Yep, it’s going to happen. Every grade perfectionist I saw go to college hits that point. Either the teacher is really hard, the subject itself is, or they just screw up but it happens. It’s interesting to see how they react.
More likely one of those newfangled automated full care, self cleaning beds.
I think I saw it on one of those anime shorts but cant remember the title.
Ah, here it is, the Roujin Z-0001 Robotic Bed. circa 1991? Damn I feel old.
Plus, perfect people don’t doubt that they’re perfect, except that if they don’t, they have an ego problem, which means they’re not perfect, but if they do, they sell themselves short, which means…
The only solution is that they’re perfect because they say they’re perfect, and being perfect, whatever they say is true. Catch-22.
but the logic is fairly sound. you can be humble and honest when you are a failure but if you are honest and successful you sound like a bragard and you can only really but successful and humble if you lie for the most part.
Not really. It’s long been remarked that the most accomplished experts in any field are the most acutely aware of their own ignorance; someone not constantly going up their own asshole about how rich they are is isn’t dishonesty, it’s just basic social skills.
It’s a thing that sounds deep but really is just some almost clever wordplay.
Situational and subjective perfection are, in my opinion, oxymorons. If there’s any conditionals or exceptions, whatever it is is simply not perfect.
Perfection is absolute completion. No advancement possible, no better option in any way, the incomparable best.
It is nothing but an ideal. A hypothetical impossibility.
By definition, it’s not something Dorothy wants at all. Because it’s an end. A state which cannot be progressed.
And then it can be argued that since such perfection is depressing, it’s not perfection anyway. That’s situational and subjective, which is why I would agree.
perfect in one persons eye isn’t just perfect its wishing they had what you have i think. in a sense seeing things in them that could counter all their own flaws.
You mean in the movie or in the book? I can mainly remember the books, and in there even Hermione did keep her human-ness pretty well, simply because she also had her faults. As well as did Harry. The main purpose of Harry was that everybody wanted to see something special in him, when he himself only denied that – which in the end did make him special (because, let’s be honest, he could’ve developed into a power-hungry monster). I think about everyone in the book displayed human tendencies, even Voldi.
Oh, not at all. I just think he’s a pointless character who never amounts to anything, who has no personality worth mentioning, and whose only defining characteristics are “poor redhead with brothers who’s friends with the Chosen One.”
Actually he’s the kind caring openhearted guy,willing to accept Harry into his family and circle of friends. He’s loyal, openhearted, intelligent. He’s the only one of the trio who was actually born in a magical family,and thus has experience with magic outside of books. Which makes him incredibly useful.
He’s not perfect, but he’s faaaaaar from pointless. And as for ‘not amounting to anything’… he comes to accept himself, is a hero, becomes an auror and has a happy and healthy homelife, while accepting that his wife has a bigger career than he does, without feeling jealous about it. Which I’d say is a high goal to achieve for a male character.
I was trying to make you feel better about yourself, because Trump is the epitome of a mess-up trying to look better, and in comparison, you are better.
Unrealistic expectations screw up a lot of relationships, I have the opinion more so than cheating or any of the other huge events that can happen. You assume one thing or a bunch of stuff about a person’s character, and if you don’t communicate it just snowballs from there.
*by events I mean stereotypical issues like cheating, or dealing with in-laws (which can be related to that), not like illness/health problems and death which are tribulations all on their own.
I’d have to go back in the archive to check for sure, but I think that his issue here isn’t Dorothy. Walky is a smart guy and always had an easy time in high school, and he assumed that college classes would be just as easy. Instead, he’s having a hard time. Since he doesn’t have the experience to knuckle down and study, he’s retreated into his comfort zone of ‘not trying’.
I do agree that dating Dorothy might make it harder for Walky to admit what’s going wrong, but I don’t think that’s the root cause of the issue.
I think i can relate somewhat to walky here. I suspect he feels he isn’t good enough for her which honestly is/was part of why i dont date. im not good enough yet
Man, non-amazing people can still date — being worthy of asking somebody out, that’s not a very high bar.
But, I don’t know what you think constitutes not-good-enough-for-dates, or if you think of yourself accurately. It’s cool if you, like, want to clean your room before you invite people over, but I hope you don’t consider yourself fundamentally unlovable. Nobody’s that.
1. Pretty much fits the bill.
2. Honestly Trump’s problems aren’t fundamental characteristic issues, they exist in the space between fundamental characteristics and extrinsic presentation of self to the world.
Yes. He is a hollow shell of a person, with a heart of gold. Cold, unfeeling, uncaring, gold. Glittering gilded emptiness.
Is he fundamentally unlovable? His supporters sure seem to love him, and I’m sure quite a few Nazis loved Hitler. Serial killers receive tons of fan mail. The world is really fucked up.
Even people whom we detest ourselves, they aren’t fundamentally unlovable by anyone ever. You and I detest Trump, but we aren’t everyone in the whole world. Some people love Trump. Takes all kinds.
I exactly know where you’re coming from. Also because what you get to hear when you even just mention to someone “yeah it would be nice to have someone” they, themselves in relationships, spout things as “You only have to love yourself, love yourself first” or “It will happen when you least expect it”
Thing is if you don’t even consider yourself to be “good enough yet” you can’t really love yourself for being you completely, because you want to change how you are right now nearly constantly. And most people I know don’t get that.
And people in relationships however strong their self-esteem is tend to forget that being in a relationship (a healthy and good one, that is) is an emotional boost in itself, and it can help support your feelings about yourself in a positive way, like “I might not look perfect, but this person is together with me regardless” – or “I know I’m clumsy, but this one thinks it’s cute” etc.etc.
Most of my friends in relationships seem to forget that. A friend of mine (in a 3-year-long relationship) simply told me “bullshit” as I mentioned to her how I’m not comfortable in my body right now (I had to deal with overweight a few years back, now am slim but want to be muscular), simply because she has more weight than I do, but on her it doesn’t look like that, because my hips are wider and most of my weight is on my hips. But to her I sound as if I have body issues when I should have none – which might be the case (I’m not anorexic or underweight, to clear things up)- but I react allergic to ppl not being able to empathise with how I feel replying simply “bullshit” to my (however maybe unfounded) worries.
Man, I relate so hard to you two right now. My particular issue is holding an ungair standard for myself (fixing my health issues, mental and otherwise, for starters) before I can even be close friends, much less date. I say unfaur, because I would NEVER subject anyone else in my boat to it, so I *know* it’s dumb…but I’m not sure how to get to the point I *believe* it, if that makes sense?
Tl;dr: Don’t tell someone struggling with self-doubt/loathing they need to love themselves first. You probably mean well, but they hear something different than you think, and that will stick with them.
Knowing something and believing it are two different things. and yeah, it can be really really fucking hard. like, I’ve been working on my mental health for >5 years and only in the last year have I been able to touch the issue of self-compassion with a ten-foot pole. 😛 Luckily, it seems to be the same shape of problem as ones I’ve already tackled with CBT/mindfulness/etc.
I understand that. Now, because I mentioned body issues up above and to just stay in the example (I’ve got other issues too, e.g. skin problems, but bear with me for that) – I’d also NEVER judge people for how they look, if overweight or ‘too thin’, because I know their side, and some may have health problems, or some may be stress eaters (or non-eaters), or compensate emotions unknowingly with food (which e.g. I did as a teen by stuffing myself with mainly too much and fast food), but I judge myself harshly in that department.
So: I also know of that unfair standard – I use that for myself too in many departments (also mental health) – and there’s always this “When I can’t do even that, how should anyone even want to spend time with me?”
It also doesn’t help your self-esteem when everyone around you is in a loving relationship for at least a year (and my sister’s married to the guy she got together with at age 16 – and she’ll be 28 this year) and your only ‘adult’ relationship, the one time you thought you met someone actually accepting you, only lasted 1 1/2 months and his feelings ‘just changed’. And everyone of your more or less closer friends thought you’d definitely be in a relationship because you were the “most normal one of them” – just enhancing the idea of ‘you’re obviously not, if you still aren’t’ after 8 years of telling me this.
So yeah, telling someone with issues “you need to love yourself” is as useful as telling someone with depression “to just be happy” – because yeah, it’s that easy, why didn’t I think of that sooner!
In that case, it’s better to tell them what YOU like about them, so that they feel that at least they have some worth because a friend likes them for what they might consider a fault at most times (e.g. I talk too much with my friends, but one told me, she likes it on our shared drive home at night, because it keeps her from falling asleep while tired, and she likes my rambling).
My luck is just that I gained friends while I had these issues and didn’t let them go during their issues, which has kept me and them together, BEFORE I was aware of the scope of all my issues and new ones developed. But still, I don’t bother all of my friends with all of my issues because I know it would be too much for them.
So…I hope I’m still relatable somehow and didn’t drive you away with this long comment, because that somehow at the least gives me some effed up sense of community feeling that shouldn’t be needed in the first place, but it is there, because of our “standards” :/
Of all the things one could do to be less relatable, telling me more of their story is the least effective. I love the opportunity to really, truly understand other people.And yeah, I get that kind of romantic frustration. I’m the eldest of my siblings, who all are or have been in serious relationships…meanwhile, the closest I got to a significant other ended up with my dad. Kinda hard to believe you’re interesting and fun to be around when that happens, though I have gotten better. I get the food issues, too, which is really hard to seek help for when you’re a dude who *ssems* healthy.
That’s a relief to read, somehow 🙂 I’m like that too, it’s some kind of strange fulfilment to get to know other people in the way you describe, it’s widening your horizon and…hard to describe what’s going beyond that.
Yeah, after such things, it’s really difficult to fight one’s self-doubts, and I’m glad to read you’re doing better 🙂 (I do too, though last winter was unbearable). With the food issue, I can only describe it from a female point of view (and I only have one male close friend, who I know doesn’t has problems in that regard) – but I get that it must be difficult for you too, especially if other’s think from outside that you look healthy anyway.
Reminds me of this conversation with a group of friends that’s somehow only remotely relevant: I was very focused on my nutrition (after having slimmed down healthily with sport) and tried to stay away from fast food (because I know how unhealthy it is – in the end it was what made me fat very fast, especially chips, because I’m addicted to them – I lack the self-restrain to only eat a handful of them, I need to eat the whole package and after it I feel bad about it – which is why I try to follow the “don’t buy” rule) – and because I talked “too much” about it, another friend snapped at me, because she said that fast food every now and then doesn’t hurt etc.etc. and basically told me I was stupid for trying to keep them out of my diet.
Now she understands my side better (she gained, lost, and gained weight in the past years), but I still can’t talk to her about it as much as I’d maybe wanted too, because she doesn’t understand that chips are really addicting to me (I think because of the salt – I could eat the whole package, and even a second, even if my gum starts hurting) or that I see that as very bad.
(So yeah, just another part of my life. Damn, I feel like sharing today!)
I strongly agree with CoMa, Sundaes, and Halpful. I hope I’m not being that jerk in a relationship who spouts annoying platitudes.
When you tell somebody “love yourself first”, that may be unaligned with where they’re at. If self-love seems impossible to them, for example, it’s like saying “you cannot date until you do this impossible thing, so it’s impossible for you to ever date”. No. Messy people are allowed to ask for dates if they want to!
Miados had said this is only one reason that they don’t date right now. I respect that Miados knows their own life best, and I am certainly not trying to pressure Miados into dating. (I also chose to be single for several years, because I said so, and I don’t regret it.)
I’m more going on a tangent, that some people think you have to be ‘good enough’ for dating, whereas I think, outside of not being hella abusive, you don’t have to be any particular way to ask people out.
I do hope that people who hate themselves will get some helpful therapy towards liking themselves more (whether it’s related to depression, or body issues, or recent failures or life events, or anything else), because hating/liking/loving yourself is legitimately impactful on your life, and legit very difficult, and nobody should have to navigate these thoughts all by themselves! But that’s separate from dating. A person can have a partner AND a therapist, you know?
Nah, that comment is perfectly fine, it’s good to share your thoughts, because even if they might not help us (not saying they don’t), they might help someone else who reads them (too)!
Personally, I’ll try to keep it in mind – though I have developed strategies to cope, and try to think of it as being a last resort. Because I want to manage on my own. It might be due to these stupid standards I apply to myself, but the (veeery stupid!) thing is that I know full well what’s wrong with me – and that there’s actually nothing wrong with me – at many times in my life. It’s like how SundaesChild described, we know it, but we sometimes just don’t believe it, at times. And up until now, I could build my life around occasionally sharing bits of my most troubling thoughts to different close friends during those troubling times (I’d never want to weigh them down with everything all around) – which is my substitution for therapy, basically. Up until now it worked and has been the one stable thing in my life.
the long and short of it for me personally is well its hard to feel like someone you tried to end the life of is someone worth loving and since i tried to do that twice its not exactly a speedy recovery.
at this point i am worried more about finding a full time job where i can live on my own
This…makes the first sentence of my first reply to you sound pretty presumptuous, I’m sorry about that…
I stuck with the body issue, because I wanted to take a ‘more light-hearted’ example, but…I’ve fought suicidal thoughts for years – I never went through with it because I was always just on the verge, just not stepping over the line (if that makes sense) – and it didn’t help that I took optional medication for one of my problems, which made my depressive tendencies worse during medication. Last year, after the heartbreak described above, I was confronted with these thoughts again (while also taking those meds) – and the only thing keeping them at bay was the thought of what would happen to my family and friends (my uncle took his life at that time and attending the funeral was torture, because I was fighting those thoughts but saw first-hand how everyone dealt with it).
So, I never meant to take your comment lightly in any way – the body issue just came to my mind first, and I hope you can believe me that.
Now after saying that, I hope that you achieve that goal of finding a job and can do your best, however hard that might be! I’m finishing up my studies right now (and I need to, relatively fast), so I kind of can relate to that in some way too.
And last but not least I want to point at Leorale’s post above our heads, and hope that however we may feel, we might be able to keep her words in mind, somehow.
Sensible — it’s plenty tough enough to rebuild your life without having to do every single piece of it at the same time. Good luck on your job hunt and your continued recovery. <3
All the support to your both (miados and CoMa). Suicidal thoughts are the worst, but the resilience you’re both showing in recovery and going after your goals is admirable, to say the least. And to Leorale, thanks. The world needs more people who believe in the basic goodness of others.
He isn’t good enough and Dorothy made that clear at the beginning. He’s there to provide creature comforts for this year. She wasn’t planning on sacrificing anything for him or becoming a couple, just coupling with him. Nice, no drama sex and intimacy. On those terms, she should drop him now and Walky knows that. If she sticks with a potential loser as a boyfriend, then the relationship has changed.
I like this though because Dorothy is right to be upset. But when Billie called her perfect, it was something of an insult and a put-down. When Walky says she’s perfect, it’s a compliment. A self-deprecating one but still something he means positively. This is a good first step for them! Walky finally admitted his deepest darkest secret! …Walky is also lucky that this is the deepest, darkest secret he’s got.
I agree. He means it positively but I can see how Dorothy being held and holding herself to these impossible standards has sort of damaged her ability to deal with failure and like herself including all her imperfections.
So true and the sad part is that that runs deep in Dorothy. She has modeled herself into trying to be the best she can, which isn’t bad! But when you are building yourself up to be the best, anything less is absolutely crushing. And as good as Dorothy is, to have Roz expose her flaws makes her feel even worse because it’s like a chink in her perfectly composed armor that she never considered.
Dorothy needs to allow herself some mistakes and faults, she is only human after all! That’s something I’ve honestly struggled with some too. I try my best so when I fall short, it feels twice as bad.
I don’t think the problem is that Dorothy doesn’t allow herself to make mistakes though, it is that she doesn’t fall to pieces for making one, so people assume she doesn’t make mistakes at all.
Roz pointed out as much that Dorothy doesn’t appear to make mistakes, which is why Dorothy is being triggered when people say she is perfect now because they are saying that as if she has never made a mistake in her life, as if she can’t try to understand or empathise or sympathise with people because she isn’t making constant huge mistakes (thanks Billie).
And for someone like Dorothy, that is endlessly frustrating because she knows she is human and makes mistakes but if no one is willing to listen or believe her, she can’t even do anything about it. It is like being socially punished for not being a deeply flawed person that makes grand mistakes for everyone to see, which is really messed up.
Well, but he might’ve missed only like two classes? Or if, as BBCC said, only one, he won’t fail it or drop out. In my university (well, granted in Europe, maybe it’s different in the US) you’d fail a course automatically when you missed 3 classes, regardless of whether they could be excused or not. Though if you were sick, in the hospital or anything, most professors would try to find a solution and maybe talk with administration for a special agreement, if you just were to miss a 4th class, but then resumed attending, and if you only missed classes because you actually couldn’t come (e.g heavy bronchitis or anything that would likely infect the rest of class)
In my college days, there were in general no attendance requirements. You needed to do assignments and pass tests. If you could do that without showing up to class, more power to you.
Some classes you’d see people at the exams you’d never seen in class.
I had one large lecture hall style chem class that I never went to after the first week. Went to lab and the TA’s discussion session, but the lecture was a waste of time. Couple hundred students and the professor reading from the book.
Well, in mine there (still) are lectures (attendance not needed, with about 150-500 seats, depending on the room), some seminar-style lectures (attendance needed; are rare, but were implemented to cope with large masses in a cheap-seminar-style kind of way – up to 100 seats) and different kinds of seminars (attendance needed) for different kinds of levels (higher levels mostly topic-specific, in literature studies) which you needed to preregister for in hope of getting a seat, with between 25 possible to at the most 50 seats – which stretched regulations, because only 40 seats were allowed anyway) – so it’s kind of a strange mixture of classes you need to attend to pass and lectures you could just get access to via elearning and then go to the tests.
Even if it’s past the early drop period, he should be able to withdraw and get a non-GPA-effecting W on his transcript. This will shake his schedule up if this class is a prerequisite, and of course Linda will be upset, but at least it won’t be a boat anchor on his grades. (Though if he flunks the class doesn’t he have to retake it anyway?)
The first step is admitting you have a problem. Maybe he’s acquired some of Dorothy’s maturity through osmosis and will actually get some help now.
Many schools have a period to retake classes for replacement on transcripts and GPA calculations. Typically either as long as you’re a Freshmen when you retake the class or else anytime if the class was originally taken during your first term as a freshman. This has become more normalized as more and more kids have the kinds of problems Walky does here transitioning from the workload and expectations of a high school student, even if a college prep student in AP classes, to those of an undergrad. I’d have to spend way too long checking, but I’d be surprised if IU didn’t have some sort of policy like that in this day and age.
Narrator: Joyce walked down the street, it was rainy, as it usually is in these types of stories. She checked her pockets, finding picture bible, and a BB gun designed to look like a revolver.
Joyce (monologue): six shots, I really should get some more ammunition.
Narrator: it was cold as fuck.
Joyce: it’s cold as f….a frigid area here.
Narrator: After a few minutes of walking, Joyce finally came across a small group of girls. Who I probably do not have to describe.
Joyce: Hey Sal
Narrator: Joyce waved heartily, Sal did not wave back, in fact Sal didn’t even look up from her phone. Carla glanced over though, and so Joyce decide to talk to her.
Joyce: Hey, you’re Carla right?
Carla: Yeah.
Joyce: I need to ask your group about something.
Carla: About what?
Joyce: Mary has been murdered.
Carla: We know. It’s all over the news.
Joyce: Do you know anything?
Carla: What would I know, besides do you really think I’d kill my best prank victim? But I do have something for you.
Narrator: Carla pulls a sheet of paper out of her pocket with a large R printed on it. The R wasn’t any script that Joyce could recognize, and must have been taken from someone’s hand writing.
Joyce: is this?
Carla: A decipher of the bloody note that was in Mary’s hands? Yes, it is.
Joyce: Did you?
Carla: Steal the original from the campus police, and use something involving light that the writer is to lazy to think of right now to make the original writing legible. Yes, yes I did.
Joyce: Why though?
Carla: Cause no murderers get in the way of my revenge.
Joyce: Well I’ll see you around. Thanks for the clue.
Joyce decided to walk back to her office, she had some old writings of her friends to go through.
Welp what do you guys think will happen? Will it be
A. Dorothy leaves Walky so he can get better in class
B. Leaves Walky for lying to her
C. They watch their favorite cartoon and suddenly everything is better
I think if he’s too far gone he might have to drop the class entirely. They can try, but at a certain point no matter what you do your grade is going to be pretty low anyway. I don’t think they’ve had their first exam, so there is hope for Walky yet – she’ll probably get him a tutor like miados said.
He doesn’t even need the class for his major, so he could really just drop the class, and sign up for an easy math class that he can just sail through next semester–maybe even two classes.
He’s not on a scholarship or anything. A withdrawal means basically nothing.
But that’s just avoiding a problem he’s going to have to deal with eventually. I mean I guess he could only ever have a problem with math and he’ll sail through all the rest of his college years without ever needing to study, but I don’t think that’s the point of this arc. I kind of wish it wasn’t Math he was struggling in, since that just reinforces the whole “Math is hard” thing and suggests the simple answer of take less Math, when I’m pretty sure the real problem is supposed to be that college is harder than high school and he’s not going to be able to cruise through.
I’m also not at all sure this is the hard Math class. Just judging by who’s in it, none of them are known to be science or engineering track, right? Joyce, Sal, Walky?
And more importantly that approach would neglect the self-esteem all wrapped up in being effortlessly smart thing he’s got going.
It’s Calculus I. Joyce is in Education and so doesn’t need this class at all as her major requires a different math that would fulfill her gen eds. Presumably this is an interest class, as she enjoys math and said its her favourite subject. Sal’s undeclared and so is probably knocking out gen eds while she figures out what she wants (not a bad idea).
Walky’s in telecommunications, which is no longer a undergrad major in Indiana U, but when it was, Calculus would have fulfilled his math modelling requirement. That said, it’s not the only one. There’s also finite math and a couple combos thereof.
This seems like a standard 101, but it’s the next level from what he took in high school, so he feels obligated to keep taking it.
Also, I’m wondering about his other classes – any other walls he might be hitting soon? Gender Studies maybe?
But then they’d have to communicate without animosity. It would be an interesting scene. He’s asking who he thinks is a resentful screw-up for help, Sal might resent him while she’s helping him (or not! who knows) or prove to him that she has worth outside of what he thinks of her. Endless possibilities for drama
Sal’s problem wasn’t that she didn’t know how to study, it’s that Jason’s a terrible tutor. Once she found one who could explain in a way she understood, she did fine.
I never really thought about it before I read Cerb’s comments (by the way – where’s she been? Has anyone heard from her or been able to check in? It’s been a while) but now that I have, he is so. FUCKING. AWFUL.
It has been a while since Cerb left a comment. I haven’t mentioned it because I kept thinking that she would show up but I’m honestly getting a little worried. I hope she, her stundents, and her fiancé are ok. I remember her saying in one of her comments that her fiancé was getting scared and thinking they should leave the country and that one of her students was going through a traumatic experience combined with a shitty school administration head, so I really hope nothing bad happened.
Likewise. She’s vanished before, and it turned out to be because she was scared off of having an internet presence for a while. I’m hoping it’s something like that and not . . .
The world sucks, where we have to ask these kinds of questions.
I’d been wondering about Cerberus as well.
Hey, Emperor Norton? You did that podcast thing – do you have a way to contact?
Not that she’s got any responsibility to keep posting here of course or even to let us know, but it might help to know she’s missed and we worry.
Yeah, sorry everyone for worrying everyone. I kind of shut down hard this first Trump week with the sheer onslaught of fascist awfulness. Plus work got somewhat unbearable of late with the upper level completely turning on us for reporting the rape incident and it’s followup. They’ve also been doing some petty shit where they threatened to shut down all the queer safe space stuff we’ve been doing as revenge for reporting the mishandling of the rape stuff.
Plus the kid is tired of fighting this and just wants to accept the world is shit and move on which means the baddies essentialy won in this one cause I’m not going to go against a survivor’s will with regards to how they rebuild agency after an assault.
I dunno. Was feeling really helpless and awful but got dragged out last night to kind of a “we’re worried about you” outing cause I had started self-harming again that really helped me reboot. Still not sure what I’m doing in the medium-term but I’m in a much better headspace for the short-term.
Sorry for making everyone worry and thanks for the well-wishes.
Also yeah, Jason is just a horrible teacher on like ninety different levels and that might be a podcast episode in the near future cause holy fuckballs.
You don’t need to apologize to us. If you need to not be here for awhile, that’s cool. Just glad to know you’re alright – as relative a term as that might be these days.
You’re missed when you’re gone, but take care of yourself first and your kids next.
No need to apologize Cerberus. Like thejeff said take care of yourself and your kids first. Also, I’m deeply sorry to hear about what the upper level administration is doing.
*hugs*
(I assume you are comfortable with the idea of Internet hugs because you often offer them but if not please correct me)
Some of the kids I sub for have been having a hard time lately because they had family stopped at airports by the Muslim ban. A decent proportion of the school and local community are Assyrian, meaning they have family in or from Iraq. A similiar proportion is Sikh (both about one eight of the school each) so, they had family who got stopped because they simply had beards and turbans. So I’ve been helping the regular faculty try to play damage control. This last week has sucked. But it’s good to know that as of this moment you are ok-ish. So, once again:
*hugs*
Oh no, honey, don’t be sorry. It’s okay. I completely understand. I’m glad you feel better than you have recently right now. Hugs if wanted and appropriate gestures of support if not.
It’s been a rough week, Evil Cheeto wise, and that situation at work sounds abysmal. Even if nothing happens to that evil little snot and that awful awful admin, at least the situation was reported.
Don’t feel bad for not being around – you need to take care of your mental health first, your responsibilities (including the kids) second.
Also – *squeaks with delight at Jason podcast possibility* YAS! That lousy little creeper has one coming.
Just want to add that I’ve also been wondering where you were and if you were okay, and it’s good to hear from you. Completely understand not being okay, though.
Dotty looks a bit taken aback there in the last panel. More and more intriguing. How much inner-life are they both going to share with each other, I wonder. Is the lead-up to the events in the sidebar ad?
This very afternoon I was feeling low and I asked my fellow if he would like me even when I suck (har har, not that kind), and he said “Yes.”
No argument or equivocation. Somehow it was the most reassuring thing in the world.
While she’s not averse to using it, I think she’s got a similar attitude to swearing as Joyce: Save it for when you need it.
And you know what? That’s actually true. Keeping the rougher swear words will indeed make them meaningful, to the point of where a good swear can help release your body’s own painkillers faster when you’re stubbing your toe against the corner of a wall. Quite amazing, isn’t it?
So yeah, don’t be afraid to swear. But save it ’till you need it.
Sorry, Emperor, I got more swear words in my mouth than there is dog shit on the streets and sidewalks of the world. That is just not an attainable goal for me (unless children are around or folks have asked me not to swear around them in meatspace). That said, I respect people choosing not to or to limit themselves (so long as that’s a free choice and not something imposed on them, as it was on Joyce).
Yep. Called it. I knew that Dorothy would be more upset with Walky not telling her than Walky flunking. And for good reason too, since his reasons for not telling her were… Well, not entirely rational.
But yeah, reckon she’ll start fixing things as soon as she collects her thoughts a bit.
“I knew that Dorothy would be more upset with Walky not telling her…”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
I think Dorothy is most upset with Walky for skipping classes and not telling anyone.
I suppose the reaction would’ve been different* if he admitted to having a private tutor or something, because then at least he’d be doing something constructive about it.
*That is, she’d probably still have said “Why didn’t you tell me?” but with far less shouting and just some sadness in her voice instead.
1) Finish the shock and panic and confusion reaction. Yeah, better if you never did that to begin with, but surprise is like that. It’s excusable. It’s not like you’re perfect, right? Right?
2) Spend the next hour cuddling with Walky. Maaaaaybe sex, but cuddling with a bit of reassuring cooing and caressing’s probably better. His emotional ego’s bruised to the point of incoherence, and he won’t be capable of discussing things in a remotely rational manner until that’s taken care of. This means reassuring him that he has emotional support and refuge that won’t turn on him for the very thing he needs emotional support and refuge regarding. Uh… you might want to tack on an extra minute for every second of your initial shock-and-panic reaction.
3) When he’s VERY relaxed and too mellow to be depressed, start exploring things with him. Don’t focus on the math issue. Focus on his reaction to the math issue. Why did he run away? Why did he keep it secret? What was he feeling that made THESE his reactions rather than anything else? Keep up the cuddling for this. He might switch from mellow to depressed, so repeat step 1 as needed.
4) Once you both understand the impulses he’s diving into, start talking rational solutions. He’s struggling to grasp the material? Study sessions. He has trouble focussing on study sessions? See student psych services about the possibility of a learning disability. So on. This might uncover more levels of denial, so repeat steps 1 and 2 as needed.
5) Realize that you just missed two classes helping out your boyfriend and freak the fuck out.
0) Lock the door so Mike can’t come in to contribute to steps 1 through 5. Oops. Probably should have thought of that earlier. But that’s okay, no one’s perfect.
So is Dorothy’s reaction in panel one appropriate or an overreaction? they’re not even mid semester so Walky can’t be failing the course for sure yet….
I was trying to say: I really like Dorothy, but “everyone thinks I’m perfect” is sure a hard “problem” to be sympathetic to.
…Which of course is why it’s a problem for her, I guess. Not many are gonna root for you (…or vote for you) if they can’t find anything to sympathize with.
Consider it more like “everyone misunderstands me, won’t see me as I am, has all these wack assumptions, won’t connect with me as a real human being”. Still a bit of a first world problem, but closer to what sucks about being held up as an unrealistic ideal.
It’s not “Oh gosh why must I be lowered to the standards of these piteous mortals”, it’s that Dorothy has spent her entire life trying to excel at everything because she’s been told that’s the only way she’ll matter, and now people are holding that against her and treating her like she’s on a pedestal.
I wouldn’t say “she’s been told that’s the only way she’ll matter” – her parents are, as far as we know, very kind, supportive, and laid-back. Being so driven to do everything “right” is more something she decided for herself; it’s something she just WANTS to do – because she’s good at it. And why shouldn’t she? There’s nothing wrong with it in itself. It’s just it happens to be a “problem” that’s, uh, very high up there on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. And thus one most people can’t sympathize with, and to be fair, they have no obligation to do so. And, as I said, it’s hard for people to root for someone they can’t sympathize with.
Not that they dislike her – we haven’t seen any indication anyone actually dislikes Dorothy (IIRC). But most people don’t relate to her, and know she can’t relate to them, and thus find her efforts to curry their favor disingenuous (not just Billie; Sal has also hinted at this). It’s really not her fault…but it’s not something she can really do anything about, either. I mean, what can she really do? Hence, her frustration.
Like, I don’t find her a “sympathetic” character in this regard, but I get it. And I like that this is presented as sort of an impasse for Dorothy rather than being some black-and-white “oh poor Dorothy everyone is so mean to her”. It’s easy to see where she’s coming from, but it’s also understandable why a lot of people aren’t particularly on her side even if they’re not overtly against her.
It is a very aggravating problem if you are the one who has it though. Dorothy obviously knows she makes mistakes, this wouldn’t be upsetting her so much if she didn’t, but the worst part of being on a pedestal is that only other people can remove you from it. And if they don’t listen to you, then you’re just left feeling frustrated and miserable that everyone misunderstands you fundamentally as a person.
It also is especially frustrating when people go ‘you wouldn’t understand’ in the way Billie did previously, because that is now assuming the ‘perfect’ person can’t empathise, sympathise or otherwise make an effort to understand you. That they’ve never made a mistake in their life or never suffered once in their life, which is just unrealistic.
It is a very unhappy situation to get caught in because you’re essentially being punished for being a good person, with mostly good judgement, without deep seated flaws that would hinder you for life. And it is honestly very messed up because you’re just trying to do your best and people saying ‘you’re too good and perfect to understand us!’ is basically like them calling ‘MARY SUE!’ on a real person.
Awwww, poor lite Walky makes himself as small as he can and crawls under the pillow. Sorry, little mouse-boy, Jesus won’t help you with your math score (unless you study Jesus Math, of course).
And poor Dorothy gets another painful remainder of the discrepancy between the RA-lite she wants to be and how little control she really has of the shit the people around her has to endure. If even her boyfriend has hidden math problems, what else is she missing?
Don’t worry, Dorothy. You do the good job even without having full control of the situation. I know that’s strange and scary for a perfectionism, but its true nevertheless.
I think what Walky actually means is not literally that she is flawless, but rather something more like that she won’t empathize with failure because hasn’t ever been seriously tested. Compared to the other characters, as far as we know, nothing seriously bad has ever happened to her, and nothing has ever significantly shaken her view of herself.
Walky’s struggle with an academic subject has really undermined his long-held self-image as someone who glides through school, and I suspect he’s thinking that Dorothy is going to say something akin to, “Why didn’t you promptly abandon your unproductive view of yourself and change everything about your approach to academics until you solved the problem?” And he won’t have a rational answer, because his reaction was rooted in fear.
We saw a little of this in her reaction to Danny telling her that he was discovering bi feelings. That’s of course not a failing of any kind, but it was a shock to his system. Dorothy’s reaction, while supportive, was something a bit too nonchalant to be empathetic, along the lines of “just change your whole view of your sexuality, and you’ll be fine.”
“Compared to the other characters, as far as we know, nothing seriously bad has ever happened to her, and nothing has ever significantly shaken her view of herself.”
Except the time when she realised that she didn’t have anywhere near the support for being RA that she thought she would have; which was the reason she came to Walky to begin with.
Nah, he’s thinking Dorothy’s going to say something like “GASP! YOU ARE NOT THE PERSON YOU THOUGHT YOU WERE! HOW DARE YOU DECEIVE ME SO! I HAVE NOTHING IN COMMON WITH LOWLY MATH FAILERS!” and dump him forever for not being talented ™
I mean, dumping a friend for not being literally flawless and having academic problems WOULD be a character flaw, too bad Walky doesn’t think of it like that )=
Panel One: Immediately, Dorothy is on top of things trying to ascertain what’s going on and how bad the problem is. And yet, that’s not helping Walky here. Walky is seeing this as the start of a huge, relationship ending, tear Walky down freak out.
Panel Two: Poor Walky, that wince hurts. Because he fully expects that he will be rejected for this. There are just no scenarios where this ends in his head without being screamed at and ditched. It’s heartbreaking how much of his self worth was wrapped in him being smart, and effortlessly so. And admitting that he did this boneheaded thing is just making it worse because now its out loud. It’s out there.
Panel Three: And of course Dorothy just wants to help. This is a problem she can easily help with. It plays to her strengths. And she is empathetic and eager to help people so much that of course she’s jumping at the chance to what’s, to her, the obvious solution. And yes, she’s upset he didn’t tell her because she wants to be able to help people and she wants them to confide in her. And now she’s probably wondering if she’s really NOT approachable enough to be relied on when that’s not the case at all. Walky’s just down on himself, not Dorothy.
Panel Four: *sigh* Yup. If you’re not effortlessly talented at things, you’re stupid. Poor Walky. This is not a good thing, to have your idea of your intelligence wrapped in things being easy. It’s unhealthy for you when you hit something that you can do, but requires effort. It feels overwhelming and scary and all you want to do is hide because you’re surely the stupidest creature who has ever lived, right?
And yeah, he’s always had Dorothy high up on a bit of a pedestal. He thinks she’s wonderful. And one of the problems with his easy simple life (which isn’t a bad thing in and of itself, but nothing is perfect) is that wonderful, smart, pretty, nice girls don’t ‘want’ slackers, they ‘want’ someone as awesome as they are because that’s how power couples are sold as. So while Walky has no problems being a goofball and he doesn’t like being pressured into fitting someone else’s idea of how he should be, he does know he would not be expected to work out with Dorothy. And so this is a new layer on top of his own expectations and how his family treats ‘failures’ (fuck I hate the Walkerton parents) and his society treats black kids who don’t do well.
Panel Five: And no, this isn’t helping Dorothy here. She feels unapproachable and like she’s being bludgeoned for being flawed by naysayers and now for being flawless and unrelatable. Which do you people want? You can’t have both. And yet that’s the bind a lot of women find themselves in. A lot of people will damn you no matter what you do. And she’s seen that in (for her) the previous year where people voted for an angry racist cheeto over a woman because some saw her as ‘too rehearsed’.
And yeah, if people think you’re perfect, they wonder how you can possibly relate to their problems and flaws as they can’t relate to someone without them. It’s hard to understand problems you don’t personally experience and even if you do a lot of research, there will always be things you cannot fully 100% understand and relate to because you do not experience that problem first hand, even if it makes logical sense and you empathize completely.
And some of it is because Dorothy’s a perfectionist herself so she rakes herself over every little perceived flaw and imperfection and wondering how on earth others don’t see them. Some of it is because they’re comparatively small (worrying about potentially going to a better school vs worrying about your girlfriend being hospitalized for suicidal depression). That doesn’t make Dorothy’s problems unimportant, but it does make them smaller scale. And so some of this may be because her problems are seen as small and dismissed easier, but I think she’s mostly frustrated people don’t see the issues she’s so sure she’s broadcasted and that she’s hit her own wall because of it. A certain measure of connecting to people is required in a good RA (putting in good here because Ruth didn’t do that very well, but she was a terrible RA).
Panel Six: And yeah, both of them are quiet now. How the hell do you respond to that? And Dorothy looks miserable here. She’s basically asking for people to understand her. Even if she seems perfect, she is not. She’s put a lot of work into appearing so, for her career’s sake, but she cannot be perfect. Nobody is. It kills her now that she’s seen as unrelatable because she tries that hard. It’s a damn tricky double bind and it is hurting her.
Panel Seven: And yeah, being told someone is gonna keep doing the thing you just loudly asked people to stop doing is annoying as hell. Not faulting her angry eyebrows here.
But Walky doesn’t get to see that – he knows he thinks Dorothy is perfect, not as a bad thing, but as a thing that makes her great. She is not the problem in his mind. He is.
But that’s not really helpful for her because it still ignores the things she struggles with daily and that’s not good for her either.
Just….these two dorks want to help each other so much and they don’t know how because their own experiences are hindering their ability to understand while they communicate, but they want to try regardless because they care about each other and just….
I was about to say the same. The change of mouth expression too seems to indicate a softening in that last panel.
Because the way he says it makes it pretty damn hard to stay mad at him. We cannot hear the tone in his voice, but I’m willing to make a pretty big bet (at least 20 NKR) that he’s basically squeaking that “no” out as meekly as a mouse that just rounded the corner to find a cat staring at it.
And it’s very difficult to not be at least a little bit disarmed by that. It’s both very sincere, yet at the same time so incredibly goofy.
Her mouth is softer, but her eyebrows look kind of annoyed. Which is possible – she CAN be both sympathetic to how upset he is and still kind of irritated he just said he won’t stop doing the thing that’s upsetting her, even if she knows its not because he’s mean spirited.
Okay, can someone introduce me to the American higher education system please? Here, if you flunk a first semester class, you just try again in the next semester (or if it’s not available in a spring semester then the next one). What exactly is the big deal?
Or is this exclusively about Walky fearing to lose his gf who he thinks is too perfect for him? Because why be with her if he feels like there’s such a brutal imbalance between them to begin with?
This is the most confusing relationship in the whole strip to me. There are some story arcs that make me go “eeh, yeah this is not really in touch with reality”, but these two kids’ relationship is the one that loses me completely.
Not related to the US system:
Walky is accustomed to acing math without doing anything. His self-image gets badly damaged right now because suddenly math is a closed book. He doesn’t understand the class at first go (probably he was drawing dinosaurs when the one sentence that he’d need to make sense of things was said). And as he never needed to study, he doesn’t know how to start now and feels like the worst idiot in the world.
I can relate to that, I went from first in class at school to failing maths at university, too.
Managed at later tries to get it right, but did it feel like all kinds of unfair and shitty.
Well, you pay to go to college. If you’re part-time, you pay on a per-credit basis. Full time is usually a flat rate.
Still, since it takes up time and effort you could spend on another class, you’re essentially paying for it each time.
That’s not really the issue here, like CJ says.
Walky’s not thinking: “I’ve screwed this class and there are procedural hurdles that will keep me from trying it again.”, but “I’m too dumb for college and I’m going to fail out because I’m not smart like I thought I was and Dorothy’s going to leave me because I’m not good enough for her and …”
Also, depending on the school, a better grade doesn’t always erase the previous grade; sometimes they just get averaged together. A falling grade may pull down his whole GPA (grade point average).
I bet this happens all the damn time, though, freshmen take a bit more coursework than they can handle, and don’t realize it til midterms. I image he could ask the Dean to mercifully expunge his F and let him take the course afresh, or an easier course.
But Walky’s never had to navigate an F, he’s unaccustomed to anything below a completely effortless A (with maybe a B or two that upset his parents).
Dorothy also gets As, and an F is her nightmare scenario, but she doesn’t judge so harshly somebody who doesn’t get an A as, like, an intrinsic and unchangeable failure inside. This is totally something that Dorothy can help him find out.
In its own way, this is a very sweet strip and it does tell us a lot of Walky’s feelings for Dorothy and how it affects him. To him, she’s perfect and that makes him think that he has to be perfect too in order to be worthy of her. That’s a really, really lovely thought and, I hope, worthy of at least one hug before Dorothy tries to fix all of his problems!
Not even my supernaturally understanding and forgiving girlfriend who laughs at all my stupid jokes and thinks I’m the hottest dude she’s ever seen. Case in point: She finally hit her breaking point with my stupidity.
Dorothy is not perfect, but it’s more of a technicality to people other than her. She’s outright better than most people, and that creates a barrier to relatability. Denying the source of the barrier only makes it stronger. How can a person born rich truly understand the struggles of the working poor? What can a person who excels at nearly everything and is obviously destined for greatness possibly know about sucking and mediocrity? On the plus side it helps people choose leaders who don’t see the problems people live and breathe everyday as some numbers on a statistic sheet (Dorothy’s increased note checking reinforced this preconception about her). On the minus side, it often becomes this weird phenomenon where people prioritize relatability over successful work practices.
Ah, but that’s the damndest part. The fact is Dorothy wasn’t just born with talent. She even lacks any easily discernable character flaws or vices. People can’t even blame her for having Ivy League ambitions and planning to transfer out, because of course that’s where Ms. Perfect belongs. Don’t expect to get much empathy for the troubles of being admired, especially when you actively strive to show that you are indeed the best.
And this is as someone who feels that the people not liking Dorothy’s qualities to the point of disfavoring her for a leadership position are the sort of moronic voters which bring down demcracies.
Okay. Walky here is pushing one of my big buttons as a (one-time) educator. (I mean, I’m no longer an educator, but you never really stop looking at the world through that lens, you know?)
I’ve got this perhaps-not-entirely-charitable view of students that, deep down, they’re looking for an excuse to fail. Not necessarily that they WANT to fail, overall, but that seeking an excuse for failure is one of the many impulses at work in their mind.
Why? Because usually, learning material and doing the coursework presents difficulties. It’s a chore. It’s challenging. It often involves bouts of frustration and exasperation. And in the most hair-pulling moments of that, part of you realizes that you’d just rather toss it all in a corner and just sit back eating chicken mcnuggets and living a life of no worries at all. (Well, okay, maybe not the mcnuggets thing.)
But you have to do the work, right? You’ve got your ego riding on it. You’ve got social expectations riding on it. You’ve got your status and standing in society riding on it. You’ve got your self-worth and self-image riding on it.
But not if you have an excuse.
Like, let’s say the power goes out at the dorms and you can’t work on your computer. That’s a good excuse not to do your homework, right? Except, if you think about it for just a bit, you have the option of going to the library and working there instead. Or to an internet cafe. Or… lots of options, really. But you don’t want to. The rationalizing part of your brain… and human reason seems to be grounded on rationalization, rather than rationality… has its excuse to fail. And between a path to success and an excuse for failure, the excuse for failure is what you want.
This is particularly problematic in the mathematical domains where I used to teach. There are SO MANY excuses to be found there. “I’m not a math person” is a common one, along with its variations like “I’m not good at math” or “I’m right-brained” or the like. While I don’t doubt that there are quite a few innate learning disabilities, in the case of most students spouting these excuses, THEY DON’T HAVE THEM. And if they do, they’re usually not following a path to success of diagnosis and learning to overcome them. For crying out loud, Stephen Hawking routinely does super-advanced math while being completely crippled. John Nash pioneered game theory, redefined economics, and earned his Nobel Prize WHILE SUFFERING FROM SCHIZOPHRENIC DELUSIONS. I’m not trying to downplay the impact of genuine disabilities. But I’m trying to emphasize that they are not roadblocks to success. Obstacles, maybe, but far from insurmountable… if you roll up your sleeves and get to work.
The human brain doesn’t want to get to work. The human brain wants to sit back and nom on chicken mcnuggets. In a slightly different form, this attitude served our ape ancestors pretty darn well.
One of the most common excuses to be found here is the belief that mathematical aptitude is innate. IT ISN’T. There might be some small edge for some people, but it is outright dwarfed by the impact of long nights studying and retraining the brain to think mathematically. But… that’s an excuse to fail. And it is a woefully socially-acceptable one.
So, back to this comic.
Notice how everything about Walky’s attitudes here revolves around innateness. He used to think he was smart. Not a hard-worker, not a good study, but innately smart. Nothing he’d ever earned, nothing he’d ever had to work for, just part of who he was. The result? He had an excuse not to work hard, which amounted to an excuse to fail. And then when he started failing, his view of himself shifted. He was now dumb. Again, an innate status. Not something that can be fixed. Another excuse to fail.
It’s a stark contrast with how Sal reacted to her bad grades. She violently dragged her TA into an involuntary hours-long tutoring session. The violent and involuntary part was bad, but it’s clear that she viewed her success as something she could achieve if she worked hard at it. Then she decided she could get out of learning the material with sex, which had its own problems… one of which (often unmentioned) was that she stopped trying to learn. But when that didn’t work, she made a deal for tutoring with Danny. She and Walky both had trouble with math, but they reacted to it in different ways and got very different results.
And now there’s Dorothy’s perfection. It sounds like they’re having two different conversations. Dorothy wants to talk about Walky flunking math, and Walky wants to talk about how Dorothy’s perfect. But they’re not two different conversations at all. They’re the exact same topic, viewed from two different angles.
Because the “perfect” narrative is another view of innateness. Dorothy succeeds because she’s perfect… and thus no one who isn’t perfect can match that success. Boom, an excuse to fail even when someone else is succeeding.
Dorothy knows perfectly (ahem) well that this isn’t true. She’s had to work at everything she’s gotten. She had to work hard. She had some advantages, sure — the Keeners did an awesome job of raising her, supporting her, and teaching her that with hard work she could accomplish anything. But that just goes back to attitude.
Just a moment ago, when she’d hit that wall she felt she couldn’t surmount, having found the “I can’t do this” excuse, even considering it violated her core attitudes. Part of her embraced the excuse to fail, but another part of her rejected it wholesale, on principle, on a deep and fundamental level. THAT is why she is so damn successful. And if she keeps that attitude through the next few comics and this revelation from Walky, THAT is why she’ll roll up her sleeves, identify what’s missing in her ability to connect with the masses, and learn how to do exactly that damn thing. Maybe not in time to be RA, but definitely in time to be President. And that response is something that everyone can have and do… provided they don’t take the excuse to fail.
That’s not how Walky reacts to adversity, though. And if he’s dumb and she’s perfect, then he can’t emmulate her either. It’s simply not in his makeup. A worm can’t fly, a mole can’t speak, and a Walky can’t do as well as a Dorothy. So why try? Just sit back and laze around instead. And that is WHY he isn’t a Dorothy.
Excuses like “I’m dumb” and “I’m just not a math person” are worse than lies. They’re self-fulfilling prophesies.
And we can expand this beyond the classroom and into society at large. I’ve noticed an increasing frustration in our society of… I want to call it “learned helplessness”, but that’s a specific psychological response to abusive situations and it isn’t quite that. Maybe “assumed impotence”. People see things that they want to change, but they assume it’s too hard for them, they don’t have the power, they don’t have the money, they don’t have the whatever. They’re not powerful. They assume they’re impotent to fix what needs fixing. And yeah, maybe they face a lot of obstacles, maybe even more than most people do. But none of that matters once they’ve found the excuse for not trying in the first place, or giving up after the most superficial of attempts. Once they embrace the excuse to fail, whatever chance they have to succeed evaporates. I think a lot of politics today depends on people assuming a status of impotence.
To be very clear, I’m not saying that every failure is a result of this. People can give their damnedest and still come up short. And I’m not saying that every success is the result of hard work, and that things like privilege and disabilities aren’t factors. But I am saying that this excusing philosophy is a road to failure, a way of destroying all the chances of success that you actually do have.
And Walky is showing all of this in spades. And he reminds me of far, far too many of my students.
I don’t have much to add, really. I think you have a perfect handle on Walky, Dorothy and Sal in that description.
In fact, I think Walky present the same attitude in his relationship with “too good for him” Dorothy. “Whelp, I’m not perfect. Guess I’m dumped and don’t have to live with relationship insecurities any longer.”
Poor little buddy. But it was good for him to finally get it out in the open. Now he can start the long road towards learning for real.
I disagree that Walky is looking for excuses. What he’s really talking about his his feeling that he’s inadequate compared to Dorothy and this is one of the reasons he feels that he mustn’t have to try extra hard: She doesn’t need to (at least in his perception). To be worthy to be her boyfriend, he, too, needs to have this effortless ability to succeed.
It will be a healthy thing indeed (both for them as individuals and for their relationship) for Walky and Dorothy to try to help each other out in this matter.
I think a large part of the problem is that society tends to be set up in a way that focus a lot on people being “smart” and less on all the less glamorous hard work and there’s a weird disconnect in our popular consciousness that if someone is “smart” in a subject, the subject should come easy, and so it creates this high likelihood of failure because kids assume if something happens to make sense because the teaching style matches their learning style or they’ve had previous exposure or so on… then they are “smart” and shouldn’t need to ever try.
And if things are difficult and doesn’t make sense at first or requires hard work, then that’s a sign they’re a “dumbass” and so they might as well not even try because they’re “never going to be good at it like the ‘smart’ kids”.
And so yeah, it creates an easy system to justify not putting in the work or asking the teachers or tutors or so on for a different approach to the study material.
And yeah, as a math and science teacher, the math part can be the most dangerous because so many things build from previous material in math in a linear way that there’s often a quicksand effect that can feel overwhelming to a student if they fall back a couple of classes in the material.
Possibly less relevant in Walky’s case, but it’s also important to keep in mind that we train certain types of students to view themselves as not capable, particularly with math. Last semester, I was teaching statistics to students in a nationally competitive masters program, and I still encountered several female students with math anxiety bordering on panic. One of them, who worked very hard and mastered the material, was still down on herself because it took her longer to learn (e.g. she wasn’t as “smart”). I told her the fact she had to work so hard would just make her better at explaining statistics to people who hadn’t studied it. I’m not sure if she internalized that.
Yup! If I hear ‘men are good at math, science, and technology because it involves logic and women are good at english, history, social sciences and humanities because they’re good at feelings’ I will become a one lady riot.
By the by, “crippled” is not a very…kosher word for disabled people. I know what you were getting at, maybe just add Hawking’s particular disability? (a rare of sclerosis)
Panel 1: There’s so much Walky is pushing through here and it’s beautiful. After all, he’s got a lot of pride wrapped up in being the “smart” one. In schoolwork being easy and he’s been raised in an environment where he’s been valued for things like that while he watched his sister be denigrated for needing to work hard for things that didn’t come easily.
And there’s a racial element as well, considering how many pervasive racist messages exist that says that black folks are “inherently dumb”, which is definitely going to surface for him when he feels like he’s losing his grip on feeling “smart”, which was such a key focus for his self-esteem.
So admitting this vulnerability is a big step and an even bigger step because he’s a guy who has swallowed a lot of messages on what it means to be a man. And that matters because one of the more pernicious toxic myths for guys is the idea that showing vulnerability, admitting personal failing, admitting things like fear, and so on are all considered “unmanly” and likely to get you called a slur for a gay man for doing so and possibly experience violence for it (and we know from flashbacks that he’s had to quickly escape the eye of bullies in the past).
This is a huge thing for him to move past and I’m immensely proud of him for doing so.
Also, heh on her booze bubbles being gone. Clearly the news was sobering as fuck.
Panel 4-7:
Ah, the pedestal, a very pernicious trap, especially for women. And one that can be heavily annoying, because it can become a cage and a weight in the guise of a compliment. And it’s a thing we know that Dorothy can’t stand.
Heck, Danny constantly putting her on a pedestal, treating her like this perfect angel who was going to save him, was a key part of what made her so hesitant to continue the relationship and was the initial spark to break up when she was talking to Ruth.
And this arc, we’re seeing some of the reasons why and why she resents being considered “perfect” by partners and friends. And a large part of it is society loathes “perfect” women and frequently demands a standard of perfection to achieve any form of success beyond a certain degree (the latter of which we saw heavily during the Presidential election).
And that’s reflected in the responses she’s been getting, Roz mocking her perfectionism and seeing it as a challenge to fight, Billie initially refusing to open up to Dorothy and snapping at her because of her impressions that Dorothy was “perfect” and now Walky here thinking a breakup is imminent if he admitted a flaw, because clearly Dorothy’s “perfection” must not allow itself to intermingle with “failure”.
These views of Dorothy are toxic as fuck, even though they are arising subconsciously, and they don’t allow her room to be a mess (and anyone, but especially people in high stress environments need quiet safe personal spaces where they can be a mess sometimes) or have needs of her own. To have crises of her own. And her crises are frequently dismissed by the people who view her as perfect.
Plus, we know she likes to know when people around her are hurting. She’s a fixer and wants to jump in to help people she cares about. And we’ve seen a large number of people start withdrawing from letting her know about problems once they started putting her on the pedestal. Danny not talking about his self-esteem issues, Joyce trying to hide her struggles with her faith and parents initially, Walky hiding the math thing.
It’s a concrete thing she loses, something she considers critical in close relationships, once she goes up on the pedestal and is labeled “perfect”.
I’m not sure it’s quite so toxic as all that – at least the version of it coming from Walky. (His own problems show his own toxicity well enough. )
I don’t think Walky’s demanding perfection of her or doing anything similar to Danny’s behavior. Walky’s been quite willing to push back against her or against her attempts to change him. I don’t think his problem here is so much with him elevating her onto a pedestal as with what the math problem is doing to his own self-esteem.
Not him failing to match up to her perfection, but him being revealed more generally as a fraud and a failure.
Oh I would agree with that. I was more coming into it from Dorothy’s side where she’s tired in general of being treated in certain ways because she’s read as “perfect”.
Yip. I almost wrote something about 4-7, so I’m glad I scrolled up.
It’s not that others have used perfect as an insult, and so it now bothers her. It’s that people think she’s too perfect to relate to them.
And probably because she doesn’t have a clue how to deal with this. She thinks she can be Roz, which obviously will not work.
I know how she feels. I was treated this way, too. I’ve even had this moment, where someone I loved didn’t want to tell me about something bad that they’d done because they thought I was too perfect. (Though, in my example, it was that they thought I was some perfect Christian.)
My way of dealing with this was just to talk to people, and genuinely ask them about themselves. It was to actually talk about how I had messed up in the past.
Granted, I’m no politician. People wouldn’t vote for me, and I don’t want the responsibility. But I never hear this idea anymore.
It did not involve intentionally going out and screwing up, or pretending to have a personality that I just don’t have.
Seems Walky has a lot of self-worth tied up in his concept of himself as being effortlessly smart, and suddenly having to make an effort is causing an identity crisis. Been there, done that.
OTOH, she was in the middle of a bit of a meltdowny confession of her own and he just trumped it with his own problem – while reinforcing the issue she’s dealing with. That’s frustrating as hell.
It’s fair and it happens. His problem is more serious and she’s been worried about what’s been bothering him for awhile. But it’s still hard to get wrenched out of your own distress to deal with someone else’s.
I do not think this is Dorothy’s thought process, but perfectionism can also be a sign of insecurity. The feeling that if you make just one mistake, if you say just one dumb thing, you could be completely rejected and pushed away.
I think that might be part of it actually. Considering the extent of her ambitions, she explicitly worries that any slip up might tank her career path entirely
Well, I guess now we’ll find out if the ‘non-perfect Dorothy’ is a hypocrite…
Harsh on Danny – Harsh on Walky.
Anything else (in so *short* a period of time) is pretty damning.
Either that, or her opinion of Danny is pretty bloody low for someone she insisted she loved.
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but you fuck so perfectly =o~~~~~|
hahaha shit, Alt-text is good
Just wait till Dorothy learns about the dreaded One-Legged “A”
a….. “P”?
The middle earth rune for W, actually.
*glances slightly to the left*
Are you sure he still feels that way?
Just wait until she goes lower than b.
Yep, it’s going to happen. Every grade perfectionist I saw go to college hits that point. Either the teacher is really hard, the subject itself is, or they just screw up but it happens. It’s interesting to see how they react.
You mean the d
I know it’s not really that close to the same line, but now I have the song “Crazy bongo” stuck in my head. I hate that song.
I had a feeling that word was autocorrected.
Shouty Dotty. This is new.
No, we’ve seen her before, back when…
…hm, no, okay, but what about…
…there was that one time, with — actually, not really…
…but what about —
—huh. This IS new.
Poor Walky, tonight’s gonna get worse before it gets better
Tell me about it. By the time he gets back to his milkshake, it will have melted.
Thermodynamics is a cruel mistress.
You can’t win
You can’t break even
You can’t get out of the game
Don’t forget the 0th law: You can’t change the rules of the game.
Why should I tell you about it when you just told us about it?
But in the end, he’ll be glad it happened.
An end that’s far, far in the future, but still.
Gloating at Dorothy’s grave, I take it, in his wheelchair.
More likely one of those newfangled automated full care, self cleaning beds.
I think I saw it on one of those anime shorts but cant remember the title.
Ah, here it is, the Roujin Z-0001 Robotic Bed. circa 1991? Damn I feel old.
If you look to the banner to your left, you’ll find out it ends up with Walky gettin Pegged.
That’s a reacharound, not pegging. Unless there’s a different definition of pegging which I’m not aware of (very possible)
I don’t see why it couldn’t be both.
It’s clearly Dorothy pulling a monster suplex on Walky.
There’s the one with the assumptions of character and the thing with the laundry.
Well, as I only have the banner to guess…
first rule of dating Dorothy: NEVER ADMIT SHES NEVER PERFECT NO MATTER HOW HARD SHE TELLS YOU NOT TO XD
of course she isn’t perfect. she has glasses so her eyesight isnt perfect…… thats all i got.
Plus, perfect people don’t doubt that they’re perfect, except that if they don’t, they have an ego problem, which means they’re not perfect, but if they do, they sell themselves short, which means…
The only solution is that they’re perfect because they say they’re perfect, and being perfect, whatever they say is true. Catch-22.
the dilbert guy said he wanted to be three things even if logically he could only be 2 of them.
humble, honestly, and successful
in his mind you can only be two of them successfully though.
Scott Adams is, charitably, one of the three.
but the logic is fairly sound. you can be humble and honest when you are a failure but if you are honest and successful you sound like a bragard and you can only really but successful and humble if you lie for the most part.
Not really. It’s long been remarked that the most accomplished experts in any field are the most acutely aware of their own ignorance; someone not constantly going up their own asshole about how rich they are is isn’t dishonesty, it’s just basic social skills.
It’s a thing that sounds deep but really is just some almost clever wordplay.
Situational and subjective perfection are, in my opinion, oxymorons. If there’s any conditionals or exceptions, whatever it is is simply not perfect.
Perfection is absolute completion. No advancement possible, no better option in any way, the incomparable best.
It is nothing but an ideal. A hypothetical impossibility.
By definition, it’s not something Dorothy wants at all. Because it’s an end. A state which cannot be progressed.
And then it can be argued that since such perfection is depressing, it’s not perfection anyway. That’s situational and subjective, which is why I would agree.
That sounds like exactly what she doesn’t want to hear right now.
First rule of dating men: They will assume you are being obtuse at all times and then blame you for being obtuse when you finally pick up on it.
See, two can play at this game.
your comment made me think of the fairly odd parents theme song.
perfect in one persons eye isn’t just perfect its wishing they had what you have i think. in a sense seeing things in them that could counter all their own flaws.
I have a feeling this is going to get uncomfortably real for me.
Had the last part of the conversation with like, a few girls uve dated xD
Also I totally get where Walky is coming from, I’d feel so bad if my girlfriend was super smart and I’m just a mess up always trying to impress her
These two give me a Ron & Hermione vibe.
The only difference being that Walky is actually interesting.
Hey, that hurts, its always interesting to watch a second banana try and fail to one up his cooler friend.
But seriously though, if you’re one of those people who think’s Ron is selfish or stupid or some dreck, I. Will. Fight you.
He’s fine in the books, but the movies kinda played up the idiot-comic-relief shtick.
Movies kinda do that a lot. Even in the books though, Ron is kinda a doof in spite of being the only real mensch among the main cast by the end.
You mean in the movie or in the book? I can mainly remember the books, and in there even Hermione did keep her human-ness pretty well, simply because she also had her faults. As well as did Harry. The main purpose of Harry was that everybody wanted to see something special in him, when he himself only denied that – which in the end did make him special (because, let’s be honest, he could’ve developed into a power-hungry monster). I think about everyone in the book displayed human tendencies, even Voldi.
The problem with the movies, is that they gave most of Ron’s good lines, and moments of usefulness to Hermione.
Oh, not at all. I just think he’s a pointless character who never amounts to anything, who has no personality worth mentioning, and whose only defining characteristics are “poor redhead with brothers who’s friends with the Chosen One.”
Actually he’s the kind caring openhearted guy,willing to accept Harry into his family and circle of friends. He’s loyal, openhearted, intelligent. He’s the only one of the trio who was actually born in a magical family,and thus has experience with magic outside of books. Which makes him incredibly useful.
He’s not perfect, but he’s faaaaaar from pointless. And as for ‘not amounting to anything’… he comes to accept himself, is a hero, becomes an auror and has a happy and healthy homelife, while accepting that his wife has a bigger career than he does, without feeling jealous about it. Which I’d say is a high goal to achieve for a male character.
Aren’t we all just mess ups trying to impress each other?
Because if not I’m going to have an existential crisis pretty soon.
Trump.
I think we’re okay.
Those two sentences should not be touching.
I was trying to make you feel better about yourself, because Trump is the epitome of a mess-up trying to look better, and in comparison, you are better.
Unrealistic expectations screw up a lot of relationships, I have the opinion more so than cheating or any of the other huge events that can happen. You assume one thing or a bunch of stuff about a person’s character, and if you don’t communicate it just snowballs from there.
*by events I mean stereotypical issues like cheating, or dealing with in-laws (which can be related to that), not like illness/health problems and death which are tribulations all on their own.
I’d have to go back in the archive to check for sure, but I think that his issue here isn’t Dorothy. Walky is a smart guy and always had an easy time in high school, and he assumed that college classes would be just as easy. Instead, he’s having a hard time. Since he doesn’t have the experience to knuckle down and study, he’s retreated into his comfort zone of ‘not trying’.
I do agree that dating Dorothy might make it harder for Walky to admit what’s going wrong, but I don’t think that’s the root cause of the issue.
Yes I also think that’s the case, but that excuse was in response to her question “Why didn’t you tell me?”, not an excuse for the failing itself.
I think i can relate somewhat to walky here. I suspect he feels he isn’t good enough for her which honestly is/was part of why i dont date. im not good enough yet
Man, non-amazing people can still date — being worthy of asking somebody out, that’s not a very high bar.
But, I don’t know what you think constitutes not-good-enough-for-dates, or if you think of yourself accurately. It’s cool if you, like, want to clean your room before you invite people over, but I hope you don’t consider yourself fundamentally unlovable. Nobody’s that.
So… Trump is nobody?
1. Pretty much fits the bill.
2. Honestly Trump’s problems aren’t fundamental characteristic issues, they exist in the space between fundamental characteristics and extrinsic presentation of self to the world.
Yes. He is a hollow shell of a person, with a heart of gold. Cold, unfeeling, uncaring, gold. Glittering gilded emptiness.
Is he fundamentally unlovable? His supporters sure seem to love him, and I’m sure quite a few Nazis loved Hitler. Serial killers receive tons of fan mail. The world is really fucked up.
Even people whom we detest ourselves, they aren’t fundamentally unlovable by anyone ever. You and I detest Trump, but we aren’t everyone in the whole world. Some people love Trump. Takes all kinds.
I exactly know where you’re coming from. Also because what you get to hear when you even just mention to someone “yeah it would be nice to have someone” they, themselves in relationships, spout things as “You only have to love yourself, love yourself first” or “It will happen when you least expect it”
Thing is if you don’t even consider yourself to be “good enough yet” you can’t really love yourself for being you completely, because you want to change how you are right now nearly constantly. And most people I know don’t get that.
And people in relationships however strong their self-esteem is tend to forget that being in a relationship (a healthy and good one, that is) is an emotional boost in itself, and it can help support your feelings about yourself in a positive way, like “I might not look perfect, but this person is together with me regardless” – or “I know I’m clumsy, but this one thinks it’s cute” etc.etc.
Most of my friends in relationships seem to forget that. A friend of mine (in a 3-year-long relationship) simply told me “bullshit” as I mentioned to her how I’m not comfortable in my body right now (I had to deal with overweight a few years back, now am slim but want to be muscular), simply because she has more weight than I do, but on her it doesn’t look like that, because my hips are wider and most of my weight is on my hips. But to her I sound as if I have body issues when I should have none – which might be the case (I’m not anorexic or underweight, to clear things up)- but I react allergic to ppl not being able to empathise with how I feel replying simply “bullshit” to my (however maybe unfounded) worries.
Man, I relate so hard to you two right now. My particular issue is holding an ungair standard for myself (fixing my health issues, mental and otherwise, for starters) before I can even be close friends, much less date. I say unfaur, because I would NEVER subject anyone else in my boat to it, so I *know* it’s dumb…but I’m not sure how to get to the point I *believe* it, if that makes sense?
Tl;dr: Don’t tell someone struggling with self-doubt/loathing they need to love themselves first. You probably mean well, but they hear something different than you think, and that will stick with them.
Knowing something and believing it are two different things. and yeah, it can be really really fucking hard. like, I’ve been working on my mental health for >5 years and only in the last year have I been able to touch the issue of self-compassion with a ten-foot pole. 😛 Luckily, it seems to be the same shape of problem as ones I’ve already tackled with CBT/mindfulness/etc.
I understand that. Now, because I mentioned body issues up above and to just stay in the example (I’ve got other issues too, e.g. skin problems, but bear with me for that) – I’d also NEVER judge people for how they look, if overweight or ‘too thin’, because I know their side, and some may have health problems, or some may be stress eaters (or non-eaters), or compensate emotions unknowingly with food (which e.g. I did as a teen by stuffing myself with mainly too much and fast food), but I judge myself harshly in that department.
So: I also know of that unfair standard – I use that for myself too in many departments (also mental health) – and there’s always this “When I can’t do even that, how should anyone even want to spend time with me?”
It also doesn’t help your self-esteem when everyone around you is in a loving relationship for at least a year (and my sister’s married to the guy she got together with at age 16 – and she’ll be 28 this year) and your only ‘adult’ relationship, the one time you thought you met someone actually accepting you, only lasted 1 1/2 months and his feelings ‘just changed’. And everyone of your more or less closer friends thought you’d definitely be in a relationship because you were the “most normal one of them” – just enhancing the idea of ‘you’re obviously not, if you still aren’t’ after 8 years of telling me this.
So yeah, telling someone with issues “you need to love yourself” is as useful as telling someone with depression “to just be happy” – because yeah, it’s that easy, why didn’t I think of that sooner!
In that case, it’s better to tell them what YOU like about them, so that they feel that at least they have some worth because a friend likes them for what they might consider a fault at most times (e.g. I talk too much with my friends, but one told me, she likes it on our shared drive home at night, because it keeps her from falling asleep while tired, and she likes my rambling).
My luck is just that I gained friends while I had these issues and didn’t let them go during their issues, which has kept me and them together, BEFORE I was aware of the scope of all my issues and new ones developed. But still, I don’t bother all of my friends with all of my issues because I know it would be too much for them.
So…I hope I’m still relatable somehow and didn’t drive you away with this long comment, because that somehow at the least gives me some effed up sense of community feeling that shouldn’t be needed in the first place, but it is there, because of our “standards” :/
Of all the things one could do to be less relatable, telling me more of their story is the least effective. I love the opportunity to really, truly understand other people.And yeah, I get that kind of romantic frustration. I’m the eldest of my siblings, who all are or have been in serious relationships…meanwhile, the closest I got to a significant other ended up with my dad. Kinda hard to believe you’re interesting and fun to be around when that happens, though I have gotten better. I get the food issues, too, which is really hard to seek help for when you’re a dude who *ssems* healthy.
That’s a relief to read, somehow 🙂 I’m like that too, it’s some kind of strange fulfilment to get to know other people in the way you describe, it’s widening your horizon and…hard to describe what’s going beyond that.
Yeah, after such things, it’s really difficult to fight one’s self-doubts, and I’m glad to read you’re doing better 🙂 (I do too, though last winter was unbearable). With the food issue, I can only describe it from a female point of view (and I only have one male close friend, who I know doesn’t has problems in that regard) – but I get that it must be difficult for you too, especially if other’s think from outside that you look healthy anyway.
Reminds me of this conversation with a group of friends that’s somehow only remotely relevant: I was very focused on my nutrition (after having slimmed down healthily with sport) and tried to stay away from fast food (because I know how unhealthy it is – in the end it was what made me fat very fast, especially chips, because I’m addicted to them – I lack the self-restrain to only eat a handful of them, I need to eat the whole package and after it I feel bad about it – which is why I try to follow the “don’t buy” rule) – and because I talked “too much” about it, another friend snapped at me, because she said that fast food every now and then doesn’t hurt etc.etc. and basically told me I was stupid for trying to keep them out of my diet.
Now she understands my side better (she gained, lost, and gained weight in the past years), but I still can’t talk to her about it as much as I’d maybe wanted too, because she doesn’t understand that chips are really addicting to me (I think because of the salt – I could eat the whole package, and even a second, even if my gum starts hurting) or that I see that as very bad.
(So yeah, just another part of my life. Damn, I feel like sharing today!)
I strongly agree with CoMa, Sundaes, and Halpful. I hope I’m not being that jerk in a relationship who spouts annoying platitudes.
When you tell somebody “love yourself first”, that may be unaligned with where they’re at. If self-love seems impossible to them, for example, it’s like saying “you cannot date until you do this impossible thing, so it’s impossible for you to ever date”. No. Messy people are allowed to ask for dates if they want to!
Miados had said this is only one reason that they don’t date right now. I respect that Miados knows their own life best, and I am certainly not trying to pressure Miados into dating. (I also chose to be single for several years, because I said so, and I don’t regret it.)
I’m more going on a tangent, that some people think you have to be ‘good enough’ for dating, whereas I think, outside of not being hella abusive, you don’t have to be any particular way to ask people out.
I do hope that people who hate themselves will get some helpful therapy towards liking themselves more (whether it’s related to depression, or body issues, or recent failures or life events, or anything else), because hating/liking/loving yourself is legitimately impactful on your life, and legit very difficult, and nobody should have to navigate these thoughts all by themselves! But that’s separate from dating. A person can have a partner AND a therapist, you know?
Whoops, y’all continued the conversation in a way better direction while I was typing. Please ignore my comment above, theirs are better.
Nah, that comment is perfectly fine, it’s good to share your thoughts, because even if they might not help us (not saying they don’t), they might help someone else who reads them (too)!
Personally, I’ll try to keep it in mind – though I have developed strategies to cope, and try to think of it as being a last resort. Because I want to manage on my own. It might be due to these stupid standards I apply to myself, but the (veeery stupid!) thing is that I know full well what’s wrong with me – and that there’s actually nothing wrong with me – at many times in my life. It’s like how SundaesChild described, we know it, but we sometimes just don’t believe it, at times. And up until now, I could build my life around occasionally sharing bits of my most troubling thoughts to different close friends during those troubling times (I’d never want to weigh them down with everything all around) – which is my substitution for therapy, basically. Up until now it worked and has been the one stable thing in my life.
the long and short of it for me personally is well its hard to feel like someone you tried to end the life of is someone worth loving and since i tried to do that twice its not exactly a speedy recovery.
at this point i am worried more about finding a full time job where i can live on my own
This…makes the first sentence of my first reply to you sound pretty presumptuous, I’m sorry about that…
I stuck with the body issue, because I wanted to take a ‘more light-hearted’ example, but…I’ve fought suicidal thoughts for years – I never went through with it because I was always just on the verge, just not stepping over the line (if that makes sense) – and it didn’t help that I took optional medication for one of my problems, which made my depressive tendencies worse during medication. Last year, after the heartbreak described above, I was confronted with these thoughts again (while also taking those meds) – and the only thing keeping them at bay was the thought of what would happen to my family and friends (my uncle took his life at that time and attending the funeral was torture, because I was fighting those thoughts but saw first-hand how everyone dealt with it).
So, I never meant to take your comment lightly in any way – the body issue just came to my mind first, and I hope you can believe me that.
Now after saying that, I hope that you achieve that goal of finding a job and can do your best, however hard that might be! I’m finishing up my studies right now (and I need to, relatively fast), so I kind of can relate to that in some way too.
And last but not least I want to point at Leorale’s post above our heads, and hope that however we may feel, we might be able to keep her words in mind, somehow.
I’m tryin to get comptia a+ certified myself at the moment.
Wow, that’s awesome! Good luck! I’ll cross my fingers that everything works out!
I’m right now struggling with my diploma thesis in English and my first language (teacher’s degree), so, I guess luck to us both 🙂
passed the 901 but the 902 is a pain….
Sensible — it’s plenty tough enough to rebuild your life without having to do every single piece of it at the same time. Good luck on your job hunt and your continued recovery. <3
All the support to your both (miados and CoMa). Suicidal thoughts are the worst, but the resilience you’re both showing in recovery and going after your goals is admirable, to say the least. And to Leorale, thanks. The world needs more people who believe in the basic goodness of others.
Can we, like, get together over ice cream and talk about our problems? I’m feeling really emotionally close to you right now.
He isn’t good enough and Dorothy made that clear at the beginning. He’s there to provide creature comforts for this year. She wasn’t planning on sacrificing anything for him or becoming a couple, just coupling with him. Nice, no drama sex and intimacy. On those terms, she should drop him now and Walky knows that. If she sticks with a potential loser as a boyfriend, then the relationship has changed.
Dorothy unilaterally changed those terms long ago. She told him she loved him.
Mind you, she’s still planning on leaving, but it’s not a casual fling anymore.
I like this though because Dorothy is right to be upset. But when Billie called her perfect, it was something of an insult and a put-down. When Walky says she’s perfect, it’s a compliment. A self-deprecating one but still something he means positively. This is a good first step for them! Walky finally admitted his deepest darkest secret! …Walky is also lucky that this is the deepest, darkest secret he’s got.
that and he was a furry with a mouse fursona? i mean it is on film
I forgot about that one, that’s a pretty dark secret too. Haunting, really.
No one ever saw that video, though.
What video? ;D
I agree. He means it positively but I can see how Dorothy being held and holding herself to these impossible standards has sort of damaged her ability to deal with failure and like herself including all her imperfections.
So true and the sad part is that that runs deep in Dorothy. She has modeled herself into trying to be the best she can, which isn’t bad! But when you are building yourself up to be the best, anything less is absolutely crushing. And as good as Dorothy is, to have Roz expose her flaws makes her feel even worse because it’s like a chink in her perfectly composed armor that she never considered.
Dorothy needs to allow herself some mistakes and faults, she is only human after all! That’s something I’ve honestly struggled with some too. I try my best so when I fall short, it feels twice as bad.
I don’t think the problem is that Dorothy doesn’t allow herself to make mistakes though, it is that she doesn’t fall to pieces for making one, so people assume she doesn’t make mistakes at all.
Roz pointed out as much that Dorothy doesn’t appear to make mistakes, which is why Dorothy is being triggered when people say she is perfect now because they are saying that as if she has never made a mistake in her life, as if she can’t try to understand or empathise or sympathise with people because she isn’t making constant huge mistakes (thanks Billie).
And for someone like Dorothy, that is endlessly frustrating because she knows she is human and makes mistakes but if no one is willing to listen or believe her, she can’t even do anything about it. It is like being socially punished for not being a deeply flawed person that makes grand mistakes for everyone to see, which is really messed up.
Does IU have a testing period or whatever? I remember mine was five weeks to add or drop a class.
In-universe, classes started last week of August. It’s October now. Kinda surprised he hasn’t had a midter…. oh right he stopped going to classes.
Yeah, he’s failing worse than before just by dint of not going. He needed to drop when he stopped going.
He stopped going yesterday.
Well, but he might’ve missed only like two classes? Or if, as BBCC said, only one, he won’t fail it or drop out. In my university (well, granted in Europe, maybe it’s different in the US) you’d fail a course automatically when you missed 3 classes, regardless of whether they could be excused or not. Though if you were sick, in the hospital or anything, most professors would try to find a solution and maybe talk with administration for a special agreement, if you just were to miss a 4th class, but then resumed attending, and if you only missed classes because you actually couldn’t come (e.g heavy bronchitis or anything that would likely infect the rest of class)
In my college days, there were in general no attendance requirements. You needed to do assignments and pass tests. If you could do that without showing up to class, more power to you.
Some classes you’d see people at the exams you’d never seen in class.
I had one large lecture hall style chem class that I never went to after the first week. Went to lab and the TA’s discussion session, but the lecture was a waste of time. Couple hundred students and the professor reading from the book.
Well, in mine there (still) are lectures (attendance not needed, with about 150-500 seats, depending on the room), some seminar-style lectures (attendance needed; are rare, but were implemented to cope with large masses in a cheap-seminar-style kind of way – up to 100 seats) and different kinds of seminars (attendance needed) for different kinds of levels (higher levels mostly topic-specific, in literature studies) which you needed to preregister for in hope of getting a seat, with between 25 possible to at the most 50 seats – which stretched regulations, because only 40 seats were allowed anyway) – so it’s kind of a strange mixture of classes you need to attend to pass and lectures you could just get access to via elearning and then go to the tests.
He stopped going last storyline, which took place yesterday in universe. The math class before that was in That Perfect Girl, which he attended.
Thanks! With everything going on, I have a hard time keeping track (I just remembered that he flunked one, but wasn’t sure if he maybe did more)
He’s flunked at least three weekly quizzes. So yeah, not good. But not impossible to fix.
There was a mention of mid-terms recently, so I think they’re coming up.
Even if it’s past the early drop period, he should be able to withdraw and get a non-GPA-effecting W on his transcript. This will shake his schedule up if this class is a prerequisite, and of course Linda will be upset, but at least it won’t be a boat anchor on his grades. (Though if he flunks the class doesn’t he have to retake it anyway?)
The first step is admitting you have a problem. Maybe he’s acquired some of Dorothy’s maturity through osmosis and will actually get some help now.
Many schools have a period to retake classes for replacement on transcripts and GPA calculations. Typically either as long as you’re a Freshmen when you retake the class or else anytime if the class was originally taken during your first term as a freshman. This has become more normalized as more and more kids have the kinds of problems Walky does here transitioning from the workload and expectations of a high school student, even if a college prep student in AP classes, to those of an undergrad. I’d have to spend way too long checking, but I’d be surprised if IU didn’t have some sort of policy like that in this day and age.
First thing I thought of:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocDlOD1Hw9k
I understand these sorts of things go on the hacked muzak or gramophone or something?
Narrator: Joyce walked down the street, it was rainy, as it usually is in these types of stories. She checked her pockets, finding picture bible, and a BB gun designed to look like a revolver.
Joyce (monologue): six shots, I really should get some more ammunition.
Narrator: it was cold as fuck.
Joyce: it’s cold as f….a frigid area here.
Narrator: After a few minutes of walking, Joyce finally came across a small group of girls. Who I probably do not have to describe.
Joyce: Hey Sal
Narrator: Joyce waved heartily, Sal did not wave back, in fact Sal didn’t even look up from her phone. Carla glanced over though, and so Joyce decide to talk to her.
Joyce: Hey, you’re Carla right?
Carla: Yeah.
Joyce: I need to ask your group about something.
Carla: About what?
Joyce: Mary has been murdered.
Carla: We know. It’s all over the news.
Joyce: Do you know anything?
Carla: What would I know, besides do you really think I’d kill my best prank victim? But I do have something for you.
Narrator: Carla pulls a sheet of paper out of her pocket with a large R printed on it. The R wasn’t any script that Joyce could recognize, and must have been taken from someone’s hand writing.
Joyce: is this?
Carla: A decipher of the bloody note that was in Mary’s hands? Yes, it is.
Joyce: Did you?
Carla: Steal the original from the campus police, and use something involving light that the writer is to lazy to think of right now to make the original writing legible. Yes, yes I did.
Joyce: Why though?
Carla: Cause no murderers get in the way of my revenge.
Joyce: Well I’ll see you around. Thanks for the clue.
Joyce decided to walk back to her office, she had some old writings of her friends to go through.
Joyce still can’t say ‘fuck’ XD
Why isn’t Carla writing this?
Because she’s a fictional character
Walky’s little “No” is both kinda sweet and, to Dorothy at least, aggravating.
Welp what do you guys think will happen? Will it be
A. Dorothy leaves Walky so he can get better in class
B. Leaves Walky for lying to her
C. They watch their favorite cartoon and suddenly everything is better
i think she will bring him to an academic counselor or something.
I think if he’s too far gone he might have to drop the class entirely. They can try, but at a certain point no matter what you do your grade is going to be pretty low anyway. I don’t think they’ve had their first exam, so there is hope for Walky yet – she’ll probably get him a tutor like miados said.
He doesn’t even need the class for his major, so he could really just drop the class, and sign up for an easy math class that he can just sail through next semester–maybe even two classes.
He’s not on a scholarship or anything. A withdrawal means basically nothing.
But that’s just avoiding a problem he’s going to have to deal with eventually. I mean I guess he could only ever have a problem with math and he’ll sail through all the rest of his college years without ever needing to study, but I don’t think that’s the point of this arc. I kind of wish it wasn’t Math he was struggling in, since that just reinforces the whole “Math is hard” thing and suggests the simple answer of take less Math, when I’m pretty sure the real problem is supposed to be that college is harder than high school and he’s not going to be able to cruise through.
I’m also not at all sure this is the hard Math class. Just judging by who’s in it, none of them are known to be science or engineering track, right? Joyce, Sal, Walky?
And more importantly that approach would neglect the self-esteem all wrapped up in being effortlessly smart thing he’s got going.
It’s Calculus I. Joyce is in Education and so doesn’t need this class at all as her major requires a different math that would fulfill her gen eds. Presumably this is an interest class, as she enjoys math and said its her favourite subject. Sal’s undeclared and so is probably knocking out gen eds while she figures out what she wants (not a bad idea).
Walky’s in telecommunications, which is no longer a undergrad major in Indiana U, but when it was, Calculus would have fulfilled his math modelling requirement. That said, it’s not the only one. There’s also finite math and a couple combos thereof.
This seems like a standard 101, but it’s the next level from what he took in high school, so he feels obligated to keep taking it.
Also, I’m wondering about his other classes – any other walls he might be hitting soon? Gender Studies maybe?
Walky isn’t dumb, math can be hard. All he needs is some study skills. Dorothy is a study ninja. Plenty of time to watch cartoons as well.
he might have to ask his sister for help since she has had to learn how to study here. for the same class no less.
But then they’d have to communicate without animosity. It would be an interesting scene. He’s asking who he thinks is a resentful screw-up for help, Sal might resent him while she’s helping him (or not! who knows) or prove to him that she has worth outside of what he thinks of her. Endless possibilities for drama
Sal’s problem wasn’t that she didn’t know how to study, it’s that Jason’s a terrible tutor. Once she found one who could explain in a way she understood, she did fine.
Still might be a wise idea to talk to her though.
He really was
So.
Fucking.
Terrible.
I never really thought about it before I read Cerb’s comments (by the way – where’s she been? Has anyone heard from her or been able to check in? It’s been a while) but now that I have, he is so. FUCKING. AWFUL.
I’ve been wondering about her myself.
It has been a while since Cerb left a comment. I haven’t mentioned it because I kept thinking that she would show up but I’m honestly getting a little worried. I hope she, her stundents, and her fiancé are ok. I remember her saying in one of her comments that her fiancé was getting scared and thinking they should leave the country and that one of her students was going through a traumatic experience combined with a shitty school administration head, so I really hope nothing bad happened.
Likewise. She’s vanished before, and it turned out to be because she was scared off of having an internet presence for a while. I’m hoping it’s something like that and not . . .
The world sucks, where we have to ask these kinds of questions.
I’d been wondering about Cerberus as well.
Hey, Emperor Norton? You did that podcast thing – do you have a way to contact?
Not that she’s got any responsibility to keep posting here of course or even to let us know, but it might help to know she’s missed and we worry.
I normally don’t worry too much when she doesn’t post for a few days because she still posts on Patreon, but she’s vanished from there too.
Yeah, sorry everyone for worrying everyone. I kind of shut down hard this first Trump week with the sheer onslaught of fascist awfulness. Plus work got somewhat unbearable of late with the upper level completely turning on us for reporting the rape incident and it’s followup. They’ve also been doing some petty shit where they threatened to shut down all the queer safe space stuff we’ve been doing as revenge for reporting the mishandling of the rape stuff.
Plus the kid is tired of fighting this and just wants to accept the world is shit and move on which means the baddies essentialy won in this one cause I’m not going to go against a survivor’s will with regards to how they rebuild agency after an assault.
I dunno. Was feeling really helpless and awful but got dragged out last night to kind of a “we’re worried about you” outing cause I had started self-harming again that really helped me reboot. Still not sure what I’m doing in the medium-term but I’m in a much better headspace for the short-term.
Sorry for making everyone worry and thanks for the well-wishes.
Also yeah, Jason is just a horrible teacher on like ninety different levels and that might be a podcast episode in the near future cause holy fuckballs.
You don’t need to apologize to us. If you need to not be here for awhile, that’s cool. Just glad to know you’re alright – as relative a term as that might be these days.
You’re missed when you’re gone, but take care of yourself first and your kids next.
No need to apologize Cerberus. Like thejeff said take care of yourself and your kids first. Also, I’m deeply sorry to hear about what the upper level administration is doing.
*hugs*
(I assume you are comfortable with the idea of Internet hugs because you often offer them but if not please correct me)
Some of the kids I sub for have been having a hard time lately because they had family stopped at airports by the Muslim ban. A decent proportion of the school and local community are Assyrian, meaning they have family in or from Iraq. A similiar proportion is Sikh (both about one eight of the school each) so, they had family who got stopped because they simply had beards and turbans. So I’ve been helping the regular faculty try to play damage control. This last week has sucked. But it’s good to know that as of this moment you are ok-ish. So, once again:
*hugs*
Oh no, honey, don’t be sorry. It’s okay. I completely understand. I’m glad you feel better than you have recently right now. Hugs if wanted and appropriate gestures of support if not.
It’s been a rough week, Evil Cheeto wise, and that situation at work sounds abysmal. Even if nothing happens to that evil little snot and that awful awful admin, at least the situation was reported.
Don’t feel bad for not being around – you need to take care of your mental health first, your responsibilities (including the kids) second.
Also – *squeaks with delight at Jason podcast possibility* YAS! That lousy little creeper has one coming.
Just want to add that I’ve also been wondering where you were and if you were okay, and it’s good to hear from you. Completely understand not being okay, though.
*joins in the sending of internet-hugs*
Hopefully he takes the Sal-Danny approach, and not the Sal-Jason approach
Danny will always be a star in my book for tutoring Sal.
And Cerberus, hugs away! Keep fighting the good fight!
Dotty looks a bit taken aback there in the last panel. More and more intriguing. How much inner-life are they both going to share with each other, I wonder.
Is the lead-up to the events in the sidebar ad?Yeah, that alt text is… #Relatable.
That was cute.
This very afternoon I was feeling low and I asked my fellow if he would like me even when I suck (har har, not that kind), and he said “Yes.”
No argument or equivocation. Somehow it was the most reassuring thing in the world.
that sounds nice.
It really was.
It really was. I’d been worried!
Right answer
Ah, the elusive Dotty f-bomb.
While she’s not averse to using it, I think she’s got a similar attitude to swearing as Joyce: Save it for when you need it.
And you know what? That’s actually true. Keeping the rougher swear words will indeed make them meaningful, to the point of where a good swear can help release your body’s own painkillers faster when you’re stubbing your toe against the corner of a wall. Quite amazing, isn’t it?
So yeah, don’t be afraid to swear. But save it ’till you need it.
I won a car in a raffle once. I posted about it on Facebook, using the phrase “holy fuck.”
My ex-boyfriend responded to the post, completely shocked… that I had used the word “fuck.”
Sorry, Emperor, I got more swear words in my mouth than there is dog shit on the streets and sidewalks of the world. That is just not an attainable goal for me (unless children are around or folks have asked me not to swear around them in meatspace). That said, I respect people choosing not to or to limit themselves (so long as that’s a free choice and not something imposed on them, as it was on Joyce).
You need to invent your own personal super swear.
Edging out Walky for the lowest F-bomb/strip count of anyone who’s on the scoreboard at all.
Dina says “fuck” twice as often as Dorothy.
Yep. Called it. I knew that Dorothy would be more upset with Walky not telling her than Walky flunking. And for good reason too, since his reasons for not telling her were… Well, not entirely rational.
But yeah, reckon she’ll start fixing things as soon as she collects her thoughts a bit.
“I knew that Dorothy would be more upset with Walky not telling her…”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
I think Dorothy is most upset with Walky for skipping classes and not telling anyone.
I suppose the reaction would’ve been different* if he admitted to having a private tutor or something, because then at least he’d be doing something constructive about it.
*That is, she’d probably still have said “Why didn’t you tell me?” but with far less shouting and just some sadness in her voice instead.
Okay, Dorothy. Here’s how to handle this.
1) Finish the shock and panic and confusion reaction. Yeah, better if you never did that to begin with, but surprise is like that. It’s excusable. It’s not like you’re perfect, right? Right?
2) Spend the next hour cuddling with Walky. Maaaaaybe sex, but cuddling with a bit of reassuring cooing and caressing’s probably better. His emotional ego’s bruised to the point of incoherence, and he won’t be capable of discussing things in a remotely rational manner until that’s taken care of. This means reassuring him that he has emotional support and refuge that won’t turn on him for the very thing he needs emotional support and refuge regarding. Uh… you might want to tack on an extra minute for every second of your initial shock-and-panic reaction.
3) When he’s VERY relaxed and too mellow to be depressed, start exploring things with him. Don’t focus on the math issue. Focus on his reaction to the math issue. Why did he run away? Why did he keep it secret? What was he feeling that made THESE his reactions rather than anything else? Keep up the cuddling for this. He might switch from mellow to depressed, so repeat step 1 as needed.
4) Once you both understand the impulses he’s diving into, start talking rational solutions. He’s struggling to grasp the material? Study sessions. He has trouble focussing on study sessions? See student psych services about the possibility of a learning disability. So on. This might uncover more levels of denial, so repeat steps 1 and 2 as needed.
5) Realize that you just missed two classes helping out your boyfriend and freak the fuck out.
0) Lock the door so Mike can’t come in to contribute to steps 1 through 5. Oops. Probably should have thought of that earlier. But that’s okay, no one’s perfect.
Buuut because you’re just a dumb college freshman without the mileage to have this type of horse sense, you’ll be lucky to get 0 and 1 right.
Yes, Dotty, empathize with him. That will make you less of a perfect girlfriend for sure.
This is a serious comic, but that last panel is adorable.
I know, right? It was actually rather sweet of Walky to say that.
meltdown for two, and two for tea~
Me and you, and you, and me~
Walky’s not dumb, he’s just never needed to learn how to study properly until college.
Walky is going to get the worst grade imaginable
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XY3BnNGsNwk
Wernstrom!
So is Dorothy’s reaction in panel one appropriate or an overreaction? they’re not even mid semester so Walky can’t be failing the course for sure yet….
I
He did tell you. Just now. Weren’t you listening?
Aww crap, stupid mobile.
I was trying to say: I really like Dorothy, but “everyone thinks I’m perfect” is sure a hard “problem” to be sympathetic to.
…Which of course is why it’s a problem for her, I guess. Not many are gonna root for you (…or vote for you) if they can’t find anything to sympathize with.
Consider it more like “everyone misunderstands me, won’t see me as I am, has all these wack assumptions, won’t connect with me as a real human being”. Still a bit of a first world problem, but closer to what sucks about being held up as an unrealistic ideal.
It’s not “Oh gosh why must I be lowered to the standards of these piteous mortals”, it’s that Dorothy has spent her entire life trying to excel at everything because she’s been told that’s the only way she’ll matter, and now people are holding that against her and treating her like she’s on a pedestal.
I wouldn’t say “she’s been told that’s the only way she’ll matter” – her parents are, as far as we know, very kind, supportive, and laid-back. Being so driven to do everything “right” is more something she decided for herself; it’s something she just WANTS to do – because she’s good at it. And why shouldn’t she? There’s nothing wrong with it in itself. It’s just it happens to be a “problem” that’s, uh, very high up there on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. And thus one most people can’t sympathize with, and to be fair, they have no obligation to do so. And, as I said, it’s hard for people to root for someone they can’t sympathize with.
Not that they dislike her – we haven’t seen any indication anyone actually dislikes Dorothy (IIRC). But most people don’t relate to her, and know she can’t relate to them, and thus find her efforts to curry their favor disingenuous (not just Billie; Sal has also hinted at this). It’s really not her fault…but it’s not something she can really do anything about, either. I mean, what can she really do? Hence, her frustration.
Like, I don’t find her a “sympathetic” character in this regard, but I get it. And I like that this is presented as sort of an impasse for Dorothy rather than being some black-and-white “oh poor Dorothy everyone is so mean to her”. It’s easy to see where she’s coming from, but it’s also understandable why a lot of people aren’t particularly on her side even if they’re not overtly against her.
It is a very aggravating problem if you are the one who has it though. Dorothy obviously knows she makes mistakes, this wouldn’t be upsetting her so much if she didn’t, but the worst part of being on a pedestal is that only other people can remove you from it. And if they don’t listen to you, then you’re just left feeling frustrated and miserable that everyone misunderstands you fundamentally as a person.
It also is especially frustrating when people go ‘you wouldn’t understand’ in the way Billie did previously, because that is now assuming the ‘perfect’ person can’t empathise, sympathise or otherwise make an effort to understand you. That they’ve never made a mistake in their life or never suffered once in their life, which is just unrealistic.
It is a very unhappy situation to get caught in because you’re essentially being punished for being a good person, with mostly good judgement, without deep seated flaws that would hinder you for life. And it is honestly very messed up because you’re just trying to do your best and people saying ‘you’re too good and perfect to understand us!’ is basically like them calling ‘MARY SUE!’ on a real person.
Dorothy … you know you’re not perfect. No one is.
But Walky thinks you’re perfect, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.
He’s been skipping class?! I don’t recall this mentioned in the comic before.
There was a page a bit back where he made some excuse and split up with the other cast members going to class, but I don’t remember when.
It starts here-ish
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/latenight/
Ah right. Reginald, Duke of Thingley.
Awwww, poor lite Walky makes himself as small as he can and crawls under the pillow. Sorry, little mouse-boy, Jesus won’t help you with your math score (unless you study Jesus Math, of course).
And poor Dorothy gets another painful remainder of the discrepancy between the RA-lite she wants to be and how little control she really has of the shit the people around her has to endure. If even her boyfriend has hidden math problems, what else is she missing?
Don’t worry, Dorothy. You do the good job even without having full control of the situation. I know that’s strange and scary for a perfectionism, but its true nevertheless.
Jesus math: 3 = 1.
(I know the video wasn’t Catholic; I just make joke.)
Walky’s very sensitive to shaming, to the point that he’s shaming himself. You can see quite clearly that he’s the one doing his own pillow-rying.
Jesus Math. Isn’t that how you do the thing with the loaves and fishes?
Something about a set that contains multiple copies of itself?
The alt text is my mom
I think what Walky actually means is not literally that she is flawless, but rather something more like that she won’t empathize with failure because hasn’t ever been seriously tested. Compared to the other characters, as far as we know, nothing seriously bad has ever happened to her, and nothing has ever significantly shaken her view of herself.
Walky’s struggle with an academic subject has really undermined his long-held self-image as someone who glides through school, and I suspect he’s thinking that Dorothy is going to say something akin to, “Why didn’t you promptly abandon your unproductive view of yourself and change everything about your approach to academics until you solved the problem?” And he won’t have a rational answer, because his reaction was rooted in fear.
We saw a little of this in her reaction to Danny telling her that he was discovering bi feelings. That’s of course not a failing of any kind, but it was a shock to his system. Dorothy’s reaction, while supportive, was something a bit too nonchalant to be empathetic, along the lines of “just change your whole view of your sexuality, and you’ll be fine.”
Sorry. That was supposed to be a new comment, not a reply to Ivy.
“Compared to the other characters, as far as we know, nothing seriously bad has ever happened to her, and nothing has ever significantly shaken her view of herself.”
Except the time when she realised that she didn’t have anywhere near the support for being RA that she thought she would have; which was the reason she came to Walky to begin with.
Sure, but that’s only happening right now, and hearing about it is probably a big part of the reason for his opening up to her now.
I have different gravatars on different devices!
Check the upper/lower case of your email-address.
Nah, he’s thinking Dorothy’s going to say something like “GASP! YOU ARE NOT THE PERSON YOU THOUGHT YOU WERE! HOW DARE YOU DECEIVE ME SO! I HAVE NOTHING IN COMMON WITH LOWLY MATH FAILERS!” and dump him forever for not being talented ™
* you’re not the person _I_ thought you were
Exactly. Walky’s not criticizing Dorothy here, he’s telling her how great he thinks she is. Along with how he doesn’t feel good enough for her.
I mean, dumping a friend for not being literally flawless and having academic problems WOULD be a character flaw, too bad Walky doesn’t think of it like that )=
“Will everyone please stop thinking that I’m fucking perfect?”
Who is this perfect person she is fucking?
Walky can’t defeat a perfect dude! It’s impossible! How is he supposed to fight gor her?!
She’s not fucking perfect. She’s fucking Walky.
Walky is definitely not the same as perfect. How are people even getting this confused?
It’s the caramel.
Panel One: Immediately, Dorothy is on top of things trying to ascertain what’s going on and how bad the problem is. And yet, that’s not helping Walky here. Walky is seeing this as the start of a huge, relationship ending, tear Walky down freak out.
Panel Two: Poor Walky, that wince hurts. Because he fully expects that he will be rejected for this. There are just no scenarios where this ends in his head without being screamed at and ditched. It’s heartbreaking how much of his self worth was wrapped in him being smart, and effortlessly so. And admitting that he did this boneheaded thing is just making it worse because now its out loud. It’s out there.
Panel Three: And of course Dorothy just wants to help. This is a problem she can easily help with. It plays to her strengths. And she is empathetic and eager to help people so much that of course she’s jumping at the chance to what’s, to her, the obvious solution. And yes, she’s upset he didn’t tell her because she wants to be able to help people and she wants them to confide in her. And now she’s probably wondering if she’s really NOT approachable enough to be relied on when that’s not the case at all. Walky’s just down on himself, not Dorothy.
Panel Four: *sigh* Yup. If you’re not effortlessly talented at things, you’re stupid. Poor Walky. This is not a good thing, to have your idea of your intelligence wrapped in things being easy. It’s unhealthy for you when you hit something that you can do, but requires effort. It feels overwhelming and scary and all you want to do is hide because you’re surely the stupidest creature who has ever lived, right?
And yeah, he’s always had Dorothy high up on a bit of a pedestal. He thinks she’s wonderful. And one of the problems with his easy simple life (which isn’t a bad thing in and of itself, but nothing is perfect) is that wonderful, smart, pretty, nice girls don’t ‘want’ slackers, they ‘want’ someone as awesome as they are because that’s how power couples are sold as. So while Walky has no problems being a goofball and he doesn’t like being pressured into fitting someone else’s idea of how he should be, he does know he would not be expected to work out with Dorothy. And so this is a new layer on top of his own expectations and how his family treats ‘failures’ (fuck I hate the Walkerton parents) and his society treats black kids who don’t do well.
Panel Five: And no, this isn’t helping Dorothy here. She feels unapproachable and like she’s being bludgeoned for being flawed by naysayers and now for being flawless and unrelatable. Which do you people want? You can’t have both. And yet that’s the bind a lot of women find themselves in. A lot of people will damn you no matter what you do. And she’s seen that in (for her) the previous year where people voted for an angry racist cheeto over a woman because some saw her as ‘too rehearsed’.
And yeah, if people think you’re perfect, they wonder how you can possibly relate to their problems and flaws as they can’t relate to someone without them. It’s hard to understand problems you don’t personally experience and even if you do a lot of research, there will always be things you cannot fully 100% understand and relate to because you do not experience that problem first hand, even if it makes logical sense and you empathize completely.
And some of it is because Dorothy’s a perfectionist herself so she rakes herself over every little perceived flaw and imperfection and wondering how on earth others don’t see them. Some of it is because they’re comparatively small (worrying about potentially going to a better school vs worrying about your girlfriend being hospitalized for suicidal depression). That doesn’t make Dorothy’s problems unimportant, but it does make them smaller scale. And so some of this may be because her problems are seen as small and dismissed easier, but I think she’s mostly frustrated people don’t see the issues she’s so sure she’s broadcasted and that she’s hit her own wall because of it. A certain measure of connecting to people is required in a good RA (putting in good here because Ruth didn’t do that very well, but she was a terrible RA).
Panel Six: And yeah, both of them are quiet now. How the hell do you respond to that? And Dorothy looks miserable here. She’s basically asking for people to understand her. Even if she seems perfect, she is not. She’s put a lot of work into appearing so, for her career’s sake, but she cannot be perfect. Nobody is. It kills her now that she’s seen as unrelatable because she tries that hard. It’s a damn tricky double bind and it is hurting her.
Panel Seven: And yeah, being told someone is gonna keep doing the thing you just loudly asked people to stop doing is annoying as hell. Not faulting her angry eyebrows here.
But Walky doesn’t get to see that – he knows he thinks Dorothy is perfect, not as a bad thing, but as a thing that makes her great. She is not the problem in his mind. He is.
But that’s not really helpful for her because it still ignores the things she struggles with daily and that’s not good for her either.
Just….these two dorks want to help each other so much and they don’t know how because their own experiences are hindering their ability to understand while they communicate, but they want to try regardless because they care about each other and just….
DORKS! *flaps happily*
You think Panel 7 is angry? It looks more like a softening of her expression and getting ready to cry to me. I saw it as. 5: RAHR. 6: SHIT… 7: …shit…
I was about to say the same. The change of mouth expression too seems to indicate a softening in that last panel.
Because the way he says it makes it pretty damn hard to stay mad at him. We cannot hear the tone in his voice, but I’m willing to make a pretty big bet (at least 20 NKR) that he’s basically squeaking that “no” out as meekly as a mouse that just rounded the corner to find a cat staring at it.
And it’s very difficult to not be at least a little bit disarmed by that. It’s both very sincere, yet at the same time so incredibly goofy.
Her mouth is softer, but her eyebrows look kind of annoyed. Which is possible – she CAN be both sympathetic to how upset he is and still kind of irritated he just said he won’t stop doing the thing that’s upsetting her, even if she knows its not because he’s mean spirited.
There may even be a trace of happiness that he still thinks so well of, even if she doesn’t want the expectations of being “perfect”.
Yeah, I can see that.
I am appreciative of your understanding of Dorothy’s problem.
Okay, can someone introduce me to the American higher education system please? Here, if you flunk a first semester class, you just try again in the next semester (or if it’s not available in a spring semester then the next one). What exactly is the big deal?
Or is this exclusively about Walky fearing to lose his gf who he thinks is too perfect for him? Because why be with her if he feels like there’s such a brutal imbalance between them to begin with?
This is the most confusing relationship in the whole strip to me. There are some story arcs that make me go “eeh, yeah this is not really in touch with reality”, but these two kids’ relationship is the one that loses me completely.
Here, if you flunk a first semester class, you have to pay to retake it as though you were taking it for the first time.
I don’t think paying is Walky’s problem here.
Not related to the US system:
Walky is accustomed to acing math without doing anything. His self-image gets badly damaged right now because suddenly math is a closed book. He doesn’t understand the class at first go (probably he was drawing dinosaurs when the one sentence that he’d need to make sense of things was said). And as he never needed to study, he doesn’t know how to start now and feels like the worst idiot in the world.
I can relate to that, I went from first in class at school to failing maths at university, too.
Managed at later tries to get it right, but did it feel like all kinds of unfair and shitty.
You have to pay for it the first time?
Well, you pay to go to college. If you’re part-time, you pay on a per-credit basis. Full time is usually a flat rate.
Still, since it takes up time and effort you could spend on another class, you’re essentially paying for it each time.
That’s not really the issue here, like CJ says.
Walky’s not thinking: “I’ve screwed this class and there are procedural hurdles that will keep me from trying it again.”, but “I’m too dumb for college and I’m going to fail out because I’m not smart like I thought I was and Dorothy’s going to leave me because I’m not good enough for her and …”
Also, depending on the school, a better grade doesn’t always erase the previous grade; sometimes they just get averaged together. A falling grade may pull down his whole GPA (grade point average).
I bet this happens all the damn time, though, freshmen take a bit more coursework than they can handle, and don’t realize it til midterms. I image he could ask the Dean to mercifully expunge his F and let him take the course afresh, or an easier course.
But Walky’s never had to navigate an F, he’s unaccustomed to anything below a completely effortless A (with maybe a B or two that upset his parents).
Dorothy also gets As, and an F is her nightmare scenario, but she doesn’t judge so harshly somebody who doesn’t get an A as, like, an intrinsic and unchangeable failure inside. This is totally something that Dorothy can help him find out.
In its own way, this is a very sweet strip and it does tell us a lot of Walky’s feelings for Dorothy and how it affects him. To him, she’s perfect and that makes him think that he has to be perfect too in order to be worthy of her. That’s a really, really lovely thought and, I hope, worthy of at least one hug before Dorothy tries to fix all of his problems!
Dotty got so altered that the drunk bubbles have blown away
Fact is: nobody’s perfect.
Unfortunately, they can seem that way, especially to a young person in the throes of a first love.
Not even my supernaturally understanding and forgiving girlfriend who laughs at all my stupid jokes and thinks I’m the hottest dude she’s ever seen. Case in point: She finally hit her breaking point with my stupidity.
Please ignore this. I’ve had a lot of Bacardi… :'(
Dorothy is not perfect, but it’s more of a technicality to people other than her. She’s outright better than most people, and that creates a barrier to relatability. Denying the source of the barrier only makes it stronger. How can a person born rich truly understand the struggles of the working poor? What can a person who excels at nearly everything and is obviously destined for greatness possibly know about sucking and mediocrity? On the plus side it helps people choose leaders who don’t see the problems people live and breathe everyday as some numbers on a statistic sheet (Dorothy’s increased note checking reinforced this preconception about her). On the minus side, it often becomes this weird phenomenon where people prioritize relatability over successful work practices.
She works very hard for it; she didn’t luck into being academically successful. And people putting her on this pedestal is very dehumanizing.
I agree very much.
Ah, but that’s the damndest part. The fact is Dorothy wasn’t just born with talent. She even lacks any easily discernable character flaws or vices. People can’t even blame her for having Ivy League ambitions and planning to transfer out, because of course that’s where Ms. Perfect belongs. Don’t expect to get much empathy for the troubles of being admired, especially when you actively strive to show that you are indeed the best.
And this is as someone who feels that the people not liking Dorothy’s qualities to the point of disfavoring her for a leadership position are the sort of moronic voters which bring down demcracies.
The “Which one would I rather have a beer with?” thing.
*HUGS BOTH OF THEM*
Please don’t fight, guys. I just had a real life breakup, I don’t need one of my favorite comic couples doing it too.
My condolences. I hope you feel better emotionally over the weekend.
Okay. Walky here is pushing one of my big buttons as a (one-time) educator. (I mean, I’m no longer an educator, but you never really stop looking at the world through that lens, you know?)
I’ve got this perhaps-not-entirely-charitable view of students that, deep down, they’re looking for an excuse to fail. Not necessarily that they WANT to fail, overall, but that seeking an excuse for failure is one of the many impulses at work in their mind.
Why? Because usually, learning material and doing the coursework presents difficulties. It’s a chore. It’s challenging. It often involves bouts of frustration and exasperation. And in the most hair-pulling moments of that, part of you realizes that you’d just rather toss it all in a corner and just sit back eating chicken mcnuggets and living a life of no worries at all. (Well, okay, maybe not the mcnuggets thing.)
But you have to do the work, right? You’ve got your ego riding on it. You’ve got social expectations riding on it. You’ve got your status and standing in society riding on it. You’ve got your self-worth and self-image riding on it.
But not if you have an excuse.
Like, let’s say the power goes out at the dorms and you can’t work on your computer. That’s a good excuse not to do your homework, right? Except, if you think about it for just a bit, you have the option of going to the library and working there instead. Or to an internet cafe. Or… lots of options, really. But you don’t want to. The rationalizing part of your brain… and human reason seems to be grounded on rationalization, rather than rationality… has its excuse to fail. And between a path to success and an excuse for failure, the excuse for failure is what you want.
This is particularly problematic in the mathematical domains where I used to teach. There are SO MANY excuses to be found there. “I’m not a math person” is a common one, along with its variations like “I’m not good at math” or “I’m right-brained” or the like. While I don’t doubt that there are quite a few innate learning disabilities, in the case of most students spouting these excuses, THEY DON’T HAVE THEM. And if they do, they’re usually not following a path to success of diagnosis and learning to overcome them. For crying out loud, Stephen Hawking routinely does super-advanced math while being completely crippled. John Nash pioneered game theory, redefined economics, and earned his Nobel Prize WHILE SUFFERING FROM SCHIZOPHRENIC DELUSIONS. I’m not trying to downplay the impact of genuine disabilities. But I’m trying to emphasize that they are not roadblocks to success. Obstacles, maybe, but far from insurmountable… if you roll up your sleeves and get to work.
The human brain doesn’t want to get to work. The human brain wants to sit back and nom on chicken mcnuggets. In a slightly different form, this attitude served our ape ancestors pretty darn well.
One of the most common excuses to be found here is the belief that mathematical aptitude is innate. IT ISN’T. There might be some small edge for some people, but it is outright dwarfed by the impact of long nights studying and retraining the brain to think mathematically. But… that’s an excuse to fail. And it is a woefully socially-acceptable one.
So, back to this comic.
Notice how everything about Walky’s attitudes here revolves around innateness. He used to think he was smart. Not a hard-worker, not a good study, but innately smart. Nothing he’d ever earned, nothing he’d ever had to work for, just part of who he was. The result? He had an excuse not to work hard, which amounted to an excuse to fail. And then when he started failing, his view of himself shifted. He was now dumb. Again, an innate status. Not something that can be fixed. Another excuse to fail.
It’s a stark contrast with how Sal reacted to her bad grades. She violently dragged her TA into an involuntary hours-long tutoring session. The violent and involuntary part was bad, but it’s clear that she viewed her success as something she could achieve if she worked hard at it. Then she decided she could get out of learning the material with sex, which had its own problems… one of which (often unmentioned) was that she stopped trying to learn. But when that didn’t work, she made a deal for tutoring with Danny. She and Walky both had trouble with math, but they reacted to it in different ways and got very different results.
And now there’s Dorothy’s perfection. It sounds like they’re having two different conversations. Dorothy wants to talk about Walky flunking math, and Walky wants to talk about how Dorothy’s perfect. But they’re not two different conversations at all. They’re the exact same topic, viewed from two different angles.
Because the “perfect” narrative is another view of innateness. Dorothy succeeds because she’s perfect… and thus no one who isn’t perfect can match that success. Boom, an excuse to fail even when someone else is succeeding.
Dorothy knows perfectly (ahem) well that this isn’t true. She’s had to work at everything she’s gotten. She had to work hard. She had some advantages, sure — the Keeners did an awesome job of raising her, supporting her, and teaching her that with hard work she could accomplish anything. But that just goes back to attitude.
Just a moment ago, when she’d hit that wall she felt she couldn’t surmount, having found the “I can’t do this” excuse, even considering it violated her core attitudes. Part of her embraced the excuse to fail, but another part of her rejected it wholesale, on principle, on a deep and fundamental level. THAT is why she is so damn successful. And if she keeps that attitude through the next few comics and this revelation from Walky, THAT is why she’ll roll up her sleeves, identify what’s missing in her ability to connect with the masses, and learn how to do exactly that damn thing. Maybe not in time to be RA, but definitely in time to be President. And that response is something that everyone can have and do… provided they don’t take the excuse to fail.
That’s not how Walky reacts to adversity, though. And if he’s dumb and she’s perfect, then he can’t emmulate her either. It’s simply not in his makeup. A worm can’t fly, a mole can’t speak, and a Walky can’t do as well as a Dorothy. So why try? Just sit back and laze around instead. And that is WHY he isn’t a Dorothy.
Excuses like “I’m dumb” and “I’m just not a math person” are worse than lies. They’re self-fulfilling prophesies.
And we can expand this beyond the classroom and into society at large. I’ve noticed an increasing frustration in our society of… I want to call it “learned helplessness”, but that’s a specific psychological response to abusive situations and it isn’t quite that. Maybe “assumed impotence”. People see things that they want to change, but they assume it’s too hard for them, they don’t have the power, they don’t have the money, they don’t have the whatever. They’re not powerful. They assume they’re impotent to fix what needs fixing. And yeah, maybe they face a lot of obstacles, maybe even more than most people do. But none of that matters once they’ve found the excuse for not trying in the first place, or giving up after the most superficial of attempts. Once they embrace the excuse to fail, whatever chance they have to succeed evaporates. I think a lot of politics today depends on people assuming a status of impotence.
To be very clear, I’m not saying that every failure is a result of this. People can give their damnedest and still come up short. And I’m not saying that every success is the result of hard work, and that things like privilege and disabilities aren’t factors. But I am saying that this excusing philosophy is a road to failure, a way of destroying all the chances of success that you actually do have.
And Walky is showing all of this in spades. And he reminds me of far, far too many of my students.
Arrrgh! So much rant!
*applauds*
I don’t have much to add, really. I think you have a perfect handle on Walky, Dorothy and Sal in that description.
In fact, I think Walky present the same attitude in his relationship with “too good for him” Dorothy. “Whelp, I’m not perfect. Guess I’m dumped and don’t have to live with relationship insecurities any longer.”
Poor little buddy. But it was good for him to finally get it out in the open. Now he can start the long road towards learning for real.
I disagree that Walky is looking for excuses. What he’s really talking about his his feeling that he’s inadequate compared to Dorothy and this is one of the reasons he feels that he mustn’t have to try extra hard: She doesn’t need to (at least in his perception). To be worthy to be her boyfriend, he, too, needs to have this effortless ability to succeed.
It will be a healthy thing indeed (both for them as individuals and for their relationship) for Walky and Dorothy to try to help each other out in this matter.
I think a large part of the problem is that society tends to be set up in a way that focus a lot on people being “smart” and less on all the less glamorous hard work and there’s a weird disconnect in our popular consciousness that if someone is “smart” in a subject, the subject should come easy, and so it creates this high likelihood of failure because kids assume if something happens to make sense because the teaching style matches their learning style or they’ve had previous exposure or so on… then they are “smart” and shouldn’t need to ever try.
And if things are difficult and doesn’t make sense at first or requires hard work, then that’s a sign they’re a “dumbass” and so they might as well not even try because they’re “never going to be good at it like the ‘smart’ kids”.
And so yeah, it creates an easy system to justify not putting in the work or asking the teachers or tutors or so on for a different approach to the study material.
And yeah, as a math and science teacher, the math part can be the most dangerous because so many things build from previous material in math in a linear way that there’s often a quicksand effect that can feel overwhelming to a student if they fall back a couple of classes in the material.
Possibly less relevant in Walky’s case, but it’s also important to keep in mind that we train certain types of students to view themselves as not capable, particularly with math. Last semester, I was teaching statistics to students in a nationally competitive masters program, and I still encountered several female students with math anxiety bordering on panic. One of them, who worked very hard and mastered the material, was still down on herself because it took her longer to learn (e.g. she wasn’t as “smart”). I told her the fact she had to work so hard would just make her better at explaining statistics to people who hadn’t studied it. I’m not sure if she internalized that.
Yup! If I hear ‘men are good at math, science, and technology because it involves logic and women are good at english, history, social sciences and humanities because they’re good at feelings’ I will become a one lady riot.
By the by, “crippled” is not a very…kosher word for disabled people. I know what you were getting at, maybe just add Hawking’s particular disability? (a rare of sclerosis)
Walk, that’s really sweet, what you just said there.
Good boyfriend material, would date.
Comic Reactions:
Panel 1: There’s so much Walky is pushing through here and it’s beautiful. After all, he’s got a lot of pride wrapped up in being the “smart” one. In schoolwork being easy and he’s been raised in an environment where he’s been valued for things like that while he watched his sister be denigrated for needing to work hard for things that didn’t come easily.
And there’s a racial element as well, considering how many pervasive racist messages exist that says that black folks are “inherently dumb”, which is definitely going to surface for him when he feels like he’s losing his grip on feeling “smart”, which was such a key focus for his self-esteem.
So admitting this vulnerability is a big step and an even bigger step because he’s a guy who has swallowed a lot of messages on what it means to be a man. And that matters because one of the more pernicious toxic myths for guys is the idea that showing vulnerability, admitting personal failing, admitting things like fear, and so on are all considered “unmanly” and likely to get you called a slur for a gay man for doing so and possibly experience violence for it (and we know from flashbacks that he’s had to quickly escape the eye of bullies in the past).
This is a huge thing for him to move past and I’m immensely proud of him for doing so.
Also, heh on her booze bubbles being gone. Clearly the news was sobering as fuck.
Panel 4-7:
Ah, the pedestal, a very pernicious trap, especially for women. And one that can be heavily annoying, because it can become a cage and a weight in the guise of a compliment. And it’s a thing we know that Dorothy can’t stand.
Heck, Danny constantly putting her on a pedestal, treating her like this perfect angel who was going to save him, was a key part of what made her so hesitant to continue the relationship and was the initial spark to break up when she was talking to Ruth.
And this arc, we’re seeing some of the reasons why and why she resents being considered “perfect” by partners and friends. And a large part of it is society loathes “perfect” women and frequently demands a standard of perfection to achieve any form of success beyond a certain degree (the latter of which we saw heavily during the Presidential election).
And that’s reflected in the responses she’s been getting, Roz mocking her perfectionism and seeing it as a challenge to fight, Billie initially refusing to open up to Dorothy and snapping at her because of her impressions that Dorothy was “perfect” and now Walky here thinking a breakup is imminent if he admitted a flaw, because clearly Dorothy’s “perfection” must not allow itself to intermingle with “failure”.
These views of Dorothy are toxic as fuck, even though they are arising subconsciously, and they don’t allow her room to be a mess (and anyone, but especially people in high stress environments need quiet safe personal spaces where they can be a mess sometimes) or have needs of her own. To have crises of her own. And her crises are frequently dismissed by the people who view her as perfect.
Plus, we know she likes to know when people around her are hurting. She’s a fixer and wants to jump in to help people she cares about. And we’ve seen a large number of people start withdrawing from letting her know about problems once they started putting her on the pedestal. Danny not talking about his self-esteem issues, Joyce trying to hide her struggles with her faith and parents initially, Walky hiding the math thing.
It’s a concrete thing she loses, something she considers critical in close relationships, once she goes up on the pedestal and is labeled “perfect”.
Oh, good, there you are, Cerb! 😀
Wonderful as always, and yeah, this is basically the same road I’ve been going in The Great Mass Analysis of Dorothy and Walky. AKA – Dorks.
I’m not sure it’s quite so toxic as all that – at least the version of it coming from Walky. (His own problems show his own toxicity well enough. )
I don’t think Walky’s demanding perfection of her or doing anything similar to Danny’s behavior. Walky’s been quite willing to push back against her or against her attempts to change him. I don’t think his problem here is so much with him elevating her onto a pedestal as with what the math problem is doing to his own self-esteem.
Not him failing to match up to her perfection, but him being revealed more generally as a fraud and a failure.
Oh I would agree with that. I was more coming into it from Dorothy’s side where she’s tired in general of being treated in certain ways because she’s read as “perfect”.
Great writeup as always.
Yip. I almost wrote something about 4-7, so I’m glad I scrolled up.
It’s not that others have used perfect as an insult, and so it now bothers her. It’s that people think she’s too perfect to relate to them.
And probably because she doesn’t have a clue how to deal with this. She thinks she can be Roz, which obviously will not work.
I know how she feels. I was treated this way, too. I’ve even had this moment, where someone I loved didn’t want to tell me about something bad that they’d done because they thought I was too perfect. (Though, in my example, it was that they thought I was some perfect Christian.)
My way of dealing with this was just to talk to people, and genuinely ask them about themselves. It was to actually talk about how I had messed up in the past.
Granted, I’m no politician. People wouldn’t vote for me, and I don’t want the responsibility. But I never hear this idea anymore.
It did not involve intentionally going out and screwing up, or pretending to have a personality that I just don’t have.
Seems Walky has a lot of self-worth tied up in his concept of himself as being effortlessly smart, and suddenly having to make an effort is causing an identity crisis. Been there, done that.
Dorothy, stop yelling at someone who’s trying to reveal vulnerability to you. i love you, Dorothy, but stop.
OTOH, she was in the middle of a bit of a meltdowny confession of her own and he just trumped it with his own problem – while reinforcing the issue she’s dealing with. That’s frustrating as hell.
It’s fair and it happens. His problem is more serious and she’s been worried about what’s been bothering him for awhile. But it’s still hard to get wrenched out of your own distress to deal with someone else’s.
I do not think this is Dorothy’s thought process, but perfectionism can also be a sign of insecurity. The feeling that if you make just one mistake, if you say just one dumb thing, you could be completely rejected and pushed away.
I think that might be part of it actually. Considering the extent of her ambitions, she explicitly worries that any slip up might tank her career path entirely
She’s said as much. Dorothy has to constantly drive herself to be perfect.
Well, I guess now we’ll find out if the ‘non-perfect Dorothy’ is a hypocrite…
Harsh on Danny – Harsh on Walky.
Anything else (in so *short* a period of time) is pretty damning.
Either that, or her opinion of Danny is pretty bloody low for someone she insisted she loved.
Or maybe the situations are entirely different.