Not to mention that the stacks are not necessarily completely opaque. Sure, you may not be able to see through them from one end of the library to the other, but you can usually see through two or three at least.
Speaking as a former employee of a university library, I have to say that yes, there IS sex going on in the stacks. And yes, they usually were caught in the act because it’s not a very private place. But our college had two sets of stacks, the new and the old. The old stacks were pretty secluded, and not widely used (most of the old, out of date stuff was located there)
.
Speaking as a former employee of a university library (work-study, technically, but it still counts), I have to say that there was NOT sex going on in the stacks.
I suppose it probly depends on the library in question and how it’s laid out.
Full disclosure: former stacks technician at Wichita State.
Caught people having sex twice. Third floor and basement. Found the remnants of sex several other times, again third floor and basement. About once a week, caught someone beating it at a public computer. Found a section of books removed to make way for a case of Bud Light in the basement.
It’s not sex, but a local artist liked to screw with our library. He’d sneak his own books into the collection labelled as great works. He’d come in, take down entire shelves and stack the books “artistically.”
So yeah, unless your library is a single floor with nothing of value in it, there are places to have sex. Nobody goes into the Government Documents section after about 6:00. The study rooms in the basement are so secluded, you could die in one and not be found until someone had to reshelve a book in the TZs. The biology section was not heavily trafficked. If you could get a key and weren’t scared of asbestos, you could host an orgy in Compact Shelving. Big, old school = Big, old libraries = lots of places to hide.
Currently, I’m at one of the many not-quite-UT schools in Texas, and I can say this with certainty: you could not get laid in the stacks there.
My college library DOES have quite a few students in it most of the time, however near 100% of them are either on a computer not studying, sitting at a table to talk to their friends, or using one of the offices/’private’ rooms to do the same, as it’s free to do so.
Also, it was a reference to a show called ‘Undergrads’
My girlfriend and I used to make out in the college library…
and we were in a very strict Christian school where we likely
would have been kicked out for it – or severely reprimanded for
sure.
BTW we are married now lol.
All I remember is the general reaction when she went from amusingly aggressive RA to stalker/harasser with an inclination to steal and damage personal property.
Most non-college libraries have normal office hours of 9-5 or school hours of 8-3:30. It would stand to reason that plenty of college libraries would be 9-5 as well.
College libraries are nothing like public libraries. There were two at my college, one three levels and the other five, and neither had more than one or two small shelves of books you would read for fun. That’s not what the libraries were for. They were for studying and research, and as such, had to be open enough for students to work around class schedules. They were open until 2 am all year, 24/7 finals week.
Yea, mine was similar, it was open till like 1 am during the week, 8 or 9 pm on weekends and around the clock finals time. But that being said, it’s not just study that Sarah has to be worried about. If Dana has been hotboxing in their dorm for weeks Sarah probably isn’t even comfortable sleeing there and lack of sleep kills your brain and school work quality fast. Stack omnipresent contact high (which Sarah would have if spends much time in the dorm) and there is recipe for failure going on there. I get that Dana lost her mom and needs to cope but her coping mechanism is impacting someone else which makes it selfish. Sarah’s suggestion of therapy is valid and warranted as far as I can tell, she may be a bit snappy but to all of those who believe that Sarah living in the library is a viable solution to Dana bogarting the dorm room consider that the Dorm room is not the only place Dana can toke up.
hot boxing only works well in a very small room. or with a lot of people smoking. It’s very unlikely Sarah would get high from being in the same room as one person smoking. At worst, the room reeks of weed, which is a bit annoying but can be mostly solved by opening a window.
hot boxing doesn’t work well in anything bigger than a 5×5 room (even then) with no ventilation unless you have a lot of people or are burning a constant string of joints. One person smoking to drown out their pain isn’t going to get everyone else in the room high unless it’s the bathroom with the door shut and the fan off. Or a car, or cabana, etc.
Meriam Library at CSU Chico was open 7-Midnight M-S, 8-11p on Sunday, and 24/7 the week before and during finals. At least when I was there, which was when most of the materials were engraved on stone tablets.
Nice. The library at the small university that I attended closed at something like 9:00 or 10:00 at night. It definitely wasn’t a reliable study space if you had a night job or needed to study well into the wee hours of the morning.
Then again, I went to college from 1993 to 1998, so perhaps that has changed over the years. 😉
Our library is not good for studying. The university has turned it into more of a hangout (in a desperate attempt to get more students there?), so it’s only good for group projects… and terrible for actual studying.
I don’t believe that it’s her only motive, though it does lend a certain urgency to the situation from her perspective. At worst, I think it was a tremendously tactless comment to make.
I still like Sarah a lot more than Dana’s other “friends.” They’re being completely apathetic about her situation.
“Giving a person their space” with depression and substance abuse when you claim to be their friend is absolutely apathetic, if not damn near criminally negligent.
This. A thousand times this.
Weed shouldn’t be used as a coping method, EVER.
Having been ont he supporting end of someone very close to me who used to use weed as a coping method, I can’t stress enough that getting high 24/7 when your sad is the worst thing to do. By smoking to keep from being sad, all you do is make your depression stretch out and befor eyou know it, you don’t even know what you’re sad about anymore. You’re just sad, and weed is the only thing that stops it.
@gilly
for some people weed is an excellent coping method. For others it isn’t.
Depression is not 1 disease, it’s a general term that covers many diseases. As such, there is no cure-all for depression.
While the effect you described is true for many cases, it doesn’t cover all of them. Brain chemistry is complicated and there is a long list of imbalances that can cause severe depression.
I know people in both groups and while self-medication is never recommended, it can be better than no medication. And self medication on weed is certainly better than alcohol.
Aren’t they all freshmen? That means they’re, like, 18?
Children aren’t exactly known for their worldly knowledge on how to fix problems, and most of them are still in that teenager “the world is about me me me” phase. Not saying it’s OK for them not to do anything, just saying they’re kids and they probably have no idea what they should be doing in the first place
I was going to say. Carl’s line just tells us he’s clinging to a memory of someone he used to know, before her life changed. If he said he had talked to her that might mean he knows something meaningful, but I’m going to guess that would have been a lie.
And Sarah hasn’t exactly demonstrated flawless tact in the past. And even though Carl says he “knows” her his perception of what normal should be already has some flaws.
Sarah’s not covering herself in glory here, but it’s pretty clear there’s been a passage of time between this strip and yesterday and Dana’s been smoking most of it. “She’ll come round eventually, honest” is a pretty crap response (what if she doesn’t?).
I think we’ve established that Sarah isn’t generally the type to get mushy even when she cares about people. I think the self-serving reason for her concern is the easiest for her to admit to.
At which point you take steps to study that don’t involve fucking over the people around you. Granted, given how this university apparently condones rampant abuse of power by RAs, getting someone out of a suboptimal living situation without screwing over everyone involved is probably impossible.
I would have taken steps from the very beginning. High GPA and pothead roomie aren’t something I’d keep floating at the same time..and that would have been way before the death.
I don’t know. A chill, pot-smoking roomie that you at least get along with most of the time might be better than whatever roulette roommate you get when you complain of a problem. I’d certainly think so as an 18-year-old, especially since Dana wasn’t smoking in the room or otherwise attracting RA attention prior to this.
As a person with asthma who has lived with a smoker, it doesn’t matter if the other person is “courteous” about it. Unless they stand outside and air themselves out the smell follows them and gets on everything. Coughing, a splitting headache, and an overall inability to breathe and focus makes it difficult to focus on much, especially studies. Even if Sarah were to go to the library to study she still has to sleep somewhere. She should’ve switched sooner like Harrowed said.
::shrug:: Apparently the smell was managable prior to this. I’m a bit asthmatic and allergic to cigarettes as well, and I could NEVER live with a smoker (that smell, aaaagh), but for some reason pot smell barely bothers me. Depends on the person, I guess.
yeah she could have
“All I’m saying is that dead parents are not a big deal but my passing a test is and Dana’s problems are garbage to me, and so is she, so are ALL of you.”
Ouch. I would have preferred Sarah mentioning a time frame of how long this has been going on. Plus, as others have said, the library is where she should be studying. Your dorm is not only your “home”, but it’s also your roommate’s home. If they don’t want to study, you can’t make, or expect, them to be quiet/non-irritating.
Indeed. And while a roommate’s inconsiderate behavior can be a legitimate cause for complaint you have to take into account extenuating circumstances. Like the fact that they might be in mourning. Still, Sarah’s advice is sound. It’s the kind of thing a good RA might broach. (Since college kids are pretty separated from family, you know, they don’t have as much of a support system. Plus, you know, nothing is ever wrong with therapy to help with trauma.)
As someone who has worked in, and attempted to study in, a library: they can be noisy and uncomfortable. The fact it might just be random little noises like elevator dings, study groups whispering, librarians dropping books on bookshelves and squeaky-wheeled carts, air conditioning vents, etc. Plus some people can’t study in a public place like that. I know I can’t — even in one of the private study rooms, I feel awkward and self-conscious, and on-the-spot. Sarah might be the same way.
I hate studying in the library because they won’t let you eat. And any other public place where you are allowed to eat (cafe, cafeteria, my school had a couple of lounge areas) are often noisy. When I study, I snack constantly to keep myself focused and my energy up. If I’m not able to do that, I can’t go for as long and waste precious minutes refueling.
I’ve been trying reeeaaallly hard to take Sarah’s side, but to be honest, she’s be super selfish. I understand wanting to keep your GPA up to keep your scholarship (I’m in the same boat), but Dana’s been really nice to Sarah and Sarah should be concerned for Dana’s sake, not her own. Find somewhere else to study and do homework and try to help out Dana because she’s your friend, not because you want to study.
This only makes sense if you believe allowing somebody to wallow in self pity and substance abuse constitutes ‘helping them’. That an RA can pretty easily tell when someone is toking out in their room is a factor as well.
If she were abusing alcohol instead of weed, would that affect your position?
So wait… Sarah expresses concern for Dana’s sake and gets the classic “more space”, so she’s supposed to just keep expressing concern for Dana’s sake and continue to get the “give her more space” response?
Sara isn’t the kind of person who knows how to help a friend. She also has never been good at networking. All she knows to do is to bring it up to her friends and that’s not working.
Was what she said a bit harsh and completely lacking in tact? Yes, but I have to say that I’ve done just as bad.
It’s definitely a product of her own cynicism. She really believes that she is this monster that Dana’s old friends make her out to be, so that’s the image she’s portraying in her story.
I gotta say, if this story goes where I think it’s going, I truly have no sympathy for Sarah here. But, since I’m not sure how this is gonna be resolved, I’ll save my judgement until the hammer drops.
Given Sarah’s comment in panel 3 it seems that avoiding/ignoring the issue has come to an end and that something needs to done now. I like Sarah for the “invisible” forgiveness she might have shown to Dana and her friends may not consider it a problem unless the issue is addressed 5 or 6 times before something is thought about doing.
I have tons of sympathy of Sarah. Why? Because Dana shouldn’t be in school right now. If she is so depressed that she’s stoned in her room all the time and messing up her roommates life, then she should be at home with family.
It would be nice to know how long this has been going on. I get the impression that it’s been a while and that “just this once” has become a regular thing.
I’m sorry your mother died, but you know what? Everybody dies, and most of them die sooner than we would want. It’s the one immutable fact of life and everybody has to deal with it eventually. If your way of “dealing” with it is to smoke pot in your shared room where you had previously agreed to not smoke, then you get very little sympathy from me.
“The library is where you study”
“god, study at the library”
“if you can’t study in your dorm, go to the library!”
Brilliant suggestions. Unless of course she is used to studying in her dorm and she can’t focus as well in a library. Studying is just like everything else, there are places and times when it is done best and when you deviate from these, the result can be terrible.
Also, add on the stress of not being able to go back to your dorm because your roommate is smoking pot.
This might be also messing with her sleep which can affect her studying as well. Not to mention it just being a very bad environment to be in period. When you have no where to go but “the library” then your comfort system breaks down and it becomes hard to study no matter where you are.
That’s on Sarah, though. Dana could have any number of habits that are not illegal which Sarah finds annoying. If she can’t deal with that in her own way, than its her problem for being inflexible. It happens all the time!
plus the fact that the library is full of people, and Sarah doesn’t seem to like many of them.
I agree, if all you ever do is study in your dorm, it’s hard to change that routine on the fly – I always studied in my room. maybe she was being selfish, but she’s right to suggest help for her roommate if she thinks Dana needs it.
I know that my college library is closed on weeknights and Sunday night. Also if either of my roommates did drugs I wouldn’t feel comfortable being in my room at all.
Actually, studies have shown that it’s best to study in several different locations to prevent information from being associated with only one area. It’s a college campus and there are plenty of places to study. My first roommate smoked and drank and kicked me out of the room for “personal time” and came in and woke me up at 4am high as a kite but I never tried to get him kicked out of school. I got a new roommate. Moreover, if my roommate’s mother DIED, I would have been a little more compassionate and I wouldn’t have been as selfish as Sarah’s being. I dunno, Willis, I don’t want to hate Sarah, help me out here.
Well, if you’re replicating the conditions in which you’ll need to recall the information, a single place is better when the goal is simply test performance.
Oh man, I would’ve gotten him kicked out within a week. I seriously don’t understand how you people can be so lenient. Why should /I/ leave when you’re the one messing up our personal space, that kinda thought process is what I’m having here.
Sarah wants to help her, and her friends don’t.
The fact that Sarah pointed out that it isn’t *all* about Dana and that she’s starting to be negatively affected by her behavior doesn’t change that. And it certainly doesn’t make her selfish to show some concern for herself.
Good points. Sleeping problems can affect memory as well as speech, sight and hearing. I don’t blame Sarah at all for trying to get Dana a therapist.
And although Carl says Dana’ll just snap back from it, i doubt that will happen. Sure, she might have gotten over, say, her guinea pig dying, but your mom was and is almost* always there to take care of you in one way or another. That would be very hard to just ‘snap back from’ and I have total sympathy for Dana, but do believe she needs help.
Willis, are you getting all this?
*I say ‘almost’ because my parents are divorced and I live with my dad, who is the more responsible parent out of the two. I know several others in the same situation as I am, and they would all back me up on this front.
Its pretty strange to me how many commenters here seem to think that smoking pot is in itself a bad thing and that Dana is bad for doing it. I don’t see how her smoking a lot of pot is keeping Sarah from studying. If it annoys her, well… there’s many ways to deal with a roommate’s annoying habits. I don’t see why she couldn’t study in a library or other common area. I’m pretty sure the only person who would be in trouble with the school or the law for Dana’s smoking is Dana herself, unless a future strip explicitly states otherwise. It seems like Sarah has sort of made it about the drugs because it makes her feel less guilty. It’s a scapegoat.
I’ve shared living space with several someone who smoked pot a lot. First of all there is the smell. It either smells like pot or whatever incense they mistakenly believe covers the pot smell … all the damn time. Second, they didn’t keep regular hours. This sucks greatly when you have to get up ridiculously early for work and they’re up watching tv, listening to music, banging around in the kitchen, and/or generally being disruptively noisy very late at night. Thirdly, you’re completely discounting all the second hand smoke floating around their dorm room that Sarah is being exposed to.
The thing that bugs me is how everyone keeps saying Sarah should just leave her room to enable her roommate. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with smoking pot, but I do think there something wrong with getting drunk/high so that you don’t have to deal with life. Yes, Dana is going through a rough time, losing people you love sucks in the worst way, but she’s not giving thought one to the person who has to share living space with her. She’s grieving and, let’s be honest, she doesn’t give a shit about Sarah right now. Someone who is barely her friend, and has to live with her, shouldn’t be expected to just accept bullshit selfish behavior for an indefinite amount of time.
I don’t think that’s giving Dana enough credit. Before her mom died her smoking habit was the one thing that stopped her from being an angel. She reached out to Sarah with friendship on multiple occasions, and put up with an unwarranted amount of rudeness on two occasions. If anything is clear from the story, it’s that Dana was the only reason Sarah had anything that ever resembled a social life.
True. But that all ended when her mother died and she retreated into herself and her habit. Note that this is very, very understandable – grief sucks and changes a person. But regardless, for all her angel status before, she is now at best a millstone to others. Which, again, is neither unexpected nor something that should be held too much against her. But it is a problem.
Summation: she’s not currently deserving of much credit for her behavior. The reaction? Get her counseling. For everyone’s good.
An angel? Was she out feeding the hungry and curing the sick when she wasn’t getting high? At best, we can say she appeared to be a kind person and a very decent roommate. Neither of which is in any way impacted by the fact that she smoked pot.
The thing about reaching out to people is that, sometimes, the people you’re reaching out to, would rather you not. Sarah didn’t go out of her what to be rude to Dana, she just made it clear, in her blunt way, that she was focused on her future when Dana asked her to hang out. Granted, her intro to Raidah was pretty rude, but I think Sarah is very aware of how she comes off to people and she uses it. Much better to be seen as a bongoy and misanthropic than “lonely” and “withdrawn” … which sound sad and pathetic. It’s clear to me from the story that Sarah didn’t want a social life and only started hanging out with these people for future career opportunities. She didn’t go in to it wanting a social life, at least not consciously, and what, in the end, does she have to be glad for? A bunch of people that turned their backs on her when she did what she thought was right?
Well it is illegal… and addictive (for those who say it isn’t there are studies out there and I have a friend whose brother became severely addicted). Sarah is trying to find help for someone, the fact that she doesn’t just turn her in shows that she cares about Dana’s well being.
Losing a loved one sucks. So does landing yourself into a dead end for the rest of your life because you were kicked out of college/couldn’t afford to go. They are not the same kind of suck, but both are terrible.
Sarah has the right of it on this one. At some point it is time to grow up. Deal with your personal problems like an Adult, don’t let them interfere with the lives of others around you. Sarah is at least suggesting a way to help Dana deal with her grief.
Rule #1 of depression: Never tell somebody to ‘grow up’. Depression is the pain that you can’t beat on your own, no matter how hard you try. So telling somebody to get over it will make them feel ever worse because they can’t.
As someone who’s had to deal with a similar case, I can’t help but understand Sarah. Even if you can study elsewhere (and it’s not easy if the library closes before midnight and you have to cram for longer than usual), having to share space with someone whose behavior and substance abuse makes you uncomfortable is really difficult. You cannot avoid it forever, and sooner or later, you will have to face it. In college, my solution was to last the year and transfer to another room, which I had to pay extra for.
((I also don’t know just how well Carl knows Dana, but in my (somewhat limited) experience, “snapping” back to normal is very rare. Most people go back to normal slowly and gradually after such trauma, and a good number never do, especially alcoholics and other substance users.))
I feel like that “just this once” has turned into “just once every several times a day” and that it has been awhile (I’m assuming more than a few weeks). And while everyone is saying “go to the library” you need to remember Sarah has to live there (and sometimes colleges wont let you switch/its a huge fucking hassle to switch) and if you can’t live and rest and feel comfortable someplace, you won’t retain any information and will not work well.
Also remember that Sarah is probably spending all her time trying to cover up the pot that is wafting from her room. She doesn’t want either of them thrown out, and she’s covering both their asses. It takes up a lot of time trying to tip toe around a grieving pot smoker and make sure neither are thrown out. Sarah has every right to try and get her to at least stop smoking in their room.
Honestly, while I agree that Sarah is handling this improperly, I completely understand where she’s coming from. Sometimes you forget your tactfulness when you’re behind on sleep and over stressed with work, and it’s normal for people to have some self interest at heart. This incident also helps give credence to why Raidah is so angry with Sarah currently. I wouldn’t say this backstory makes me like Sarah less (she’s still my favorite character) but it does make me like Dana, Raidah and the other friends more. They are all so complex and wonderful!
Regardless, my first thought was still “go study in a library.” That seems like the sensible solution here.
The “I haven’t been able to study” line makes me feel like it’s probably been a while, and, like someone has already mentioned, the “just this once” has probably turned into the norm. I could be wrong! No times being mentioned could mean I’m talking out of my ass.
But if it HAS been a while, and Dana has been staying in a spiral of grief and pot smoking, it’s kind of unfair to expect Sarah to go study in the library for a couple months. It’s great to be understanding of other people’s pain and their ways of dealing with it, but Sarah is paying for her dorm room too and if she’s stuck out somewhere else or unable to study/sleep in the room for an extended period, it’s not fair to her either.
But Sarah tends to always want to be seen as the gruff, uncaring type when she usually DOES care, like with Joyce. So it might be both that she’s stressing about her own grades and her own future, while also genuinely wanting to get Dana some help. She just can’t TELL people that. They’ll know she has FEELINGS, so it’s easier to hide behind the another, equally valid reason to get her help.
Contact High!
I am wondering why everyone seems to have missed something really glaring here.
Any of you ever share in a dorm room with a heavy pot user for any lenght of time? It isn’t being bothered by the use of the pot so much as getting high from the use of the pot.
It is near impossible to study with a room full of pot smoke making you feel soooo mellow that you could give a crap about tomorrows test.
Go to the library and study, and back to your dorm room and sit in the stink of weed?
Sarah may be very narrow in her ‘my scholarship viewpoint’ but what her roomate is doing is not right either. Her friends smoke, so go smoke with your friends and come back and crash in your room.
By where I think this is going, it’s starting to look like Sarah hasn’t changed or learned anything, while Raidah, post-punch, is starting to…just barely…but starting.
What’s Sarah supposed to be learning again? That wallowing in drugs to the point of your own self-destruction is bad for both yourself *and* your roommate’s totally trivial ability to retain her scholarship?
Oh, right. That weed is the panacea of all things and getting high on secondhand smoke can only improve your grades. Got it.
I was thinking more of Joyce being the new Danah for Sarah, and Raidah being called on shaming others for trying (in flawed manner) to deal with ethical dilemmas in ways other than harboring quiet good intentions while hiding behind the crowd.
One jumps the gun and takes too much responsibility for someone else, the other fails to do anything save fret over how ugly the first one’s solutions looked and sounded. However, I think Sarah’s counter-shaming may have actually prepped Raidah for an overdue epiphany.
So, riddle me this. If Sarah is such a horrible, selfish person, why has Dana not been kicked out of school yet? So far, we’ve seen Sarah hanging out with Dana and her friends, spraying air freshener to cover up Dana’s pot-stink, and trying to get Dana’s other friends to help her. And since Sarah is actually living with Dana, I’m more inclined to accept her read of the situation than Carl’s, than you very much.
At no point, so far, has she threatened to get Dana kicked out of school.
Oh, she’ll obviously look pretty horrible to Radiah. (This comic is clearly planting the seed of that.) And she’ll obviously look pretty sympathetic to a large portion of the readership. The question is where the split will be.
She held out for as long as was reasonable, looking after Dana’s needs. Now she’s got some of her own to look after and she’s brainstorming with some friends about what to do. She was straightforward in her communication. She said “Therapist”, they said “Give her time”, she said “I ain’t got no more time to give”. You can interpret it as unforgiving, but the facts often are and in this case it sounds like they’re equally unforgiving of both roommates. She was never the type to sugar coat this sort of stuff or dance in circles around the subject.
If anything I think it speaks more to the quality of the friends she’s found that she put forth a problem that was hurting both Dana and herself and their sole contribution was “Geez. Think of Dana’s needs.” as if she’d been callously disregarding them when she suggested a therapist.
The tough thing about grieving is that, in the real world, nobody really wants you to. They want you to perform a series of actions that they consider to be grieving, and if you do not do what they want, they attack you.
If you manage to keep yoruself together and function as a person? Some of your family will berate and SCREAM at you for “Not grieving properly!” If you at any point say “I’m sorry, my mom just died,” they will berate and SCREAM at you for not getting over it. if anybody else around says something like “Everybody grieves differently. Give him a break,” they will yella t them until the helpful people hback off. Your relatives will follow you around, berating and yelling at you no matter what you do. And if you get the balls to tell them to stop it, and let you grieve normally, they will act hurt and offended, and they might even call the police and make up wild stories just because you didn’t play by their stupid script. When that amounts to nothing because you didn’t do anything wrong and even a professional grief counselor agrees with you, then they will simply start stabbing at you in more subtle ways, calling any other relatives (sometimes not realizing you’re in the room and it[‘s a speaker phone), and making up lies about you.
I really can’t tell if you’re using sarcasm to make a point, if you’re generalizing from your own experiences (in which case I’m sincerely and profoundly sorry for you) or if you’ve got “the real world” and “daytime drama shows” mixed up, but that is NOT what happens when I try to grieve.
I don’t understand this, because it’s never happened to me. I come from a very large, very in-your-business, sort of family, but I’ve never had any of them give me a hard time about grieving. Sounds rough.
People have a very specific image of what a grieving person looks like. It helps if you think of social interaction like a dance. Some dances allow for more freedom than others, some settings inflict harsher penalties for missteps than others, but generally there is some concept of how things are supposed to go. The grief dance is almost absurdly restrictive in how strict and specific the routine gets. The penalties become quite harsh, largely because everybody else is also grieving and not at their best.
If you can’t grieve the way everybody else is grieving then they don’t think you care. That offends people. If you don’t care about the person who died then you probably won’t care about them when they die. They question whether you love them or anyone. Sometimes they grow to hate you. Lash out at you for being the only person not dancing the grief dance. Really you just have two left feet and no matter how much you try you can’t make you dance match what’s happening around you, but they don’t understand that. They withdraw the network of caring and support and then they vilify you for choosing to stay outside the network where everybody is trying to help eachother through a hard time. That’s about how it works. Not about how nosey they are. Just about how well you can dance and how complete your knowledge of the steps is.
I don’t care if you have anther place to physically study, the stress of a shitty roommate who, by the sound of things, is just getting high 24/7 to deal with the death of her mother (which, seriously, does no one see this as self-destructive?), can drastically affect your ability to study, concentrate, sleep. It’s not like this chick is Sara’s best friend of a decade, she’s an assigned roommate. It’s not Sara’s duty to put up with this girl’s bullshit just because the girl’s mom died. Everyone’s got problems. The roommate is lucky Sara has been nice so far, letting her smoke herself into oblivion, and is now suggesting that she get professional help to deal with grief. I say she just throw her to the dogs and report the drug abuse.
I think people are being too harsh on Sarah. Dana isn’t going through a good time, it’s possible that she does need therapy if she’s beginning to spiral.
At the same time, Sarah needs to concentrate on school.
Honestly, it looks like a lot of this is just miscommunication and everyone is snapping at everyone.
I think people are being too harsh on Sarah. Dana isn’t going through a good time, it’s possible that she does need therapy if she’s beginning to spiral.
At the same time, Sarah needs to concentrate on school.
Honestly, it looks like a lot of this is just miscommunication and everyone is snapping at everyone.
Also, sleep in the library. Just remember to come back often enough to spray the air cleanser, to cover Dana’s self-destructive ass. But don’t *help* Dana, as that would be a baaaaad idea.
Good idea on the surface, not very manageable in practice. If you’re not used to doing so, it can be very challenging to study in places you don’t usually study in. As people have said… pretty much all over this page.
Wow, the amount of people saying that asking a depressive person’s friends to get help get her professional help is selfish on the part of Sarah is… kind of sad.
Yes, her mum died, and that’s horrible. But there’s giving time, and there’s ignoring the fact that she’s rapidly sinking into heavy substance abuse.
S’like if drank instead of smoked pot, would they be anywhere near this level of “Eh, time heals all wounds”.
And the really depressing thing is that by actually doing the sensible and empathetic thing, Raidah and co probably screwed Sarah’s future anyway by spreading rumours amongst their lawyer parents, thus preventing further career options.
“Wow, the amount of people saying that asking a depressive person’s friends to get help get her professional help is selfish on the part of Sarah is… kind of sad.”
…you think it’s sad that this amount is zero?
I dunno, I think it would be pretty sad if people did say that.
I can not see a single comment in this thread saying that Sarah is selfish for trying to get Dana professional help. Can you?
There are several comments saying that Sarah is selfish for wanting the Dana problem fixed so that she can study, which is another thing entirely. There are also several comments expressing lost sympathy for Sarah without giving a reason.
Or, in more general terms:
Comment 1: A because B!
Comment 2: A!
Comment 3: A!
Comment 4: A because B!
…
Comment X: The amount of people saying “A because C!” is kind of sad.
It is hard to have a meaningful discussion if you misinterpret each other’s arguments.
And because we humans are so good at misinterpreting, I should probably point out that I have not yet expressed my own opinion of Sarah’s actions. If anyone thinks they have found it somewhere between these lines, they are most likely mistaken.
Actually, given US alcohol laws, it’s more like “well, my /18/ year old friend is constantly drinking whiskey in my room and leaving the room smelling like a distillery, but it’s okay, his mom died.” I would’ve just exchanged 12 for 18, but I realized that even then, your comparison would only work if we were talking about the comic page before this one. Something doesn’t become “less illegal” just because you’re closer to the age where it becomes legal.
TL;DR version:
18 year old depressed teen abusing pot = 18 year old depressed teen abusing alcohol, not 12 year old depressed preteen abusing alcohol.
And yes, Sarah is right to suggest counseling, but her followup, if she actually cared, should’ve been more “No, she NEEDS help,” and less “Well, could she snap out of it NOW? I need to study.” The way she said it makes it seem as if the reason she suggested it was because she was annoyed Dana hadn’t worked through it yet, rather than actually concerned about Dana doing a nosedive of self-destruction. Of course, given her reaction to Dana’s “friends” in the present, I’m fairly certain Sarah WAS concerned, and getting Dana reported may have been a last-ditch effort to help her after constantly getting told “Dana will be fine” whenever she tried to convince the others that Dana needed a lot more help than can be found at the business end of a bong.
And certain simplistic definitions of “solved.” People keep pointing out that it’s not always easy to study in an unfamiliar place, especially if you’re there because there’s nowhere else to go.
I think there’s also more to it than just needing a less distracting place to study. Knowing someone you’re friends with is having so many problems (and isn’t coping well) can be -really- mentally taxing. Getting Dana a therapist would not only get her out of the dorm, but give Sarah some peace of mind that at least someone is making sure Dana doesn’t self-destruct.
I see both sides of the debate here, but I’m with Sarah on this one. I used to think I could handle all my worries and problems alone but finally gave in and talked to a therapist. It doesn’t completely resolve problems but it does help to talk to someone that at least feels more confidential than friends or family.
Also, keep in mind that Raidah and the others were hinted at to be privileged kids. Sarah isn’t so lucky. She loses her scholarship, she won’t get her degree. She doesn’t get her degree, she doesn’t get a decent job. No decent job means living paycheck to paycheck, wondering what the hell happened to herself.
On a side note, I will not be able to comment for a while due to school starting up again tomorrow. I will comment when I can, and hope to see you guys tomorrw if possible.
I LOVE YOU GUYS!!!
It will be so awesome if, after all this, some RA just happens to wake up and smell the poppies and report the room. Sarah (justifiably) points fingers, Dana goes bye-bye, the roommates assume that Sarah’s the one that instigated the report.
Admittedly, that would rob Sarah the opportunity to do the right thing and try to get Dana some professional help, but it would sure shut people up.
I actually went back and re-read from the beginning of Sarah’s story because I had lost all sense of context for what was happening in today’s strip.
It’s amazing how much more even-handed the story comes off reading it straight through. (Timeline seems a little clearer, too)
In fact, in her own strange way, Sarah IS favoring herself in her recollection of events. Sure she admits being difficult and a little callous, but that’s definitely in line with the narrative she likes to present to people. It’s a pretty simple story of “I took a chance on friendship and it went horribly awry.”
I can’t shake the feeling that Sarah has worked herself into a trap. She puts up the tough exterior to keep from getting hurt, but she’s been so good at keeping people away that she doesn’t know how to communicate, so she can’t effectively tell people when there’s something going wrong, which means things go wrong anyway and she winds up getting hurt. And that’s really not just specific to the flashback currently unfolding, if she can’t communicate with people then life is going to be exponentially more difficult than it needs to be.
You have to honor a roommate agreement, but the argument that Sarah can’t study because her roommate is doing drugs is absolutely ridiculous. I never studied hard in my dorm room, it was always in the library or computer lounge. If she can’t sleep, that’s an issue, but if it’s just having nowhere to study then I call shenanigans. SHENANIGANS! EVERYONE GET A BROOM, IT’S SHENANIGANS!
Why isn’t anyone thinking of Sarah? Everyone’s like, “Dana’s mother died”, “Dana needs time to grieve”, “Sarah can just go to the library”. BULLSHIT! It’s clear that Sarah needs that scholarship in order to stay at school. Generosity can only go so far without it affecting the giver negatively.
As for Raidah and the others; they’re not helping, they’re being neglectful! They’re just sitting around until Dana “eventually” gets better. Well what garantee is there that Dana was going to get better? There was also the chance that she would’ve taken a turn for the worst. Yes, we could say that Sarah was acting mostly on her own behalf, but the point remains that she took action!
College is really hard work, and when you’re getting through college on scholarships you have to maintain a certain level of academic aptitude. If you slip up and lose your scholarships, you may not get a second chance, or as much money if you do.
Sarah’s working hard to give herself a good education so she can have a great future — ideally a great-paying job that she loves so she can take care of herself, her loved ones who have taken care of her up to this point, and maybe even start a family and help provide for her children. When you’re in college, sometimes you have to watch out for number one.
I feel like this really should be a no-brainer for anybody who’s gone through college without rich parents and paid for it either through prestigious scholarships with strict academic requirements or even out of pocket. At some point you’ve got to knuckle down, be an adult and get serious. Yeah, it sucks that a friend’s mother died, and you lend your support as much as you can. Heck, you wouldn’t risk a well-paying job over a friend’s mother, so why risk your education?
THANK YOU! Someone here with some damn perspective. Frankly, my only complaint about Sarah’s behaviour so far is that she hasn’t ALREADY gone to the campus authorities over her roommates behaviour. If I’d caught one of my flatmates smoking pot in the flat while I was in halls, I’d have been on the phone to the RA in seconds.
I’m with Sarah on this. “Go to the library”? Really? Hey, I want to blaze up in a university-owned dorm room which your financial aid/ personal money pays for so can you piss off and study elsewhere? Sorry, I’m not a prude but if someone lit up in a dorm room I shared with them they’d go straight out the windows, grief-be-damned. If it were a VW microbus then I’d say Sarah should leave but it’s not, it’s her dorm room… for sleeping and studying, not hotboxing. For reals.
Grieving is one thing. Smoking weed in your dorm while putting your roommate into danger of losing her scholarships is not grieving. Sarah’s biggest sin is that she did not IMMEDIATELY try to get a new roommate after Dana made it clear what she was doing.
And now to go off on a tangent. Wouldn’t the University know about Dana’s mother dying, and have already sent someone over to see how she is doing? I would think the school would already have a program in place for situations like this.
How would it even be possible for the school to be monitoring that independent of input from the students? All I can think of is some kind of surgically implanted sensor which sets off an alarm when her heart stops.
Well, presumably she would have told her professors- I had a family member die last year about a month into the semester, and you want to tell them in case you have to miss classes because of the funeral, or see if you can get an extension on your assignments because even if it’s only an hour’s travel on a weekend you still have a funeral to attend. Mind you, Dana might not be the kind of person who would tell them, but as far as I know it’s what’s generally done.
When my friend’s sister was dying, the college he was attending did not give him any time off to go see her, because they did not believe him. Then he had to go to a funeral two weeks later. Some schools might handle the death in the family situation well, but I am certain that many do not.
Yeah sympathy for Sarah is quickly approaching zero. I’m talking heading towards sub-Malaya levels. What clinches it is that Sarah wants Dana to be better for selfish reasons.
The only reason she wants Dana to be better is because a distraught Dana is interrupting her studying. That’s pretty friggin heartless.
It must be nice to be able to read the minds of comic characters and determining that the ONLY reason she wants Dana to be better is because her studying is getting interrupted. It couldn’t possibly be that, like every human on the planet, she has a whole stack of reasons on her plate to want to do something, up to and including wanting Dana to be happier as a person. Of course Sarah was answering the question of why getting Dana help now would be a better choice than dicking around for a few months making bets on how self-destructive she can get, but obviously the fact that Sarah factors her petty concerns about her grades, scholarship, and entire future into such an answer shows that she is absolutely 100% uninterested in Dana’s well-being too.
If I could have such certainty when reading the minds of drawings, I would devote those talents to reading the minds of scratch tickets.
Well, yeah, point. You have to go by character’s actions though. And the first and most pressing reason for Sarah to want to get Dana help seems to be a selfish one. It certainly doesn’t make Sarah a bad person, although her statement in the comment implies a severe lack of tact/communication skills.
I think that we can ALL agree that Sarah suffers from a global shortage in the tact/communication department.
However, on the subject of character actions, it’s worth nothing that Sarah has been putting up with Dana’s upswing in her smoking habits for X number of days/weeks now, and her first move to change the situation is to hold a group meeting with the rest of their circle of friends and float the idea that they should seek to help the poor girl. Admittedly her reasons aren’t entirely selfless, but if she’d just wanted the girl gone with the full force of her blackened heart, she could have gone straight to the authorities.
I find myself wondering how disruptive a move in the middle of the semester might be to studying. (I presume that she wouldn’t be asking Dana to move.)
It would take at least a week or two to get processed.
If you knew who you were moving in with already, instead of just asking to get reassigned somewhere. And if you don’t, you’re screwed. That could take until the semester break because no one’s available or they’re not compatible with you or your schedule or a billion other things.
And then there’s actually packing and moving everything, potentially to another floor or building.
And depending on the college, they might ask questions like “are you SURE you have to move” and why and have you tried working through things with your roommate, all things that would probably get her expelled.
In other words? Yeah. It could go okay, but I’d bet it would probably be pretty disruptive.
I don’t know about Indiana University, but at a lot of big schools, my own included, switching roommates mid-semester is not allowed unless a) they stole something from you worth over $100 (I think that’s the minimum, not sure), b) they died, c) they got arrested. It’s also hard to do at the end of the semester. If every disillusioned freshman who got in a fight with their lottery-assigned roommate was given a NEW lottery-assigned roommate, the expense and logistics would be ridiculous.
Oh, and if they physically assaulted you or otherwise made you fear for your safety, you would at least get your case heard. But basically, requesting a switch might require her to implicate Dana in something horrible/criminal (she could always tell the truth and report her for drug abuse!), which would save no grief and drama whatsoever.
…Wait, the one who’s actively harming her and who’s caused the entire situation isn’t the one causing the pain and drama, it’s the one reacting?
Even *if* she was purely self-interested, which she’s not, she has every right to be! I’ve been the person who puts up with everything; standing up for yourself is not evil.
Alright, that settles it. Sarah is officially my least favorite character. Me, me, me, me, my opinions, my rules, my friends, SHUT UP. She acts like a child about everything, but she puts on the mask of “the parent” and “the protector”.
There’s always somewhere else you can go study, but it sounds like Dana needs help regardless. Dana’s friends are being enablers. I think Sarah would be concerned over Dana’s condition whether or not she had an impending test, but the test makes it more of an urgent issue.
If the situation seems manufactured off of petty bullshit excuses, well, we already know it ends in capital-D Drama, and all Drama is based on petty bullshit, so it’s just par for the course.
and here i thought the reason why she didnt get along with those girls was because they didnt agree on clothes or something, but NOW well, Sarah is kind of a bongo, i mean why not just go to a friends room and study or to a damn library. they got those on college campuses. i have seen them.
Wait, hang on… How come it’s okay for Dana to not only have a home but to also take away Sarah’s, but it’s selfish for Sarah to expect to have anything?
I can easily understand Sarah’s motives, and I can give her a little sympathy. A little. When you feel like your whole future is based on getting through college and it just takes that one little thing for your whole life to fall apart like failing a test and losing a scholarship…well, a little desperation is understandable! And Sarah is young and inexperienced; who in this strip is not? They’ll all figure it out eventually. None of them truly deserve blame.
You guys are all out of your minds! I don’t care what happens in your life you don’t smoke pot in your damn dorm room. Sarah is being nice for not just going to the RA in the first place when she knew her roommate was doing illegal things in her dorm room. I wouldn’t be able to live like that. It would make me so anxious and nervous I’d be miserable. Sarah deserves to be able to be in her own home without someone doing drugs in it.
If Sarah can go somewhere else to study then shouldn’t Dana be able to go somewhere else to smoke?
I don’t understand why Sarah is getting shit for this. I’d bet that if your daily rhythm was interrupted by something like this that’d you complain too and want it to stop. She could’ve said it better, granted.
Gah, If I hear “Sarah can just go study somewhere else” one more time I think I’ll scream. Are some people not realizing that Dana isn’t clipping her toenails loudly or humming or making forts out of the mattresses, she’s smoking weed in her dorm room. t’s not that it’s illegal (although it is), it’s that it’s not a self-contained vice. Drinking? Affects only you. Pills? Same thing. Smoking has an area affect that touches all in its radius… second hand smoke is bad and a contact buzz makes it a bit tough to study. Besides, it’s not a coping mechanism for her grief, Dana was toking before her Mom died and she’s just continuing… before it was because Mondays stink, the cafeteria was out of tater tots, she needed to “unwind”, etc. it’s kind of a cop out to blame her stoner-ness on her Mom when it was a pre-existing condition.
Should have just grassed her up to the University who would have kicked her out for smoking an illegal drug on university property.
That is wasn’t noticed or acted on by anyone with official powers in the dorms or elsewhere is another issue!
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Okay… Sarah… I understand your position but come on. Come on. You can study in the library. Hell, everybody studies in the library.
In fact, several libraries (I admittedly don’t know if IU is one of them) have SOUNDPROOF CHAMBERS in their libraries.
Several colleges, sorry.
But really…
Yes. A million times this. I was just about to say it. That’s what the library is *for*.
No, the library is for looking at the National Geographics and beating off or having “the sex” in between the stacks.
Nobody has “the sex” in between the stacks. Contrary to popular belief, college libraries are filled with students. You’d immediately get caught.
Not to mention that the stacks are not necessarily completely opaque. Sure, you may not be able to see through them from one end of the library to the other, but you can usually see through two or three at least.
Speaking as a former employee of a university library, I have to say that yes, there IS sex going on in the stacks. And yes, they usually were caught in the act because it’s not a very private place. But our college had two sets of stacks, the new and the old. The old stacks were pretty secluded, and not widely used (most of the old, out of date stuff was located there)
.
Speaking as a former employee of a university library (work-study, technically, but it still counts), I have to say that there was NOT sex going on in the stacks.
I suppose it probly depends on the library in question and how it’s laid out.
Heh heh “laid out”.
Full disclosure: former stacks technician at Wichita State.
Caught people having sex twice. Third floor and basement. Found the remnants of sex several other times, again third floor and basement. About once a week, caught someone beating it at a public computer. Found a section of books removed to make way for a case of Bud Light in the basement.
It’s not sex, but a local artist liked to screw with our library. He’d sneak his own books into the collection labelled as great works. He’d come in, take down entire shelves and stack the books “artistically.”
So yeah, unless your library is a single floor with nothing of value in it, there are places to have sex. Nobody goes into the Government Documents section after about 6:00. The study rooms in the basement are so secluded, you could die in one and not be found until someone had to reshelve a book in the TZs. The biology section was not heavily trafficked. If you could get a key and weren’t scared of asbestos, you could host an orgy in Compact Shelving. Big, old school = Big, old libraries = lots of places to hide.
Currently, I’m at one of the many not-quite-UT schools in Texas, and I can say this with certainty: you could not get laid in the stacks there.
Whenever my GF and I wanted to do that kind of thing we usually found a better place to do it than between the stacks in the library.
My college library DOES have quite a few students in it most of the time, however near 100% of them are either on a computer not studying, sitting at a table to talk to their friends, or using one of the offices/’private’ rooms to do the same, as it’s free to do so.
Also, it was a reference to a show called ‘Undergrads’
lol no one remembers that show. great opening song tho.
I used to use the library private rooms to get quality nap time between classes.
What? I can’t be the only one.
You are not the only one.
I head to the Student Center lounge for that. There’s a couch running around the wall.
You would be surprised…
My girlfriend and I used to make out in the college library…
and we were in a very strict Christian school where we likely
would have been kicked out for it – or severely reprimanded for
sure.
BTW we are married now lol.
Your avatar of Raidah makes me want to believe you’re a girl for this story.
yea except theres always one section that no one goes into so i you are quiet you can get away with it
Really? My experiences have led me to believe it’s for sleeping in.
Oh man, I loved napping in Oberlin’s womb chairs. So comfy!
I loved napping in my mom’s womb.
Nickel.
Femur.
This is getting downright lazy.
STTOOORRYYYYYTTIIIMMEE to the FAAAAAAACE.
I don’t get “femur”.
You need them to live.
(It’s a reference from waaaaay back in the strip – as in, back when people thought Ruth was fun, not hateful.)
Hateful? All I see is the top comment on the most recent strip featuring Ruth:
“Oh Ruth. How I love you so.”
All I remember is the general reaction when she went from amusingly aggressive RA to stalker/harasser with an inclination to steal and damage personal property.
But whichever.
Jeez, ever since I got into Oberlin I’ve been seeing Obies everywhere. And yes, those womb chairs are heavenly
Ewww….I wonder if they’ve cleaned out the womb chairs in the eon’s they’ve had them. Though I will admit they are comfortable.
But how late is the library open? Waaaay back in the archives, Sarah mentioned Dana coming in at o’clock in the morning.
Open 24/7.
Most non-college libraries have normal office hours of 9-5 or school hours of 8-3:30. It would stand to reason that plenty of college libraries would be 9-5 as well.
I was hoping for a ‘Mike did your mom’ joke but that works too.
Humboldt State University’s Library closes at around 11pm on weekdays, a couple hours later during finals. and 9-5 on weekends.
College libraries are nothing like public libraries. There were two at my college, one three levels and the other five, and neither had more than one or two small shelves of books you would read for fun. That’s not what the libraries were for. They were for studying and research, and as such, had to be open enough for students to work around class schedules. They were open until 2 am all year, 24/7 finals week.
Yea, mine was similar, it was open till like 1 am during the week, 8 or 9 pm on weekends and around the clock finals time. But that being said, it’s not just study that Sarah has to be worried about. If Dana has been hotboxing in their dorm for weeks Sarah probably isn’t even comfortable sleeing there and lack of sleep kills your brain and school work quality fast. Stack omnipresent contact high (which Sarah would have if spends much time in the dorm) and there is recipe for failure going on there. I get that Dana lost her mom and needs to cope but her coping mechanism is impacting someone else which makes it selfish. Sarah’s suggestion of therapy is valid and warranted as far as I can tell, she may be a bit snappy but to all of those who believe that Sarah living in the library is a viable solution to Dana bogarting the dorm room consider that the Dorm room is not the only place Dana can toke up.
hot boxing only works well in a very small room. or with a lot of people smoking. It’s very unlikely Sarah would get high from being in the same room as one person smoking. At worst, the room reeks of weed, which is a bit annoying but can be mostly solved by opening a window.
College dorm rooms tend to be pretty small. ESPECIALLY freshman dorms. Please clarify.
hot boxing doesn’t work well in anything bigger than a 5×5 room (even then) with no ventilation unless you have a lot of people or are burning a constant string of joints. One person smoking to drown out their pain isn’t going to get everyone else in the room high unless it’s the bathroom with the door shut and the fan off. Or a car, or cabana, etc.
Meriam Library at CSU Chico was open 7-Midnight M-S, 8-11p on Sunday, and 24/7 the week before and during finals. At least when I was there, which was when most of the materials were engraved on stone tablets.
Your mom is open for Mike 24/7, at the cost of a nickel.
You’re welcome.
IU Main Library is open 24/7.
Nice. The library at the small university that I attended closed at something like 9:00 or 10:00 at night. It definitely wasn’t a reliable study space if you had a night job or needed to study well into the wee hours of the morning.
Then again, I went to college from 1993 to 1998, so perhaps that has changed over the years. 😉
I can’t study in the library. Too many distractions. =\
Our library is not good for studying. The university has turned it into more of a hangout (in a desperate attempt to get more students there?), so it’s only good for group projects… and terrible for actual studying.
Sarah you could ask to move in with one of your “friends” for a while. =/
They’re probably potheads, too, and she’s sensitive to pot in her space. But still, it’d be a better plan than fixing the grieving daughter.
And to an extension they might not be all that forgiving of Dana too unless her Dad is a member of a high paying law firm.
Hey my avatar changed again.
It does that sometimes. 😀
Mine only changes to girls. I should probably change my name…
And just when I was starting to like Sarah…
Just when you were starting to like her, it’s revealed that she’s the only one of Dana’s friends who shows any desire to help her? What a bongo.
It’s the professed motive behind the desire to help. Even though I still agree with her, I’m not so sure I like her as much now.
I think help for a selfish reason is still better than not helping for a selfless reason.
I don’t believe that it’s her only motive, though it does lend a certain urgency to the situation from her perspective. At worst, I think it was a tremendously tactless comment to make.
I still like Sarah a lot more than Dana’s other “friends.” They’re being completely apathetic about her situation.
Giving a person their space is not apathy.
It is when they are using illegal substance in your personal space.
Are they? Carl says he KNOWS her; she may very well just need a bit of time alone with her pot. We also don’t know how long it’s been.
“Giving a person their space” with depression and substance abuse when you claim to be their friend is absolutely apathetic, if not damn near criminally negligent.
Thank you Mr. Hondo.
This. A thousand times this.
Weed shouldn’t be used as a coping method, EVER.
Having been ont he supporting end of someone very close to me who used to use weed as a coping method, I can’t stress enough that getting high 24/7 when your sad is the worst thing to do. By smoking to keep from being sad, all you do is make your depression stretch out and befor eyou know it, you don’t even know what you’re sad about anymore. You’re just sad, and weed is the only thing that stops it.
@gilly
for some people weed is an excellent coping method. For others it isn’t.
Depression is not 1 disease, it’s a general term that covers many diseases. As such, there is no cure-all for depression.
While the effect you described is true for many cases, it doesn’t cover all of them. Brain chemistry is complicated and there is a long list of imbalances that can cause severe depression.
I know people in both groups and while self-medication is never recommended, it can be better than no medication. And self medication on weed is certainly better than alcohol.
Aren’t they all freshmen? That means they’re, like, 18?
Children aren’t exactly known for their worldly knowledge on how to fix problems, and most of them are still in that teenager “the world is about me me me” phase. Not saying it’s OK for them not to do anything, just saying they’re kids and they probably have no idea what they should be doing in the first place
But have Carl known her when her mom passed away before?
Nice one.
I was going to say. Carl’s line just tells us he’s clinging to a memory of someone he used to know, before her life changed. If he said he had talked to her that might mean he knows something meaningful, but I’m going to guess that would have been a lie.
You can know someone pretty damn well, but that may not mean jack all when a parent dies. Sometimes the rubber band is too brittle to snap back, man.
And Sarah hasn’t exactly demonstrated flawless tact in the past. And even though Carl says he “knows” her his perception of what normal should be already has some flaws.
Sarah’s not covering herself in glory here, but it’s pretty clear there’s been a passage of time between this strip and yesterday and Dana’s been smoking most of it. “She’ll come round eventually, honest” is a pretty crap response (what if she doesn’t?).
A good friend would at least say, “yeah, we’re worried about her too.”
I guess she does have her friend somewhere in her heart but it still seems rather shitty thing to say while trying to get dana some help.
I think we’ve established that Sarah isn’t generally the type to get mushy even when she cares about people. I think the self-serving reason for her concern is the easiest for her to admit to.
Maybe. But after this, can you blame Raidah for thinking she just cares about her scholarship?
Yyyeeeah I had a suspicion of this. Sarah’s schooling, and entire future, probably hinges upon a very high GPA.
At which point you take steps to study that don’t involve fucking over the people around you. Granted, given how this university apparently condones rampant abuse of power by RAs, getting someone out of a suboptimal living situation without screwing over everyone involved is probably impossible.
I would have taken steps from the very beginning. High GPA and pothead roomie aren’t something I’d keep floating at the same time..and that would have been way before the death.
I don’t know. A chill, pot-smoking roomie that you at least get along with most of the time might be better than whatever roulette roommate you get when you complain of a problem. I’d certainly think so as an 18-year-old, especially since Dana wasn’t smoking in the room or otherwise attracting RA attention prior to this.
As a person with asthma who has lived with a smoker, it doesn’t matter if the other person is “courteous” about it. Unless they stand outside and air themselves out the smell follows them and gets on everything. Coughing, a splitting headache, and an overall inability to breathe and focus makes it difficult to focus on much, especially studies. Even if Sarah were to go to the library to study she still has to sleep somewhere. She should’ve switched sooner like Harrowed said.
::shrug:: Apparently the smell was managable prior to this. I’m a bit asthmatic and allergic to cigarettes as well, and I could NEVER live with a smoker (that smell, aaaagh), but for some reason pot smell barely bothers me. Depends on the person, I guess.
I’m curious, what if Dana was blaring loud music at all hours of the day? Would you say that it is Sarah’s responsibility to accommodate her?
This reminds me of the phrase “Right answer for the wrong reasons”.
Sarah has a point, but damn, she could not have done that worse.
yeah she could have
“All I’m saying is that dead parents are not a big deal but my passing a test is and Dana’s problems are garbage to me, and so is she, so are ALL of you.”
Ouch. I would have preferred Sarah mentioning a time frame of how long this has been going on. Plus, as others have said, the library is where she should be studying. Your dorm is not only your “home”, but it’s also your roommate’s home. If they don’t want to study, you can’t make, or expect, them to be quiet/non-irritating.
Indeed. And while a roommate’s inconsiderate behavior can be a legitimate cause for complaint you have to take into account extenuating circumstances. Like the fact that they might be in mourning. Still, Sarah’s advice is sound. It’s the kind of thing a good RA might broach. (Since college kids are pretty separated from family, you know, they don’t have as much of a support system. Plus, you know, nothing is ever wrong with therapy to help with trauma.)
As someone who has worked in, and attempted to study in, a library: they can be noisy and uncomfortable. The fact it might just be random little noises like elevator dings, study groups whispering, librarians dropping books on bookshelves and squeaky-wheeled carts, air conditioning vents, etc. Plus some people can’t study in a public place like that. I know I can’t — even in one of the private study rooms, I feel awkward and self-conscious, and on-the-spot. Sarah might be the same way.
But…. dorms are the exact same way. There’s always some little noise either in your room or an adjacent one.
It’s easier to tune it out in a home environment, however.
I hate studying in the library because they won’t let you eat. And any other public place where you are allowed to eat (cafe, cafeteria, my school had a couple of lounge areas) are often noisy. When I study, I snack constantly to keep myself focused and my energy up. If I’m not able to do that, I can’t go for as long and waste precious minutes refueling.
I’ve been trying reeeaaallly hard to take Sarah’s side, but to be honest, she’s be super selfish. I understand wanting to keep your GPA up to keep your scholarship (I’m in the same boat), but Dana’s been really nice to Sarah and Sarah should be concerned for Dana’s sake, not her own. Find somewhere else to study and do homework and try to help out Dana because she’s your friend, not because you want to study.
This only makes sense if you believe allowing somebody to wallow in self pity and substance abuse constitutes ‘helping them’. That an RA can pretty easily tell when someone is toking out in their room is a factor as well.
If she were abusing alcohol instead of weed, would that affect your position?
Alternative, you could get an RA like what’s her face in this comic, who will encourage the student to kill herself.
I still say that it’s easier for her to give a selfish reason than to admit that she really cares.
So wait… Sarah expresses concern for Dana’s sake and gets the classic “more space”, so she’s supposed to just keep expressing concern for Dana’s sake and continue to get the “give her more space” response?
Sara isn’t the kind of person who knows how to help a friend. She also has never been good at networking. All she knows to do is to bring it up to her friends and that’s not working.
Was what she said a bit harsh and completely lacking in tact? Yes, but I have to say that I’ve done just as bad.
Dammit Sarah, when you tell a story like this you twist it to make yourself look okay.
I prefer the term “reimagine.” Twist sounds so… ugly.
Or “retcon” it to eliminate those parts of continuity that make you look terrible now.
or Reboot. Just start the story from a different continuity entirely.
Sarah should’ve been a history major. She’d know how to do revisionist history.
I dunno, she doesn’t seem like she’s casting herself in that positive a light.
…Isn’t that the point?
It’s definitely a product of her own cynicism. She really believes that she is this monster that Dana’s old friends make her out to be, so that’s the image she’s portraying in her story.
I gotta say, if this story goes where I think it’s going, I truly have no sympathy for Sarah here. But, since I’m not sure how this is gonna be resolved, I’ll save my judgement until the hammer drops.
STOP. Hammer drops.
oh oh oh oh oh oh.
>insert cheesy dance moves<
Given Sarah’s comment in panel 3 it seems that avoiding/ignoring the issue has come to an end and that something needs to done now. I like Sarah for the “invisible” forgiveness she might have shown to Dana and her friends may not consider it a problem unless the issue is addressed 5 or 6 times before something is thought about doing.
Also in conjuction with yesterdayks comic Dana may be calling out for help
I have tons of sympathy of Sarah. Why? Because Dana shouldn’t be in school right now. If she is so depressed that she’s stoned in her room all the time and messing up her roommates life, then she should be at home with family.
My sympathy for Sarah plummets ever downwards.
Scroll down and read the wall comments,and your sympathy will skyrocket.
1) Sarah is correct that Dana needs to see a counselor, stat.
2) She also needs to realize that libraries exist.
It would be nice to know how long this has been going on. I get the impression that it’s been a while and that “just this once” has become a regular thing.
I’m sorry your mother died, but you know what? Everybody dies, and most of them die sooner than we would want. It’s the one immutable fact of life and everybody has to deal with it eventually. If your way of “dealing” with it is to smoke pot in your shared room where you had previously agreed to not smoke, then you get very little sympathy from me.
I’d like to see how much longer this STORYTIME goes on. I would like to see Walky freak out over Joyce’s new boots.
It’s really interesting how in a way, all of them are wrong. Which is pretty much college students in a nutshell.
“The library is where you study”
“god, study at the library”
“if you can’t study in your dorm, go to the library!”
Brilliant suggestions. Unless of course she is used to studying in her dorm and she can’t focus as well in a library. Studying is just like everything else, there are places and times when it is done best and when you deviate from these, the result can be terrible.
Also, add on the stress of not being able to go back to your dorm because your roommate is smoking pot.
This might be also messing with her sleep which can affect her studying as well. Not to mention it just being a very bad environment to be in period. When you have no where to go but “the library” then your comfort system breaks down and it becomes hard to study no matter where you are.
That’s on Sarah, though. Dana could have any number of habits that are not illegal which Sarah finds annoying. If she can’t deal with that in her own way, than its her problem for being inflexible. It happens all the time!
plus the fact that the library is full of people, and Sarah doesn’t seem to like many of them.
I agree, if all you ever do is study in your dorm, it’s hard to change that routine on the fly – I always studied in my room. maybe she was being selfish, but she’s right to suggest help for her roommate if she thinks Dana needs it.
Good points. Maybe one or more of these will be shown to apply Sarah.
I know that my college library is closed on weeknights and Sunday night. Also if either of my roommates did drugs I wouldn’t feel comfortable being in my room at all.
Actually, studies have shown that it’s best to study in several different locations to prevent information from being associated with only one area. It’s a college campus and there are plenty of places to study. My first roommate smoked and drank and kicked me out of the room for “personal time” and came in and woke me up at 4am high as a kite but I never tried to get him kicked out of school. I got a new roommate. Moreover, if my roommate’s mother DIED, I would have been a little more compassionate and I wouldn’t have been as selfish as Sarah’s being. I dunno, Willis, I don’t want to hate Sarah, help me out here.
Were those studies performed in several different locations? Because that could effect the quality of the studies.
Well, if you’re replicating the conditions in which you’ll need to recall the information, a single place is better when the goal is simply test performance.
True, but that argues for her studying in the test room, not her dorm or the library
Oh man, I would’ve gotten him kicked out within a week. I seriously don’t understand how you people can be so lenient. Why should /I/ leave when you’re the one messing up our personal space, that kinda thought process is what I’m having here.
Sarah wants to help her, and her friends don’t.
The fact that Sarah pointed out that it isn’t *all* about Dana and that she’s starting to be negatively affected by her behavior doesn’t change that. And it certainly doesn’t make her selfish to show some concern for herself.
Good points. Sleeping problems can affect memory as well as speech, sight and hearing. I don’t blame Sarah at all for trying to get Dana a therapist.
And although Carl says Dana’ll just snap back from it, i doubt that will happen. Sure, she might have gotten over, say, her guinea pig dying, but your mom was and is almost* always there to take care of you in one way or another. That would be very hard to just ‘snap back from’ and I have total sympathy for Dana, but do believe she needs help.
Willis, are you getting all this?
*I say ‘almost’ because my parents are divorced and I live with my dad, who is the more responsible parent out of the two. I know several others in the same situation as I am, and they would all back me up on this front.
Its pretty strange to me how many commenters here seem to think that smoking pot is in itself a bad thing and that Dana is bad for doing it. I don’t see how her smoking a lot of pot is keeping Sarah from studying. If it annoys her, well… there’s many ways to deal with a roommate’s annoying habits. I don’t see why she couldn’t study in a library or other common area. I’m pretty sure the only person who would be in trouble with the school or the law for Dana’s smoking is Dana herself, unless a future strip explicitly states otherwise. It seems like Sarah has sort of made it about the drugs because it makes her feel less guilty. It’s a scapegoat.
One good way to deal with the roommate’s annoying habits is to get her some counseling about dealing with the death of her mother.
Oh no, not that. Big no.
I’ve shared living space with several someone who smoked pot a lot. First of all there is the smell. It either smells like pot or whatever incense they mistakenly believe covers the pot smell … all the damn time. Second, they didn’t keep regular hours. This sucks greatly when you have to get up ridiculously early for work and they’re up watching tv, listening to music, banging around in the kitchen, and/or generally being disruptively noisy very late at night. Thirdly, you’re completely discounting all the second hand smoke floating around their dorm room that Sarah is being exposed to.
The thing that bugs me is how everyone keeps saying Sarah should just leave her room to enable her roommate. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with smoking pot, but I do think there something wrong with getting drunk/high so that you don’t have to deal with life. Yes, Dana is going through a rough time, losing people you love sucks in the worst way, but she’s not giving thought one to the person who has to share living space with her. She’s grieving and, let’s be honest, she doesn’t give a shit about Sarah right now. Someone who is barely her friend, and has to live with her, shouldn’t be expected to just accept bullshit selfish behavior for an indefinite amount of time.
I don’t think that’s giving Dana enough credit. Before her mom died her smoking habit was the one thing that stopped her from being an angel. She reached out to Sarah with friendship on multiple occasions, and put up with an unwarranted amount of rudeness on two occasions. If anything is clear from the story, it’s that Dana was the only reason Sarah had anything that ever resembled a social life.
True. But that all ended when her mother died and she retreated into herself and her habit. Note that this is very, very understandable – grief sucks and changes a person. But regardless, for all her angel status before, she is now at best a millstone to others. Which, again, is neither unexpected nor something that should be held too much against her. But it is a problem.
Summation: she’s not currently deserving of much credit for her behavior. The reaction? Get her counseling. For everyone’s good.
An angel? Was she out feeding the hungry and curing the sick when she wasn’t getting high? At best, we can say she appeared to be a kind person and a very decent roommate. Neither of which is in any way impacted by the fact that she smoked pot.
The thing about reaching out to people is that, sometimes, the people you’re reaching out to, would rather you not. Sarah didn’t go out of her what to be rude to Dana, she just made it clear, in her blunt way, that she was focused on her future when Dana asked her to hang out. Granted, her intro to Raidah was pretty rude, but I think Sarah is very aware of how she comes off to people and she uses it. Much better to be seen as a bongoy and misanthropic than “lonely” and “withdrawn” … which sound sad and pathetic. It’s clear to me from the story that Sarah didn’t want a social life and only started hanging out with these people for future career opportunities. She didn’t go in to it wanting a social life, at least not consciously, and what, in the end, does she have to be glad for? A bunch of people that turned their backs on her when she did what she thought was right?
Well it is illegal… and addictive (for those who say it isn’t there are studies out there and I have a friend whose brother became severely addicted). Sarah is trying to find help for someone, the fact that she doesn’t just turn her in shows that she cares about Dana’s well being.
Losing a loved one sucks. So does landing yourself into a dead end for the rest of your life because you were kicked out of college/couldn’t afford to go. They are not the same kind of suck, but both are terrible.
Sarah has the right of it on this one. At some point it is time to grow up. Deal with your personal problems like an Adult, don’t let them interfere with the lives of others around you. Sarah is at least suggesting a way to help Dana deal with her grief.
Rule #1 of depression: Never tell somebody to ‘grow up’. Depression is the pain that you can’t beat on your own, no matter how hard you try. So telling somebody to get over it will make them feel ever worse because they can’t.
I called it……….um for the wrong reasons apparently for the wrong reasons.
As someone who’s had to deal with a similar case, I can’t help but understand Sarah. Even if you can study elsewhere (and it’s not easy if the library closes before midnight and you have to cram for longer than usual), having to share space with someone whose behavior and substance abuse makes you uncomfortable is really difficult. You cannot avoid it forever, and sooner or later, you will have to face it. In college, my solution was to last the year and transfer to another room, which I had to pay extra for.
((I also don’t know just how well Carl knows Dana, but in my (somewhat limited) experience, “snapping” back to normal is very rare. Most people go back to normal slowly and gradually after such trauma, and a good number never do, especially alcoholics and other substance users.))
I feel like that “just this once” has turned into “just once every several times a day” and that it has been awhile (I’m assuming more than a few weeks). And while everyone is saying “go to the library” you need to remember Sarah has to live there (and sometimes colleges wont let you switch/its a huge fucking hassle to switch) and if you can’t live and rest and feel comfortable someplace, you won’t retain any information and will not work well.
Also remember that Sarah is probably spending all her time trying to cover up the pot that is wafting from her room. She doesn’t want either of them thrown out, and she’s covering both their asses. It takes up a lot of time trying to tip toe around a grieving pot smoker and make sure neither are thrown out. Sarah has every right to try and get her to at least stop smoking in their room.
Honestly, while I agree that Sarah is handling this improperly, I completely understand where she’s coming from. Sometimes you forget your tactfulness when you’re behind on sleep and over stressed with work, and it’s normal for people to have some self interest at heart. This incident also helps give credence to why Raidah is so angry with Sarah currently. I wouldn’t say this backstory makes me like Sarah less (she’s still my favorite character) but it does make me like Dana, Raidah and the other friends more. They are all so complex and wonderful!
Regardless, my first thought was still “go study in a library.” That seems like the sensible solution here.
^THIS^
I’m guessing it’ll turn out that she tried the library, and it didn’t work.
PINKIE PIE NINJA
YOTOMOE, DRAW IT!
Please?
The “I haven’t been able to study” line makes me feel like it’s probably been a while, and, like someone has already mentioned, the “just this once” has probably turned into the norm. I could be wrong! No times being mentioned could mean I’m talking out of my ass.
But if it HAS been a while, and Dana has been staying in a spiral of grief and pot smoking, it’s kind of unfair to expect Sarah to go study in the library for a couple months. It’s great to be understanding of other people’s pain and their ways of dealing with it, but Sarah is paying for her dorm room too and if she’s stuck out somewhere else or unable to study/sleep in the room for an extended period, it’s not fair to her either.
But Sarah tends to always want to be seen as the gruff, uncaring type when she usually DOES care, like with Joyce. So it might be both that she’s stressing about her own grades and her own future, while also genuinely wanting to get Dana some help. She just can’t TELL people that. They’ll know she has FEELINGS, so it’s easier to hide behind the another, equally valid reason to get her help.
Im not sure which joke to go with A “Your mom” joke or an observational humor type joke about airline peanuts
Mike gave your mom his airline peanuts for a nickel.
you’re welcome.
For some strange reason, nothing sexual cmes to mind.
Heh heh, you said “comes”. Heh heh heh heh heh.
Actually, they said “cmes.” An abbreviation for Cheese Makes Excellent Sweetener?
Contact High!
I am wondering why everyone seems to have missed something really glaring here.
Any of you ever share in a dorm room with a heavy pot user for any lenght of time? It isn’t being bothered by the use of the pot so much as getting high from the use of the pot.
It is near impossible to study with a room full of pot smoke making you feel soooo mellow that you could give a crap about tomorrows test.
Go to the library and study, and back to your dorm room and sit in the stink of weed?
Sarah may be very narrow in her ‘my scholarship viewpoint’ but what her roomate is doing is not right either. Her friends smoke, so go smoke with your friends and come back and crash in your room.
Plus it’s not like that stuff’s good for your lungs anyway.
Or your eyes, or your esophagus, or your liver, or your kidneys…
Shall I go on?
By where I think this is going, it’s starting to look like Sarah hasn’t changed or learned anything, while Raidah, post-punch, is starting to…just barely…but starting.
What’s Sarah supposed to be learning again? That wallowing in drugs to the point of your own self-destruction is bad for both yourself *and* your roommate’s totally trivial ability to retain her scholarship?
Oh, right. That weed is the panacea of all things and getting high on secondhand smoke can only improve your grades. Got it.
I was thinking more of Joyce being the new Danah for Sarah, and Raidah being called on shaming others for trying (in flawed manner) to deal with ethical dilemmas in ways other than harboring quiet good intentions while hiding behind the crowd.
One jumps the gun and takes too much responsibility for someone else, the other fails to do anything save fret over how ugly the first one’s solutions looked and sounded. However, I think Sarah’s counter-shaming may have actually prepped Raidah for an overdue epiphany.
So, riddle me this. If Sarah is such a horrible, selfish person, why has Dana not been kicked out of school yet? So far, we’ve seen Sarah hanging out with Dana and her friends, spraying air freshener to cover up Dana’s pot-stink, and trying to get Dana’s other friends to help her. And since Sarah is actually living with Dana, I’m more inclined to accept her read of the situation than Carl’s, than you very much.
At no point, so far, has she threatened to get Dana kicked out of school.
The key word is “yet.” We know that Dana will be kicked out of school; the question is only how horrible Sarah looks for doing it.
Oh, she’ll obviously look pretty horrible to Radiah. (This comic is clearly planting the seed of that.) And she’ll obviously look pretty sympathetic to a large portion of the readership. The question is where the split will be.
Story’s not over yet folks. Reserve judgement until we have all the facts.
You know who else was unforgiving… Hitler.
Godwin’s law! Godwin’s law!
Biebergluk!!!
She held out for as long as was reasonable, looking after Dana’s needs. Now she’s got some of her own to look after and she’s brainstorming with some friends about what to do. She was straightforward in her communication. She said “Therapist”, they said “Give her time”, she said “I ain’t got no more time to give”. You can interpret it as unforgiving, but the facts often are and in this case it sounds like they’re equally unforgiving of both roommates. She was never the type to sugar coat this sort of stuff or dance in circles around the subject.
If anything I think it speaks more to the quality of the friends she’s found that she put forth a problem that was hurting both Dana and herself and their sole contribution was “Geez. Think of Dana’s needs.” as if she’d been callously disregarding them when she suggested a therapist.
Well said.
The tough thing about grieving is that, in the real world, nobody really wants you to. They want you to perform a series of actions that they consider to be grieving, and if you do not do what they want, they attack you.
If you manage to keep yoruself together and function as a person? Some of your family will berate and SCREAM at you for “Not grieving properly!” If you at any point say “I’m sorry, my mom just died,” they will berate and SCREAM at you for not getting over it. if anybody else around says something like “Everybody grieves differently. Give him a break,” they will yella t them until the helpful people hback off. Your relatives will follow you around, berating and yelling at you no matter what you do. And if you get the balls to tell them to stop it, and let you grieve normally, they will act hurt and offended, and they might even call the police and make up wild stories just because you didn’t play by their stupid script. When that amounts to nothing because you didn’t do anything wrong and even a professional grief counselor agrees with you, then they will simply start stabbing at you in more subtle ways, calling any other relatives (sometimes not realizing you’re in the room and it[‘s a speaker phone), and making up lies about you.
THAT’S what happens when you try to grieve.
O_O
I really can’t tell if you’re using sarcasm to make a point, if you’re generalizing from your own experiences (in which case I’m sincerely and profoundly sorry for you) or if you’ve got “the real world” and “daytime drama shows” mixed up, but that is NOT what happens when I try to grieve.
For this and many other reasons, I have hated my relatives for years.
Sounds like your relatives weren’t grieving properly.
Maybe we should go yell at them until they do it right.
I don’t understand this, because it’s never happened to me. I come from a very large, very in-your-business, sort of family, but I’ve never had any of them give me a hard time about grieving. Sounds rough.
People have a very specific image of what a grieving person looks like. It helps if you think of social interaction like a dance. Some dances allow for more freedom than others, some settings inflict harsher penalties for missteps than others, but generally there is some concept of how things are supposed to go. The grief dance is almost absurdly restrictive in how strict and specific the routine gets. The penalties become quite harsh, largely because everybody else is also grieving and not at their best.
If you can’t grieve the way everybody else is grieving then they don’t think you care. That offends people. If you don’t care about the person who died then you probably won’t care about them when they die. They question whether you love them or anyone. Sometimes they grow to hate you. Lash out at you for being the only person not dancing the grief dance. Really you just have two left feet and no matter how much you try you can’t make you dance match what’s happening around you, but they don’t understand that. They withdraw the network of caring and support and then they vilify you for choosing to stay outside the network where everybody is trying to help eachother through a hard time. That’s about how it works. Not about how nosey they are. Just about how well you can dance and how complete your knowledge of the steps is.
I don’t care if you have anther place to physically study, the stress of a shitty roommate who, by the sound of things, is just getting high 24/7 to deal with the death of her mother (which, seriously, does no one see this as self-destructive?), can drastically affect your ability to study, concentrate, sleep. It’s not like this chick is Sara’s best friend of a decade, she’s an assigned roommate. It’s not Sara’s duty to put up with this girl’s bullshit just because the girl’s mom died. Everyone’s got problems. The roommate is lucky Sara has been nice so far, letting her smoke herself into oblivion, and is now suggesting that she get professional help to deal with grief. I say she just throw her to the dogs and report the drug abuse.
Or suggest the next logical step. If you want to get high 24/7 do it F#|<ing elsewhere, you've had free run to hotbox the dorm long enough.
When that fails THEN reporting begins.
I somehow new this comic was going to spark a whole bunch of walls of text.
“Her mom just died … she’ll snap back to normal.” <– does not work like that
THANK YOU
I think people are being too harsh on Sarah. Dana isn’t going through a good time, it’s possible that she does need therapy if she’s beginning to spiral.
At the same time, Sarah needs to concentrate on school.
Honestly, it looks like a lot of this is just miscommunication and everyone is snapping at everyone.
Did that post twice? Also whoooo I’m Leslie now.
I think people are being too harsh on Sarah. Dana isn’t going through a good time, it’s possible that she does need therapy if she’s beginning to spiral.
At the same time, Sarah needs to concentrate on school.
Honestly, it looks like a lot of this is just miscommunication and everyone is snapping at everyone.
You know what? Study in the library. I should get paid to solve easy problems.
Also, sleep in the library. Just remember to come back often enough to spray the air cleanser, to cover Dana’s self-destructive ass. But don’t *help* Dana, as that would be a baaaaad idea.
Good idea on the surface, not very manageable in practice. If you’re not used to doing so, it can be very challenging to study in places you don’t usually study in. As people have said… pretty much all over this page.
Wow, the amount of people saying that asking a depressive person’s friends to get help get her professional help is selfish on the part of Sarah is… kind of sad.
Yes, her mum died, and that’s horrible. But there’s giving time, and there’s ignoring the fact that she’s rapidly sinking into heavy substance abuse.
S’like if drank instead of smoked pot, would they be anywhere near this level of “Eh, time heals all wounds”.
And the really depressing thing is that by actually doing the sensible and empathetic thing, Raidah and co probably screwed Sarah’s future anyway by spreading rumours amongst their lawyer parents, thus preventing further career options.
“Wow, the amount of people saying that asking a depressive person’s friends to get help get her professional help is selfish on the part of Sarah is… kind of sad.”
…you think it’s sad that this amount is zero?
I dunno, I think it would be pretty sad if people did say that.
Are you kidding? It would be DEPRESSING.
You think that this amount is zero? Seriously?
What, no, there were people further up the page saying how Sarahrrrah appeared to be a jerk for trying to get her professional help. 🙁
I can not see a single comment in this thread saying that Sarah is selfish for trying to get Dana professional help. Can you?
There are several comments saying that Sarah is selfish for wanting the Dana problem fixed so that she can study, which is another thing entirely. There are also several comments expressing lost sympathy for Sarah without giving a reason.
Or, in more general terms:
Comment 1: A because B!
Comment 2: A!
Comment 3: A!
Comment 4: A because B!
…
Comment X: The amount of people saying “A because C!” is kind of sad.
It is hard to have a meaningful discussion if you misinterpret each other’s arguments.
And because we humans are so good at misinterpreting, I should probably point out that I have not yet expressed my own opinion of Sarah’s actions. If anyone thinks they have found it somewhere between these lines, they are most likely mistaken.
dunno what you guys think but when people are doing illegal things in my dorm room I want them to stop no matter what.
That’s like saying “well, my 12 year old friend is drinking whisky in my room, but it’s okay, his mom died”.
Actually, given US alcohol laws, it’s more like “well, my /18/ year old friend is constantly drinking whiskey in my room and leaving the room smelling like a distillery, but it’s okay, his mom died.” I would’ve just exchanged 12 for 18, but I realized that even then, your comparison would only work if we were talking about the comic page before this one. Something doesn’t become “less illegal” just because you’re closer to the age where it becomes legal.
TL;DR version:
18 year old depressed teen abusing pot = 18 year old depressed teen abusing alcohol, not 12 year old depressed preteen abusing alcohol.
And yes, Sarah is right to suggest counseling, but her followup, if she actually cared, should’ve been more “No, she NEEDS help,” and less “Well, could she snap out of it NOW? I need to study.” The way she said it makes it seem as if the reason she suggested it was because she was annoyed Dana hadn’t worked through it yet, rather than actually concerned about Dana doing a nosedive of self-destruction. Of course, given her reaction to Dana’s “friends” in the present, I’m fairly certain Sarah WAS concerned, and getting Dana reported may have been a last-ditch effort to help her after constantly getting told “Dana will be fine” whenever she tried to convince the others that Dana needed a lot more help than can be found at the business end of a bong.
I can’t blame Sarah for this.
I can blame her for not just going to the library. Problem solved.
For certain simplistic definitions of “problem”.
And certain simplistic definitions of “solved.” People keep pointing out that it’s not always easy to study in an unfamiliar place, especially if you’re there because there’s nowhere else to go.
Why should Sarah be the one to go elsewhere to study? Dana should go elsewhere to get high. Problem solved.
I think there’s also more to it than just needing a less distracting place to study. Knowing someone you’re friends with is having so many problems (and isn’t coping well) can be -really- mentally taxing. Getting Dana a therapist would not only get her out of the dorm, but give Sarah some peace of mind that at least someone is making sure Dana doesn’t self-destruct.
Getting her a therapist wouldn’t even necessarily get her out of the dorm – there idea would be to help her, not get rid of her.
If Radiah and co had jumped on Sarah’s idea of counseling for Dana, they would probably all be smiles and sunshine now.
I see both sides of the debate here, but I’m with Sarah on this one. I used to think I could handle all my worries and problems alone but finally gave in and talked to a therapist. It doesn’t completely resolve problems but it does help to talk to someone that at least feels more confidential than friends or family.
So it is starting to looks like Raidah and company aren’t really good friends, just nice people (until they turn on you).
Also, keep in mind that Raidah and the others were hinted at to be privileged kids. Sarah isn’t so lucky. She loses her scholarship, she won’t get her degree. She doesn’t get her degree, she doesn’t get a decent job. No decent job means living paycheck to paycheck, wondering what the hell happened to herself.
On a side note, I will not be able to comment for a while due to school starting up again tomorrow. I will comment when I can, and hope to see you guys tomorrw if possible.
I LOVE YOU GUYS!!!
Auf Wiedersehen, frau LuckyStar7!
It will be so awesome if, after all this, some RA just happens to wake up and smell the poppies and report the room. Sarah (justifiably) points fingers, Dana goes bye-bye, the roommates assume that Sarah’s the one that instigated the report.
Admittedly, that would rob Sarah the opportunity to do the right thing and try to get Dana some professional help, but it would sure shut people up.
I actually went back and re-read from the beginning of Sarah’s story because I had lost all sense of context for what was happening in today’s strip.
It’s amazing how much more even-handed the story comes off reading it straight through. (Timeline seems a little clearer, too)
In fact, in her own strange way, Sarah IS favoring herself in her recollection of events. Sure she admits being difficult and a little callous, but that’s definitely in line with the narrative she likes to present to people. It’s a pretty simple story of “I took a chance on friendship and it went horribly awry.”
I can’t shake the feeling that Sarah has worked herself into a trap. She puts up the tough exterior to keep from getting hurt, but she’s been so good at keeping people away that she doesn’t know how to communicate, so she can’t effectively tell people when there’s something going wrong, which means things go wrong anyway and she winds up getting hurt. And that’s really not just specific to the flashback currently unfolding, if she can’t communicate with people then life is going to be exponentially more difficult than it needs to be.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedgehog's_dilemma
You have to honor a roommate agreement, but the argument that Sarah can’t study because her roommate is doing drugs is absolutely ridiculous. I never studied hard in my dorm room, it was always in the library or computer lounge. If she can’t sleep, that’s an issue, but if it’s just having nowhere to study then I call shenanigans. SHENANIGANS! EVERYONE GET A BROOM, IT’S SHENANIGANS!
Why isn’t anyone thinking of Sarah? Everyone’s like, “Dana’s mother died”, “Dana needs time to grieve”, “Sarah can just go to the library”. BULLSHIT! It’s clear that Sarah needs that scholarship in order to stay at school. Generosity can only go so far without it affecting the giver negatively.
As for Raidah and the others; they’re not helping, they’re being neglectful! They’re just sitting around until Dana “eventually” gets better. Well what garantee is there that Dana was going to get better? There was also the chance that she would’ve taken a turn for the worst. Yes, we could say that Sarah was acting mostly on her own behalf, but the point remains that she took action!
Thank goodness for you.
College is really hard work, and when you’re getting through college on scholarships you have to maintain a certain level of academic aptitude. If you slip up and lose your scholarships, you may not get a second chance, or as much money if you do.
Sarah’s working hard to give herself a good education so she can have a great future — ideally a great-paying job that she loves so she can take care of herself, her loved ones who have taken care of her up to this point, and maybe even start a family and help provide for her children. When you’re in college, sometimes you have to watch out for number one.
I feel like this really should be a no-brainer for anybody who’s gone through college without rich parents and paid for it either through prestigious scholarships with strict academic requirements or even out of pocket. At some point you’ve got to knuckle down, be an adult and get serious. Yeah, it sucks that a friend’s mother died, and you lend your support as much as you can. Heck, you wouldn’t risk a well-paying job over a friend’s mother, so why risk your education?
THANK YOU! Someone here with some damn perspective. Frankly, my only complaint about Sarah’s behaviour so far is that she hasn’t ALREADY gone to the campus authorities over her roommates behaviour. If I’d caught one of my flatmates smoking pot in the flat while I was in halls, I’d have been on the phone to the RA in seconds.
I’m with Sarah on this. “Go to the library”? Really? Hey, I want to blaze up in a university-owned dorm room which your financial aid/ personal money pays for so can you piss off and study elsewhere? Sorry, I’m not a prude but if someone lit up in a dorm room I shared with them they’d go straight out the windows, grief-be-damned. If it were a VW microbus then I’d say Sarah should leave but it’s not, it’s her dorm room… for sleeping and studying, not hotboxing. For reals.
I like to think this takes place exactly thirty minutes after Dana returns from the funeral.
Grieving is one thing. Smoking weed in your dorm while putting your roommate into danger of losing her scholarships is not grieving. Sarah’s biggest sin is that she did not IMMEDIATELY try to get a new roommate after Dana made it clear what she was doing.
And now to go off on a tangent. Wouldn’t the University know about Dana’s mother dying, and have already sent someone over to see how she is doing? I would think the school would already have a program in place for situations like this.
How would it even be possible for the school to be monitoring that independent of input from the students? All I can think of is some kind of surgically implanted sensor which sets off an alarm when her heart stops.
By…sending someone over to see how she is doing?
No I mean how do they know that Dana’s mother is dead independent of student input? What system is in place to notify them when that happens?
Ah. Fair point.
Well, presumably she would have told her professors- I had a family member die last year about a month into the semester, and you want to tell them in case you have to miss classes because of the funeral, or see if you can get an extension on your assignments because even if it’s only an hour’s travel on a weekend you still have a funeral to attend. Mind you, Dana might not be the kind of person who would tell them, but as far as I know it’s what’s generally done.
When my friend’s sister was dying, the college he was attending did not give him any time off to go see her, because they did not believe him. Then he had to go to a funeral two weeks later. Some schools might handle the death in the family situation well, but I am certain that many do not.
Augh. Bad break there.
And fair enough. Varies from school to school, obviously. Still, can’t hurt to ask.
Yeah sympathy for Sarah is quickly approaching zero. I’m talking heading towards sub-Malaya levels. What clinches it is that Sarah wants Dana to be better for selfish reasons.
The only reason she wants Dana to be better is because a distraught Dana is interrupting her studying. That’s pretty friggin heartless.
It must be nice to be able to read the minds of comic characters and determining that the ONLY reason she wants Dana to be better is because her studying is getting interrupted. It couldn’t possibly be that, like every human on the planet, she has a whole stack of reasons on her plate to want to do something, up to and including wanting Dana to be happier as a person. Of course Sarah was answering the question of why getting Dana help now would be a better choice than dicking around for a few months making bets on how self-destructive she can get, but obviously the fact that Sarah factors her petty concerns about her grades, scholarship, and entire future into such an answer shows that she is absolutely 100% uninterested in Dana’s well-being too.
If I could have such certainty when reading the minds of drawings, I would devote those talents to reading the minds of scratch tickets.
Well, yeah, point. You have to go by character’s actions though. And the first and most pressing reason for Sarah to want to get Dana help seems to be a selfish one. It certainly doesn’t make Sarah a bad person, although her statement in the comment implies a severe lack of tact/communication skills.
I think that we can ALL agree that Sarah suffers from a global shortage in the tact/communication department.
However, on the subject of character actions, it’s worth nothing that Sarah has been putting up with Dana’s upswing in her smoking habits for X number of days/weeks now, and her first move to change the situation is to hold a group meeting with the rest of their circle of friends and float the idea that they should seek to help the poor girl. Admittedly her reasons aren’t entirely selfless, but if she’d just wanted the girl gone with the full force of her blackened heart, she could have gone straight to the authorities.
All Sarah had to do was request a move. No need to cause all that pain and drama.
I find myself wondering how disruptive a move in the middle of the semester might be to studying. (I presume that she wouldn’t be asking Dana to move.)
It would take at least a week or two to get processed.
If you knew who you were moving in with already, instead of just asking to get reassigned somewhere. And if you don’t, you’re screwed. That could take until the semester break because no one’s available or they’re not compatible with you or your schedule or a billion other things.
And then there’s actually packing and moving everything, potentially to another floor or building.
And depending on the college, they might ask questions like “are you SURE you have to move” and why and have you tried working through things with your roommate, all things that would probably get her expelled.
In other words? Yeah. It could go okay, but I’d bet it would probably be pretty disruptive.
And I’m assuming that Sarah is trying to minimize the trauma to Dana…having your roommate move out because they can’t tolerate you? Pretty traumatic…
I don’t know about Indiana University, but at a lot of big schools, my own included, switching roommates mid-semester is not allowed unless a) they stole something from you worth over $100 (I think that’s the minimum, not sure), b) they died, c) they got arrested. It’s also hard to do at the end of the semester. If every disillusioned freshman who got in a fight with their lottery-assigned roommate was given a NEW lottery-assigned roommate, the expense and logistics would be ridiculous.
Oh, and if they physically assaulted you or otherwise made you fear for your safety, you would at least get your case heard. But basically, requesting a switch might require her to implicate Dana in something horrible/criminal (she could always tell the truth and report her for drug abuse!), which would save no grief and drama whatsoever.
…Wait, the one who’s actively harming her and who’s caused the entire situation isn’t the one causing the pain and drama, it’s the one reacting?
Even *if* she was purely self-interested, which she’s not, she has every right to be! I’ve been the person who puts up with everything; standing up for yourself is not evil.
Alright, that settles it. Sarah is officially my least favorite character. Me, me, me, me, my opinions, my rules, my friends, SHUT UP. She acts like a child about everything, but she puts on the mask of “the parent” and “the protector”.
Ugh I’m tired of this story line.
You’re absolutely right. Sarah should’ve neglected Dana in her grieving and let her wallow in self pity. That would’ve worked out for the best.
There’s always somewhere else you can go study, but it sounds like Dana needs help regardless. Dana’s friends are being enablers. I think Sarah would be concerned over Dana’s condition whether or not she had an impending test, but the test makes it more of an urgent issue.
If the situation seems manufactured off of petty bullshit excuses, well, we already know it ends in capital-D Drama, and all Drama is based on petty bullshit, so it’s just par for the course.
and here i thought the reason why she didnt get along with those girls was because they didnt agree on clothes or something, but NOW well, Sarah is kind of a bongo, i mean why not just go to a friends room and study or to a damn library. they got those on college campuses. i have seen them.
Yeah Sarah, how dare you expect to have a home?
Wait, hang on… How come it’s okay for Dana to not only have a home but to also take away Sarah’s, but it’s selfish for Sarah to expect to have anything?
I can easily understand Sarah’s motives, and I can give her a little sympathy. A little. When you feel like your whole future is based on getting through college and it just takes that one little thing for your whole life to fall apart like failing a test and losing a scholarship…well, a little desperation is understandable! And Sarah is young and inexperienced; who in this strip is not? They’ll all figure it out eventually. None of them truly deserve blame.
You guys are all out of your minds! I don’t care what happens in your life you don’t smoke pot in your damn dorm room. Sarah is being nice for not just going to the RA in the first place when she knew her roommate was doing illegal things in her dorm room. I wouldn’t be able to live like that. It would make me so anxious and nervous I’d be miserable. Sarah deserves to be able to be in her own home without someone doing drugs in it.
If Sarah can go somewhere else to study then shouldn’t Dana be able to go somewhere else to smoke?
I don’t understand why Sarah is getting shit for this. I’d bet that if your daily rhythm was interrupted by something like this that’d you complain too and want it to stop. She could’ve said it better, granted.
Gah, If I hear “Sarah can just go study somewhere else” one more time I think I’ll scream. Are some people not realizing that Dana isn’t clipping her toenails loudly or humming or making forts out of the mattresses, she’s smoking weed in her dorm room. t’s not that it’s illegal (although it is), it’s that it’s not a self-contained vice. Drinking? Affects only you. Pills? Same thing. Smoking has an area affect that touches all in its radius… second hand smoke is bad and a contact buzz makes it a bit tough to study. Besides, it’s not a coping mechanism for her grief, Dana was toking before her Mom died and she’s just continuing… before it was because Mondays stink, the cafeteria was out of tater tots, she needed to “unwind”, etc. it’s kind of a cop out to blame her stoner-ness on her Mom when it was a pre-existing condition.
Should have just grassed her up to the University who would have kicked her out for smoking an illegal drug on university property.
That is wasn’t noticed or acted on by anyone with official powers in the dorms or elsewhere is another issue!
Even if you can’t study outside your room, you can TOTALLY request a room shift. It’s easy.
-9000 likes for Sarah.