it isn’t always stressful but it certainly can be. Especially when the one being tutored doesn’t want to be and it is being forced on them. or if the person is forced to tutor because of academic requirements perhaps.
The big problem is that Jason doesn’t know how to tutor. He thinks it’s just a matter of saying things how he understands them. He doesn’t really do diagnosis, or trying to grasp someone else’s current state of understanding, or trying different learning styles, or explaining something five different ways until it finally clicks.
In all fairness to Jason, it isn’t really tutoring (its grad student TAing, which means one usually doesn’t have much time to focus on individual students, especially since their main time sink is still their thesis), and most schools put very little time into training grad students anything at all about pedagogy (and then those same individuals go on to become faculty…).
Frankly, from my perspective of what sort of time and effort the typical grad student TA will put into any given large-lecture STEM class, Jason’s attempts to personally follow-up with students easily puts him in the top percentile of actually caring. That said, that Jason has been involved with Walky’s sister, also a student, makes things entirely problematic.
Part of his job description is office hours to talk with students. The fact he’s doing his job isn’t something I’d consider particularly praise worthy, tbh. The only time he actually did something good is when he offered Walky help when he first started falling behind. Other than that, he’s been pretty consistently shit. And sure, he’s not trained to teach, probably, but if he actually gives a rats ass about being a good teacher (like he says he does) then he needs to stop whining and do something to improve. That or be content with being shit and stop professing he cares about being a good teacher.
My read on him is that he does want to be a good teacher. It was in his head, part of his self-image, that he was a good teacher… or at least had that in his skillset, even if he’d never used it. (Hint: If you believe you’re good at something you’ve never done, you’re most likely wrong.)
He’s started to realize that this self-image was false, but he wants to be true. Right now he’s stuck in a mode where he thinks good intentions plus tryhard is the fix. It’s… not going well.
But none of that means he doesn’t care about being a good teacher. And it’s not really fair to blame him for that, because… as kingleon said? No one gave him significant training. The system cares more about making grad students into researchers rather than into making them into good teachers. And by “more”, I mean “only”.
Jason’s story is that of a man out of his depths who suddenly and belatedly realizes that the well-being of others rests on his own incapable shoulders. And of course he screws it up. No one’s taught him how to do anything else.
I do believe he cares about being a good teacher, but I also believe that since he’s not good at it, that means he needs to put in an effort to learn to be better. I get that time and money are tight but if he wants to be a good teacher, he’s got to either learn to do that (hell, I’d take just googling ‘tutoring tips’ – at least then he’d be TRYING even if it didn’t help) or accept that’s he’s a sucky teacher and doesn’t have the time/money/energy to put into being better and so will remain so.
IME as an ex-grad student who TA’d a lot: Odds are very good that by doing the minimum job description he’s putting in more time than he gets paid for. Because university fuck over grad students at every opportunity. Grad students are even cheaper than sessional instructors, and unlike sessional instructors, the grad student can’t move to a different uni or go somewhere with better pay without tanking their career, so the schools love putting grad students in charge of most of the responsibility for putting on a course (but you get no authority to go with the responsibility – you’re the one designing grading rubrics and report forms and marking and doing most of the teaching, buuut if the sessional instructor who comes in three hours a week decides you were too haaard on the student who refuses to wear PPE and spends the entire lab “jokingly” threatening to splash other students with acid, the well-deserved F the student got from being punted from your lab over safety will get overturned.
Furthermore, many unis limit how many hours grad students can work anywhere such that there’s no possible way you can keep your financial head above water (and then they offer loans and what have you for “emergencies” which they charge outrageous interest on – it’s a full on company store bullshit deal), so in order to have enough to eat and a safe place to sleep you’re usually doing something else under the table and hoping the uni doesn’t find out. All in all when I was a grad student I was working 7 AM to 9 PM, six days a week and four to eight hours the remaining day of the week.
My point here is part of Jason’s unarguable incompetence might be just sheer exhaustion if his family isn’t rich enough to support him.
The sex is still on him, though. Which brings to mind the question—after having slept with her, which harms his integrity less—grading her as he would have otherwise, and upholding (the remaining shreds of) his professional ethics, but at the cost of dishonoring the implicit agreement he made with Sal when he slept with her, or, on the other hand, sacrificing whatever professional ethics he might have left, but honoring the agreement with Sal?
It depends on the school, the department, and the class in question. I was a grad student at IU, so I have some first hand knowledge of how things work at IU for grad students. Fortunately for me, I was in the Microbiology program teaching various biology courses, which meant I got paid better than the TAs for math or the humanities. That’s not to say that was remotely fair since the university got paid the same for each credit hour of language arts than they did for microbiology lab, so the fact that I got paid noticeably more than them for the same amount of work was kind of bullshit for them.
Long story made short, I imagine that Jason is probably either pretty stressed about his finances or stressed from working a side job like some other grad students I knew. If he is working a side job, he has to be hush-hush about it lest the school find out (I only worked side jobs in between semester sessions to avoid this issue).
Mind you, this speculation requires us to assume his family isn’t rich and that he actually has money problems. There’s no guarantee in that.
That definitely sucks, and I can definitely understand not wanting to bother in that case, but I’m still not overly impressed by doing the bare minimum.
“FUCK SCHOOL!!!!!”
“WITHIN REASON, AND NOT INTENDING DISRUPTION TO ESTABLISHED CURRICULUM”
“YEAH, AND UNLESS YOUR MUM FINDS OUT.”
*Electric guitar solo*
Honestly, he probably would/will, but he has to deal with Joe first. Then he can tutor Walky and Sal individually. He’ll probably have to be ever so slight assertive though.
Walky: So what’s up Wonderbread?
Danny: Alright first thing, don’t call me Wonderbread, only Sal gets to do that.
Walky: Why, cause you think she’s hot?
Danny: No, because she’s actually passing math.
Walky:…Dammit I don’t have a comeback for that.
Danny: Now that the sass is done, let’s get started.
Well you can but you then end up with negative numbers which are a bit harder to represent as physical objects.
William has 5 apples. The lord whose land he lives on demands 7 apples in payment. How many apples does William have? Show working.
5 apples – 7 apples = -2 apples.
As one cannot have a negative quantity of apples, and William cannot give more than he owns, William either has no apples and no home, if the lord evicts him for failing to pay in full, or needs to find other goods to trade in lieu/provide services worth two apples to somebody who can pay him. Alternatively, he may try to steal the additional two apples. If he is caught and it is a first offence, he is likely to have his hand chopped off. As we are given no indication that he has any other worldly goods or marketable skills, legal or otherwise, one must conclude that William has 0 apples and has been evicted. However, he probably has 2 hands, and may be able to gain employment helping somebody else with their landholding in exchange for food and shelter.
This is kind of a singular situation. While Danny might have some input on how to best help Dorothy handle stress, it’d only help so much in this case.
Pretty awkward, though, since Dorothy dumped Danny and then pretty immediately began a relationship with Walky.
I’m not in any way saying that it was wrong for her to do so, or whatever—Dorothy has the right to date anyone she pleases regardless of how it makes anyone else feel—but Danny probably resents Walky—or would be somewhat justified to do so—and Walky might feel awkward about it.
That said, Danny seems like he’d put that aside to help someone who needs it, and Walky really, really doesn’t want to disappoint Dorothy, so it could work out.
Yeah you don’t always want to talk right away. My biggest darkest time when i was getting help i pretty much hid in the bedroom for the whole first day. things take time.
for a STEM grad student at a large research university, being a crappy TA and/or disliking teaching will have pretty much no impact on Jason’s grad school experience. as someone who did quit grad school at a similar university in the same similar field, i was the opposite (enjoyed teaching, didn’t care enough about research to finish the phd).
sleeping with a student on the other hand, that could (or at least should) get him kicked out if it gets out. as much as i find jason entertaining, that’s pretty unforgivable for me.
IU’s rules would agree with you. As would Jason and Penny, who both said if Jason got caught he’d be out on his ass (though apparently, they would cover it up if Jason were better liked).
Oh, I know, I just think it would be an interesting story. For one thing, Jason seems pretty disillusioned about the fact that, on the one hand, he’s bad at teaching, but on the other hand it doesn’t really matter (except to his students). I find it interesting to extrapolate that further into a “what if Jason isn’t where he should be at all” train of thought. Not just because of Jason himself, but because in a large ensemble cast of university students, it seems likely that *someone* would leave their program of study, and maybe Jason could leave more easily than one of the undergrads from a storytelling perspective.
I was good at math in school. I even went to a math bee in middle school. Although i got frustrated that my teachers in highschool could never explain why imaginary numbers matter.
yeah I recall that. Although most of the time i can do the typical math faster than many people i know can figure it out with their calculator. not always but still.
yeah, i’m awful at math (i have only vague seemings of spatial reasoning and managed to get Cs on the same 3d figure geometry test three times in a row no matter how much i studied) but the only time i ever tried to use a calculator for really basic stuff is the time i took an algebra 2 test doped up on super-strong cough medicine for a chronic cough. i forgot an entire page of the test and kept trying to do things like 7 x 1 on my calculator. it was terrible and i did terribly
there are lots of reasons imaginary numbers matter, it’s too bad your teachers couldn’t come up with any of them. one of the most convincing for many people, is that there are many questions that you can reasonably ask where the question and the answer are both in real numbers, but you need to use imaginary numbers somewhere during the solution. for example, some important integrals in electrical engineering and probability are computed this way.
It would probably help if they weren’t called “imaginary.” They’re not imaginary; they correspond to actual things. They’re extremely useful in quantum mechanics because it makes the math of wave mechanics so much easier to do, for example.
But calling them “imaginary” makes students who aren’t just naturally curious about math for math’s sake check out immediately. It conveys the absence of practicality, even though there’s so much practicality.
But it’s too late now. The name exists, and no one’s going to change it.
Well, to be fair, imaginary numbers were a thing long before quantum mechanics was even dreamed of (like centuries earlier), so at the time the naming was pretty apt.
Also I think the main reason for imaginary numbers to be in most curriculums is that they are a pretty fine example of math being completely ridiculous and much closer to art than to engineering, but also turning out unexpectedly to be very elegant in weird ways…, I mean some guy some five hundred years ago went “hey, what we we pretended that negative numbers have square roots?” and everyone else was like “you are beng ridiculous” and he went “no seriously, just pretend for a second that what I’m saying is not complete bullshit, and suddenly we can actually solve these equations that people are literally killing each other over. Like, we alreay pretend that negative numbers make sense. Bear with me” and most people still were firmly on the “you’re ridiculous” side but a few of them were a bit “oh look, this idea actually opens a ton of new possibilities!”
The name “imaginary” was probably derogatory from the start, as a way to tell people that those ideas were kind of absurd, and a lot of that was because people found the whole concept inelegant and useless. That was in the Renaissance, before we had Calculus and long, long before we had Set Theory, and math was very much an aesthetic art, much like painting and sculpture. But centuries later Iluminists still side-eyed imaginary numbers, and I guess they only became more formally accepted when Euler ambraced them in the 18th century, and figured out a ton of really cool applications for them, including the Euler Identity. Imaginary numbers are a really great example of how letting yourself believe for a second that a completely absurd thing makes sense can eventually allow you to learn many things that are way more beautiful than you had at first imagined. Even if it takes 300 years for those things to come up.
So after that, imaginary numbers were taught in mathematics for roughly two centuries before quantum mechanics was invented/discovered, because they offered really elegant formulas and visualizations and techniques for analysis. I firmly believe that being imaginary is actually a plus, not a minus.
Sorry, I get emotional and babbly abt this stuff and I know most math teachers are undertrained and have too little time to teach history of math and make things interesting, which makes me really unhappy.
I’ve got a T-Shirt where
i says to pi (sorry, no Greek keyboard)
“Be rational”
And pi answers “Get real”
Only one of my friends gets it.
I must have a bad geek ratio.
Why would you pretend not to get it? The first time I someone wearing something like that I couldn’t help but burst out laughing (but then, I like self-aware relationship jokes)
I’d actually be entirely okay with an affair between these two. However, some people might object to the retconning of their sexualities. However, the smoldering lust between them cannot be denied.
Knowing the statistics for people in that profession and having known several socially, I find that near absurdly unlikely. Here’s a nice article from Psychology Today, first published 20 years ago, that highlights some of the issues in why.
Unfortunately I can’t graph the results of these divistating equaketions.
…
I don’t normally do puns, so you can’t hold me accountable for that formulaic travesty.
Hah. Silly fools. Broly was born with 20,000 reasons. (I say this as someone who thinks Broly’s character was wasted potential and really hope Kale is cool)
From what I’ve seen of Jason’s tutoring so far, it sounds like Jason is a terrible tutor. Walky should probably find someone else to tutor him in math.
You know, whenever I see this gravatar, I can’t see it as just a head connected to a neck. I always see it as if the person’s chin had just slowly, gradually melted from their face, elongating itself before it finally breaks off and plops its way to freedom.
I do agree that 18 in college is too young to be considered 100% finished adult, and they do need some looking after, but I do think they’re old enough to be expected to navigate interpersonal relationships as adults-in-training, with expectations as such.
I used to believe that once too… At this point, just a couple years shy of 40, I’ve learned to let it go and just never expect anyone of any age to act with any kind of emotional maturity when relationships are involved even when, on the rare occasion, someone pleasantly surprises me and does so.
I’ve got hope for them since, despite Walky’s weird one-pair-of-shoes brand of masculinity, neither of them strikes me as the “rauuuugh this girl is mine forever both forwards and backwards in time and any reminder that this is unreasonable makes me angry” type.
Walky is pretty flip about “srs bzns”, I wouldn’t be surprised if Ryan’s dead. That doesn’t bode well for Amber. Being justified, and being okay with your actions are two very, very different things.
walky there is stuff you want to do in theory and stuff you want to do in application. I suspect wanting to watch is better in theory. I can’t handle gore so i know I would likely be unable to watch what happened to not ryan
There’s a funny thing. I can deal quite well with simulated gore, having grown up in the era of ’80s slasher movies and VHS releases of ’70s classic B film gore like Texas Chainsaw Massacre while being a lifelong horror fan, and even relish it with glee, but with anything real, even if I’m merely exposed through video and not witnessing it directly, just makes me an emotional wreck.
That reminds me of the Bloom County strip where two of the characters are watching TV and can’t agree whether they’re watching a war movie or the 10 o’clock news.
The punchline: “Would someone please tell me if I should be enjoying this or not!”
So was panel five right before or immediately after they pulled out the Samurai swords? And who was the one who went onto one knee but stood standing while the other at first thought they won but then just face planted?
A single wave will break against the mountain with no effect. But a million waves will lay the same mountain low. And the ocean is restless without end.
…
What I’m saying is that you have the roles reversed. Walky’s ignorance is the ocean and Jason’s incompetence is the mountain.
Aaaah, so the mathematics grad student with zero training and personal inclination to be a teacher continues to be a terrible teacher. I am stunned by this twist.
She is, but Walky actually did good there. He’s openly expressing how he feels, and given how little experience he has with therapy, it’s understandable that he’d feel that way.
Bringing it up allowed Dorothy to explain and defuse those feelings rather than Walky holding them in until they fester and turn into resentment. A+ personal growth, Walky
There’s too many variations now. From what I know, there’s Blue, Red, and Rose. And if Broly shows up, I won’t be surprised if they say he’s Super Saiyan Green ~_~
Well, uh, Kale just entered the picture. She’s a Saiyan from Universe 6. She is also a female version of Broly. So…you’re kinda right. With the exception that Super Saiyan Rose only existed because an evil Kai from the future of Universe 10 stole Goku’s body in an alternate timeline, and was a result of his natural ki working in tandem with Goku’s ki. …That storyline could be very hard to follow at times. But it’s not a natural Super Saiyan form that a Saiyan can achieve. On the other hand, that arc also made Spirit Saiyan from the movie “Super Android 13” canon, at least for half saiyans. Oh, and Goku can use the Kaioken when in Super Saiyan Blue mode.
Comparing faces: Panel 2 Dorothy and Panel 7 Walky.
Who’s got the worse trauma here? I mean, sure, Dorothy went through something far more horrific. But she’s got an outlet and it’s not effecting her self-image, so maybe she’s in a healthier place?
Exactly: that’s not an “obscure” meaning, it’s the only meaning -as far as I know- of ‘effect’ as a verb. And it’s not the verb you want with that sentence: as it is, what the sentence means is that the experience Doroty went through “is not causing her self-image”, which makes no sense. What he meant to say is that it’s not affecting (having an effect on) her self-image.
We cannot know if it’s affecting her self-image. Just because she deals with stuff as expected.
And, you know, I find comparing suddenly realizing your not good at something you thought you were good at and getting angry with the (angry and not very helpful) tutor with watching someone you look up to put a knife into a bad guy somewhat grating.
This chapter is named “The ‘Do’ List” – an unlikely title for the reveal.
The next chapter – according to the archive – invites us to “Face the Strange” – more likely, because of FAAAAAAACCCCCCCEEEEEE! (Bring back the 80s old memes!)
But we don’t know how long we will have to – waitforit – wait for it!
Okay, seriously are they piloting a super robot while learning math O_o
That would be pretty cool. I mean, subtracting by knowing how many robots enemy has and blowing them add. Multiplying by having several enemies that can multiply. Division by seeing them organize in equally numerous hordes. Very fun way to learn.
There is no universe in which David ‘Walky’ Walkerton and Jason Chesterfield are capable of spending any length of time alone together without ending up practically at each other’s throats. If that ever changed, I’d be genuinely worried if one or both of them had been replaced with a pop person.
Also, yeah: The reality of watching one of your friends eviscerate someone is probably nothing like any fantasy or abstract concept ever. I genuinely wonder from Dorothy’s clear flashback-style trauma reaction in panel 2 if she’ll ever be able to talk to Amber ever again.
Seriously, board games have never been better than now. Dozens of genres (including co-op games if you don’t like being competitive; or games that aren’t very serious at all and nobody really gives a shit about who’s winning) and lots and lots of games with good mechanics. They are so fucking fun!
PLUS this: It’s a way, way better way to meet other people than going to bars or shit, especially for people that are horrible at small talk* or generally introverted. You get to focus on the same thing (the game) and because you get focused on the game, it’s hard to hide personalities, so you learn a lot about people. And some people talk more, and some talk less, but it’s all fine, and if there are pauses in the conversation, then it’s not awkward, it just means people are plotting things.
I’ll take that over any weather or television or sports talk any day of the week.
I myself regularly attend meetings with BOGA (Boardgamers of Greater Akron). We meet twice a month, with 30-70 people coming. We also invite people to demo their games for us so we can playtest them and give them feedback. Several times this has given us credits (as a group) on the final product. I’ve met so many people I like through this group, and have in fact been invited to two weddings by couples attending it.
And most half-decent board game groups are always willing to teach you games. I mean, it just makes sense. If you don’t teach people the game you love, then you won’t find as many people willing to play it with you.
So yeah, board games. If you’re lucky, there might even be a board game-themed bar near you at this point. I have one five minutes from where I live.
*Not that I blame them, because small talk with people you don’t know is usually pretty horrible.
I do enjoy playing Catan, but the main friends I play it with aren’t around anymore (moving states/countries). I also like the game Fluxx, but same issue. I was more thinking in terms of maintaining friendships, but I could probably do with making new friends too.
I don’t think there are any board game bars around here, though. I’ve seen Groupons for some before, but they’re like 30+ miles away.
socialmeeples dot com is also a nice tool (though I don’t think it has an app, so more for computers, possibly?). It’s like meetup, except entirely focused on meeting for boardgaming, making the UI more specialized and streamlined.
And I know the guy that made it. He’s a really friendly fellow.
Oh, that is too weird, one of my best friends lives in Akron! I’d recommend this to him except he and his wife have a brand new baby and are probably devoting their free time to things like sleeping.
Will Walky ever learn math in time for the final year exams? Will Jason get an aneurysm from having to deal with Walky? Find out next time on Dumbing of Age Z!
Oh Walky you little adorable average man.
Oh Dorothy you perfect cinnamon roll.
Is it weird that I find this particular strip so pure despite the context of it ?
The main key toward my hand?
Come, let me touch thee.
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal display, sensible
To feeling as to sight? Or art thou but
A tablet of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed CPU?
Yeah, I doubt that Amber killed him. But whatever she did, it was obviously something “bad”. We haven’t seen or heard from Amber at all since the new arc, which kind of suggests she’s either in for medical observation (at best) or in jail awaiting trial (at worst).
Anyway, I’m glad that you feel that way, Dorothy. It means that you’re not a psychopath. It’s one thing to be filled with righteous anger and seek justice against those who would harm others, but the moment you start ENJOYING the infliction of pain and suffering on someone else, no matter how justified, you’ve crossed a line you can never come back from.
Amber could also be on the run, though I doubt that’s where this is going.
Joyce’s question to Danny made me wonder though. It could be read as “no one has heard from Amber since the incident”.
I doubt that Amber did anything “bad”, or Dorothy wouldn’t likely agree with Walky at all. Just something unpleasant to witness. Like carving Ryan a new butthole, in his chest. So now he can make chest poops
Please do not use the term psychopath in this way. Being sadistic does not make you a psychopath, is not a criteria for being a psychopath and even if someone were a sadistic psychopath, that doesn’t mean they are evil, cruel or going to hurt anyone. Being a psychopath should not be an insult – their brains are wired differently – doesn’t make them the epitome of evil.
Also, even if someone has the trait of being sadistic, that is not ‘crossing a line’ they ‘can’t come back from’ as people DON’T choose to be sadistic; it is a trait – one plenty of people deal with safely through BDSM and plenty of people do not acknowledge at all. It is also unnecessarily shaming for people that became sadistic due to trauma and feel guilty about it even though they would never randomly harm innocent people.
It would also literally be shaming Amber who enjoyed hitting her abusive father, then felt extreme guilt afterwards and she already had freaking Rachel tell her she was irredeemable and look how that turned out, she literally disappeared into a goddamn void, that’s how that turned out.
tldr; being a psychopath or being sadistic does not make you evil or irredeemable, neither of those are things you choose to be.
Finally someone asked!!! I thought I heard someone mention that death will be limited in this comic (thought I could be mistaken) Also, as bad as it sounds), I am more concerned about Amber and Ethan, who Joyce specially asked about, than Ryan. Apparently whatever happened was not private nor does it seem that it was covered up.
You know what’s going to end up happening? We’re going to get another big development we’ve all been waiting for when WHAM, it’s interrupted for us to finally find out what the hell happened.
…Willis is enjoying this trolling, I just know it.
I am loving everything about frames 1 and 2. Walky’s caring, but out of his… paygrade. Counseling professionals (OK assuming good ones) can be better than friends for dealing with things that just aren’t as simple as they seem.
Hey, that’s just like when people tried to tutor me in math! Ahh…good times. Like if math were a screw and people were trying to smash it into my head with a hammer.
Walky: Curse you Jason! You killed my nachitoes! YOU WILL PAAAAAAAY *goes super Walky*
Jason: What? No, how can this beeeeeeeeee *explodes after 5 minutes of screaming*
I kinda doubt either of the walkertons are exactly making this easy for him. Not sure if it’s entirely fair to say he sucks at tutoring as a whole, he just sucks at dealing with Sal/Walky and their knot of personal issues that impede their ability to study
Unlike Walky, Sal was a willing student. Jason’s approach to the actual tutoring was to basically repeat the exact same lesson, in the exact same way. He never actually tried to understand why Sal didn’t get it the first time, or even change his approach.
Later when he asked Sal what Danny did differently, and she told him, his reaction was defensive anger and dismissing her explanation as “sappy rubbish”.
I like this, Dorothy had some serious fan-girling going on over AG but in panel two theres the realization of what that actually entails and what the reality can lead to
Ezachary, I really enjoy the John Wick series (Keanu Reeves is the best action star ever) but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t want to be witnessing him kill someone with a pencil, in real life
3) While she’s currently cringing at the thought of whatever Amber did to scarface, she’s been traumatized by that, but also almost certainly by having been stalked and threatened by a rapist with a knife. This is not a great moment for an “I told you so”
1. Does Dorothy understand the difference and who would answer to any crimes committed by AG, Amber or AG?
In her eyes AG and Amber are one and the same
2. Yes it was self-defense but it was also very brutal (I’m assuming) and Dorothy watched first hand a type of brutality she probably hasn’t experienced before
3. I’m not saying “told you so” I’m saying that Dorothy has had her romanticised ideal shattered by the stark reality of what those actions can lead to
Its a good strip because it shows the repercussions of those actions and they aren’t always “good”
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WITH REAL MATHS ACTION
Have you heard of 0x0.st? Could be useful for your anachronistic purposes
With real maths action
https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/existence_proof.png
With IMAGINARY Math action
https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/complex_conjugate.png
tutoring can be stressful on both sides
I’ve hardly ever found it to be that way, and it was my primary income for a while.
….
…. then again, Jason just don’t know how to tutor.
it isn’t always stressful but it certainly can be. Especially when the one being tutored doesn’t want to be and it is being forced on them. or if the person is forced to tutor because of academic requirements perhaps.
The big problem is that Jason doesn’t know how to tutor. He thinks it’s just a matter of saying things how he understands them. He doesn’t really do diagnosis, or trying to grasp someone else’s current state of understanding, or trying different learning styles, or explaining something five different ways until it finally clicks.
In all fairness to Jason, it isn’t really tutoring (its grad student TAing, which means one usually doesn’t have much time to focus on individual students, especially since their main time sink is still their thesis), and most schools put very little time into training grad students anything at all about pedagogy (and then those same individuals go on to become faculty…).
Frankly, from my perspective of what sort of time and effort the typical grad student TA will put into any given large-lecture STEM class, Jason’s attempts to personally follow-up with students easily puts him in the top percentile of actually caring. That said, that Jason has been involved with Walky’s sister, also a student, makes things entirely problematic.
Part of his job description is office hours to talk with students. The fact he’s doing his job isn’t something I’d consider particularly praise worthy, tbh. The only time he actually did something good is when he offered Walky help when he first started falling behind. Other than that, he’s been pretty consistently shit. And sure, he’s not trained to teach, probably, but if he actually gives a rats ass about being a good teacher (like he says he does) then he needs to stop whining and do something to improve. That or be content with being shit and stop professing he cares about being a good teacher.
He seems to give a rat’s ass about people thinking he’s a good teacher more than he gives a rat’s ass about actually being a good teacher.
Agreed.
My read on him is that he does want to be a good teacher. It was in his head, part of his self-image, that he was a good teacher… or at least had that in his skillset, even if he’d never used it. (Hint: If you believe you’re good at something you’ve never done, you’re most likely wrong.)
He’s started to realize that this self-image was false, but he wants to be true. Right now he’s stuck in a mode where he thinks good intentions plus tryhard is the fix. It’s… not going well.
But none of that means he doesn’t care about being a good teacher. And it’s not really fair to blame him for that, because… as kingleon said? No one gave him significant training. The system cares more about making grad students into researchers rather than into making them into good teachers. And by “more”, I mean “only”.
Jason’s story is that of a man out of his depths who suddenly and belatedly realizes that the well-being of others rests on his own incapable shoulders. And of course he screws it up. No one’s taught him how to do anything else.
(But screwing Sal up, that’s on him.)
I do believe he cares about being a good teacher, but I also believe that since he’s not good at it, that means he needs to put in an effort to learn to be better. I get that time and money are tight but if he wants to be a good teacher, he’s got to either learn to do that (hell, I’d take just googling ‘tutoring tips’ – at least then he’d be TRYING even if it didn’t help) or accept that’s he’s a sucky teacher and doesn’t have the time/money/energy to put into being better and so will remain so.
IME as an ex-grad student who TA’d a lot: Odds are very good that by doing the minimum job description he’s putting in more time than he gets paid for. Because university fuck over grad students at every opportunity. Grad students are even cheaper than sessional instructors, and unlike sessional instructors, the grad student can’t move to a different uni or go somewhere with better pay without tanking their career, so the schools love putting grad students in charge of most of the responsibility for putting on a course (but you get no authority to go with the responsibility – you’re the one designing grading rubrics and report forms and marking and doing most of the teaching, buuut if the sessional instructor who comes in three hours a week decides you were too haaard on the student who refuses to wear PPE and spends the entire lab “jokingly” threatening to splash other students with acid, the well-deserved F the student got from being punted from your lab over safety will get overturned.
Furthermore, many unis limit how many hours grad students can work anywhere such that there’s no possible way you can keep your financial head above water (and then they offer loans and what have you for “emergencies” which they charge outrageous interest on – it’s a full on company store bullshit deal), so in order to have enough to eat and a safe place to sleep you’re usually doing something else under the table and hoping the uni doesn’t find out. All in all when I was a grad student I was working 7 AM to 9 PM, six days a week and four to eight hours the remaining day of the week.
My point here is part of Jason’s unarguable incompetence might be just sheer exhaustion if his family isn’t rich enough to support him.
The sex is still on him, though. Which brings to mind the question—after having slept with her, which harms his integrity less—grading her as he would have otherwise, and upholding (the remaining shreds of) his professional ethics, but at the cost of dishonoring the implicit agreement he made with Sal when he slept with her, or, on the other hand, sacrificing whatever professional ethics he might have left, but honoring the agreement with Sal?
It depends on the school, the department, and the class in question. I was a grad student at IU, so I have some first hand knowledge of how things work at IU for grad students. Fortunately for me, I was in the Microbiology program teaching various biology courses, which meant I got paid better than the TAs for math or the humanities. That’s not to say that was remotely fair since the university got paid the same for each credit hour of language arts than they did for microbiology lab, so the fact that I got paid noticeably more than them for the same amount of work was kind of bullshit for them.
Long story made short, I imagine that Jason is probably either pretty stressed about his finances or stressed from working a side job like some other grad students I knew. If he is working a side job, he has to be hush-hush about it lest the school find out (I only worked side jobs in between semester sessions to avoid this issue).
Mind you, this speculation requires us to assume his family isn’t rich and that he actually has money problems. There’s no guarantee in that.
That definitely sucks, and I can definitely understand not wanting to bother in that case, but I’m still not overly impressed by doing the bare minimum.
Their death metal band, on the other hand, is coming along great!
Yeah…”Jason And The ArgueNauts”!
I very nearly spit tea all over my screen.
Thanks for that.
That is goddamn beautiful. You deserve a cookie. Go buy yourself a cookie.
Amazing.
oh my god i keep grinning despite myself, damn you van jealous
This is wonderful. Put some rose petals on your bed tonight. You deserve it.
Where is the upvote button when you need one. This is sweet XD
I do believe that for the next thirty minutes, you own the Internet. Because that joke definitely paid for a half hour of universal internet control.
Where’s the “Like” button? Why is there no “Like” button?
Nice.
MARRY ME
“FUCK SCHOOL!!!!!”
“WITHIN REASON, AND NOT INTENDING DISRUPTION TO ESTABLISHED CURRICULUM”
“YEAH, AND UNLESS YOUR MUM FINDS OUT.”
*Electric guitar solo*
and then they start kamehameha’ing each other, it’s brutal
I’m expecting more of the comical dog-paddling slap fight from these two.
So the real reason for the time skip was so we wouldn’t have to sit through several weeks of Walky and Jason powering up?
Walky, stop cheating on Dorothy! We know you had hate-sex with Bowtie! It’s a family failing.
So the tutoring is gonna be on slipshine then?
I think I will make this joke about everything that happens off panel at this point.
I’d suggest that Walky try asking Danny, but that might be a bit…uncomfortable for them.
But, hey, he’s New Danny now, so maybe it’d work out.
New Danny will teach math skills via soulful ukulele tunes!
He’s a good egg, so he’d help for sure!
Honestly, he probably would/will, but he has to deal with Joe first. Then he can tutor Walky and Sal individually. He’ll probably have to be ever so slight assertive though.
Walky: So what’s up Wonderbread?
Danny: Alright first thing, don’t call me Wonderbread, only Sal gets to do that.
Walky: Why, cause you think she’s hot?
Danny: No, because she’s actually passing math.
Walky:…Dammit I don’t have a comeback for that.
Danny: Now that the sass is done, let’s get started.
Hooray for new math, New Math!
It won’t do you a bit of good to review math!
It’s so simple, so very simple,
That only a child can do it!
You can’t take three from two, two is less than three, so you…
http://www.lyricsfreak.com/t/tom+lehrer/new+math_20138395.html
Well you can but you then end up with negative numbers which are a bit harder to represent as physical objects.
William has 5 apples. The lord whose land he lives on demands 7 apples in payment. How many apples does William have? Show working.
5 apples – 7 apples = -2 apples.
As one cannot have a negative quantity of apples, and William cannot give more than he owns, William either has no apples and no home, if the lord evicts him for failing to pay in full, or needs to find other goods to trade in lieu/provide services worth two apples to somebody who can pay him. Alternatively, he may try to steal the additional two apples. If he is caught and it is a first offence, he is likely to have his hand chopped off. As we are given no indication that he has any other worldly goods or marketable skills, legal or otherwise, one must conclude that William has 0 apples and has been evicted. However, he probably has 2 hands, and may be able to gain employment helping somebody else with their landholding in exchange for food and shelter.
Times were tough back then.
This is kind of a singular situation. While Danny might have some input on how to best help Dorothy handle stress, it’d only help so much in this case.
I…meant about the math tutoring thing. I don’t think “Dorothy advice” would be on the list of topics that would make things LESS uncomfortable.
Oh true, I had forgotten Danny tutored Sal. That’d be much better.
Pretty awkward, though, since Dorothy dumped Danny and then pretty immediately began a relationship with Walky.
I’m not in any way saying that it was wrong for her to do so, or whatever—Dorothy has the right to date anyone she pleases regardless of how it makes anyone else feel—but Danny probably resents Walky—or would be somewhat justified to do so—and Walky might feel awkward about it.
That said, Danny seems like he’d put that aside to help someone who needs it, and Walky really, really doesn’t want to disappoint Dorothy, so it could work out.
Well, he could always resort to alternative math and bully his way through 😉
ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA!
MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA!
Walky’s Bizarre Adventure: Maths are Unteachable
Like Willis, she would rather not talk about it right now 🙁
Yeah you don’t always want to talk right away. My biggest darkest time when i was getting help i pretty much hid in the bedroom for the whole first day. things take time.
Hmm, this reminds me that I thought Jason might be a good candidate for “The Story of someone who quits [grad] school.”
for a STEM grad student at a large research university, being a crappy TA and/or disliking teaching will have pretty much no impact on Jason’s grad school experience. as someone who did quit grad school at a similar university in the same similar field, i was the opposite (enjoyed teaching, didn’t care enough about research to finish the phd).
sleeping with a student on the other hand, that could (or at least should) get him kicked out if it gets out. as much as i find jason entertaining, that’s pretty unforgivable for me.
IU’s rules would agree with you. As would Jason and Penny, who both said if Jason got caught he’d be out on his ass (though apparently, they would cover it up if Jason were better liked).
First they would need to change Sal’s math class.
Oh, I know, I just think it would be an interesting story. For one thing, Jason seems pretty disillusioned about the fact that, on the one hand, he’s bad at teaching, but on the other hand it doesn’t really matter (except to his students). I find it interesting to extrapolate that further into a “what if Jason isn’t where he should be at all” train of thought. Not just because of Jason himself, but because in a large ensemble cast of university students, it seems likely that *someone* would leave their program of study, and maybe Jason could leave more easily than one of the undergrads from a storytelling perspective.
I need more Jason and Walky comics in my life
Dorothy doesn’t know trauma! Math tutoring, that’s the real deal!
I was good at math in school. I even went to a math bee in middle school. Although i got frustrated that my teachers in highschool could never explain why imaginary numbers matter.
Remember how they used to say we had to learn because we wouldn’t have calculators all the time?
yeah I recall that. Although most of the time i can do the typical math faster than many people i know can figure it out with their calculator. not always but still.
FWIW, it’s important to be able to sanity check. If you plug in 18 x 18 and get back 342, you know you done goofed.
Dun goofed indeed.
(18 x 20) – 36 = 324
yeah, i’m awful at math (i have only vague seemings of spatial reasoning and managed to get Cs on the same 3d figure geometry test three times in a row no matter how much i studied) but the only time i ever tried to use a calculator for really basic stuff is the time i took an algebra 2 test doped up on super-strong cough medicine for a chronic cough. i forgot an entire page of the test and kept trying to do things like 7 x 1 on my calculator. it was terrible and i did terribly
there are lots of reasons imaginary numbers matter, it’s too bad your teachers couldn’t come up with any of them. one of the most convincing for many people, is that there are many questions that you can reasonably ask where the question and the answer are both in real numbers, but you need to use imaginary numbers somewhere during the solution. for example, some important integrals in electrical engineering and probability are computed this way.
It would probably help if they weren’t called “imaginary.” They’re not imaginary; they correspond to actual things. They’re extremely useful in quantum mechanics because it makes the math of wave mechanics so much easier to do, for example.
But calling them “imaginary” makes students who aren’t just naturally curious about math for math’s sake check out immediately. It conveys the absence of practicality, even though there’s so much practicality.
But it’s too late now. The name exists, and no one’s going to change it.
To be fair, the idea that these numbers were imaginary was the only thing that made me care about them. What’s reality.
And “real” numbers are much more abstract things than their name suggests, as anyone who has had (and passed!) a real analysis course can tell you.
Well, to be fair, imaginary numbers were a thing long before quantum mechanics was even dreamed of (like centuries earlier), so at the time the naming was pretty apt.
Also I think the main reason for imaginary numbers to be in most curriculums is that they are a pretty fine example of math being completely ridiculous and much closer to art than to engineering, but also turning out unexpectedly to be very elegant in weird ways…, I mean some guy some five hundred years ago went “hey, what we we pretended that negative numbers have square roots?” and everyone else was like “you are beng ridiculous” and he went “no seriously, just pretend for a second that what I’m saying is not complete bullshit, and suddenly we can actually solve these equations that people are literally killing each other over. Like, we alreay pretend that negative numbers make sense. Bear with me” and most people still were firmly on the “you’re ridiculous” side but a few of them were a bit “oh look, this idea actually opens a ton of new possibilities!”
The name “imaginary” was probably derogatory from the start, as a way to tell people that those ideas were kind of absurd, and a lot of that was because people found the whole concept inelegant and useless. That was in the Renaissance, before we had Calculus and long, long before we had Set Theory, and math was very much an aesthetic art, much like painting and sculpture. But centuries later Iluminists still side-eyed imaginary numbers, and I guess they only became more formally accepted when Euler ambraced them in the 18th century, and figured out a ton of really cool applications for them, including the Euler Identity. Imaginary numbers are a really great example of how letting yourself believe for a second that a completely absurd thing makes sense can eventually allow you to learn many things that are way more beautiful than you had at first imagined. Even if it takes 300 years for those things to come up.
So after that, imaginary numbers were taught in mathematics for roughly two centuries before quantum mechanics was invented/discovered, because they offered really elegant formulas and visualizations and techniques for analysis. I firmly believe that being imaginary is actually a plus, not a minus.
Sorry, I get emotional and babbly abt this stuff and I know most math teachers are undertrained and have too little time to teach history of math and make things interesting, which makes me really unhappy.
I’ve got a T-Shirt where
i says to pi (sorry, no Greek keyboard)
“Be rational”
And pi answers “Get real”
Only one of my friends gets it.
I must have a bad geek ratio.
I get it, but if I knew you in real life and saw you wearing that shirt, I would absolutely pretend I had no awareness of it whatsoever.
Why on earth? I’m not even a math person, but I *am* a pun person, so…
Why would you pretend not to get it? The first time I someone wearing something like that I couldn’t help but burst out laughing (but then, I like self-aware relationship jokes)
I wouldn’t pretend not to *get* it, I would pretend not to *see* it.
I’d actually be entirely okay with an affair between these two. However, some people might object to the retconning of their sexualities. However, the smoldering lust between them cannot be denied.
The NSFW thingy isn’t Sal it’s Walky with a wig and a cigarette.
That’d be super uncomfortable for the same reason Jason fucking Sal was super uncomfortable.
With an extra bonus for cheating on Dorothy.
It’s why Walky looks guilty. It just sort of happened. Jason realized that Sal reminded him of Walky and that’s what his heart truly yearned for.
It wouldn’t surprise me a bit if Walky was bi.
basically every walky-jason conversation ever. :p
I would actually be perfectly fine with a whole strip consisting of nothing but Walky and Jason screaming at each other.
Reminds me of this:
http://www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=995
Ah, yes. The best page.
A true work of art.
It offers a fascinating glimpse into the subtle complexities of fairy culture.
“Subtlety” is not the word I’d use!
Go Super Saiyan, Walky!
You saw it here first folks! Questing of Age is now canon.
Only one universe can survive! It needs to be this one! You can do this, Walky!
Last time I heard “only one universe can survive” we got Darkclaw… So I guess what I’m trying to say is: Yes, please!
That’s a really weird intro panel for the next Welcome to the Fuck Zone.
Aaaaaaaa love you!
Aaaaaaa love you too!
🙂
It’s too big…
Seems to me…you don’t wanna talk about it
Seems to me…you just turn your pretty head and Walk Away!
I ship it.
…I think Walky needs therapy of his own now.
Is there anyone in the comic who doesn’t need therapy?
Sierra?
I think the better question is who won’t reject it.
Carla. Carla is perfect,
While Carla is indeed perfect, she could also probably use therapy as trans people got a lot of shit to put up with.
the therapist might not need therapy.
Knowing the statistics for people in that profession and having known several socially, I find that near absurdly unlikely. Here’s a nice article from Psychology Today, first published 20 years ago, that highlights some of the issues in why.
based on whats in the comic i havent seen a reason for therapy to be needed.
I see they’re dealing with weapons of math instruction.
They carefully have to calculate their next moves.
Walky is so triggered-nometry.
(not my best pun)
I’d say that pun shouldn’t count, then.
also it’s a “triggered” joke so it’s automatically shit
Yep, this. It’s in especially poor taste given the current comic topic.
They’re tutor-mentors locked in a room with only each other as victims.
…. two-tormentors?
…. anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
That’s a straight line of a punk. What’s your angle?
I just was someone to cosine with me.
Unfortunately I can’t graph the results of these divistating equaketions.
…
I don’t normally do puns, so you can’t hold me accountable for that formulaic travesty.
I can’t blame Walky for his frustration, Jason’s manner of teaching is utterly derivative.
I think that’s a bit hyperbolic.
Frustration does seem, well integrated into his style though.
And that’s why it’s above Walky’s paygrade.
I’m pretty sure that even a much more mature version of Walky would not be able to compete with a professional therapist.
Therapy isn’t just for people whose boyfriends are manchildren
Tho it is definitely for people whose boyfriends are manchildren
I see Walky spend some time in the Hyperbolic Math Chamber
But no time spent on hyperbolic functions, oddly enough.
“So do you know Dragon Ball Z? Like that, but my hair turns gray instead of blonde.”
Somebody make up an “over 9000” joke. I’m too sleepy.
There are over 8000 reasons I refuse to do so…
Hah. Silly fools. Broly was born with 20,000 reasons. (I say this as someone who thinks Broly’s character was wasted potential and really hope Kale is cool)
Chances are he does but he was taught expressing those reasons just gets you yelled at.
I got over 99,000 problems
But a Saiyan ain’t one
We’re gonna have to pay to see that jerk getting what came to him, aren’t we?
I don’t want to see it. We can skip right to the bit where we know he’s out of commission, whichever way that is.
Slipshine has taken a weird turn…
From what I’ve seen of Jason’s tutoring so far, it sounds like Jason is a terrible tutor. Walky should probably find someone else to tutor him in math.
Walky, go talk to your big sister. She can hook you up with a way better tutor than this dickhole.
I foresee no possible problems in getting tutored by your girlfriends ex-boyfriend
Not if everyone acts like mature adults who recognize that most relationships eventually end and that’s okay.
Except that neither of them are adults
They’re over 18 and in college, at what point do you feel they become adults?
I don’t know, but they’re not there yet.
Physical maturity: the only maturity that actually matters by law!
You know, whenever I see this gravatar, I can’t see it as just a head connected to a neck. I always see it as if the person’s chin had just slowly, gradually melted from their face, elongating itself before it finally breaks off and plops its way to freedom.
Oh. Oh dear.
It’s haunted me for years.
Who is this freaky gravatar and why did I get stuck with it?
His name is Arnold and he’s been in like two strips … several more in Shortpacked!
I do agree that 18 in college is too young to be considered 100% finished adult, and they do need some looking after, but I do think they’re old enough to be expected to navigate interpersonal relationships as adults-in-training, with expectations as such.
I used to believe that once too… At this point, just a couple years shy of 40, I’ve learned to let it go and just never expect anyone of any age to act with any kind of emotional maturity when relationships are involved even when, on the rare occasion, someone pleasantly surprises me and does so.
I’m not sure if either of them are mature enough for that yet. Definitely not at the beginning but they have both grown a lot since.
I’ve got hope for them since, despite Walky’s weird one-pair-of-shoes brand of masculinity, neither of them strikes me as the “rauuuugh this girl is mine forever both forwards and backwards in time and any reminder that this is unreasonable makes me angry” type.
*Reads your post*
*Checks which comic we’re reading*
*Reads your post again*
*reads the URL again*
…
Me, I’m incredibly impressed that Shiro managed to type all of that with a straight face.
Neither do I, but Jason was never her boyfriend. They just fucked twice. And he was an incredible jerks to her too.
(Pssst they said girlfriend (Dorothy) not sister)
Oh, shit, my bad. In that case, nooooo, can’t see any awkwardness at all, even if it’s not malicious, nosireebob.
“hook you up”, eh?
If only Jason weren’t his TA. But he is, so that would be the biggest of no-nos.
….. so panels 5 and 6 aren’t NECESSARILY counter to the “Walky/Jason hatefuck over tutoring session” theory.
…. okay, I wasn’t thinking it. And I’m still not. And they seem to be wearing clothes.
But now you can’t unsee it.
All it takes is unfastened trousers.
As someone who tutors for a living, I can attest to that.
Also, my first post. Long time reader/lurker, first time comment or. Hello friends!
Hello Nyomnyomnyom. Please do not endlessly scream in flashbacks. We already have Jason and Walky doing that.
Looking more and more like Amber killed Ryan. Or maimed him within an inch of his life.
I think Walky would’ve phrased it differently if Ryan was dead? Maybe?
And I’m hoping that the way he says “jerk got what he had comin’ to him” like it’s an uncontroversial opinion is significant.
Walky is pretty flip about “srs bzns”, I wouldn’t be surprised if Ryan’s dead. That doesn’t bode well for Amber. Being justified, and being okay with your actions are two very, very different things.
Cryin’ Ryan got sliced and diced and WE didn’t get to see what happened? Insert slow burn here.
walky there is stuff you want to do in theory and stuff you want to do in application. I suspect wanting to watch is better in theory. I can’t handle gore so i know I would likely be unable to watch what happened to not ryan
There’s a funny thing. I can deal quite well with simulated gore, having grown up in the era of ’80s slasher movies and VHS releases of ’70s classic B film gore like Texas Chainsaw Massacre while being a lifelong horror fan, and even relish it with glee, but with anything real, even if I’m merely exposed through video and not witnessing it directly, just makes me an emotional wreck.
That reminds me of the Bloom County strip where two of the characters are watching TV and can’t agree whether they’re watching a war movie or the 10 o’clock news.
The punchline: “Would someone please tell me if I should be enjoying this or not!”
So was panel five right before or immediately after they pulled out the Samurai swords? And who was the one who went onto one knee but stood standing while the other at first thought they won but then just face planted?
YES! Let Jason’s wave of self-righteous incompetence crash against Walky’s mountain of stubborn immaturity and be broken!
A single wave will break against the mountain with no effect. But a million waves will lay the same mountain low. And the ocean is restless without end.
…
What I’m saying is that you have the roles reversed. Walky’s ignorance is the ocean and Jason’s incompetence is the mountain.
But Jason doesn’t have a million waves in him. Sure, long term Walky could eb shouted down but Jason doesn’t have it in him.
That’s why Walky’s the ocean and Jason’s the…oh. Ok, how did I not notice that pun in your response until now.
So Jason being a crappy teacher and Walky being an unwilling student aren’t working well together. Who’da thunk it?
oh hey, the flashback panels are back!
at least these aren’t red…
If tutoring flash-backs become red, even I will ask for Jason’s resignation.
What if they’re red from Jason’s perspective?
I’m glad that Jason and Walky have bonded over their secret love of screamo music.
Gonna need Walky with the Shortpacked “most epic of hatefucks” speechbubble added in and Jason’s name swapped out for Mike’s
If I push the fanon hard enough l’ll be one step closer to the dream of “Walky Performs on a TA”
Aaaah, so the mathematics grad student with zero training and personal inclination to be a teacher continues to be a terrible teacher. I am stunned by this twist.
Not doing a whole analysis, but: Panel 1- Good for Walky for trying, but she’s totally right here.
She is, but Walky actually did good there. He’s openly expressing how he feels, and given how little experience he has with therapy, it’s understandable that he’d feel that way.
Bringing it up allowed Dorothy to explain and defuse those feelings rather than Walky holding them in until they fester and turn into resentment. A+ personal growth, Walky
And he’s not challenging her assessment in any way. Could be there’s two reasons for that happy fond smile in the last panel.
(whoops, adding to add: way to go Dorothy for the neat catch-and-redirect on Walky’s “I’d pay to see that”. awesome little moment, that.)
Oh man… I knew it was gonna be bad.
Confirmation that Walky and Jason are fucking.
I’m sure they both feel they are fucked
Baby steps, you two. Baby steps.
I STILL friggin’ love Doroty. She has a very healthy attitude to her trauma, and I love all the little gentle check-ins between her and Walky.
Dorothy the person is one of the absolutely most likeable people in the whole wide world. She is a perfect autumn blossom, after all.
She is, she truly is. AND a precious cinnamon roll AND a 10 (not that Joyce rates women or anything)
I’m not sure who will become SSJ first, Walky or Jason
Any more yelling and those two are gonna go super saiyan. Or whatever’s the most current saiyan form.
All these DBZ jokes are priceless
Clearly Jason already went Super Saiyan Blue 😀
There’s too many variations now. From what I know, there’s Blue, Red, and Rose. And if Broly shows up, I won’t be surprised if they say he’s Super Saiyan Green ~_~
Well, uh, Kale just entered the picture. She’s a Saiyan from Universe 6. She is also a female version of Broly. So…you’re kinda right. With the exception that Super Saiyan Rose only existed because an evil Kai from the future of Universe 10 stole Goku’s body in an alternate timeline, and was a result of his natural ki working in tandem with Goku’s ki. …That storyline could be very hard to follow at times. But it’s not a natural Super Saiyan form that a Saiyan can achieve. On the other hand, that arc also made Spirit Saiyan from the movie “Super Android 13” canon, at least for half saiyans. Oh, and Goku can use the Kaioken when in Super Saiyan Blue mode.
And here I thought they were in the middle of a beam battle. I sure hope whichever one is aiming AWAY from the earth is the one that wins!
Comparing faces: Panel 2 Dorothy and Panel 7 Walky.
Who’s got the worse trauma here? I mean, sure, Dorothy went through something far more horrific. But she’s got an outlet and it’s not effecting her self-image, so maybe she’s in a healthier place?
*affecting (typo squad to the rescue!) 😉
Nope, effecting.
You used that word just to be able to link the strip, didn’t you.
And what would be the obscure meaning of “effect” which justifies its use in your sentence?
http://www.explainxkcd.com/
Although using it with this meaning in Reltzik’s sentence effects a weird affect in my brain.
Exactly: that’s not an “obscure” meaning, it’s the only meaning -as far as I know- of ‘effect’ as a verb. And it’s not the verb you want with that sentence: as it is, what the sentence means is that the experience Doroty went through “is not causing her self-image”, which makes no sense. What he meant to say is that it’s not affecting (having an effect on) her self-image.
Seconded. Arianod is right.
We cannot know if it’s affecting her self-image. Just because she deals with stuff as expected.
And, you know, I find comparing suddenly realizing your not good at something you thought you were good at and getting angry with the (angry and not very helpful) tutor with watching someone you look up to put a knife into a bad guy somewhat grating.
Do we have to wait a year to find out what happened to Amber ?
This chapter is named “The ‘Do’ List” – an unlikely title for the reveal.
The next chapter – according to the archive – invites us to “Face the Strange” – more likely, because of FAAAAAAACCCCCCCEEEEEE! (Bring back the
80sold memes!)But we don’t know how long we will have to – waitforit – wait for it!
Wait, Jason had sex with Walky, too? Damn, man.
Pffft haha XD
I guess the question is, did Jason “imagine this* but with boobs”, or the other way around?
*http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-2/01-pajama-jeans/gross/
OK, that was hilarious.
I thought they were having mayhem lessons not singing lessons.
Mayhem lessons sound fun, but ime college students are naturally proficient in mayhem and need no tutoring.
Finally getting some light on the cliffhanger. I’m glad Dotty asked.
Okay, seriously are they piloting a super robot while learning math O_o
That would be pretty cool. I mean, subtracting by knowing how many robots enemy has and blowing them add. Multiplying by having several enemies that can multiply. Division by seeing them organize in equally numerous hordes. Very fun way to learn.
There is no universe in which David ‘Walky’ Walkerton and Jason Chesterfield are capable of spending any length of time alone together without ending up practically at each other’s throats. If that ever changed, I’d be genuinely worried if one or both of them had been replaced with a pop person.
Also, yeah: The reality of watching one of your friends eviscerate someone is probably nothing like any fantasy or abstract concept ever. I genuinely wonder from Dorothy’s clear flashback-style trauma reaction in panel 2 if she’ll ever be able to talk to Amber ever again.
MATH TUTORING NO JUTSU~!
Completely unrelated to anything, what are some things to do for fun? But, like, with other people?
(“Are…are you asking how to have friends?”
Look, I used to be okay at it, but I’ve gotten worse.)
Board games.
Seriously, board games have never been better than now. Dozens of genres (including co-op games if you don’t like being competitive; or games that aren’t very serious at all and nobody really gives a shit about who’s winning) and lots and lots of games with good mechanics. They are so fucking fun!
PLUS this: It’s a way, way better way to meet other people than going to bars or shit, especially for people that are horrible at small talk* or generally introverted. You get to focus on the same thing (the game) and because you get focused on the game, it’s hard to hide personalities, so you learn a lot about people. And some people talk more, and some talk less, but it’s all fine, and if there are pauses in the conversation, then it’s not awkward, it just means people are plotting things.
I’ll take that over any weather or television or sports talk any day of the week.
I myself regularly attend meetings with BOGA (Boardgamers of Greater Akron). We meet twice a month, with 30-70 people coming. We also invite people to demo their games for us so we can playtest them and give them feedback. Several times this has given us credits (as a group) on the final product. I’ve met so many people I like through this group, and have in fact been invited to two weddings by couples attending it.
And most half-decent board game groups are always willing to teach you games. I mean, it just makes sense. If you don’t teach people the game you love, then you won’t find as many people willing to play it with you.
So yeah, board games. If you’re lucky, there might even be a board game-themed bar near you at this point. I have one five minutes from where I live.
*Not that I blame them, because small talk with people you don’t know is usually pretty horrible.
I do enjoy playing Catan, but the main friends I play it with aren’t around anymore (moving states/countries). I also like the game Fluxx, but same issue. I was more thinking in terms of maintaining friendships, but I could probably do with making new friends too.
I don’t think there are any board game bars around here, though. I’ve seen Groupons for some before, but they’re like 30+ miles away.
Oh, -maintaining- friendship. Well, that’s an easy one.
Don’t ever play Diplomacy with them.
Thanks, though, as I’ve now learned about both the app Meetup and a board game group I might attend.
socialmeeples dot com is also a nice tool (though I don’t think it has an app, so more for computers, possibly?). It’s like meetup, except entirely focused on meeting for boardgaming, making the UI more specialized and streamlined.
And I know the guy that made it. He’s a really friendly fellow.
Oh, that is too weird, one of my best friends lives in Akron! I’d recommend this to him except he and his wife have a brand new baby and are probably devoting their free time to things like sleeping.
“And THIS… is to go even FURTHER BEYOND!”
Will Walky ever learn math in time for the final year exams? Will Jason get an aneurysm from having to deal with Walky? Find out next time on Dumbing of Age Z!
(Cue Super Saiyan 3 theme music)
Oh Walky you little adorable average man.
Oh Dorothy you perfect cinnamon roll.
Is it weird that I find this particular strip so pure despite the context of it ?
What did Amber do to him holy shit
Nothing much. Just gave him “These Scars”
At the very least, I suspect that she carved ‘Rapist Scum’ onto his forehead. She may have also emasculated and castrated him.
Unseam’d him from th’chops to the navel.
(I don’t know if this quote is correct, it’s been ages since I read MacBeth.)
Is this a smartphone that I see before me?
The main key toward my hand?
Come, let me touch thee.
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal display, sensible
To feeling as to sight? Or art thou but
A tablet of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed CPU?
I doubt she killed him at least. Otherwise Walky would have said something different.
Yeah, I doubt that Amber killed him. But whatever she did, it was obviously something “bad”. We haven’t seen or heard from Amber at all since the new arc, which kind of suggests she’s either in for medical observation (at best) or in jail awaiting trial (at worst).
Anyway, I’m glad that you feel that way, Dorothy. It means that you’re not a psychopath. It’s one thing to be filled with righteous anger and seek justice against those who would harm others, but the moment you start ENJOYING the infliction of pain and suffering on someone else, no matter how justified, you’ve crossed a line you can never come back from.
well, there’s SSC sadomasochism, that’s not crossing any line
not that that’s what was going on with Ryan and Amber
but still, enjoying inflicting pain != monster
Amber could also be on the run, though I doubt that’s where this is going.
Joyce’s question to Danny made me wonder though. It could be read as “no one has heard from Amber since the incident”.
I doubt that Amber did anything “bad”, or Dorothy wouldn’t likely agree with Walky at all. Just something unpleasant to witness. Like carving Ryan a new butthole, in his chest. So now he can make chest poops
“never” is a very strong word :p
Please do not use the term psychopath in this way. Being sadistic does not make you a psychopath, is not a criteria for being a psychopath and even if someone were a sadistic psychopath, that doesn’t mean they are evil, cruel or going to hurt anyone. Being a psychopath should not be an insult – their brains are wired differently – doesn’t make them the epitome of evil.
Also, even if someone has the trait of being sadistic, that is not ‘crossing a line’ they ‘can’t come back from’ as people DON’T choose to be sadistic; it is a trait – one plenty of people deal with safely through BDSM and plenty of people do not acknowledge at all. It is also unnecessarily shaming for people that became sadistic due to trauma and feel guilty about it even though they would never randomly harm innocent people.
It would also literally be shaming Amber who enjoyed hitting her abusive father, then felt extreme guilt afterwards and she already had freaking Rachel tell her she was irredeemable and look how that turned out, she literally disappeared into a goddamn void, that’s how that turned out.
tldr; being a psychopath or being sadistic does not make you evil or irredeemable, neither of those are things you choose to be.
Finally someone asked!!! I thought I heard someone mention that death will be limited in this comic (thought I could be mistaken) Also, as bad as it sounds), I am more concerned about Amber and Ethan, who Joyce specially asked about, than Ryan. Apparently whatever happened was not private nor does it seem that it was covered up.
You know what’s going to end up happening? We’re going to get another big development we’ve all been waiting for when WHAM, it’s interrupted for us to finally find out what the hell happened.
…Willis is enjoying this trolling, I just know it.
Here’s what I think will happen: We won’t find out what happened until the very last strip of the day.
screaming is supposed to be therapeutic, right?
Screaming is supposed to teach you math, right?
Well one of my teachers tried that approach. Didn’t work. He seemed to feel better afterwards though ^^
“Listen up, Doctor Who. Whatever you did for my sister, you better do for me a thousand times better!”
NEXT TIME ON DUMBING OF AGE!
WALKY AND HIS TEACHER YELL ALOT! NOTHING ACCOMPLISHED! THEN THEY TAKE THEIR TUTORING TO THE NEXT LEVEL!
WHAT’S THIS?! SUPER HUMAN LEVEL 2?!?
PREPARE FOR WEEKS WORTH OF FILLER EPISODES!
I am loving everything about frames 1 and 2. Walky’s caring, but out of his… paygrade. Counseling professionals (OK assuming good ones) can be better than friends for dealing with things that just aren’t as simple as they seem.
This brings back bad memories of my high school math tutor. Freaking old crone.
So, they took a break to compare Doug Walker impressions?
Yep. Math. Accurate.
So which one turned blonde first…?
Walky. Which is surprising, because Jason already has that hair color.
Hey, that’s just like when people tried to tutor me in math! Ahh…good times. Like if math were a screw and people were trying to smash it into my head with a hammer.
(Not pictured: Jason and Walky jerking eachother so right)
Noooooo my lil Dorothy 🙁 so what happened to the other two..?
*left cheek twitches spasmodically*
“Uhh… GOOD! It’s going… good…”
Also, in Panel 7, looks like one of Walky’s eyebrows is escaping in the confusion.
It’s gone to be with Joyce’s eyebrows.
Good catch. I didn’t notice that he only had one eyebrow in low earth orbit there.
Next time on Dumbingball Z
Walky: Curse you Jason! You killed my nachitoes! YOU WILL PAAAAAAAY *goes super Walky*
Jason: What? No, how can this beeeeeeeeee *explodes after 5 minutes of screaming*
No guys, it’s okay, it’s okay.
Jason amd Walky are just counting the number of A’s being multiplied together in a^44.
It’s official: Jason sucks at tutoring!
I kinda doubt either of the walkertons are exactly making this easy for him. Not sure if it’s entirely fair to say he sucks at tutoring as a whole, he just sucks at dealing with Sal/Walky and their knot of personal issues that impede their ability to study
Unlike Walky, Sal was a willing student. Jason’s approach to the actual tutoring was to basically repeat the exact same lesson, in the exact same way. He never actually tried to understand why Sal didn’t get it the first time, or even change his approach.
Later when he asked Sal what Danny did differently, and she told him, his reaction was defensive anger and dismissing her explanation as “sappy rubbish”.
Jason is bad at this.
I see Jason’s tutoring has not improved.
I can’t find the video for the appropriate Scrubs clip so I’ll just post the dialogue here.
Cox’s shrink: How’s your anger been lately?
Dr. Cox: *flashbacks to himself screaming for 30 seconds solid* *back to real world* …Better!
I like this, Dorothy had some serious fan-girling going on over AG but in panel two theres the realization of what that actually entails and what the reality can lead to
A good comic strip
Like not being stabbed to death by a scarfaced rapist.
Ezachary, I really enjoy the John Wick series (Keanu Reeves is the best action star ever) but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t want to be witnessing him kill someone with a pencil, in real life
Looked pretty cool on the big screen though 🙂
1) That was Amber, not Amazi-Girl.
2) It was self-defense, not vigilantism
3) While she’s currently cringing at the thought of whatever Amber did to scarface, she’s been traumatized by that, but also almost certainly by having been stalked and threatened by a rapist with a knife. This is not a great moment for an “I told you so”
1. Does Dorothy understand the difference and who would answer to any crimes committed by AG, Amber or AG?
In her eyes AG and Amber are one and the same
2. Yes it was self-defense but it was also very brutal (I’m assuming) and Dorothy watched first hand a type of brutality she probably hasn’t experienced before
3. I’m not saying “told you so” I’m saying that Dorothy has had her romanticised ideal shattered by the stark reality of what those actions can lead to
Its a good strip because it shows the repercussions of those actions and they aren’t always “good”
Wait, does Walky have a chipped tooth? I don’t remember that in any of the previous comics.
What gives you the impression he has a chipped tooth?
The part at the bottom right. Because of the coloring/shape it looks like a piece of his tooth is missing.
That’s a bit of gum showing.
His gums? I thought Willis would draw that around the whole bottom and top of his teeth. That’s an odd shape and place for that detail imo.
I’m glad I’m not the only one to have noticed that odd bit of gum!
I thought maybe he has a little bit of spinach stuck in there. He is kind of a slob.
Willis, I think Walky and Jason is the best relationship you’ve ever written.
RUUOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUGH I CAN FEEL THE LONG DIVISION COURSING THROOUUUGH MEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!
All I can see is them doing Dragon Ball Z-esque powerup sequence.
So, is it a race to see who gets to 9000 first?
What? Somebody had to do it, and it has been a day already.
Next time on x+y=Z!
Yeah seems about right with how I do math.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!”
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!”
“AAAAAAAHHH!”
“AAAAAAAHHH”
“AAAAHH!”
Xiaolin Showdown!