising his hand again.
I went over to see what he needed and he would have pulled up YouTube in those few seconds and then tell me to wait for the minute long video to finish. Needless to say, I am glad he is no longer my concern.
Stopping having is free time. He’s allowed free time, even if he doesn’t have friends. Friendless people don’t deserve to have their non-working time interrupted by a student who wasted his scheduled tutoring time, any more than if it was, say, Penny and she was there with her boyfriend or a group of friends.
If he’s a graduate student as I suspect he is, he’s probably putting 55-70 hours a week between teaching, classes, and research. There’s a decent chance he was thinking about work while sitting in the bar, too, because it’s really hard to unplug when you’re in grad school.
As a graduate student myself, there are times when I just need to sit quietly for an evening somewhere. Even if I’m not actively doing something, that time is essential for me to recover mentally. I’m exhausted most of the time; I don’t need a student barging in on me and making me unexpectedly work more when I wasn’t expecting to have to (for once).
Jason isn’t a good teacher, but that’s irrelevant here. And in general, I advise against admonishing a graduate student that they could do this extra work thing when they’re actually taking a break for once. Because one of two things will happen: they’ll snap at your because they’re stressed and tired and resent the implication they should be working more than they already are (since that’s the expectation put on them by just being in graduate school, and it’s horrible and exhausting and destructive), or they’ll suck up inside themselves because they’ve internalized a sense of inferiority and failure and will be overcome with guilt for not being at work, no matter how many hours they’d put in already.
Is he a good teacher? No. But he’s a TA, not a full-on teacher, and at least he’s trying to be better. Walky’s barging in on Jason’s personal time and begging for help, and Jason has every right to tell Walky to fuck off and do his own studying.
Basically there’s two characters here. One is trying to be a good, helpful person, the other is being an asshole to those around him and seems likely to continue to waste other people’s time. Guess whose got my sympathy.
Even more than him being a TA: He’s a mathematics grad student more than likely. He’s almost certainly never had a single class or any training on techniques or learning styles or any of the things teachers in the comments section spent years learning.
If I were an accountant for a garage, I would get mad as hell about people getting on their high horse about how bad a mechanic I am. I am NOT a mechanic. I am an ACCOUNTANT. Similarly, Jason – despite being thrust into the role by virtue of wanting an advanced degree – is not a teacher. He’s a mathematician.
Which is a problem with the whole way we handle research universities and graduate school and such positions.
We take people who’s whole education is focused on the subject and assume they’ll be able to teach it. Frankly, that it works as well as it does is shocking.
Walky has a great point though, why would you put a bicycle on a wall as a decoration?
I suppose it doesn’t work anymore, but still, that’s a weird decoration.
I had lunch in a bar with a bicycle on the wall this week. It was a big cruiser model, painted for Fat Tire Ale, which means that brand bought a bunch of cruisers and doomed them to forever be wall decorations. Perhaps in a post-apocalyptic future they will be taken down off the wall, tires aired up, and provide valuable transportation. No longer to be stuck there, watching people get drunk.
Not all of them. I’ve seen many of these kinds of ‘advertising bikes’ that actually do see road time. Generally, though, they are low-quality, cheaply-made models — think of the ‘TV Lenny’ bikes that used to be a promo giveaway with the purchase of a new TV or stereo back in the day — that will require continuous maintenance/adjustments/repairs over the course of their lifetimes.
The pizza place near my school has a lot of sporting equipment on the walls, including an antique toboggan. Indiana is particularly known for bicycling.
“Review question 1-4 with your girlfriend and we can go through it together on Tuesday. Remember the stepwise procedure we talked about? No? Here, let me write it down on this napkin and you have enough to get started. Good luck.”
For all that I babble about how good it is that Jason is trying to be a good teacher, and how important Walky is for that, he doesn’t have to jump through ALL of Walky’s hopes. He absolutely don’t have to spend his Saturday evening with him in an attempt to make him look good to his girlfriend. So give him a clearly defined task, let him sweat about it and use it as a learning example next session.
Poor Jason. He knows fully well that he is not a good teacher, but he desperately wants to be one. And Walky push just the right button to imply that spending his Saturday evening tutoring a student is something any GOOD teacher WOULD (no).
And that’s again why he and Walky share the same central tragedy. Jason doesn’t known how to be a good teacher. Walky doesn’t know how to be a good student. Both try to play the part rather than actually doing the craft. Walky at least has Dorothy to teach him proper study technique, but there is no indication that there is anyone that can Jason teach Jason pedagogiks.
The secret to teaching Walky math is to explain it to him in a way he understands.
…. I was going to make an example by making a text problem involving Dexter and the Monkey Master, but it turns out I repressed all memories of what I learned in university math lectures… And I didn’t learn much to begin with, I failed in all classes and changed to a law major.
Walky’s problem isn’t that he’s paying attention and trying hard and not getting it. It’s that he is literally refusing to do either of those first two things. He’s not trying at all, and he’s not paying attention.
Though to be somewhat more sympathetic, that’s always worked for him before and he’s never been in a position where he had to work harder. Learning those habits of discipline isn’t a trivial task and one not helped by just writing him off as not trying.
Honestly all you guys saying that’s if he’s got ADD or ADHD ups should take adderall to help arent technically wrong for he were anything like me once he quit taking it especially after sat through his time as an undergrad then stoped lay his ability to study would crash and hard due to th sudden of all that energy being under his own control again, but like I said that’s only if he reacted to it like I did when I stopped. Sorry for the rant and it’s bad bad spelling grammar and littleo no use of punctuation.
I’m on medication for my ADD. Without my meds I literally have no ability to choose what my brain pays attention to.
So I have a lot of sympathy for Walky here.
I can literally be staring at somebody, trying to listen to what they’re saying because I know it’s important, and my brain will start thinking about a video game I was playing last night, or a TV show I watched a week ago, or a hot girl I saw a few minutes ago.
It’s not a matter of willpower. I literally cannot stop it.
Most adults with ADD end up depressed and self-medicating with drugs and alcohol. They have trouble holding down jobs and forming relationships. They can’t understand why others can focus so easily and spend a lot of time wondering what’s wrong with themselves.
People tell us to just pay attention, but we CAN’T. There’s literally something wrong with our ability to control our own brain.
And the infuriating thing is that it’s not a matter of being unable to pay attention to -anything- — it’s that I can’t CHOOSE. I’ll pay attention to something I don’t want or need to pay attention to for hours, and be unable to focus on things I desperately want or need to think about at all.
But when I’m on my meds… it’s like I have superpowers. It’s astonishing. I can hear an entire lecture, even if it’s boring or if I already know what they’re talking about. I can solve puzzles that require thinking several steps ahead. (I’ve measured my ability to solve Sudoku puzzles on and off my meds, and with meds it’s literally 5 times faster). I can remember instructions at work and not get distracted (or get back on track after being distracted).
I can suddenly function like most other human beings. And that’s when I realize it’s not a matter of willpower. There’s something not right in my brain. NO amount of strategies or training or discipline or practice is going to fix it, any more than those things will fix a broken leg or blindness.
I saw a post online once that said “If you can’t make your own neurotransmitters, it’s ok to use store-bought.”
If Walky is really unable to focus — when he REALLY wants to and there are direct consequences he’s worried about for not focusing — then he needs to get help. It’s a fixable problem.
Don’t lie to the new readers, one strip a day is never enough, the post-binge crash… well, I guess participating in the comments is worth it, but the possibility of daily cliffhangers… So not cool.
Yeah, sticking with my earlier diagnosis that Walky, like me, is ADHD inattentive-dominant. Making jokes about it is one of the many defense mechanisms you learn.
Side note: I was diagnosed with ADD later in life, but my parents suspected it for years; I’d been showing symptoms since I was five. But my uncle had had some bad experiences with Ritalin after he was diagnosed back in the 80s. Medicine changed him into a totally different, unhappy person, and my folks were terrified of something like that happening to me. So they waited to get me officially diagnosed until I was 12 and couldn’t deal on my own anymore. I don’t blame them for their decision, but I feel bad that Walky might have to go through the hell that is getting diagnosed the same way I did, especially since he’s doing it much later in life than I had to.
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Complete, undivided attent-OOH SHINY
The bicycle doesn’t look particularly shiny to me.
Dully doesn’t have the same ring to it.
Even Walky knows that dullies are pickup trucks. 🙂
Normally I don’t correct typos, but lots of readers won’t know what you mean and it’s hard to search a misspelling. I’ve only seen it spelled “dually” (plural “duallies” apparently) and it refers to a pickup truck with two wheels on each side of the back axle. (I only know it because Monty Roberts named one of his horses Dually because of its powerful back legs. IIRC that’s the horse he taught to compete in two different kinds of events in the same competition.)
the missing a is for Arithmetic
Ok I was like “is that guy Australian or something and this is slang I don’t know?”
No, in Australia it would be a ute.
I read it as the opposite of being shiny. As in dull. Or am I being dull here?
“Once upon a time I was tutored by Jeeves, but now I’m only wearing my shades. Nothing I can learn, total eclipse of my grades.”
“Once upon a time I was real good at math
Now I don’t know what these things mean
There’s nothing left to do
But get tutored by Mr. Bean.”
“Let’s turn around bad grades….”
“Every now & again I need some help…”
“Let’s turn around bad grades….”
“Every now & again I need some help…..”
“And I need you tutoring tonight! And I need it more than ever…”
“Turn around, Caramel…”
Huh, I donder why that sounds familiar? And where that Alt-Text cames from…
Daniel the Human is teaching me Google-Fu… 😛
“Oh Jesus, Once upon a time I was tutored by Jeeves, but now I’m fucking wearing my shades.”
That’s the superior version, with credit to The Dan Band.
The best version is the literal video. Four years old now, so ancient.
https://youtu.be/fsgWUq0fdKk
That was brilliant. Soo funny.
Oh, walky.
Oh, Jason.
Oh, Rocky.
Dr Scott!
Uh!
Janet!
Plankton!
Donkey!
McCloud?
Stella!
NORA!
KHAAAAN!!!!!
MARTHA!
Gary?
at least he is trying.
He’s very trying.
which he? XD
Yes
Yay Miki-chan!
“and by ‘good’ I mean ‘so desperate for validation that you’re teaching Walky'”
Panel 5, Jason knows as he’s saying it how ridiculous what he’s saying is.
Walky’s attention is so divided it’s undergoing meiosis
Wally’s attention is so fleeting it- oooh a quarter!
Don’t let him flatter you, Jason. You’re a shit teacher.
I think Walky meant he’s a good teacher in that Jason actually gives a rat’s ass about his students doing well.
ADHD? How did he ever graduate high school?
He’s bright enough he was able to coast, never challenged, never having to focus or study. So he’s in college completely unprepared for academic challenges or having to focus on things/pay attention. If he has ADHD (which is p heavily implied) nobody noticed bc of that brightness which provided a cover.
Yeah I figured he had ADHD as soon as he started talking about that, because, well, same. I was and still am really ambitious though so I’ve been learning how to study a couple years younger than him…. I’m currently 17
Oh, good. Reach out for all the support you can, now, while you’re young. I wish I had known at your age. I might have prevented so muçh pain. Then again, maybe not, because HEY WHAT KIND OF BIKE IS THAT?!?
probably by sleeping through classes, ignoring homework and acing the tests, like me.
ADHD doesn’t much slow you down until the subject matter stops being trivial.
Same
Because it doesn’t necessarily have to be ADHD per se.
See, Walky once basically said that knowledge used to just settle into his brain automatically. He never had to work for it to stick, it just happened. And so, he did not learn how to work to learn. He did not learn the discipline of learning. And you may be able to get all the way through high school on that, but when you get to college/university, you’re almost guaranteed to hit a brick wall.
And when the “Walky hit the brick wall” storyline first started, the comment field got flooded with “Oh yeah, that totally is/was me!” comments. It’s a fairly common issue with kids that have it easy in school; that they don’t get challenged. And then their teachers and parents don’t try to challenge them, and then this happens.
Well, that and theories that someone switched his and Sal’s grades, but yeah, this is a super common issue. People tend to have issues when they don’t have to study. I was a bit of a Walky in high school but even I noticed that when I read through my notes I still got even better grades than if I didn’t.
Not so sure about the switch… But I wouldn’t be surprised if they delivered homework that had basically the same answers (just worded a bit differently) and Walky got better grades than Sal.
My at-grade-level science teacher in Sophomore year, (I had to retake a semester of Freshman Science on top of the At-level-course) loved to use me as an example, as anytime I couldn’t hand in an assignment, he challenged me to re-do the work and sent me out of the room with a blank worksheet. I was back in before the class had finished grading the assignment.
that doesn’t work so well in Eastern Religion and Education courses…
People actually thought Walky and Sal’s grades were switched? That doesn’t make much sense, considering that Sal spent the last few years at a completely different school. If Sal had been the (conventionally academic) ‘bright’ one, that would have been found out way before this comic started. Sal’s grades would’ve shot up in boarding school and Walky’s would’ve plummeted after she left.
The theory was that Sal and Walky’s grades in their college math class were switched, since Sal’s grades have improved and Walky’s have fallen.
yup. if it’s not ADHD, I’m guessing it’ll just be the one brick wall, and once he gets past that he’ll be back to getting A’s.
if it is ADHD, that damn wall is going to keep on respawning and growing and uggghhhh (but the right medication can help a lot)
What was really fun for me is-most people hit the “Oh, I actually have to learn to study now. Fuck.” wall in college.
I didn’t hit it until graduate school.
In PHYSICS.
Yeaaaah that was a rough patch.
This is me. Coasted through college reading anything I liked and acing tests, applying to gradschool now and it strikes me that I don’t know how to study.
Same, but math. And, like, I knew all through college this was going to be a problem, so I made myself ‘study’ really hard anyway… turns out, striving to get perfect scores on everything isn’t really at all the same kind of hard work as struggling to understand anything that’s going on in the course… wheeee
I made it all the way through undergrad with decently good grades, mostly by torturing myself and padding my GPA with very easy classes!
But yeah I’m looking at grad school now and christ almighty I dunno how I’d do that without adderall. I actually thought it was like a myth that people were able to sit and write for more than 20 minutes without crawling out of their skin, and, presumably, everyone who’d ever written anything for longer than that was a wizard.
True story: due to the low standards of literacy, (widely varying) spelling, etc, for much of the Middle Ages, the ability to read silently – without sounding out every word and/or tracing the line with a fingertip – was considered similarly unnatural.
that is fascinating
Due to the non-standardised spelling (and a fab for spelling things fancifully) I certainly sound out some words in pre 19th century Swedish, I guess it is the same in other languages …
But spaces between words and punctuation were not common then. Itsalothardertoreadwhentherearentspacesbetweenwordsorperiodstomark sentances.
Only marginally harder. The sentences getting cut off at the edge due to failed wordwrap is more of a problem.
Nor was spelling particularly consistent. “It is a damn poor mind indeed which can’t think of at least two ways to spell any word.”
Same way pretty much every other AP Ritalin addict did…
A skin care regimen called Adderall
My wife earned a PhD with untreated ADHD and struggled for years after with doctors who thought her academic success disqualified her diagnosis and she only wanted meds as a performance enhancer. Characterizing ADHD as ‘ooh shiny!’ or ‘hey a bicycle!’ is damaging and disrespectful of those who have it. Its more complex than being a dog at the park.
Having ADHD doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t graduate high school or whatever but it can make certain things more difficult when it comes to tedious focus.
I excelled at math for most of my grade school years because I found it to be so easy that I didn’t even have to try. It was around when I got to Algebra II and Pre-cal that I had a very hard time keeping up. It wasn’t that the subject material was difficult for me to grasp but it was so tedious and required so much attention that I just couldn’t make any meaningful progress in it. Math became a struggle because of that, but subjects I had intense interest in like history came very easily to me.
Jason’s a good teacher? Since when?
Since there was a possible ego to tickle.
I’m thinking since Sal told him he was a bad one. That actually shook him. I think post her he’s been making an actual effort that he wasn’t willing to before. I know this won’t be clear until we see some results but I think Walky is getting a much better teaching experience than Sal did. He’s absolutely getting more patience. It’s also possible though that Jason’s particular style of teaching might just work better for Walky since teaching isn’t really a one size fits all thing. But this won’t be clear until we actually see Walky learning from Jason. Right now Walky is just desperate and trying to appeal to Jason’s ego but again Jason is definitely being more patient with Walky then he ever was with Sal and Walky is the one crossing the lines of what’s appropriate in a student/teacher relationship. Super not okay to stalk people on their day off (or ever).
Since Walky became a comparatively worse student.
Aw yeah Walky, lay that blatant manipulation on me.
And this is why, despite his rather significant faults, I don’t hate Jason.
Guy genuinely wants to be a good teacher.
Its also why I dislike Walky so much, he just wants everything done for him and won’t put any work in himself
I actually think him crashing and burning in this paper and having to either redo it or change papers would do him a world of good, like humble him a bit
Ehhh, kid’s 18, he’s been out of high school for like four months. Find me a smart college freshman who DOESN’T want everything done for them and who doesn’t want to put in any work.
Hell, I’d be pretty happy if I never HAD to put in any work into things again. That sounds so chill. So I have a lot of sympathy for Walky for that.
who does want to put in any work*
Well presumably the rest of the cast that hasn’t been shown to be struggling or needing tutoring.
The point being that Walky knows hes struggling but I’m guessing because of his easy grades, wealthy up bringing and parents he doesn’t feel as if he needs to work
An F could be just what he needs
Or it could kick him into the sort of spiral of shame and self-doubt I ended up in the first time I got a D on an exam.
I think I follow your point that sometimes consequences are what is needed, but as someone who coasted in high school and had been told repeatedly that my academics were the most important talent I had, when I got to college and I wasn’t prepared, my first thought was not ‘I need to get my shit together and work harder’, my first thought was ‘there has to be some way to get my grades back up before anyone finds out that I’m not as smart as they think I am, oh god, no one will ever respect me again’. I got lucky and had a genuinely good professor in that course, who helped me build my grades back up by scheduling extra office hours with me and making sure I really understood everything (small college), but in this situation I’m not sure Walky has the sort of support structure that would give him the tools to bounce back from that. Dorothy would try, but she’s burning herself out already, and to me it seems pretty clear that Walky’s problem goes beyond not wanting to do the work, he doesn’t even know how to start (from bitter personal experience: if you’re one of the smart kids, high school teaches you jack shit about how to study or self-teach effectively).
So yeah, I don’t think Walky bombing this assignment will improve the situation, even in the long run, unless something drastic about the rest of the situation changes.
Maybe that’s more the local culture than my own merit, but I love to work and earn keep for myself and my peeps.
The same is true for the majority of people I know where I live, so the people ‘who does want to put in any work’ at least includes ‘a small section of Eastern European countryside’.
They specified college freshman. Generally speaking people, wherever they are from, want to work and we enjoy the feeling of a good day’s work.
Or just let Walky go to Dorothy so’s she can do the “disappointed” look.
An F is kinda harsh. I never recovered from the ‘D’ I got for missing classes by being in the emergency room. Graduated with a 2.9.
I don’t think it’s as much that he doesn’t want to, it’s that he’s never learned how. He’s got bad habits and he’s never had to develop the discipline to push through them. He may also have some level of ADHD.
Part of the problem here is that he doesn’t really need tutoring in math – though it might be useful to catch the parts he missed, he needs more basic tutoring in how to study at all.
It’s easy to say he doesn’t want to work and he just needs to buckle down and put the work in, but he doesn’t have any real idea of what to do if he did.
He’s already freaked out enough about it. Getting an F isn’t going to help. And more practically probably pushes this storyline out decades of real time.
I’m not sure what you mean by “wants everything done for him”. Part of the arc here has been that he’s struggled to admit that he needed help at all. He is demanding it of Jason here, but that’s really a first.
Does he actually want to be a good teacher, or does he just want to be considered a good teacher as is? Honestly he’s not that different from Walky in that sense: both have their identities wrapped up in a certain image that they are good at this thing, and both struggle between actually making efforts to improve themselves vs just lashing out against the assorted proof that there is room for improvement.
The way I read him, he wants to be a good teacher but he doesn’t know how to. He would probably settle for being considered a good teacher if he could get away with it, much like Walky would settle for keep getting good grades without knowing how to study if HE could get away with it, because real change is haaaaaaaard.
This here.
Something tells me he’s going to take ADD personally, though.
That’s a common reaction, unfortunately.
Pssssht, how do you know that isn’t just two unicycles stuck together (even if you can describe any bicycle as sort of like that, but meh). :p
Oh, that Alt Text. Off by a day or two, but perfect anyway.
I can’t decide whether I’m amused or pissed that the snooty math TA has my name and kind of my attitude and would have a sexier accent than me in real life.
Fortunately, I was an English major and never even finished college, so there!
I…showed him?
He’s DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMED
No, Walky, he isn’t.
But you’re not a good student, so it evens out.
ah, Walkerton. half the attention of a 3 months old kitten.
So…1.5 months old?
Now I have that INXS song stuck in my head
if this strip had come out a day or two later that “total eclipse” joke would have been even better
Speaking of Total Eclipse of the Heart, here is, objectively, truthfully, undeniably, the best cover version of all times:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K64ipl_xwqY
That was good, so here’s another.
The original song was pretty obnoxious, but it’s almost worth that song existing so that this could be done to it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skAMmX-D41Q
While I’m at it, I’ll make one more plug for Assigned Male, in case anyone here hasn’t heard of it yet. http://assignedmale.tumblr.com/post/99204841272/stop-gendering-genitals
♬♪And they shouldn’t fence at night
or they’re gonna hurt the gymnasts.
Why do they play football inside?
Here’s another shot of fencing. ♪♬
No, Walky, no.
Looks like Walky has learned at least one thing from Jason already.
He’s learned where Jason’s weak points are at.
yeeeeep.
And that is one of Walky’s scarier traits – he is smart enough and good enough at reading people to being quite capable of figuring out weak points like that.
MOST of the time he is a good enough person to be classy about it. When he is under stress on the other hand…
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/fox/
Huh. I.alway chalked that one up to random obliviousness on Walky’s part, not his.knowing Becky’s weak point of Joyce.
…. aaaand that is how you treat a teacher like an object and not a human being. Turn it on at your leisure, “multitask”, expect instant positive results!! (Yeah, I’m a teacher…) I have had more than one that call the lecture to stop because they “don´t get it, help me Teach, please..!!” And when i come to their side and take a look at their work, they would disconnect and turn to their phones while “the Teach solves the problem…” right by my side, under my very nose. Just ten years ago, i would have had the freedom to shout like a drill sargeant until everybody marches like clockwork. Now, it will led to me being in the unnemployed line faster than you tweet: “i hate the Teach”.
I’m a TA for an intro Computer Science course and one of the students would call me over for help, I would help him figure out what he needed to do, leave him the next step to figure out himself, walk away, turn and see him raising his hand again.
I went over to see what he needed and he would have pulled up YouTube in those few seconds and then tell me to wait for the minute long video to finish. Needless to say, I am glad he is no longer my concern.
Well yeah, that would be treating the students as objects. Two wrongs don’t make a right.
“Stop everything on a Saturday night” what are you STOPPING, JASON?
Stopping having is free time. He’s allowed free time, even if he doesn’t have friends. Friendless people don’t deserve to have their non-working time interrupted by a student who wasted his scheduled tutoring time, any more than if it was, say, Penny and she was there with her boyfriend or a group of friends.
Having “his” free time.
Every Saturday night he feels the fever grow. Don’t you know what it’s like? All revved up with no place to go.
(Hey, we’ve had two Steinman songs quoted recently, what’s one more?)
If he’s not on the clock and has nothing job-related scheduled, he’s free to do whatever he pleases.
If he’s a graduate student as I suspect he is, he’s probably putting 55-70 hours a week between teaching, classes, and research. There’s a decent chance he was thinking about work while sitting in the bar, too, because it’s really hard to unplug when you’re in grad school.
As a graduate student myself, there are times when I just need to sit quietly for an evening somewhere. Even if I’m not actively doing something, that time is essential for me to recover mentally. I’m exhausted most of the time; I don’t need a student barging in on me and making me unexpectedly work more when I wasn’t expecting to have to (for once).
Jason isn’t a good teacher, but that’s irrelevant here. And in general, I advise against admonishing a graduate student that they could do this extra work thing when they’re actually taking a break for once. Because one of two things will happen: they’ll snap at your because they’re stressed and tired and resent the implication they should be working more than they already are (since that’s the expectation put on them by just being in graduate school, and it’s horrible and exhausting and destructive), or they’ll suck up inside themselves because they’ve internalized a sense of inferiority and failure and will be overcome with guilt for not being at work, no matter how many hours they’d put in already.
Shepard’s pie?
So why should I like Walky in this incarnation?
Because boring as Joe and Danny otherwise.
The way Walky’s brain keeps on slipping out of focus really makes me wonder if he’s got ADD or something!
…jesus, the level of hatred for Jason here…
Is he a good teacher? No. But he’s a TA, not a full-on teacher, and at least he’s trying to be better. Walky’s barging in on Jason’s personal time and begging for help, and Jason has every right to tell Walky to fuck off and do his own studying.
Basically there’s two characters here. One is trying to be a good, helpful person, the other is being an asshole to those around him and seems likely to continue to waste other people’s time. Guess whose got my sympathy.
Even more than him being a TA: He’s a mathematics grad student more than likely. He’s almost certainly never had a single class or any training on techniques or learning styles or any of the things teachers in the comments section spent years learning.
If I were an accountant for a garage, I would get mad as hell about people getting on their high horse about how bad a mechanic I am. I am NOT a mechanic. I am an ACCOUNTANT. Similarly, Jason – despite being thrust into the role by virtue of wanting an advanced degree – is not a teacher. He’s a mathematician.
Which is a problem with the whole way we handle research universities and graduate school and such positions.
We take people who’s whole education is focused on the subject and assume they’ll be able to teach it. Frankly, that it works as well as it does is shocking.
Walky has a great point though, why would you put a bicycle on a wall as a decoration?
I suppose it doesn’t work anymore, but still, that’s a weird decoration.
Google has a cafe (named “Go”) with several bicycles on the wall as decoration… and a sign reassuring people that no working bicycles were harmed.
I had lunch in a bar with a bicycle on the wall this week. It was a big cruiser model, painted for Fat Tire Ale, which means that brand bought a bunch of cruisers and doomed them to forever be wall decorations. Perhaps in a post-apocalyptic future they will be taken down off the wall, tires aired up, and provide valuable transportation. No longer to be stuck there, watching people get drunk.
Not all of them. I’ve seen many of these kinds of ‘advertising bikes’ that actually do see road time. Generally, though, they are low-quality, cheaply-made models — think of the ‘TV Lenny’ bikes that used to be a promo giveaway with the purchase of a new TV or stereo back in the day — that will require continuous maintenance/adjustments/repairs over the course of their lifetimes.
The pizza place near my school has a lot of sporting equipment on the walls, including an antique toboggan. Indiana is particularly known for bicycling.
“Review question 1-4 with your girlfriend and we can go through it together on Tuesday. Remember the stepwise procedure we talked about? No? Here, let me write it down on this napkin and you have enough to get started. Good luck.”
For all that I babble about how good it is that Jason is trying to be a good teacher, and how important Walky is for that, he doesn’t have to jump through ALL of Walky’s hopes. He absolutely don’t have to spend his Saturday evening with him in an attempt to make him look good to his girlfriend. So give him a clearly defined task, let him sweat about it and use it as a learning example next session.
Poor Jason. He knows fully well that he is not a good teacher, but he desperately wants to be one. And Walky push just the right button to imply that spending his Saturday evening tutoring a student is something any GOOD teacher WOULD (no).
And that’s again why he and Walky share the same central tragedy. Jason doesn’t known how to be a good teacher. Walky doesn’t know how to be a good student. Both try to play the part rather than actually doing the craft. Walky at least has Dorothy to teach him proper study technique, but there is no indication that there is anyone that can Jason teach Jason pedagogiks.
yep!
Agreed.
Jason Panel 4: “The thing is, I know you’re playing me…but I really wish you were right.”
Spot on
What Walky wouldn’t do for a total eclipse of the Math. He looks better with the silver sharpies.
The secret to teaching Walky math is to explain it to him in a way he understands.
…. I was going to make an example by making a text problem involving Dexter and the Monkey Master, but it turns out I repressed all memories of what I learned in university math lectures… And I didn’t learn much to begin with, I failed in all classes and changed to a law major.
“The secret to teaching Walky math is to explain it to him in a way he understands”
Oh, you mean the way Danny taught Sal math in a way she understood?
Walky’s problem isn’t that he’s paying attention and trying hard and not getting it. It’s that he is literally refusing to do either of those first two things. He’s not trying at all, and he’s not paying attention.
Though to be somewhat more sympathetic, that’s always worked for him before and he’s never been in a position where he had to work harder. Learning those habits of discipline isn’t a trivial task and one not helped by just writing him off as not trying.
And that’s assuming he does not have any form of ADD/ADHD. Which I personally think is still in the open.
Well no, I mean yes its not easy learning those traits but Walky also isn’t trying so it goes both ways
Honestly all you guys saying that’s if he’s got ADD or ADHD ups should take adderall to help arent technically wrong for he were anything like me once he quit taking it especially after sat through his time as an undergrad then stoped lay his ability to study would crash and hard due to th sudden of all that energy being under his own control again, but like I said that’s only if he reacted to it like I did when I stopped. Sorry for the rant and it’s bad bad spelling grammar and littleo no use of punctuation.
Have we ever picked out a voice actor for Jason?
I’d go with either Stuart Ashen or James May.
Hbomberguy.
Jason’s Teaching is Garbage, and Here’s Why
Alexis Denisof (who was super hot in Angel, especially with the glasses, rawr), or Anthony Head, if we want a slightly older version.
Of course I’m remembering them from like twenty years ago; no idea who we’d use nowadays. :/
Why aren’t these two together yet? Dorothy is great but I ship these two so much.
I’m on medication for my ADD. Without my meds I literally have no ability to choose what my brain pays attention to.
So I have a lot of sympathy for Walky here.
I can literally be staring at somebody, trying to listen to what they’re saying because I know it’s important, and my brain will start thinking about a video game I was playing last night, or a TV show I watched a week ago, or a hot girl I saw a few minutes ago.
It’s not a matter of willpower. I literally cannot stop it.
Most adults with ADD end up depressed and self-medicating with drugs and alcohol. They have trouble holding down jobs and forming relationships. They can’t understand why others can focus so easily and spend a lot of time wondering what’s wrong with themselves.
People tell us to just pay attention, but we CAN’T. There’s literally something wrong with our ability to control our own brain.
And the infuriating thing is that it’s not a matter of being unable to pay attention to -anything- — it’s that I can’t CHOOSE. I’ll pay attention to something I don’t want or need to pay attention to for hours, and be unable to focus on things I desperately want or need to think about at all.
But when I’m on my meds… it’s like I have superpowers. It’s astonishing. I can hear an entire lecture, even if it’s boring or if I already know what they’re talking about. I can solve puzzles that require thinking several steps ahead. (I’ve measured my ability to solve Sudoku puzzles on and off my meds, and with meds it’s literally 5 times faster). I can remember instructions at work and not get distracted (or get back on track after being distracted).
I can suddenly function like most other human beings. And that’s when I realize it’s not a matter of willpower. There’s something not right in my brain. NO amount of strategies or training or discipline or practice is going to fix it, any more than those things will fix a broken leg or blindness.
I saw a post online once that said “If you can’t make your own neurotransmitters, it’s ok to use store-bought.”
If Walky is really unable to focus — when he REALLY wants to and there are direct consequences he’s worried about for not focusing — then he needs to get help. It’s a fixable problem.
Not now, teach…I’m staring at the props….
And I thought the endless privilege debate on Questionable Content ‘s board was tiresome. For what it’s worth my sympathies lie with Jason.
Once upon a time, I was practicing math; now, I’m only looking at bikes. Nothin’ I can do, just too ADHD to be smart.
Turn around, shinies!
Every now and then I make a fart…
and i need you now tonight
and i need tutoring, TA!
Well, he didn’t have to lie
Walky, do us all a favor, and go play in traffic.
That’s a tad harsh, I’d suggest that Jason tells Walky to go away and come back during teaching hours and be prepared to listen and learn
If Walky doesn’t then its all on him
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooo…….I found the comic like two days ago and caught up…looking forward to more though
*hugs* It’ll be okay. :p
Don’t lie to the new readers, one strip a day is never enough, the post-binge crash… well, I guess participating in the comments is worth it, but the possibility of daily cliffhangers… So not cool.
Walky is prepared to show just how good a teacher Jason is! The best teacher can teach even the worst of students!
Which is why Walky should seek out Danny.
So, two Bonnie Tyler nods in this chapter.
Did someone say “It’s a Heartache” is due next?
Oh daaarling I’m crazy, after all these years.
I’ve come to comment and challenge you all to accept the wisdom of the Duke’s is that a bike?
Yeah, sticking with my earlier diagnosis that Walky, like me, is ADHD inattentive-dominant. Making jokes about it is one of the many defense mechanisms you learn.
Side note: I was diagnosed with ADD later in life, but my parents suspected it for years; I’d been showing symptoms since I was five. But my uncle had had some bad experiences with Ritalin after he was diagnosed back in the 80s. Medicine changed him into a totally different, unhappy person, and my folks were terrified of something like that happening to me. So they waited to get me officially diagnosed until I was 12 and couldn’t deal on my own anymore. I don’t blame them for their decision, but I feel bad that Walky might have to go through the hell that is getting diagnosed the same way I did, especially since he’s doing it much later in life than I had to.