I don’t really see Walky as the “Hands off my sister!” type. I think if Jason told him about him and Sal he either A) wouldn’t care or B) would laugh in Jason’s face because no way would SAL go for that.
I see Walky as the type to feel obligated to be “Hands off my sister!” but to put very little effort into it and to back down as soon as someone talked to him in a way he understood. He thought his his father had to fight the Dean, and I don’t think he was entirely joking: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/04-just-hangin-out-with-my-family/fancypantslounge/ Walky thought something needed to happen to create resolution for himself as he was very uncomfortable with his mother having a life before being a mother.
You know, for all the crap they get, the core Sith philosophy is based entirely on personal freedom. The Jedi are all about self-denial, order and stability, and the wellfare of the community at the expense of the individual. Oh, and kidnapping and brainwashing children based on the fact they’re force sensitive and trying to turn them into emotionless warrior-monks with no family. All in the name of bringing “balance” to the force. Which means attempting to destroy the dark side despite the fact that you don’t balance anything by that. You don’t have two bricks on two sides of a scale, and then take one of the bricks away and claim the scale’s balanced. Sorry major Sith fan here. Especially because it’s any source of passion that gives strength, not just anger and hate. Love and joy count as well.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion I gain strength.
Through strength I gain victory.
Through victory my chains are broken.
The force shall set me free.
Aside from “peace is a lie”, what part of that code is evil?
Well, they’re run by anger and hatred – love is considered a personal weakness to be expunged. And their philosophy is ‘if it helps you, fuck everyone else, you’re stronger so you have the right to do whatever the fuck you want’. That’s…..pretty fucking evil, imo.
Also, according to Lucas, the dark side is like a cancer shoving the Force out of balance, hence why getting rid of it is the point of bringing balance to the force.
Was this before or after he decided the force was midiclorians?
Plus in the “Legends” canon (I don’t know if the pre-film EU is still canon to the films or not) the original J’eddai used both the light and dark sides of the force and actually sent members who were leaning to the extremes of either to meditate on the force on moons representing the light and dark sides of the force until they came back to inner balance. Then the Rakata screwed everything up like they always do by trying to invade Tython. This then led to a civil war on Tython between light side and dark side extremists, with the dark side extremists being destroyed, with the light siders founding the Jedi Order. Meanwhile the original Sith species had a natural connection to the dark side that literally helped them survive on their death planet homeworld. They didn’t become a real threat until a bunch of Jedi who had fallen to the dark side (which happens a lot, meaning that either the Jedi Order is doing something wrong with their training, or the force is trying to balance itself out because two many people devoted solely to the light throws it out of wack) conquered and started interbreeding with them, bringing Dark Jedi philosophies with them to what was essentially a race of red skinned, non-tusked, space Orcs with a proud warrior culture. And then over centuries the Sith ended up being the name for the order. However, until the Sith Empire was wiped out they still continued to have things like honor duels and could still form lifelong friendships and even stable families without being killed, and had a prosperous (if at times unstable) semi-feudal semi-tribal society. I guess my main thing is that a Sith can still be a good person even if they believe in Sith philosophy, just like Jedi can be straight up evil at times while still maintaining their belief in Jedi philosophy. And the Jedi Order itself kept getting worse and worse. By the time of the prequels, the purpose of the Jedi Order is to make sure force wielders eventually become extinct. They’re taking children from their families at young ages, molding them into fanatical warrior monks, then making sure that these force wielders do not have children of their own. The reason force powers got so rare is because over thousands of years the Jedi Order slowly wiped them out by holding them in gilded cages and letting them die off without reproducing. That’s pretty damn sinister.
I’m not sure when he said this, but I believe it was after. He said the Force created Anakin as a sort of last ditch effort to balance itself by destroying the Sith – which, whether we’re counting Legends or not, was clearly a failure. The Sith come back in Legends and First Order are basically Sith in every way that matters. Plus the number of other Dark Siders who survived.
Also – Jedi, per the Legends canon, weren’t allowed attachment. They weren’t celibate. There were also at least two Jedi who got married and had families at the time of the prequels – Ki Adi Mundi (which was allowed because his species had a SEVERELY low number of boy babies and so they needed as many kids as possible to get that number up) and another one who simply flouted the rules (which was allowed because she remained sufficiently emotionally unattached).
Personally, I tend more towards Luke Skywalker’s Jedi Order. Much healthier. I also don’t mind the ‘alternative’ Jedi Code, which is more about accepting emotion, passion, etc. but not letting them blind you to the greater good.
And – at least after Darth Bane came around – the Sith weren’t allowed love or babies either, as they were a weakness, so the Sith would fuck the number of Force sensitive babies too.
In Jason’s defense, Walky has skipped a couple of weeks of class, drew him getting eaten by a T-Rex, and is CURRENTLY assaulting him in an attempt to get a higher grade than he actually deserves.
Right? I was raised with the expectation that an A is for exceptional work only and a B is just fine. And that’s certainly how colleges grade, in my experience.
At the end of the day, I studied art, graduated, am now employed doing art, and am fairly happy. The grades didn’t matter at all beyond pass/fail.
A character saying “Mum”? Yay, go stuffy English TA! 😛
I studied (pure) maths at university, and believe me there are some classes where scraping through is still acceptable, and getting top marks would be exceptional IF NOT BETTER.
I failed 4 out of the 8 classes in my third/final year, but to be fair those classes were:
Real Analysis II (doesn’t sound scary yet right? But then…)
Special Relativity and Electromagnetism
Introductory Quantum Theory
Quantum Mechanics II
(to be fair, I did pass Spacetime Geometry and General Relativity…although I have literally zero idea how I managed that xD)
Walky’s just got to learn to set the bar at an appropriate height depending on the difficulty of the course he’s taking (in QM2, the historic passrate was less than 10% – and there were only 10 of us in the class; the stats indicated that 1 of us MIGHT pass the class…and the stats bore out, one person passed it with like 43%!)
Walky – don’t assault the guy, even if he is a jerk most of the time; ask him for genuine help. Ask him what you can do to pull your grades up as far as they can go. Ask him if there’s any extra credit you could take to pull it up even further. You can still salvage this. IF. YOU. REALLY. TRY.
I don’t think he implied that – he just forcefully stated his intent to study hard to get an A. He’s not going “hiw can you not give me an A?”, he’s flipping out at the idea that it might be too late to get one.
Bha, I seen so many of these entitlement kids coming up from highschool-equivalent thinking they know math as they got top grades using the left hand blindfolded. What they really did was learning counting beans, sometimes in fancy ways, but still not mathematics.at.all.
When teachers pet suddenly don’t exists as concept and they suddenly need to think and learn, they flips and throws tantrums like nothing. Mostly comes around of course… But some seems to repeat it every course for the whole university stay.
He’s skipped at least two, not counting this one. The first one was Monday 4, because Dorothy’s alarm didn’t go off after he performed his first sex. Then two days ago, Monday 6, he was fighting crime as His Grace, Duke of Thingley, during class.
Wednesday 5 got timeskipped in the aftermath of butthole dad. I don’t think Walky skipped class that day, because I think he’d been drafted to help keep an eye on Joyce, but it’s possible he did.
plus, walky has been coasting by, thinking the math he learns in college will no more difficult than the math he learned in high school. because of walky’s inability to put in the work necessary for an A, of course jason would have a negative opinion of him.
To also be fair, Jason thought that Dina was the one who drew him getting eaten by a T-Rex, since that’s who he returned the homework to. I think the first encounter was Jason trying to approach Walky about his grades and Walky panicking before getting away as quickly as possible. So it would appear that Jason is a “you get one chance” type of person.
Right? Like, this is a cartoon world. It’s funny when cartoon characters are kind of dickish to each other–it doesn’t make them all irredeemable assholes.
You don’t say that to strangers though, do you? To kids you tutor? Like… it’s a horrible thing because Jason doesn’t know it won’t hurt Walky, and it could hurt someone pretty bad.
Jason starts off as merely blunt, and doesn’t go to total asshole until Walky’s grabbing him and yelling in his face. I’m pretty sure I’d instinctively hit someone at that point, so being a dick is a step up.
… How much experience does Jason have with exactly this that he doesn’t see a need to physically defend himself?
Honestly, at that point, I’d definitely be liable to punch him and yell at him for acting like that, so Jason’s being a jackass is a comparatively better reaction. At the same time, he knows punching a student would likely get him fired (as Penny pointed out, he’s selfish and pretentious enough that everyone else in the staff despises him and would love an excuse to get rid of him), he’s already used to Sal pushing him around, and he’s a total pushover. Besides, bitter snark seems to be his default mood.
Perhaps Jason could work on his delivery, but seriously this is college. The days of hand holding and gold stars are over and Walky is as irritating as every other entitled student whining about their poor grades. Admittedly graduate students don’t get much in the way of teaching lessons so they’re not the best educators, but it’s expected that their students should have enough aptitude to be there otherwise they wouldn’t have enrolled in the calls.
Right? I’m surprised by the number of people who think someone failing academically means it’s OK to say that they’re a failure in general, particularly from a teacher/TA. I know society in general agrees with that, I just thought there’d be more people here who’d agree with you.
I’m not surprised he said it though. I went back and read the strips with him and Sal and he was really nasty to her too. He really has always acted like not doing well in class means you’re just a bad person in general.
I can definitely see Mrs. Walkerton being the type to insist on actually seeing the grades, and website forgery may not be in Walky’s wheelhouse. (We can assume Walky’s parents are paying his tuition, right?)
Carol: Welcome home, David! I assume everything’s going well at school?
Walky: That’s… certainly something you can assume!
Carol: Can I see your grades, dear?
Walky: Umm, you… can’t! Because… they were… eaten! By a badger! I mean, a raccoon! Some sort of weird…. badger/raccoon hybrid! Badgercoon?
Carol: Young man…
Walky: I… I’m an adult now! I don’t haveta show you my grades if I don’ wanna!
Carol. I suppose that’s true. And I… *cracks open kitchen door* don’t have to let you in the kitchen…
*smell of warm snickerdoodles wafts across the room*
Walky: Ohhhhhhh…. *hands over grades* Fine, you win.
Carol. Of course I do. Go have a cookie.
That is something I actually ended up doing at one point in college. I tweaked the HTML from a the university’s site where you view your grades, before taking a screenshot to send my parents.
I think it probably ended up making me feel worse than it would have if I’d just admitted I was struggling at the time.
I don’t know about the US, but my university mails a physical copy of my grades to my parents every semester. I guess Walky could intercept them if/when he goes home during breaks, though.
In the event that IU doesn’t do this, it’s probable that Walky has never really had to lie to get out of trouble with his parents before due to being the designated “good” child, and thus it doesn’t feel like an option to him yet.
Hey, I totally would be for a Jason is attracted to Walky plot. Maybe his similarity to Sal helps him understand an element about himself. As for Walky? Well, there have been bigger surprises.
Certainly some of that, but when he walked her home drunk from the bar, he didn’t make a pass at her, but did try to find out how her other tutor had managed to help her when he couldn’t.
Can I ask why? Maybe it’s my academic elitism coming in, but Jason is no where near as bad as some of the T.A’s I had in University. I once had a T.A tell a 3rd year class that she knew that we had no desire to be in 3rd year and we were all there for the sake of pleasing our parents.
Mainly because, like Rachel said awhile back, I can multitask. I had a professor like Jason, who when I approached respectfully (unlike Walky) for help, had much the same reaction. I’ve also been on Jason’s side of the divide (my favorite BS student excuse so far: I couldn’t email you back all spring break because I left my laptop on campus. Same student I had to discipline for texting in class). But when you’re a TA, your job is to be the adult when an adult is needed, not further tear down the self-esteem of a student who is freaking out.
Well, I mean, I don’t have much sympathy for Jason. But that’s because he slept with Sal, not because of anything he did here. In this strip:
1) he told Walky it’s too late to drop the class. This is relevant information, given that it’s not unreasonable to figure that Walky might want to drop it.
2) he told Walky that it’s too late to bring his grade all the way back up to an A. Which, if he hasn’t even been showing up for like half the class, is just realism.
3) At this point, Walky assaulted him. Anything goes after this point IMO.
They have quizzes every week. If they all count for that much of their final grade, Sal would have been fucked a long time ago. No way they count for that much, and anything more substantial than that would probably have been brought up.
Also, when I was a biology TA, we were explicitly told not to council students on dropping a class or engage their “I’m going to be doctor (because my parents said so)” argument. Instead, if a student comes to you with concerns about those two issues and want more than just extra help with the class material, we were supposed to refer them to the professor, lab coordinator, or someone like that who’s actually faculty and has experience with this.
“Sally”?
But that’s probably true, but it comes with huge dose of implication that he should have dropped already and the only reason he shouldn’t do it now is that it’s too late.
Everything Jason says here is basically true and if taken strictly literally is good advice – Don’t drop because it’s too late and You’re probably not going to be able to get an A – but it’s all phrased to be as belittling as possible and discourage Walky from actually getting the help he needs.
I’d imagine she’d start with some heavy guilt-tripping and then move on to pressing the Dean if she had no luck there.
Like, legally she should have no means of access if he refuses to show her, but in practicality, when you have that much access to the Dean, the rules stop really applying to you.
That or, “David Walkerton, you show me your report card right now or I’ll stop paying your debts. I’m one of your investors and, as such, I have every right to see how you are performing.”
I’m betting on ‘David (insert middle name here) Walkerton, you show me those grades right now! I’m your mother, and I’m paying for you to go to university, I should be able to AT LEAST know how you’re doing, young man!”
Aw man the academic coach/higher ed administrator in me is like “no, no, Walky, your parents won’t see grades from the school until YOU show them. We can’t! Privacy laws! Also let’s work on some study habits!”
But the academic coach in me who has also heard every dang excuse in the book from Walky-like students is sitting back like “mmmhm. Shoulda thought of that in September, huh?”
“She’ll kill me, an’ then she’ll strangle you by your bowtie an’ those suspenders, an’ the world’ll turn to ice an’ everyone will sing praises of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and Cthuluh. AN’ THERE WON’T BE ANY. CHICKEN. MCNUGGETS.”
Stantz: Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling!
Spengler: Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes!
Zeddemore: The dead rising from the grave!
Venkman: Human sacrifice! Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!
Walky: My MOM will find out I got a C in Math!!
*Ghostbusters collectively suck in air through their teeth*
Mayor: *points at Walky* Okay, THAT’S BAD! What do we do??
Okay, now that he’s grabbing the suspenders, it’s time for Sal to walk in. I was going with her being angry and assuming Walky knew what happened, but now I’m picturing something more like “already tried that David.”
Oh right, I just remembered that Jason and Walky used to bounce off of each other all the time back in the Walkyverse. And here I was trying to figure out what the mouseover-text was referring to.
I like to think at the end of the semester, they’re going to demand her grades, she’ll refuse, and when they finally badger her into showing them, she’s got good grades across the board. Because FUCK the Walkerton parents.
Lawyer or Doctor, is that even what he wants to be ? – you know what scratch that I know that’s not what he wants. But I guess that’s what mommy dearest has already mapped out for him.
Okay, maybe it’s Cerberus’ podcast (which is awesome) influencing me but Jason puts down Sal and Walky both constantly in ways which implies they’re criminals. He also insults them and their attempts to do better. Most of this also comes with put downs about their background (which is upper middle class). Hard not to think he’s really really racist.
I feel like he gets excused a bit (not that he should be) because he’s British. Not because of the europeans aren’t racist fallacy (although, yeah, there’s probably some of that), but because it can come across as him calling americans stupid which is admittedly a popular opinion.
Jason made a bunch of assumptions about Sal and Walky based on the color of their skin which is pretty much the definition of racism. The fact Sal is a rebellious girl from a afluent family never entered into his head, let alone the idea she’s spent most of her teenage years in a strict Catholic school. Unless it was Saint Trinian’s, he’s just a bigot. Doubly so arrogant because he thinks Sal would ever like him for his treatment of her.
I could definitely see that. He’d also probably be one of those people who says that they aren’t racist without realizing he is being racist in that very moment. Then again, he could also be thinking “Where was this enthusiasm/need when I offered to help earlier?”, but that’s also not an excuse to be a condescending prick. Because, newsflash to Jason, sometimes students who are having trouble don’t leap at the first opportunity to get help, but eventually do change their minds. So he could have said, “Well, it’s currently to late to receive an A, but we can definitely get you a passing grade, perhaps a high B if we work really hard. And don’t worry, your mother can’t see your grades without your permission.” But he didn’t.
Yeah, the Walkertons must be doing pretty well given that they could afford to send Sal off to a private boarding school for several years in an effort to “reform” her and/or keep her out of jail. We haven’t been given much clue about Jason’s social class, but his style of speech and dressing seems to imply he’s not working class.
Almost certainly. I doubt it was an official “If you send her to catholic school we won’t put in her in juvie” … But it may have been “Since you have come up with the alternative of sending her to catholic school, we will refrain from putting her in juvie”
I have no first hand experience with any of this, but my instinct
( instinct guided by me being someone who is from the states but who has no experience with the criminal justice system, so limited knowledge about this)
is that it would have been her parents paying for the school
Interesting. I ask because reform schools are often a court alternative to juvie, but I have no idea if parents are typically paying for them or not. I can see the court assigning it and her parents having to pay for it, though, because she DOES live in the US, and I refuse to be surprised by the US anymore.
To be a little fair to Jason, Sal does do her best to come off as motorcycle gangster. Failing to see past that at first glance isn’t necessarily a sign of racism.
And there just went Jason’s shot at redemption, unless Walky somehow convinces him otherwise within the next few days IRL. Anyways, looks like Danny has another Walkerton to tutor. Anyone else thinking he (Danny) should see if the college has a tutoring program he can participate in as a part time job?
For being a crappy excuse for a TA and unethical behavior. Here was his chance to actually try and be a good teacher, and instead he decided that “snide limey” was the only flavor of personality a student trying to get aid should receive from him.
Jason’s about as dry and sarcastic as they come by default, and when a student tells you to fuck off the first time you offer help, then comes back later and mumbles that his girlfriend’s making him ask for help… yeah, I can see how professionalism might not be his first instinct.
The manhandling is a point, but everything in the first paragraph? Not an excuse. His job description is to help students, so rather than pissing and moaning about past behavior, just be glad Walky’s willing to seek help now and DO YOUR JOB.
I guess. It’s more of a personal quirk of mine that I can’t stand anyone being so nice I can tell it’s their job to be. I’d much rather have my teacher cracking snide remarks at my expense than being saccharine sweet.
‘Sides, did he say “no”? Nope. He told Walky his goal of an “A” was realistically unattainable, and he was promptly grabbed by the suspenders and screamed at. Job description or no, students have a responsibility themselves to conduct themselves in a societally-appropriate manner. Walky wasn’t. Jason may not be the nicest teacher, but he never once said he wouldn’t do his job. Walky, on the other hand, is being a *miserable* student and person in this comic, whether his irrationality is justified or not.
Can I present to you Mr. Casssady! *Makes snide remarks and jokes at my expense and others too! Comes equipped with sarcasm and language* I will switch him with one of your teachers.
Except as a teacher, you’re not supposed to be a dick to students, even if they are being absolutely awful.
Like I have a student who actively tries to harass students, is super sexist and racist, repeats nazi and white supremacist talking points, and makes rape jokes. Do I call him names or treat him like crap? Nope.
Do I point out the context of his actions and how they harm others with respect and a desire to improve his outlook on others? Yup. And I work like hell to try and limit his ability to harm other students with his actions.
Even kids on a really bad pathway need support and a teacher who is non-abusive or assholic.
That might seem unfair. But that’s teaching. And Jason absolutely sucks at that.
That’s why you are a good teacher, and Jason isn’t.
Again, Jason is the paid professional, even if his employer have done a crap job of preparing him for his position. But we can and should hold him to higher standards than Penny and Professor Thong does.
If you were already considering it, but hadn’t decided yet, go for it. I wouldn’t recommend bringing a purist along, though, because those people never know what they actually want, and this movie was not made for them. It was made for people who like fun, and it delivers on that.
Not that I’m a fan of Jason, but I do think this comic’s a bit relevant here: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/admirably/
Jason offered Walky unsolicited help before (which as Mike pointed out, is not something that happens often), but Walky insulted him and walked away. Obviously Jason’s a massive dick, but Walky hasn’t exactly endeared himself to him either.
Walky was obviously freaking out. The proper response to “okay I am finally willing to admit I am failing and need help” now is “oh good, let’s try and work with this”. Not “I AM STILL BITTER YOU REJECTED MY HELP THAT ONE TIME SO NEENER NEENER MISSED YOUR CHANCE”. Like… that’s how teaching works.
Idk, I can feel for him more here than I can 99% of the time, possibly because disappointing my mom academically meant I was gonna have a Bad Time. So I can totally identify with the panic here.
Walky’s panel two line reminds me of a psychology experiment. Badically, they had children complete puzzled or worksheets and then complimented the children on either being smart or working hard. The kids who were praised for the latter were more likely to choose a challenging activity later and the smarties were more frustrated when they ran into obstacles.
Also, fuck you Jason that the first thing you say when a student comes to you asking for help is that it’s too late to drop without penalty. I mean, maybe it wouldn’t have sounded so bad if he’d finished his sentence but jeez
It was all a coincidence, the sample size was too small and lacking diversity, the researchers had a bias going into the experiment, 12% of the children were reptilian humanoids, the entire thing was done in a complete vacuum, and the wording of the original report were left intentionally vague due to a lack of concrete results.
Get one every year. Not a Walky, per se, but an “I never got anything but an A before!” student. Including the sort who WILL drop the course if it looks like they’re not going to get an A, then try again…and do worse.
He seems more interested in telling Walky he can’t (and the zinger in the last panel is totally uncalled for).
I mean, yes, you level with students about their prospects for an A based on what points they can possibly earn coming up through the quarter. Maybe you even call them out on how unrealistic they’re being if they pull that “from now on I’m getting 100% on every assignment” when they’ve been scoring Ds and Fs up until now.
But you ALSO roll up your sleeves and help them, rather than putting them down.
…. *rereads* Okay, that last panel zinger was the ONLY thing that was a big no-no in my book, and I can put it down to Jason being exasperated by Walky’s panic attack. Bad form, but not an unforgivable sin.
Still, his emphasis should be on “Okay, let’s learn you about maths” rather than “Okay, here’s the maths about your learning”.
Indiana will take California, and paddle The Americas across the oceans as to drag everyone down into the sea. I hope Indiana takes down New York first
oh please no. Penny offering better grades for sex, Walky considering because he’s so desperate, and then the inevitable guilt and arguing over ‘sleeping with someone other than Dorothy when we haven’t discussed an open relationship’ and ‘do i really need to get better at math if i’m getting good grades’ ? nooo too much heartsick there :C no Penny/Walky interactions please
This was a replybut it got more generic so now it’s not
I probably would have been like that (Walky; desperate to please parents with grades) in my first term of college (though at least my parents didn’t pick out careers for me), except my mom fucked me right over with my student loans right off the bat and didn’t make any rush to help fix them* so I drained what little savings I had and ran out of food and my boyfriend had to start buying me groceries and basically even though unfortunately I kept my complex about bad grades, I stopped at all caring what she thought of anything I did at school.
So, I mean, I get it, even if it’s weird and dumb of a thing for an adult to worry about. I still panic about it and I haven’t been in school since like 2013, the ‘you’re smart you can do perfect at everything’ complex that gets ingrained by teachers and parents is hard to unlearn, even when you know you’re average, and I assume if you don’t get hit with a sudden loathing and lack of trust like I did that applying that to your mom’s reaction is as hard to lose.
Also Jacob’s so dumb for last panel comment; he’s TAing a first year class and first years who are used to being smart being hit by the realization that college is hard is the most common thing at a campus.
*not sure if the same in the states, but in Canada or at least BC you have to get parental forms to prove they can’t pay for your schooling before you can get student loans. I don’t know exactly how it works but you’re supposed to have to do them for four years, even though you’re expected to be over the age of majority that whole time. I loopholed out after two by having a commonlaw partner.
(in the end I got my loans, but not until december)
nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo……
Fuck, this is my exact reaction to even the concept of failure, though much more externally manifested. And, God dammit, I was was so ready to hope that Jason had fucking learned something! I was so proud, of Walky, because I knew, I fucking KNEW that his pride wasn’t intrinsic. It’s the kind of pride you construct from the expectations of the people around you, even though you’re constantly wondering what the hell they see in you that they have such expectations in the first place. And the thought of letting them down in any way is terrifying, because you’re always worrying what’s going to happen when they realize you’re garbage. And he finally broke down his walls enough to tell the person he thinks the WORLD of something that he thinks means “I’m garbage”, and she accepted him, and encouraged him to seek help, and it’s fucking being thrown back in his face, “You are garbage.” And Walky, you snap his suspenders hard, and leave to find help elsewhere. You and Dorothy, and your friends can from a study group, and you will get your grades up in no time, and will have fun doing so.
As a teacher, I can see Jason’s point about lowering expectations. I’ve had to tell students lagging behind that they had no chance of an “A” in the time left in the semester. Sometimes it’s just the math: you can;t get enough points with the assignments left.
Once a student had slept through my class and failed the whole year despite my efforts and our conferences, three F’s and a fourth coming,ask me in late May what he’d need to earn that A he’d need in order to pass 7th grade science. We had four weeks left. My response? “A time machine.”
If they’re passed the drop date, rationally Walky should shoot for passing.
It’s not that Jason tells him “You can’t get your grades to an A at this point.” That in itself isn’t an issue. It’s his previous statements, body language, and demeanor telling him “You can’t get your grades to and A, period.” That’s the problem.
I’m not reading that in his body language up until the last couple of panels, and that’s more a reaction to Walky’s… I don’t even have a word for it. It’s kind of gross and not at all what a TA should be saying, but it’s not entirely unearned.
I hope not. I feel like that would ruin Jason’s plot – that he needs to get his head out of his ass and accept he doesn’t know how to teach and if teaching matters to him, he needs to work to learn how.
Because right now, his head is still lodged firmly up his rectum.
I do want Walky to get help. I don’t want Jason’s flawed teaching style to be conveniently perfect for Walky. I want either both of them to learn to improve or for Walky to find a better teacher.
Well, it’s not so much Jason’s teaching style, since Jason doesn’t teach class and as far as we know no one else has gone to him for help.
Penny has commented on the Professor’s teaching: “Do you think Professor Rees is a good teacher? Heavens no, he regurgitates a lesson plan and then runs home to pretend to do research.”
It’s possible Jason would be a good match for Walky. In light of today’s strip it seems more likely he’ll put him off from getting any help at all.
If Walky was a real person of course we’d all like only good things to happen for him. But, he’s a story. I imagine that BBCC, like me, wants the most interesting and satisfying story.
That seems to be the central tragedy of Jason. That he refuses to learn and become better. Like Sal learned and grew and stormed past him while he stayed standing, angry, bitter, and unwilling to put forth any effort to improve himself.
He learned nothing from his myriad of fuck-ups with Sal, he’s unwilling to let go of his idea that his copy-and-paste what Dr. Rees says method of teaching doesn’t work for students who specifically are having difficult with how Dr. Rees is teaching, and he’s still got a stick-up-his-ass and a superiority complex over his students in angry petty ways.
And the end result is that he just ends up being the rock in the stream that a boat temporarily gets caught on before sailing on merrily down the river again.
“superiority complex over his students” <<<< yes yes this is the big fucking problem that makes me want to beat him over the head with the stick pulled out of his ass
Ughhhhh… Okay, I know this is going to sound rich coming from me, but I don’t actually like loathing characters. And I’d love to say that Jason is all right or getting better like Joe sometimes shows signs of doing, but… he’s bloody awful.
And yes, that’s my bias as a teacher coming through. Teaching is something I care deeply about and put a lot of effort and attention into, so when I see someone this objectively bad and harmful at it, whether in life or in fiction, that genuinely enrages me.
And let’s not be gentle, Jason continues to be awful here and adds a few new low points to his impressive pedigree here.
And well, the reasons for that could be many. He could just not be all that into teaching and would rather save time for what he is actually interested in (which, hey, the less time he spends teaching, the better in my book). He could be a bit racist (I mean, there’s some solid precedence there in his awful ideas of Sal’s backgrounds and former dating habits and there’s a common bigoted notion in society (yes, even in England) that POC are less capable at academic tasks). He could just be really elitist and look down on folks that are struggling and looking for help in a field he obviously cares about enough to go to grad school for it.
Either way, it’s not a great look for him, especially with his eyebrows in the panel as it makes him come off even more dismissive.
I think Emperor made the point a while ago that breaking bad news is always hard, but that Jason doesn’t even try to blunt it in any way and tends to wield it like a weapon to slash at the student daring to seek his aid.
Panel 2: *shudder* Oh, that “I’m a smart boy” has Mother Dearest written all over it. And I can’t help but feel that it was something she made sure to call him extra loud when she saw Sal was in the vicinity.
But I’m also proud of him, this is not an easy thing for him. He literally has no study skills and is building them from scratch and has internalized the idea that studying is an admission of failure or weakness.
And I love that him and his sister both get the same determined type of face when they are told to give up or that they should quit. I like that little bit of parallelism as it really shows what the two have in common and how they’ve navigated a world that is frequently awful to POC, especially when they are kids.
Bleugh, I am so bitter that Sal apparently does have crappy taste in men, just because it proved that fucker right. Though he immediately jumped to stereotypical gang names when for all we know she’s just dated condescending pricks like him, which is even worse and god why does Jason suck so much?
Though, really, Sal proved him right about her crappy taste the minute she fucked HIM, so.
My reading is different. While I don’t deny his attitude is not exactly warm, I think that hat more to do with his stick-in-the-mud personality than him being a pure and complete asshat.
His first statement I don’t read as anything like an encouragement to drop so much as a (maybe mildly annoyed, but Jason just seems to be permanently annoyed at everything, so that doesn’t mean much) deduction: “Oh, NOW you ask for help”. Remember that in their last interaction (Where Jason did seem to want to offer help), Walkie didn’t exactly look his best, or sanest (not that he looks his best or sanest often, but it plays ESPECIALLY poorly for him when confronting Jason). Also, he doesn’t allude in any way (to me) that Walkie should drop. Walkie’s the one who make that inference. If anything, he’s warning him that dropping would be even worse at this stage.
Again, his second statement is not surprising. Walkie’s been doing even worse than his sister. Given that she tried to explicitly get her note fixed by sleeping with him (again, reminder: he’s not just generically mean like Mike, he’s just a complete stick-in-the-mud), I think it’s understandable he has… concerns about where the conversation is headed.
Warning Walkie that a A is not achievable at this point is hardly being a bad teacher: remember that at this point he has NOT implied in any way or form that he’s not willing to help Walkie (he did genuinely try his best with Sal, even if that didn’t work out). Again WALKIE is the one the completely overreact to the idea, even though it’s not exactly a surprising thing to hear: he is WELL aware just how badly he’s doing in the course.
I’m not excusing his final insult, but I put it down more to the necessity of a punchline than to him being a terrible teacher. At no point does he imply that he won’t help him, if anything, each of his statement is more of a explanation why Walkie does need his help and a clarification of what he can expect (i.e. he doesn’t want him to delude himself with reasonable goals).
If anything, it sounds to me like Walkie’s ramblings are the only reason Jason never gets to the point of telling him he will help to the best of his capabilities.
I dunno, Jason’s precedented behavior does not push me to be overly charitable for the intention of his actions.
And well, yeah, Walky turned down help before. But so what?
Like when you’re a teacher, that’s just what happens. A student blows off an offer of help or an offer of support one week and then comes in a month later in crisis and needing lots of help.
And when you’re a teacher, you give that. You don’t get petty about being snubbed. You don’t get snarky at them. You don’t take pains to focus only on their failures as a person and a student.
Cause that’s the gig. And if you can’t put your petty shit and your ego away for the period of time that it takes to teach your classes? You have no business being in any way responsible for the academic well-being of students. And if Professor Rees wasn’t a tenured professor who clearly does not give a fuck what his grad students are doing to his student body, they’d both be rightfully removed from the program or at least removed from being able to TA classes until such time as they can prove a willingness to be professional and take the duties of teaching as seriously as they do their theoretical research.
I dunno, this is a field that gets me on my hobby horse a lot.
The point is not that Walky turned down help, it’s that he turned it down in a way that made himself sound unhinged. And I will say it again and again: Jason makes no allusion of any sort to being unwilling to help him. The “worst” he does (as I read it, ignoring the punchline because that’s a writing thing, not an IC thing IMO) is warn him that there’s only so much recovery that can be done at this stage.
I think you’re overreading into what it just Walky overreacting (as he always do) to flatly factual statements, as Jason is only ever really capable of making in a situation like this (cf. the stick-in-the-mud part).
I’m not saying he’s handling it well (honestly, he reads pretty blatantly to me as someone on the autism spectrum, just in a different way than Dina), but then I’m not sure most, if any teacher could handle a Walky freakout very well.
Oh, I’ve handled worse than Walky freakouts before. Full on manic episodes where the student is barely lucid, really bad cutting relapses, drug overdoses that I had to keep them awake from while the ambulance got there, health crisis that made it impossible for them to leave the bathroom on their own power.
And here’s the thing, if he was put off by the freakout, there’s a million ways to handle it because he’s part of a university. If he’s offput by Walky being “unhinged”, then he can refer him over to CAPS: http://healthcenter.indiana.edu/counseling/
Heck, the IU website even has “academic concerns” as the top issue on their webpage, so they’re clearly pretty well versed in all forms of grades-related meltdowns.
If he feels incapable or unwilling to support the student owing to said breakdown or a realization that his abilities are lacking and potentially harmful to a student on the edge, he can refers them to the Academic Support Center for much more regular tutoring and support.
And if I student is unhinged about grades, why the fuck would you lead with and center “yup, you sure are fucked academically” as the beginning of the conversation? Like, that’s counseling someone distraught over a breakup and going “yeah, you’re probably not going to be able to find someone new. You’re pretty ugly and you have a bad personality”.
And that context is important because Jason has a pattern of this and these types of little digs, using factually true information to make students feel like shit so he can lord his superiority over them. He did it to Sal repeatedly and now he’s doing it to Walky.
Like, I’m not asking him to be Super Teacher, but I have a base minimum he’s failing by a good 5 kilometers.
It’s basically the Hippocratic Oath: “Above all, do no harm”. I.e. don’t by your actions leave the student worse off psychologically, confidence-wise, or in their love for a subject than when they started your class.
Mixed with be professional even if you want to strangle certain students when you’re bongoing in the teacher’s lounge. And with a big heap of “never sleep with or abuse your students, ohmygod why do I even have to say that”.
That’s pretty much what my teaching style as a sub and as a full time history teacher next year (the old AP-History teacher retired and none of the current teachers in the history department is willing to take over the classes, so I got the opening Woo!) mixed in with a little bit of “spirit of the law” instead of “letter of the law” when it comes to things like tardiness or dress code (it’s a private Jesuit-run high school). The way I view it, so long as student gets in class in time to attend at least 90% of the period, I’m not going to give them detention. Mainly because I don’t want to stress out say the freshman who arrived about five minutes late because the class right before was P.E. and both the gym and pool are on the other side of campus from the classroom. Likewise I don’t need students stressing about how to hide the fact that they forgot to wear a belt (required part of the dress code) because then they won’t focus on the class. Especially if a student’s there on financial aid and doesn’t have a belt for school or a tie for the mandatory Friday Masses (like I said Jesuits). It’s why I always bring a spare belt and a couple of spare ties when I head to work, in case someone needs to borrow one. The dress code is definitely a good thing in my opinion, but I also don’t want the kids stressed because of it.
But then again, Mike, as a human being that has no supernatural powers, has the strength of Bill Cipher, and could probably destroy universes if he tried. So in reality, Mike is knot exactly the best example of who Jason is nicer than
Weird, but; mission accepted, I suppose. I’m holding you to your digital rum promise when I catch up.
(This actually does seem like an interesting comic, though. This is gonna be good.)
Panel 3: Oh, have you? Cause he’s been skipping a lot of classes of late. So you have some of his tests and work from like a week or two ago, but I would think that the massive gap full of nothing might be a bit of a major warning sign, especially since the last time you interacted with him, he had a minor meltdown about his performance in the class.
Ugh, just everything about this attitude of his sickens me. Like, students that are willing to show determination and a desire to do hard work are fucking rare. So to just throw it away with a sneer and a twitching eye is just disgusting to me. Like someone talking a beautiful piece of origami and blowing their nose into it.
Like, I don’t think he should snow Walky and it is absolutely okay to point out where he is and what his situation is and the limits that he can make up for the early section, but there’s a difference between:
“Awesome! I love that enthusiasm and I know this isn’t going to be easy but I’m willing to help out in my office hours or if you need more, the Academic Support Centers are on Briscoe, Forest, and Teter, with same-day sign-ups at 6pm every Sunday-Thursday. Now, I’m not going to snow you, you’ve got a tough road, you’ve already missed a key midterm and the missed classes really counted against you. But a B or a C in a class is not the end of the world with a start like this and I think with hard work you can manage it and salvage your semester and build good habits for your future math classes as well!”
And well, his way of over-centering the notion of Walky as failure. Not even looking him in the face, the dismissive tone, leading in with how fucked he is with no real encouragement. And like it’s also kind of a nasty follow-up and that is something he did all the time with Sal. Jump on a line of hers to use like a dagger to stab at a perceived weak point.
And well, you just don’t get to be petty like that as a teacher. Like, yes, I know, teachers are human and my standards are very high, but, it’s a job that is very unlike a lot of others. A teacher is often the first line of mentoring and support for a student and holds a lot of power over an often critical aspect of their life and development.
A bad teacher can poison a student out of an entire field they may have loved with a different teacher. Can make a student believe they are inherently a failure in life. Can create massive complexes. I teach a lot of kids who come with a lot of baggage from former shitty teachers and it’s a lot of work to undo those and get a kid to believe in themselves again.
What Jason’s doing is a lot of harm and yeah, Walky’s being a bit of a piece of shit, but that’s kids. They do that. Your role as a teacher is not to rise to that and instead safeguard their education and at the very least be professional.
Like I’m not expecting him to be a great teacher, but honestly, it’d be nice if he was just bad. If he was just a boring idiot who just had his habit of teaching the same way over and over again and referred people to the Academic Support Center when that didn’t work. But he keeps on rising to his students and pulling out just pure petty nastiness that has no place in a classroom, especially coming from an educator.
And it’s hard not to see a racial element in that given the races of Walky and Sal and the world we live in that so routinely shits on the capabilities of anyone of color.
Which means his “you can only get a B is probably also bullshit as well as unless there was a major test, there’s no way some bad unit quizzes and a handful of missed classes is an impossible deficit.
Ugh! Every piece of new information just makes his actions even shittier.
TBF, he’s apparently done badly on 3 or 4 unit quizzes or smaller assignments. I can see an A being out of the question, depending on their weight, but not, say, a high B.
I’m betting that ‘It’s too late to course correct to an A’ has absolutely nothing to do with it being mathematically impossible to get an A (which really shouldn’t be close to true if Walky was doing well the first couple weeks and we haven’t even hit midterms yet) and is just Jason’s assumption about how quickly Walky can turn it around and what his upper limit of ability is.
Jason also knows that Walky hasn’t been paying any attention at all in class, on the occasions that he’s even present. Math by its nature requires you to know the fundamentals before you can advance, and Walky has consciously ignored the fundamentals.
Him getting an A overall right now would require him learning all the course material up to this point BEFORE the next quiz and then getting everything as it came thereafter. And if he’s been trying in the last week or so, it clearly hasn’t helped.
It may not be mathematically impossible, but everything Jason knows about the guy who thinks telling jokes in class deserves an A (Walky’s own statement) and who draws dinosaurs eating people on the rare occasions he actually comes to class says yeah, this guy’s toast. And really, all he said was that an A is probably not going to happen, saying nothing about any variety of B. (3.8-4.0 probably not, but 3.5 let’s make it happen.)
A) Walky was doing well until 2 weeks ago. He had the fundamentals, he’s having a hard time with the big kids.
B) Walky does not show up ‘occasionally’. He’s been to every class except two and a half (once because he overslept, and the class before this one, plus half this class he spent freaking out)
C) Walky hasn’t been trying the last week or so. That’s kinda his problem.
“all he said was that an A is probably not going to happen”
No, what he said is that an A ISN’T going to happen, CAN’T happen. What he SHOULD be saying is ‘To make an A happen, you’ll need to X, Y, and Z’, regardless whether he thinks Walky is capable of X, Y, and Z, because X, Y, and Z is what Walky should be shooting for. If he falls a little short and ends up with a B, deal with that as it comes, but right now Jason is meeting Walky’s determination to strive for an A with dismissal. That’s not ‘realistic’ by Jason’s assessment (without any time spent working one-on-one with Walky) so don’t even try. Every single statement Jason makes is to tell Walky he’s not capable.
he saw the notes that had a dinosaur eating him I think, but I don’t know if he knew at that point who Walky was, and in any case being bitter about it would be dumb and shitty (so I guess it’s therefor possible)
He tried to talk to him at the end of one of the class not so long ago. He clearly saw where things were headed. It went as well as one might have predicted.
He actually returned those to Dina, apparently thinking “Eh, the dinosaur girl probably drew the dinosaur.” That’s…not a sign of Jason being competent. Because I’m pretty sure Dina would have put her name on her actual work.
Good point. So I’d say it’s Professor… Reed was it? Or was it Reese? Anyway it’s probably his mix up then… which means he could be a “scatter-brained professor” one of the most dangerous types of teacher for a class, without actively trying to bring the class down (lazy teacher on tenure, harsh bullying teacher, and strict stickler for the rules teacher being the other three of what I call the “Four Teachers of the Apocalypse”).
According to Penny (and, awful as she, I see no reason not to believe her, I see no reason she’d lie to Jason about someone they both know) he just regurgitates his lesson plan over and over and then rushes home to fake doing research. Sounds like your ‘lazy tenured prof’.
Teaching is a legit and difficult skill. This is why you can’t just take somebody who is good at the course material and throw them in front of a class. (Especially if they are not exactly patient or mature to begin with.)
It’s funny but I actually think Penny is a better teacher than Jason. She sleeps with students but not for grades (effectively Sal prostituting herself) then acts like they’re in a relationship (not to mention doesn’t give the grades). She doesn’t CARE about teaching but Jason expects the respect and power of being a teacher (when he’s a TA) as an option to bully students. He’s a TERRIBLE human being.
We haven’t actually seen anything of Penny other than that interaction. She may in fact be a great natural teacher despite sleeping with her students (She may even avoid sex with her students and just do it with random undergrads.)
There’s no indication of it though. She tells Jason that being a good teacher doesn’t matter and that he’s naive for thinking it does.
Confirmed in Patreon that some of the people she’s cultivating an attraction from are some of her students, as she specifically uses her office hours to get some to come and ogle at her.
Panels 4-6 (Walky): Oh fuck, this meltdown is brutal. He’s genuinely terrified by the notion of getting a B (and it’s a guarantee that he’s never gotten one before, though very likely has seen how his parents reacted to his sister getting B’s or C’s).
And this shows the shadow that Linda has placed over the two of them, even in the favored child role, the golden boy, there’s a catch. All his good treatment is based on him meeting their base standards and following her plan for him. And when that doesn’t happen… he knows what will happen to him because he sees what has happened to Sal. It’s why pedestals and “model minority” things are frequently traps, because the punishment for falling off those narrow stereotypes is frequently vile.
And his rant at Panel 5 really hammers home how much control Linda has always had on dictating what his life looks like and how her whims are seen as dominant. Like, I’m willing to bet that it wasn’t Sal or Walky’s decision to try out for a random Christian television acting gig. But nonetheless they were there. And her smirking “oh, he thinks he gets to choose his own major” with the Dean was frickin’ haunting and it really shows here as Walky notes how much she has invested in him becoming a doctor or a lawyer someday and how terrified he is of failure.
And it makes me rethink Walky a bit. I thought he had put a lot of his ego into being the “smart” one and not having to work at things. But when that’s challenged here, he doesn’t melt down about himself. He melts down about his mom and her expectations and her view of him. It’s clear that it isn’t where Walky has placed his ego, it’s where Linda placed his ego…
And ugh, there’s a nasty racist implication there connecting with a really nasty worldview that academically successful black students prove that their not like the “rest of their kind” and are practically honorary white people (until they succeed in ways that make white people feel like they aren’t still inherently better). And now I can’t stop thinking about his comment about being “generically beige” while his sister is black and how in general he seems very distant from any sort of pride in his heritage as a mixed race kid that is by our country’s standards black.
And how likely it was that academic success was related to whiteness in the Walkerton household and how Walky was likely rewarded for acting more “white” in all the ways in which Sal was punished for acting, in their stereotyped estimation as more “black”.
Ugh. Even not appearing in this arc, Linda makes a power play for inclusion in the Worst Parent Figure Face-off.
Panels 4-6 (Jason): Do I even need to say it?
He’s openly telling a student, a student clearly in crisis and having a bad meltdown… a student who is having a meltdown specifically about his mom’s expectations for him and how unforgiving they are, that he should get used to disappointing his mom.
Like… no. No, there’s no excuse for that. Like this would be a shitty thing for a random acquaintance to do. For someone in a position of authority and an educator to say this is… well, still not even in the Top 5 of worst things he has done as a teacher, but in most other teachers, this would top number one.
Like… we’ve all had experiences with shitty teachers. Teachers who bullied us, teachers who didn’t give a shit, teachers who hurt us. I once had to teach half a year of AP Biology, because our Science teacher started openly skipping classes in order to stalk college girls as part of a weird mid-life crisis.
But this is still a vile action to do as a teacher. To say to a student that they should be used to disappointing a parent? Especially a parent that causes this much fear in a student? It’s… inhuman.
And yeah, I think of the damage that shit like that does to a person, especially a person in a really bad head-space. How this could easily precede a suicide attempt in another student in another universe. And I think of the standards I hold all teachers to.
And yeah, it makes me loathe Jason. Because this shit is openly hatefully pettily vile.
And it’s why I think Walky would be better served by a pet rock as a tutor, because at least the rock wouldn’t abuse him in a weak point when he’s at his lowest like this.
I think it started being about Walky’s ego, but as things got worse and worse, he started thinking ‘Oh god, what are other people going to think, like Dorothy or – oh, crap, mom’s gonna find out.’ Because it was originally about how smart he was and how he always had it easy. But now as its getting worse and worse he gets to think about all those arguments he tuned out at home. And yeah, it’s vile.
I’m not surprised about Walky calling himself ‘beige’, though. It’s very much a thing in mixed families that a kid who fits in better with white culture or who are perceived as ‘whiter’ (thanks to racist expectations) will consider themselves ‘beige’ or ‘mixed’, while a child who doesn’t will consider themselves ‘black’ (in this case). I’ve seen it with twins. So this really doesn’t shock me. It’s very much a thing, part and parcel of preferential whiteness.
On the first part, I think it will be very awful with Linda. Even if there wasn’t all the racism behind her, this is where you learn what ‘you’re so smart, of course you can do it’ really means- ‘if you fail this, you are not trying hard enough, and you’re not valuable to me that way.’ And then, obviously, everything you said on top
The way you worded about Jason’s attitude put me straight into a shitty memory and I already knew it was harmful of Jacob, and this has a point I swear. I was at a summer camp, and I got (wrongly) accused of doing something, I started putting in details here but they don’t matter, and the counselors sat me down to talk about disciplining me, and I went into a full panic attack and couldn’t say anything except not to call my parents, I’d do literally any other punishment, because I knew they wouldn’t take my side, even though it was true, and I was way more scared of going home early than being ostracized by everyone else there.
I feel like that moment’s coming for Walky, when he realizes that they not only are strict, but actually don’t have his back any more than they do Sal’s.
I won’t specify, but I know how Walky feels right now. Everyone else seems to loom above him, and he doesn’t want his parents to see him that way. He is afraid not of failure, but the consequences that come from it. He fears what his parents will do, inducing mass panicking in him. (This is probably the deepest and most feely comment I’ll have at the moment)
It is not exactly the same because it is a different axis of privilege but I very often got that pressure to be a model science student for girls growing up. Even now as a pre-everything trans guy, I am usually the only non-cisdude in the room in my field. Sometimes it can get really uncomfortable and I never really forget that most people are surprised to see someone with chesticles in the industry. It is a surprise to everyone when I am good at it.
Sometimes it feels like my life is an exercise in proving people wrong.
I wonder if Walky has a bit of that sense of not only must he succeed at everything, but he must do it so thoroughly that even the racists who think “certain kids” (read: brown kids) just are meant to dig ditches have to give him probationary admittance to the white club (… which is a thing cisdudes have explicitly done “for” me. You’re not a woman, you’re a man now. We need to get you a man card. But it’s always probationary. Challenge status quo at all and you’re back out. Float the idea that you might have some sort of wibbly-wobbly gender-wender stuff and barred for life). Like if his existence doesn’t disprove all stereotypes he is fucked.
*nods* The token minority member is a really easy trap to fall into and I’ve often felt the pressure to be more capable, to be more friendly, to be more willing to go the extra mile than a cis or allo counterpart, because I know if I don’t, it will be used by others as a cudgel against all who share my identities.
Which is why I loved Carla’s “perfect girl” comment, because yeah, that expectation of perfection and having to be an ambassador all the time is super shitty. And often times only buys you “well, you’re one of the good ones” status of being an “honorary majority group member”.
Yeah and not only do you have to be capable but you literally have to be better than everyone to get seen as equal. Like legit, in undergrad the math students did not accept me as “peer” until I beat EVERY single first year on the fucking campus to win a university wide competition. Only then – when my ability was proven better – did I get equal status.
Also when the dudes “gave” me an “honorary man card.” Because girls aren’t good at math, and I hadn’t figured the trans thing out yet so chesticles meant girl, hence my girl status was revoked to them.
Toxic masculinity is weird. I mean they were right I am not a girl but it has got fuck all to do qith my ability to calculus.
Also filed under “how the hell did it take me to 28 to figure out the trans thing?” is how bizarrely happy that man card (it was an actual card. They got it laminated and everything) made me when they gave it to me. Like, I actually cried that night over it, I was so happy.
… and yet it would still be another 11 years before I figured it out. Introspection is apparently not my strong suit.
I feel like i need to say this on every Jason strip, but: he’s not a teacher. He’s not. He’s a socially isolated, thin-skinned, irritable on good days, British kid not much older than the rest of the class who’s likely being forced by the circumstances of his grad program into being a TA. He very specifically has neither the inclination nor the training to be a teacher.
Teaching is HARD. It takes training, practice, and dedication. Cerberus is a teacher, and she’s a great one because she has all three in addition to what I see as an obvious drive to be her best self and bring everyone around her along.
Jason has none of that barring a stubborn little desire to be good at whatever he’s trying to do. (Proof for stubborn desire to be good: he tried to offer Walky help 18 months of real-time ago and got blown off and insulted.) Jason is, compared to an actual teacher, basically a teenage babysitter trying to deal with shit WAY out of his league every time he steps into a job that he likely doesn’t even want.
Jason himself would, I think, agree that he shouldn’t be a teacher if asked outright. (As I said, I doubt he has any real choice in the matter. Yaaay grad programs.) I do think he’s legitimately horrible at it in so many different ways.
But the circumstances around his trying mean that I at least can’t feel ‘a trained, experienced, and dedicated educator is behaving this way with a child, they are human garbage of the lowest level, how dare they’, I feel ‘wow, Jason, why are you not at least shoving away this dude who’s literally physically hanging off you and screaming like a toddler’.
Is he being a jerk? GOD yes. But I have to admit I’d probably be meaner if some guy I’d actually tried to help started screaming and hanging off me in a gigantic tantrum because somehow drawing T-Rexes and skipping class didn’t result in a 4.0. I am not a teacher. There are reasons for it.
I agree with all of this: what Jason is doing WOULD be monstrous if Jason was a teacher by profession and Walky was legally a minor. But Jason doesn’t WANT to be a teacher, he’s only doing what’s necessary to get his Master’s degree and Walky is not a child, he’s legally an adult who is a few years (four?) younger than Jason. Jason is a jerk, but not monstrous
Except he IS a teacher. Right now, currently. And he professes a desire to be a good one, yet he fails to do any of the things that would MAKE him a good one. At some point, either he needs to stop pretending he cares about being a good teacher and be content with sucking or he needs to get his ass in gear and look into how to be a decent teacher because this is not it.
I feel what you and anonymously are saying, but Jason is in a grad program with a major TA component, meaning he’s in a PhD program. And the end result of a PhD program grants you a degree that basically allows you to teach anywhere, certainly at the college level and in most high school levels as well.
Part of the program expectations is that he will leave the program being a good enough teacher that he can walk into any math classroom and provide a quality education.
Now, he wouldn’t be the first grad student to look down on the teaching requirements, especially not the first STEM grad student. And I can sympathize with him being new, poorly trained, and having no real aptitude or love for the job.
But that’s part of his job as a PhD candidate and if he can’t handle that, he needs to drop down to a Master’s program* real fucking quick or start putting as much as he does into his grad classes and thesis research into his teaching, because teacher or not, that’s what his degree is going to certify him to do.
*And heck, even Master’s programs frequently expect you to be able to give a professional and informative school lesson. My thesis defense for my Master’s was an open seminar advertised in the department for weeks where I was expected to give a 45 minute lesson on my thesis topic on the level a typical undergraduate might understand it and was graded on my professionalism as a teacher as well as my competency with the material and ability to answer questions on the thesis afterwards.
Now I have sympathy for him, he’s likely barely older than him and in his mid 20s, he’s part of a field that frequently looks down on “lesser vocations” like teaching, he looks like he’s received next to no training from the perpetually out to lunch Professor Rees.
And deeply buried under all the things that make him a bad teacher is a small spark of what could make him a halfway decent one if he can push through his ego and his distaste for his role.
And I totally see both of your points. But I’m going to be inclined to be biased against him, because like it or not, he is in an educator role and that comes with certain expectations and requirements (like not banging the students because they’re hot and technically an adult). And seeing someone fuck up that role makes me all sorts of bristly.
Furthermore, when Sal called him a bad teacher, he took it as an insult to the core of his identity, later asked what Sal’s new tutor did differently as what he referred to as an ‘important question’. Not once has Jason ever suggested himself that he is ill-suited toward teaching, but simply blamed any of Sal’s failures on Sal being not good enough. That time you’re referring to when he offered Walky help? That was just after Sal called him a fraud of a teacher and it VISIBLY shook his self-identity, leading to him immediately reaching out to the nearest poorly-performing student to try to reaffirm himself.
Every piece of evidence suggests that Jason considers himself a teacher, which means he should absolutely be judged accordingly.
Y’know, I’ve been thinking for awhile now… Jason should really sit down with Danny and Sal to figure out why Danny was a more effective teacher for Sal. Yes, I know Sal said “he listened.” I think Jason needs something more concrete.
Yes. Definitely. Absolutely. But he’s going to have to be the one to take that step. That will be the sign that he can redeem himself. Until then, I will continue to be very sad at him.
Honestly, I mostly pity the people who’ve truly hurt, or upset me. They’re just kind of pathetic; clawing desperately for validation and status from and over others. And it ends up just, not being worth it to be angry. Like, “this poor asshole doesn’t even have guts to look at themself”, and any modicum of hatred I can find then just feels empty.
I think he does. His conversation with Penny long ago shows that he does think that being a good teacher is important, he just has no idea how to go about it. And no support structure in his department to help, apparently.
Hmmm, kind of a parallel with Walky there, isn’t it?
Yeah, turns out when you viciously tear down one kid for failure, the other kid becomes afraid to fail too. Handy little trick, that.
But yeah, this trick ain’t unique. Sal’s said before that when she failed, her parents were….unsupportive to say the least. At least Walky seems to think his dad will be okay. Sal apparently had to take this bullshit from Charles as well (and FUCK do I hate Charles too. He and Linda are just……..GAH, terrible bottom of the bargain bin parents. Like….lowest you can get without dumpster diving, which is where you’ll find Blaine, Ross, Clint, etc.)
Wait… Is Sal the older sibling? Because from others experiences and my own, older siblings are often neglected and younger siblings praised. It would make sense
They are. But as I have a twin, who is but 45 seconds younger than me, somehow is less neglected than me. He is also like 10 years less mature than me, but somehow is treated better even if he throws a fit. I also have another younger brother, and he is treated best because he I’d youngest
Wow, everyone else here is making really deep analytic comments and I’m just sitting here marveling at how this comic managed to go up just a couple weeks after the withdrawal period ended, making his anxiety that much more realistic to me
Don’t say that. Everyone deserves a second chance, even if they’ve done something wrong. You start over, with knowledge of what you did wrong, and share that knowledge with others. Make amends for what you have done, ad move ever onwards. We’ve all made mistakes
Not sure if you are being serious or sarcastically joking.
If you are serious:
Doesn’t mean you deserve to die. You should get help to change your thinking that leads to your particular set of abusive behaviours/actions so that you will not repeat them in the future.
Not going to lie, it will take work on your part, and you will have to at least try to earnestly make it up to your girlfriend, not just throw her an apology, but actively work on undoing damage you have done and working on improving so you don’t act the same ways again.
Being an abuser is pretty bad, but if you acknowledge it, you can change your ways of thinking and stop being one. It isn’t something you have to be until the end of time.
I don’t know what you’ve done, but no matter what you’ve done, you don’t deserve to die. If you’ve hurt someone, it might be healthier for you to be away from them and for you to get therapeutical help for what made it easy to slip into harmful patterns, but it doesn’t mean you are poison or don’t deserve to be alive.
If you are thinking about hurting yourself or otherwise trying to end you life, I would urge you to read this: https://www.metanoia.org/suicide/
And reach out the National Suicide Crisis Hotline which will be a nonjudgmental space to discuss what happened and seek immediate care to stay safe:
1-800-273-8255
Please let us know if you need any support in recovery.
Never mind on that second part. I was in a bad head-space and when I get down enough, I’m prone to exaggeration. Alcohol may have been involved. Still need to patch things up with the girlfriend, though. :/
INITIALLY I thought that this was Jason saying that it was mathematically impossible for Walky to turn his grade around to an A this far into the term, because he’s lost too many points.
But now that I think about it, this doesn’t add up on multiple levels.
First, I highly doubt Jason has everyone’s grades memorized like that, ready for instant recall. He doesn’t strike me as the sort who keeps tables of everyone’s grades and analyze them to the point where he has encyclopedic knowledge of them. And he hasn’t exactly checked a grade book.
But second and more critically… let’s assume that Walky started off getting Bs and dropped down to Ds and Fs, and has been averaging a pessimistic 50% on his classwork, quizes, and homework for the term. For him to be completely unable to get an A (which I’ll assume is 90% minimum, even if some teachers drop that threshold), he needs to have missed 10% of his points so far, roughly halfway through the term. But that would mean that classwork, quizzes, and homework combine for 40% of his total grade, leaving only 60% for midterms and a final. They haven’t had a midterm yet, right? And THAT is if there’s no “drop the lowest” policy.
Which…. is a little bit light on the testing for an introductory calculus class. I mean, I could see it, MAYBE, if they had three tests for three units and no comprehensive, but that’s more of a schema for a quarter system, and I’d expect at least four units from a semester course.
So I think what’s happened here is that Jason HASN’T done the math on Walky’s grade prospects. He’s just come to the conclusion that Walky’s pretty deep in the hole and doesn’t have a chance.
Which is… fair. But I personally have lost count of the number of times when I’ve been a chapter or more behind on the material, only to do five days of marathon studying and end up ahead on it.
Walky has been doing badly for roughly two weeks worth of classes. They’ve been in school for five and a half. He went from As/high Bs, all the way down to Ds and Fs, sure, but this was very sudden, and I doubt that was worth 10% of his grade, otherwise Sal would have been fucked, as she was doing worse for longer.
Jason’s an asshole here on waaaay so many fronts that it proves (for the first time for me) that he isn’t fit to be an educator. But it’s entirely possible that third panel Jason is taking into account the expected grades in the time it’d take for Walky to course correct – but that makes no sense, because Sal apparently did a 180º shift on her grades.
Though: I don’t know how it works in the US, but over here not all parts of the curriculum are worth the same % of your grade. It’s possible that the review materials (which apparently consist the entirety of Walky’s good grades) count very little to the final grade.
And Jason what the actual fuck. “You should be accustomed to being a disappointment to your parents” WHAT THE FUCK. This is Walky so it rolls off him like water off a duck but JESUS CHRIST YOU DONT TELL THIS TO KIDS. WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK. Worst tutor ever.
Seriously. Like, I frequently end up saying about Jason, this is what you never do as an educator, but… this is what you never do as an educator. Like, that’s some fucked up shit there.
Come on, Walky. What’s the worst Linda would do to a child that disappoints her? Disown her? Ship her away to couldn’t-care-less? Withdraw any and all support except what she absolutely can’t get away with? Telegraph disappointment at any opportunity?
And what’s Charles gonna do? Make backhanded insult that sound like compliments for the .2 seconds before you think about it? Pfft, would the Walkertons ever mistreat a child of theirs?
I think Billie is about to become their favourite kid.
Yeah, but that was about a GIRL offspring. Boys are better and deserve more tolerance, because they have more potential. Also, apparently Sal is darker-skinned than Walky (I can’t tell from the comic shadings, but that was a Sal-made accusation that I can’t recall anyone denying).
Not about skin colour, but possibly about other physical traits (Sal has her dad’s hair type, for instance), connections to the predominant (aka white American) culture and about racist ideas of how black people behave vs white people.
So yeah, Walky might get more lenience based on being the younger twin, a boy, behaving ‘whiter’, and on simply being the favourite. Believe you me, once a parent’s picked a favourite, it’s hard as HELL to change it. And it’s a common phenomenon with twins where people will arbitrarily have a favourite from birth – sometimes they justify it by saying they can just TELL one twin won’t/doesn’t like them or that the other ‘looks more like them’ or some other such crap.
Yeah, and it’s not like they’re going to actively ignore the child to their face as if to communicate that they are not even worth acknowledging… aw crap.
Danny should totally start charging for his tutoring services. He’s good at it and he could get some extra scratch for going on platonic friend dates with Ethan.
Nah, that would imply that he is actually worth something and that is just silly.
Or to be less Danny about it, he want a friend-relationship with Sal, not a tutor-student relationship, which is totally fine.
But I agree that he should start tutor other students as well… although knowing Danny that would just end up with him being in love with student A, student B being in love with him, student C sleeping with all three of them and student D pining for student C… because Drama is how Danny rolls.
Pooooooor Walky. Self-image collides with reality. He must be feeling kinda like Trump right now, except he’s not surrounded by sycophants who’ll discount reality, so he has to bear it all himself.
this is why parents shouldn’t use ‘you’ve disappointed me’ line on kids unless it’s something like torturing small animals or bullying
parental disappointment is a very powerful emotional tool and abusing it is… well, abuse
Carla’s take the cake and serve it to Carla for dessert for the next week. Seriously, if Blaine, Ross, Clint, etc. are dumpster diving and Linda and Charles are bottom of the bargain bin parents, then those two are like premium state of the art certified parents.
I think the general betting pool says it’s currently a competition between Carla’s, Dina’s, Dorothy’s, and Hank. Hank is definitely making up considerable ground, but Carla’s, Dina’s, and Dorothy’s definitely have the long-term advantage.
Hank’s reaction to Jocelyne coming out will be the moment that defines his place in the “good parent” “bad parent” scale. If he accepts Jocelyne, better yet if he protects her from Carol’s reaction, he could very well become “Best Main Cast Character’s Dad”, after arm wrestling Carla’s father for the position. Then again, at this moment I think Dina’s and Carla’s parents have the lead, with Dorothy’s parents in second, and Hank in third but gaining ground.
Everyone loves Hank now, but I’m still not sold on him being a decent father and human being for a week making up for the eighteen years (-plus, however old Jonathan is) before that.
Sierra’s parents seem pretty awesome. Reno Snow unhesitatingly put himself between a large, angry man and a complete stranger just because she needed help. That’s about all we’ve seen of them, though.
Oh very much, he’s making up ground, but he’s got a lot of ground to make up and I agree with Rukduk that a lot is riding on how he reacts to Jocelyne coming out.
And yeah, Sierra’s parents are also in for a shout. Especially her dad.
I do love Hank as he currently stands – it means a lot he recognized he taught Joyce toxic things and he needs to learn how to move along. That’s good.
I’d say he’s currently a light green on the ‘green-yellow-orange-red’ parent scale. He still can backslide though.
As is, Carla’s parents are solid green. it’d take a lot to move them.
He also has the advantage of being the parent of the main protagonist, with lots of trauma in the rest of the family and thus getting a lot of opportunity to show his quality.
Carla’s parents and Dina’s parents and Sierra’s parents may really be better, but they’re only seen as better in small doses or in offstage or in backstory. Hank gets lots of good moments up front.
Yeah, I think Carla’s parents are most likely 100% awesome from the get go from the sound of it, but I am heavily biased in Hank’s favor because of how he was there for Becky.
I have confidence that he’ll follow in his youngest daughter’s footsteps
I’m wondering… Jason must know that Walky is Sal’s brother. Is it possible that he’s trying to get back at Sal by victimising her brother? It’s the sort of passive-aggressive thing that I’d expect from his personality.
Entirely possible but it feels more like this is just his attitude in general. Imply someone who is struggling should drop the course, insult their ability to improve, snark at their desperation because he honestly doesn’t care.
We should have him Put On A Bus (trope) back to England.
As someone who also excelled in school until they suddenly didn’t, I wonder if Walky is going to have any kind of shock/surprise that a teacher is just telling him to eff off. He might chalk it up to being in college now or, if he caused trouble for his teachers in grade school, he might be used to them not wanting to help him.
My personal experience with this was feeling very betrayed that the same teachers who’d praised me suddenly didn’t like me at all. I’d thought they’d liked me as a person when all they really liked was that I made good grades and was quiet. (In hindsight I should have known better; their earlier treatment of me was actually crappy.)
But either way I imagine Walky’s going to wonder why Jason’s refusing to help him now when he was willing to earlier.
Of course, given Jason’s approach this time, I’m starting to wonder if last time he’d just been intending to tell Walky he should drop the class while he still could.
1) When I said “teacher’s who’d praised me” I was talking solely about my own experience with this. I wasn’t saying that this happened to Walky too. I’m not sure that he’s had praise from teachers at all, which is one of the reasons I’m not sure he’ll have the same reaction.
2) I’m not taking issue with Jason telling Walky he can’t get an A at this point. I’m taking issue with, “I should think you’d be accustomed to disappointing your mum”.
And oh yeah, I have once again committed a DoA/Whateley Academy fanfic<M, and have yet to be punished for my crimes! Bwhahahaha! (Yeah, I know David can’t read them for legal CYA reasons, but I am egotistical enough to think some of the others here might.)
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They’re gonna be best friends in a week or two.
Maybe if they get drunk together.
Someone get Walky a thimble full of watered beer.
or o’douls
Whoa whoa, hey now, let’s not get crazy here.
He can’t handle that.
Except that’ll probably prompt Jason to mention hooking up with Sal, and it’ll all be downhill from there.
Or Walky will hook up with Jason
I don’t really see Walky as the “Hands off my sister!” type. I think if Jason told him about him and Sal he either A) wouldn’t care or B) would laugh in Jason’s face because no way would SAL go for that.
I see Walky as the type to feel obligated to be “Hands off my sister!” but to put very little effort into it and to back down as soon as someone talked to him in a way he understood. He thought his his father had to fight the Dean, and I don’t think he was entirely joking: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/04-just-hangin-out-with-my-family/fancypantslounge/ Walky thought something needed to happen to create resolution for himself as he was very uncomfortable with his mother having a life before being a mother.
I’m just curious about what happens if Sal is the one who tells him.
He also felt like he and Danny were obligated to be nemeses.
Diet cream soda and just tell him it’s beer.
Wait, are we supposed to ship this?
Because, I could.
Javid?
Oh, I’ve been where Walky’s at…
Snap those suspenders
SNAP
THEM
Use your aggressive feelings…
Use your anger, your hatred. Let it fuel you. Let the dark side flow through you, use your passion, your fear. Through the dark side you are unleashed
You know, for all the crap they get, the core Sith philosophy is based entirely on personal freedom. The Jedi are all about self-denial, order and stability, and the wellfare of the community at the expense of the individual. Oh, and kidnapping and brainwashing children based on the fact they’re force sensitive and trying to turn them into emotionless warrior-monks with no family. All in the name of bringing “balance” to the force. Which means attempting to destroy the dark side despite the fact that you don’t balance anything by that. You don’t have two bricks on two sides of a scale, and then take one of the bricks away and claim the scale’s balanced. Sorry major Sith fan here. Especially because it’s any source of passion that gives strength, not just anger and hate. Love and joy count as well.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion I gain strength.
Through strength I gain victory.
Through victory my chains are broken.
The force shall set me free.
Aside from “peace is a lie”, what part of that code is evil?
Well, they’re run by anger and hatred – love is considered a personal weakness to be expunged. And their philosophy is ‘if it helps you, fuck everyone else, you’re stronger so you have the right to do whatever the fuck you want’. That’s…..pretty fucking evil, imo.
Also, according to Lucas, the dark side is like a cancer shoving the Force out of balance, hence why getting rid of it is the point of bringing balance to the force.
Was this before or after he decided the force was midiclorians?
Plus in the “Legends” canon (I don’t know if the pre-film EU is still canon to the films or not) the original J’eddai used both the light and dark sides of the force and actually sent members who were leaning to the extremes of either to meditate on the force on moons representing the light and dark sides of the force until they came back to inner balance. Then the Rakata screwed everything up like they always do by trying to invade Tython. This then led to a civil war on Tython between light side and dark side extremists, with the dark side extremists being destroyed, with the light siders founding the Jedi Order. Meanwhile the original Sith species had a natural connection to the dark side that literally helped them survive on their death planet homeworld. They didn’t become a real threat until a bunch of Jedi who had fallen to the dark side (which happens a lot, meaning that either the Jedi Order is doing something wrong with their training, or the force is trying to balance itself out because two many people devoted solely to the light throws it out of wack) conquered and started interbreeding with them, bringing Dark Jedi philosophies with them to what was essentially a race of red skinned, non-tusked, space Orcs with a proud warrior culture. And then over centuries the Sith ended up being the name for the order. However, until the Sith Empire was wiped out they still continued to have things like honor duels and could still form lifelong friendships and even stable families without being killed, and had a prosperous (if at times unstable) semi-feudal semi-tribal society. I guess my main thing is that a Sith can still be a good person even if they believe in Sith philosophy, just like Jedi can be straight up evil at times while still maintaining their belief in Jedi philosophy. And the Jedi Order itself kept getting worse and worse. By the time of the prequels, the purpose of the Jedi Order is to make sure force wielders eventually become extinct. They’re taking children from their families at young ages, molding them into fanatical warrior monks, then making sure that these force wielders do not have children of their own. The reason force powers got so rare is because over thousands of years the Jedi Order slowly wiped them out by holding them in gilded cages and letting them die off without reproducing. That’s pretty damn sinister.
Spoken like a true history nerd.
(Applauds)
Now, what about the Treaty of San Stefano?
(Don’t hold back – tell me what you really think)
I’m not sure when he said this, but I believe it was after. He said the Force created Anakin as a sort of last ditch effort to balance itself by destroying the Sith – which, whether we’re counting Legends or not, was clearly a failure. The Sith come back in Legends and First Order are basically Sith in every way that matters. Plus the number of other Dark Siders who survived.
Also – Jedi, per the Legends canon, weren’t allowed attachment. They weren’t celibate. There were also at least two Jedi who got married and had families at the time of the prequels – Ki Adi Mundi (which was allowed because his species had a SEVERELY low number of boy babies and so they needed as many kids as possible to get that number up) and another one who simply flouted the rules (which was allowed because she remained sufficiently emotionally unattached).
Personally, I tend more towards Luke Skywalker’s Jedi Order. Much healthier. I also don’t mind the ‘alternative’ Jedi Code, which is more about accepting emotion, passion, etc. but not letting them blind you to the greater good.
And – at least after Darth Bane came around – the Sith weren’t allowed love or babies either, as they were a weakness, so the Sith would fuck the number of Force sensitive babies too.
This is fun! I miss chatting legends continuity.
get used to having an F, walky.
Walky: how do I get a better grade?
Jason: no way of consequence
Walky: I must know
Jason: get used to dissapointment
don’t worry, Walky, Comic Time means your mum will see your grades about the same time the EARTH falls into the sun, so
still doing better than Trump’s handiwork LOLOLOLOLOLOL
[debated even bothering to post NOT FIRST since I was distracted by a Slipshine, but eh]
What in the ever living fuck does this have to do with anything related to my comment!
Are you high Ana?
AS A KITE
that is on the ground
Are we talkin’ sea level? ‘Cause, I don’t know if you realize… but there’s some pretty high ground out there.
Your comment says no, your gravatar says yes.
Ana Chron(ist)ic
The answer’s been before you this entire time.
If you want to argue politics might I suggest you do it here https://www.debatepolitics.com/
Who’s arguing? That the entire Trump junta is a complete shitshow is just objective fact.
Man, fuck Jason. “I should think you’d be accustomed to disappointing your mum?” That is… unbelievably horrible.
ikr, “mum” this is america ya limey bastard
Jason is wearing “braces”, not “suspenders” Yankee.
WRONG. Every American knows braces go in the mouth!
Let’s just relax over some chips and a tray of freshly baked biscuits.
AND IF I SO MUCH AS SEE A FRENCH FRY OR COOKIE, SO HELP ME GOD
Sorry, the can is out of order, please redirect to the loo.
I can’t help it if you don’t know your own language … madre de dios!
If it’s Walky is anything to go by, Jason is probably projecting
In Jason’s defense, Walky has skipped a couple of weeks of class, drew him getting eaten by a T-Rex, and is CURRENTLY assaulting him in an attempt to get a higher grade than he actually deserves.
He skipped one class and half of this one. But yes, Walky’s not being great here either.
Not to mention that Walky is probably the fifth kid today who’s implied he should get an A just for showing up and expressing even minimal interest.
This. There is nothing more annoying than college kids that think they just deserve an A no matter whether they do anything or not.
Right? I was raised with the expectation that an A is for exceptional work only and a B is just fine. And that’s certainly how colleges grade, in my experience.
At the end of the day, I studied art, graduated, am now employed doing art, and am fairly happy. The grades didn’t matter at all beyond pass/fail.
A character saying “Mum”? Yay, go stuffy English TA! 😛
I studied (pure) maths at university, and believe me there are some classes where scraping through is still acceptable, and getting top marks would be exceptional IF NOT BETTER.
I failed 4 out of the 8 classes in my third/final year, but to be fair those classes were:
Real Analysis II (doesn’t sound scary yet right? But then…)
Special Relativity and Electromagnetism
Introductory Quantum Theory
Quantum Mechanics II
(to be fair, I did pass Spacetime Geometry and General Relativity…although I have literally zero idea how I managed that xD)
Walky’s just got to learn to set the bar at an appropriate height depending on the difficulty of the course he’s taking (in QM2, the historic passrate was less than 10% – and there were only 10 of us in the class; the stats indicated that 1 of us MIGHT pass the class…and the stats bore out, one person passed it with like 43%!)
Walky – don’t assault the guy, even if he is a jerk most of the time; ask him for genuine help. Ask him what you can do to pull your grades up as far as they can go. Ask him if there’s any extra credit you could take to pull it up even further. You can still salvage this. IF. YOU. REALLY. TRY.
I don’t think he implied that – he just forcefully stated his intent to study hard to get an A. He’s not going “hiw can you not give me an A?”, he’s flipping out at the idea that it might be too late to get one.
Bha, I seen so many of these entitlement kids coming up from highschool-equivalent thinking they know math as they got top grades using the left hand blindfolded. What they really did was learning counting beans, sometimes in fancy ways, but still not mathematics.at.all.
When teachers pet suddenly don’t exists as concept and they suddenly need to think and learn, they flips and throws tantrums like nothing. Mostly comes around of course… But some seems to repeat it every course for the whole university stay.
He’s skipped at least two, not counting this one. The first one was Monday 4, because Dorothy’s alarm didn’t go off after he performed his first sex. Then two days ago, Monday 6, he was fighting crime as His Grace, Duke of Thingley, during class.
Wednesday 5 got timeskipped in the aftermath of butthole dad. I don’t think Walky skipped class that day, because I think he’d been drafted to help keep an eye on Joyce, but it’s possible he did.
Yeah, I was gonna say. Pretty sure that was deserved here. Nothing that Jason has seen Walky say or do makes him look good.
You don’t SAY something like this to someone! It’s a horrible thing to say to anyone. I wouldn’t even say it to
Okay I’d totally say it to Donald Trump.
But still!
plus, walky has been coasting by, thinking the math he learns in college will no more difficult than the math he learned in high school. because of walky’s inability to put in the work necessary for an A, of course jason would have a negative opinion of him.
To also be fair, Jason thought that Dina was the one who drew him getting eaten by a T-Rex, since that’s who he returned the homework to. I think the first encounter was Jason trying to approach Walky about his grades and Walky panicking before getting away as quickly as possible. So it would appear that Jason is a “you get one chance” type of person.
Jason’s not Dina’s TA. Penny is, as per Patreon canon.
Nonetheless, the T-Rex was returned to Dina, so the mix-up is certainly possible.
Oh yeah, the mix up was made, I’m just not sure it was made by Jason, as he’s not Dina’s TA. It’s debatable he even knows her.
She’s in his class, and since it had a drawing of a dinosaur, it was a completely understandable mistake. Regardless of who made it.
Dina isn’t in Jason’s class. She’s in Professor Rees’ class, but her section has Penny as a TA.
Is it? I say meaner things to people I *like*.
Eh the DOA commenters are massive shit stains
Am I joking, I’m I not…who knows!?
Are you? I for one can vouch: I am a massive shitstain.
A good rule of thumb is that anyone who calls themself a shitstain is not a shitstain
Unless they stab someone or something
I don’t know, do you deserve to be stabbed? I would assume no, but your avatar says ‘maybe’…
No, it says “Fools!” Gosh, it doesn’t even have any letters in common with maybe. (Sarcasm, obviously.)
Right? Like, this is a cartoon world. It’s funny when cartoon characters are kind of dickish to each other–it doesn’t make them all irredeemable assholes.
But you wouldn’t say something like that to someone you weren’t close with. There’s a difference between friendly ribbing and what Jason is doing.
You don’t say that to strangers though, do you? To kids you tutor? Like… it’s a horrible thing because Jason doesn’t know it won’t hurt Walky, and it could hurt someone pretty bad.
Jason starts off as merely blunt, and doesn’t go to total asshole until Walky’s grabbing him and yelling in his face. I’m pretty sure I’d instinctively hit someone at that point, so being a dick is a step up.
… How much experience does Jason have with exactly this that he doesn’t see a need to physically defend himself?
Honestly, at that point, I’d definitely be liable to punch him and yell at him for acting like that, so Jason’s being a jackass is a comparatively better reaction. At the same time, he knows punching a student would likely get him fired (as Penny pointed out, he’s selfish and pretentious enough that everyone else in the staff despises him and would love an excuse to get rid of him), he’s already used to Sal pushing him around, and he’s a total pushover. Besides, bitter snark seems to be his default mood.
Perhaps Jason could work on his delivery, but seriously this is college. The days of hand holding and gold stars are over and Walky is as irritating as every other entitled student whining about their poor grades. Admittedly graduate students don’t get much in the way of teaching lessons so they’re not the best educators, but it’s expected that their students should have enough aptitude to be there otherwise they wouldn’t have enrolled in the calls.
I’ll say! Suspenders are underwear, Jason! Get yourself a jacket and clothe yourself like a decent human being!
Right? I’m surprised by the number of people who think someone failing academically means it’s OK to say that they’re a failure in general, particularly from a teacher/TA. I know society in general agrees with that, I just thought there’d be more people here who’d agree with you.
I’m not surprised he said it though. I went back and read the strips with him and Sal and he was really nasty to her too. He really has always acted like not doing well in class means you’re just a bad person in general.
Fuck. You. Jason.
Also Linda, but she’s got a standing ‘fuck you’ already.
Panel 5 vs panel 6: Suspender snapping accomplished!
New goal: use the power of suspenders to get a better grade.
Typically suspender-power causes you to miss a few days of school.
Ah, but these are in-school suspenders, which, in my experience, ends up being much worse.
Does Walky realize that parents don’t see your college grades unless you show them?
Walky probably realizes his mother will want to know what’s up when he tells her she can’t see them.
So make some fake ones. He has no issue with lying, as revealed not too long ago.
I can definitely see Mrs. Walkerton being the type to insist on actually seeing the grades, and website forgery may not be in Walky’s wheelhouse. (We can assume Walky’s parents are paying his tuition, right?)
Carol: Welcome home, David! I assume everything’s going well at school?
Walky: That’s… certainly something you can assume!
Carol: Can I see your grades, dear?
Walky: Umm, you… can’t! Because… they were… eaten! By a badger! I mean, a raccoon! Some sort of weird…. badger/raccoon hybrid! Badgercoon?
Carol: Young man…
Walky: I… I’m an adult now! I don’t haveta show you my grades if I don’ wanna!
Carol. I suppose that’s true. And I… *cracks open kitchen door* don’t have to let you in the kitchen…
*smell of warm snickerdoodles wafts across the room*
Walky: Ohhhhhhh…. *hands over grades* Fine, you win.
Carol. Of course I do. Go have a cookie.
Dorothy wouldn’t approve. And we’ve established he’s not real good at maintaining lies around her.
Sure, until mom asks to see his grades. Do universities in the US give out report cards? Mine doesn’t.
That is something I actually ended up doing at one point in college. I tweaked the HTML from a the university’s site where you view your grades, before taking a screenshot to send my parents.
I think it probably ended up making me feel worse than it would have if I’d just admitted I was struggling at the time.
At least one person gets it. Lying in this case means giving them fake grades, not just talking.
Since parents have no rights to get grades, you can always just show them an altered copy of your own.
Not that I’d normally recommend this. I do in this case simply because Walky’s parents are not good people, and aren’t entitled to know his grades.
I would never normally suggest someone do this. Heck, my parents are the type that I would never lie to them.
Looks like he doesn’t!
On the other hand, she’s likely to ask and he’ll have to think of a way to get out of the question.
I don’t know about the US, but my university mails a physical copy of my grades to my parents every semester. I guess Walky could intercept them if/when he goes home during breaks, though.
In the event that IU doesn’t do this, it’s probable that Walky has never really had to lie to get out of trouble with his parents before due to being the designated “good” child, and thus it doesn’t feel like an option to him yet.
That’s probably a ‘your country’ thing. In the US, not only is that not done, but it’d be very much Not Okay unless you agree to it.
I don’t think Walky will have the same success in seducing Jason as Sal did.
it’s not over till it’s over give them time
…….or will he?
Dun Dun Dun!
It’ll depend on how big a fan Jason is of Dexter & Monkey Master.
Maybe throwing a toy in his head will work.
IN his head? That’s an image I didn’t need to think about (oh god so much blood). :p
Hey, I totally would be for a Jason is attracted to Walky plot. Maybe his similarity to Sal helps him understand an element about himself. As for Walky? Well, there have been bigger surprises.
like the ethanny dynamic
There might still be some residual feelings of desperation to help a student learn, since he failed so hard with Sal.
Jason’s attitude with Sal seemed less like “I didn’t teach her” than “she won’t sleep with me again.”
Certainly some of that, but when he walked her home drunk from the bar, he didn’t make a pass at her, but did try to find out how her other tutor had managed to help her when he couldn’t.
It wouldn’t help anyway, he’s clearly not willing to raise grades for time in bed.
Humorous as this is, I’ve lost sympathy for Jason.
Can I ask why? Maybe it’s my academic elitism coming in, but Jason is no where near as bad as some of the T.A’s I had in University. I once had a T.A tell a 3rd year class that she knew that we had no desire to be in 3rd year and we were all there for the sake of pleasing our parents.
Seriously. He’s a math TA. I’m amazed he cares enough to talk to the students at all.
I now understand Sal’s animosity toward her brother a little better
I’ve never had any for him in the first place. He hasn’t been in a situation yet to need it.
Mainly because, like Rachel said awhile back, I can multitask. I had a professor like Jason, who when I approached respectfully (unlike Walky) for help, had much the same reaction. I’ve also been on Jason’s side of the divide (my favorite BS student excuse so far: I couldn’t email you back all spring break because I left my laptop on campus. Same student I had to discipline for texting in class). But when you’re a TA, your job is to be the adult when an adult is needed, not further tear down the self-esteem of a student who is freaking out.
Yeah there’s a much more professional way to handle this situation that what’s Jason’s doing, that for sure.
Well, I mean, I don’t have much sympathy for Jason. But that’s because he slept with Sal, not because of anything he did here. In this strip:
1) he told Walky it’s too late to drop the class. This is relevant information, given that it’s not unreasonable to figure that Walky might want to drop it.
2) he told Walky that it’s too late to bring his grade all the way back up to an A. Which, if he hasn’t even been showing up for like half the class, is just realism.
3) At this point, Walky assaulted him. Anything goes after this point IMO.
Walky has only missed one and a half classes, but your first point is fair.
He may have missed a quiz that counts as part of his grade. If so, an A would be impossible.
They have quizzes every week. If they all count for that much of their final grade, Sal would have been fucked a long time ago. No way they count for that much, and anything more substantial than that would probably have been brought up.
1st point is fair perhaps, but shouldn’t you wait until the student asks about dropping, rather than imply they should when they ask for help?
When a student comes to ask for help, you encourage them, you don’t try to drive them away.
Also, when I was a biology TA, we were explicitly told not to council students on dropping a class or engage their “I’m going to be doctor (because my parents said so)” argument. Instead, if a student comes to you with concerns about those two issues and want more than just extra help with the class material, we were supposed to refer them to the professor, lab coordinator, or someone like that who’s actually faculty and has experience with this.
I’m under the impression Jason was going to discourage Sally from dropping the class: “It’s too late, don’t do it.”
“Sally”?
But that’s probably true, but it comes with huge dose of implication that he should have dropped already and the only reason he shouldn’t do it now is that it’s too late.
Everything Jason says here is basically true and if taken strictly literally is good advice – Don’t drop because it’s too late and You’re probably not going to be able to get an A – but it’s all phrased to be as belittling as possible and discourage Walky from actually getting the help he needs.
Whoops. XD I meant Walky. I blame autocorrect!
You can tell Walky’s still a freshman because he hasn’t yet gotten to the “Oh thank fuck I got a C” point.
Usually, in college, your parents are not allowed to see grades. Then again his mom is the dean’s ex so…illegal grade peeking?
More likely his mom will give him some sort of puppy dog eyes, or something.
Oh god that’s even worse.
Or outright tell him that she’s paying, she gets to see.
If she uses his middle name, he is powerless to resist her Mom Powers.
I’d imagine she’d start with some heavy guilt-tripping and then move on to pressing the Dean if she had no luck there.
Like, legally she should have no means of access if he refuses to show her, but in practicality, when you have that much access to the Dean, the rules stop really applying to you.
That or, “David Walkerton, you show me your report card right now or I’ll stop paying your debts. I’m one of your investors and, as such, I have every right to see how you are performing.”
Sounds more like what Clint would say.
I’m betting on ‘David (insert middle name here) Walkerton, you show me those grades right now! I’m your mother, and I’m paying for you to go to university, I should be able to AT LEAST know how you’re doing, young man!”
Linda’s not Clint. She’s going to go with the “Oh, sweety I just want to know how you’re doing” type of angle.
Eh, Linda’s basically Clint Lite®.
Same horrible taste, half the muscle mass.
In Linda’s defence (ewewewewewewewew I can’t believe I typed that), we’ve never seen her manhandle Sal like a rag doll before.
If his grades are bad enough that he won’t tell, the disappointment will be automatic.
And if he lies to them, there’s guilt and shame instead
Exactly. It doesn’t really matter if she sees them or not. If he won’t show them, she’ll know they’re bad.
See my scenario above. Moms have ways.
Aw man the academic coach/higher ed administrator in me is like “no, no, Walky, your parents won’t see grades from the school until YOU show them. We can’t! Privacy laws! Also let’s work on some study habits!”
But the academic coach in me who has also heard every dang excuse in the book from Walky-like students is sitting back like “mmmhm. Shoulda thought of that in September, huh?”
Is it October now? Is there a timeline anywhere?
Indeed there is! Today is Wednesday, October 6th (which also suggests DoA is following the days of the week as they lined up in 2010 even though the comic is set in the present).
Wow, at least now we know Jason’s not just a big dick under his pants.
“She’ll kill me, an’ then she’ll strangle you by your bowtie an’ those suspenders, an’ the world’ll turn to ice an’ everyone will sing praises of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and Cthuluh. AN’ THERE WON’T BE ANY. CHICKEN. MCNUGGETS.”
I think I could live with that.
Stantz: Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling!
Spengler: Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes!
Zeddemore: The dead rising from the grave!
Venkman: Human sacrifice! Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!
Walky: My MOM will find out I got a C in Math!!
*Ghostbusters collectively suck in air through their teeth*
Mayor: *points at Walky* Okay, THAT’S BAD! What do we do??
We’ve seen so little of Jason that I almost forgot how much of a pompous ass he is.
Don’t worry, he’ll always remind us.
Okay, now that he’s grabbing the suspenders, it’s time for Sal to walk in. I was going with her being angry and assuming Walky knew what happened, but now I’m picturing something more like “already tried that David.”
Oh right, I just remembered that Jason and Walky used to bounce off of each other all the time back in the Walkyverse. And here I was trying to figure out what the mouseover-text was referring to.
Back when we could enjoy personality clash scenes in the low stake days of alien murders and illegal abductions.
Countdown to banging in 5, 4, 3, 2….
What? I can ship, dammit!
Oh, no you don’t, young man! We have rules around here! STANDARDS!
NOT until you come up with a DECENT ship name! THEN, we’ll talk!
I hope Sal’s on her way to a really good grade. It’s be nice to disprove their parents’ favouritism.
I like to think at the end of the semester, they’re going to demand her grades, she’ll refuse, and when they finally badger her into showing them, she’s got good grades across the board. Because FUCK the Walkerton parents.
And Linda’s first instinct is to think, ‘Who did you sleep with?’
Or that she cheated. But there’ll definitely be unwarranted skepticism they were earned.
Or, if she sees Walky’s grades first, get it into her head that the grades are swapped around.
Nothing is ever ever ever the golden child’s fault.
Oh, no. Mike will have made sure to be right there somehow just as she thinks it so he can whisper in her ear.
I think I’ll be long dead of old age when we reach the end of the semester. 🙂
I wonder if she’d show her grades out of a sense of fuck you, and then they turn to their beloved David to ask him his grades.
Lawyer or Doctor, is that even what he wants to be ? – you know what scratch that I know that’s not what he wants. But I guess that’s what mommy dearest has already mapped out for him.
He chose communications as his major. My headcanon is that he wants to produce cartoon shows.
Okay, maybe it’s Cerberus’ podcast (which is awesome) influencing me but Jason puts down Sal and Walky both constantly in ways which implies they’re criminals. He also insults them and their attempts to do better. Most of this also comes with put downs about their background (which is upper middle class). Hard not to think he’s really really racist.
Yeah there’s also his use of thug, which I came across when looking for a strip a couple pages earlier.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/01-if-the-shoes-split/avail/
Wow. I totally forgot about that. How did I forget about that? That’s pretty damn awful, and pretty squarely racist I’d say.
I feel like he gets excused a bit (not that he should be) because he’s British. Not because of the europeans aren’t racist fallacy (although, yeah, there’s probably some of that), but because it can come across as him calling americans stupid which is admittedly a popular opinion.
Yeah, that last panel alone is eesh. Really really racist.
Like I don’t think he’s about to buy a Klan hood or anything, but dude’s got some fucked up views on non-white people he’s internalized.
It also feels sexist to me. Like, he’s pretty much all but saying she’s a *insert derogatory term for sexually active single woman here*.
like I feel like you mean a word for one who doesn’t get paid but in light of this conversation I think it could go the other way
(I don’t mind saying the words assuming they’re still not censored, but I don’t want to ruin the atmosphere)
Probably both. So… misogynoir?
Intersectional bigotry is fun 🙃
Dang, got a way with words there. Never heard that one before.
Jason made a bunch of assumptions about Sal and Walky based on the color of their skin which is pretty much the definition of racism. The fact Sal is a rebellious girl from a afluent family never entered into his head, let alone the idea she’s spent most of her teenage years in a strict Catholic school. Unless it was Saint Trinian’s, he’s just a bigot. Doubly so arrogant because he thinks Sal would ever like him for his treatment of her.
It could also be influenced by neither of them having a particularly good first impression, behavior-wise.
I could definitely see that. He’d also probably be one of those people who says that they aren’t racist without realizing he is being racist in that very moment. Then again, he could also be thinking “Where was this enthusiasm/need when I offered to help earlier?”, but that’s also not an excuse to be a condescending prick. Because, newsflash to Jason, sometimes students who are having trouble don’t leap at the first opportunity to get help, but eventually do change their minds. So he could have said, “Well, it’s currently to late to receive an A, but we can definitely get you a passing grade, perhaps a high B if we work really hard. And don’t worry, your mother can’t see your grades without your permission.” But he didn’t.
Yeah, the Walkertons must be doing pretty well given that they could afford to send Sal off to a private boarding school for several years in an effort to “reform” her and/or keep her out of jail. We haven’t been given much clue about Jason’s social class, but his style of speech and dressing seems to imply he’s not working class.
Sal was sent there as an alternative to juvie. Would the court make her parents pay for that?
Almost certainly. I doubt it was an official “If you send her to catholic school we won’t put in her in juvie” … But it may have been “Since you have come up with the alternative of sending her to catholic school, we will refrain from putting her in juvie”
I have no first hand experience with any of this, but my instinct
( instinct guided by me being someone who is from the states but who has no experience with the criminal justice system, so limited knowledge about this)
is that it would have been her parents paying for the school
Interesting. I ask because reform schools are often a court alternative to juvie, but I have no idea if parents are typically paying for them or not. I can see the court assigning it and her parents having to pay for it, though, because she DOES live in the US, and I refuse to be surprised by the US anymore.
In the state of Arizona, a parent can be charged on a sliding scale for being in juvie. So it is likely they had to pay for it in some fashion.
This will vary from state to state and even in AZ it’s not something that everyone agrees on.
That sounds interesting!
To be a little fair to Jason, Sal does do her best to come off as motorcycle gangster. Failing to see past that at first glance isn’t necessarily a sign of racism.
Motorcyclist, yes, but I cannot recall anything Sal’s done to indicate ‘gangster’.
And there just went Jason’s shot at redemption, unless Walky somehow convinces him otherwise within the next few days IRL. Anyways, looks like Danny has another Walkerton to tutor. Anyone else thinking he (Danny) should see if the college has a tutoring program he can participate in as a part time job?
Redemption for what, exactly?
For saying mean things! The greatest crime of all!
Oh, my! Well, in that case, I’ll supply the rope and VHS copy of Con Air.
Ehh, if you actually analyze Con Air it’s not that good a movie, and actually comes of a little as conservative propaganda.
The movie is for the guy being tied up, not the people doing the tying. We don’t want him to have a good time with it.
For being a crappy excuse for a TA and unethical behavior. Here was his chance to actually try and be a good teacher, and instead he decided that “snide limey” was the only flavor of personality a student trying to get aid should receive from him.
Ethics are for dweebs and costumed superheroes.
Well that’s ironic
Wow, Jason, that was fucking unprofessional. Or should we be accustomed to that too by now?
Well, he did fuck Sal multiple times. Jason’s not exactly setting a high bar for expectations of professionalism.
That is the joke I was making, yes.
>The joke
>My head
Jason’s about as dry and sarcastic as they come by default, and when a student tells you to fuck off the first time you offer help, then comes back later and mumbles that his girlfriend’s making him ask for help… yeah, I can see how professionalism might not be his first instinct.
Especially not with Walky manhandling him.
The manhandling is a point, but everything in the first paragraph? Not an excuse. His job description is to help students, so rather than pissing and moaning about past behavior, just be glad Walky’s willing to seek help now and DO YOUR JOB.
I guess. It’s more of a personal quirk of mine that I can’t stand anyone being so nice I can tell it’s their job to be. I’d much rather have my teacher cracking snide remarks at my expense than being saccharine sweet.
‘Sides, did he say “no”? Nope. He told Walky his goal of an “A” was realistically unattainable, and he was promptly grabbed by the suspenders and screamed at. Job description or no, students have a responsibility themselves to conduct themselves in a societally-appropriate manner. Walky wasn’t. Jason may not be the nicest teacher, but he never once said he wouldn’t do his job. Walky, on the other hand, is being a *miserable* student and person in this comic, whether his irrationality is justified or not.
Can I present to you Mr. Casssady! *Makes snide remarks and jokes at my expense and others too! Comes equipped with sarcasm and language* I will switch him with one of your teachers.
He’s being straight up manhandled by someone who has been a consistent jackass to him from Day 1, so there’s that in his defense.
I still won’t sympathise with Jason though
Except as a teacher, you’re not supposed to be a dick to students, even if they are being absolutely awful.
Like I have a student who actively tries to harass students, is super sexist and racist, repeats nazi and white supremacist talking points, and makes rape jokes. Do I call him names or treat him like crap? Nope.
Do I point out the context of his actions and how they harm others with respect and a desire to improve his outlook on others? Yup. And I work like hell to try and limit his ability to harm other students with his actions.
Even kids on a really bad pathway need support and a teacher who is non-abusive or assholic.
That might seem unfair. But that’s teaching. And Jason absolutely sucks at that.
That’s why you are a good teacher, and Jason isn’t.
Again, Jason is the paid professional, even if his employer have done a crap job of preparing him for his position. But we can and should hold him to higher standards than Penny and Professor Thong does.
It is impossible thqt he never disappointed his mom.
Impossible.
I mean, she hates Dexter and Monkey Master ….
He’s the golden child. You’d be surprised.
Also Walky guess who doesn’t actually have to sign off on your report cards anymore.
You know who else is called Jason? The Red Power Ranger, like in the new movie, which you should all go see at your earliest convenience.
So, anyway, Walky wants to keep his mom happy, and that’s totally understandable, but it’s starting to get really unhealthy.
I guess since you recommend it I guess I should see it
If you were already considering it, but hadn’t decided yet, go for it. I wouldn’t recommend bringing a purist along, though, because those people never know what they actually want, and this movie was not made for them. It was made for people who like fun, and it delivers on that.
“clenches teeth”….you are entitled to your opinion…
Not that I’m a fan of Jason, but I do think this comic’s a bit relevant here: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/admirably/
Jason offered Walky unsolicited help before (which as Mike pointed out, is not something that happens often), but Walky insulted him and walked away. Obviously Jason’s a massive dick, but Walky hasn’t exactly endeared himself to him either.
Walky was obviously freaking out. The proper response to “okay I am finally willing to admit I am failing and need help” now is “oh good, let’s try and work with this”. Not “I AM STILL BITTER YOU REJECTED MY HELP THAT ONE TIME SO NEENER NEENER MISSED YOUR CHANCE”. Like… that’s how teaching works.
THOU HAST REJECTED THE LOVE OF CHESTERFIELD! THOU SHALT BE CAST ETERNALLY INTO DARKNESS, WHERE THERE IS WEEPING AND GNASHING OF TEETH!
I used to enjoy Walky’s character more, but his lack of self-awareness and denial-fueled stupid behavior is really starting to grate.
Strange that he starts grating right when he’s beginning to get his act together.
Idk, I can feel for him more here than I can 99% of the time, possibly because disappointing my mom academically meant I was gonna have a Bad Time. So I can totally identify with the panic here.
This is brilliant
Walky’s panel two line reminds me of a psychology experiment. Badically, they had children complete puzzled or worksheets and then complimented the children on either being smart or working hard. The kids who were praised for the latter were more likely to choose a challenging activity later and the smarties were more frustrated when they ran into obstacles.
Also, fuck you Jason that the first thing you say when a student comes to you asking for help is that it’s too late to drop without penalty. I mean, maybe it wouldn’t have sounded so bad if he’d finished his sentence but jeez
It was all a coincidence, the sample size was too small and lacking diversity, the researchers had a bias going into the experiment, 12% of the children were reptilian humanoids, the entire thing was done in a complete vacuum, and the wording of the original report were left intentionally vague due to a lack of concrete results.
And “complete vacuum” means that those not accustomed to supplemental breathing gear were at a significant disadvantage.
Specifically, the disadvantage was that everyone died. (Except Batman, of course, as he can breathe in space.)
Get one every year. Not a Walky, per se, but an “I never got anything but an A before!” student. Including the sort who WILL drop the course if it looks like they’re not going to get an A, then try again…and do worse.
… only one?
Ah the fear of mom disappointment. Truly the worst kind.
Jason, you are …
… a penis.
The evil math teacher. He hates it when he passes us, but he loves to phallus.
*facepalm*
It’s weird, though. In most math classes there’s a 100%-final option
Not in any math class that I took.
Really? A lot of mine had the option, or, barring that, the classwork just didn’t count for much.
Adowable and wuvable Walky is somehow manhandling annoyed and sarcastic Jason. Priceless
I empathize with Jason. I keep hoping he is going to show himself to be a better person than he has so far proven himself to be.
He seems more interested in telling Walky he can’t (and the zinger in the last panel is totally uncalled for).
I mean, yes, you level with students about their prospects for an A based on what points they can possibly earn coming up through the quarter. Maybe you even call them out on how unrealistic they’re being if they pull that “from now on I’m getting 100% on every assignment” when they’ve been scoring Ds and Fs up until now.
But you ALSO roll up your sleeves and help them, rather than putting them down.
…. *rereads* Okay, that last panel zinger was the ONLY thing that was a big no-no in my book, and I can put it down to Jason being exasperated by Walky’s panic attack. Bad form, but not an unforgivable sin.
Still, his emphasis should be on “Okay, let’s learn you about maths” rather than “Okay, here’s the maths about your learning”.
Did you say “unforgivable sin”?
Indiana will jump over all the other states and fall into the sea.
Indiana will drag the other states into the sea with it. THAT IS HOW DISAPPOINTED LINDA WILL BE.
I hope it makes sure to take Illinois down with it, in particular.
Indiana will take California, and paddle The Americas across the oceans as to drag everyone down into the sea. I hope Indiana takes down New York first
What, hey, I need New York!
Linda will just grab the Power Boost Rod and level the whole continent.
Just draw a picture of a T-Rex eating your TA on the paper, Walky. Then you’ll be adorkable there as well.
As someone who’s been on both ends of situations like this, Jason’s an asshole, and Walky needs to accept that he fucked up and won’t get an A.
It would actually kinda hilarious if Walky goes to Penny…and she’s even worse.
oh please no. Penny offering better grades for sex, Walky considering because he’s so desperate, and then the inevitable guilt and arguing over ‘sleeping with someone other than Dorothy when we haven’t discussed an open relationship’ and ‘do i really need to get better at math if i’m getting good grades’ ? nooo too much heartsick there :C no Penny/Walky interactions please
This was a replybut it got more generic so now it’s not
I probably would have been like that (Walky; desperate to please parents with grades) in my first term of college (though at least my parents didn’t pick out careers for me), except my mom fucked me right over with my student loans right off the bat and didn’t make any rush to help fix them* so I drained what little savings I had and ran out of food and my boyfriend had to start buying me groceries and basically even though unfortunately I kept my complex about bad grades, I stopped at all caring what she thought of anything I did at school.
So, I mean, I get it, even if it’s weird and dumb of a thing for an adult to worry about. I still panic about it and I haven’t been in school since like 2013, the ‘you’re smart you can do perfect at everything’ complex that gets ingrained by teachers and parents is hard to unlearn, even when you know you’re average, and I assume if you don’t get hit with a sudden loathing and lack of trust like I did that applying that to your mom’s reaction is as hard to lose.
Also Jacob’s so dumb for last panel comment; he’s TAing a first year class and first years who are used to being smart being hit by the realization that college is hard is the most common thing at a campus.
*not sure if the same in the states, but in Canada or at least BC you have to get parental forms to prove they can’t pay for your schooling before you can get student loans. I don’t know exactly how it works but you’re supposed to have to do them for four years, even though you’re expected to be over the age of majority that whole time. I loopholed out after two by having a commonlaw partner.
(in the end I got my loans, but not until december)
You leave Jacob out of this. That boy is a saint.
I mean, I disagree, but even if I didn’t he’d be a dumb saint.
That’s Jason
Methinks you are confusing Jason and Jacob.
yeah I’m kind of dumb.
nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo……
Fuck, this is my exact reaction to even the concept of failure, though much more externally manifested. And, God dammit, I was was so ready to hope that Jason had fucking learned something! I was so proud, of Walky, because I knew, I fucking KNEW that his pride wasn’t intrinsic. It’s the kind of pride you construct from the expectations of the people around you, even though you’re constantly wondering what the hell they see in you that they have such expectations in the first place. And the thought of letting them down in any way is terrifying, because you’re always worrying what’s going to happen when they realize you’re garbage. And he finally broke down his walls enough to tell the person he thinks the WORLD of something that he thinks means “I’m garbage”, and she accepted him, and encouraged him to seek help, and it’s fucking being thrown back in his face, “You are garbage.” And Walky, you snap his suspenders hard, and leave to find help elsewhere. You and Dorothy, and your friends can from a study group, and you will get your grades up in no time, and will have fun doing so.
As a teacher, I can see Jason’s point about lowering expectations. I’ve had to tell students lagging behind that they had no chance of an “A” in the time left in the semester. Sometimes it’s just the math: you can;t get enough points with the assignments left.
Once a student had slept through my class and failed the whole year despite my efforts and our conferences, three F’s and a fourth coming,ask me in late May what he’d need to earn that A he’d need in order to pass 7th grade science. We had four weeks left. My response? “A time machine.”
If they’re passed the drop date, rationally Walky should shoot for passing.
Walky will, I expect, react in no way rationally.
It’s not that Jason tells him “You can’t get your grades to an A at this point.” That in itself isn’t an issue. It’s his previous statements, body language, and demeanor telling him “You can’t get your grades to and A, period.” That’s the problem.
I’m not reading that in his body language up until the last couple of panels, and that’s more a reaction to Walky’s… I don’t even have a word for it. It’s kind of gross and not at all what a TA should be saying, but it’s not entirely unearned.
Annoyance is not unreasonable. “Aren’t you always a disappointment?” is.
Yup, those last couple of panels are definitely bad on Jason.
Even the start is implying that dropping would be the best choice.
I have no idea what a Grethelwvier might be, and neither does Google, but You! Go! anyway.
Maybe Jason will turn out to be a great tutor for Walky?
Who knows, but this sure as hell isn’t a good foot in the door.
I hope not. I feel like that would ruin Jason’s plot – that he needs to get his head out of his ass and accept he doesn’t know how to teach and if teaching matters to him, he needs to work to learn how.
Because right now, his head is still lodged firmly up his rectum.
So you’d rather Walky not get help, if it allowed you to be right?
I do want Walky to get help. I don’t want Jason’s flawed teaching style to be conveniently perfect for Walky. I want either both of them to learn to improve or for Walky to find a better teacher.
It turns out that Jason is secretly a really complex trickster mentor.
Unfortunately he completely forgets what he’s doing and ends up teaching Walky kung fu.
….Okay, fine, I kinda wanna see that.
That is the ONLY acceptable ‘Jason is magically perfect with Walky’ storyline.
Besides Sal, have we seen anyone else complain abt Jason’s teaching style?
Joyce hasn’t complained has she?
I mean, he may not be right for her but he might be right for David.
Well, it’s not so much Jason’s teaching style, since Jason doesn’t teach class and as far as we know no one else has gone to him for help.
Penny has commented on the Professor’s teaching: “Do you think Professor Rees is a good teacher? Heavens no, he regurgitates a lesson plan and then runs home to pretend to do research.”
It’s possible Jason would be a good match for Walky. In light of today’s strip it seems more likely he’ll put him off from getting any help at all.
If Walky was a real person of course we’d all like only good things to happen for him. But, he’s a story. I imagine that BBCC, like me, wants the most interesting and satisfying story.
I changed my mind, I read your comment above and I totally want Kung Fu Walky now.
Doubtful.
Jason needs at least a few pointers in how to teach, possibly a seminar or a development day, before he can even begin to be a good tutor.
Or at the very least, pick up a damned how-to book!
So Jason didn’t learn shit.
Yay.
Walky, go ask your big sister for help. It’d be cuter and more pertinent to your family concerns.
That seems to be the central tragedy of Jason. That he refuses to learn and become better. Like Sal learned and grew and stormed past him while he stayed standing, angry, bitter, and unwilling to put forth any effort to improve himself.
He learned nothing from his myriad of fuck-ups with Sal, he’s unwilling to let go of his idea that his copy-and-paste what Dr. Rees says method of teaching doesn’t work for students who specifically are having difficult with how Dr. Rees is teaching, and he’s still got a stick-up-his-ass and a superiority complex over his students in angry petty ways.
And the end result is that he just ends up being the rock in the stream that a boat temporarily gets caught on before sailing on merrily down the river again.
“superiority complex over his students” <<<< yes yes this is the big fucking problem that makes me want to beat him over the head with the stick pulled out of his ass
Well, Walky hasn’t offered sexual favors yet.
Comic Reactions:
Ughhhhh… Okay, I know this is going to sound rich coming from me, but I don’t actually like loathing characters. And I’d love to say that Jason is all right or getting better like Joe sometimes shows signs of doing, but… he’s bloody awful.
And yes, that’s my bias as a teacher coming through. Teaching is something I care deeply about and put a lot of effort and attention into, so when I see someone this objectively bad and harmful at it, whether in life or in fiction, that genuinely enrages me.
And let’s not be gentle, Jason continues to be awful here and adds a few new low points to his impressive pedigree here.
Panel 1: Okay, so I can’t help noticing how quickly he turns to encouraging a student to drop or talking about dropping when a student turns to him for help. Like he did it to Sal as well:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-3/01-if-the-shoes-split/drop/
And well, the reasons for that could be many. He could just not be all that into teaching and would rather save time for what he is actually interested in (which, hey, the less time he spends teaching, the better in my book). He could be a bit racist (I mean, there’s some solid precedence there in his awful ideas of Sal’s backgrounds and former dating habits and there’s a common bigoted notion in society (yes, even in England) that POC are less capable at academic tasks). He could just be really elitist and look down on folks that are struggling and looking for help in a field he obviously cares about enough to go to grad school for it.
Either way, it’s not a great look for him, especially with his eyebrows in the panel as it makes him come off even more dismissive.
I think Emperor made the point a while ago that breaking bad news is always hard, but that Jason doesn’t even try to blunt it in any way and tends to wield it like a weapon to slash at the student daring to seek his aid.
Panel 2: *shudder* Oh, that “I’m a smart boy” has Mother Dearest written all over it. And I can’t help but feel that it was something she made sure to call him extra loud when she saw Sal was in the vicinity.
But I’m also proud of him, this is not an easy thing for him. He literally has no study skills and is building them from scratch and has internalized the idea that studying is an admission of failure or weakness.
And I love that him and his sister both get the same determined type of face when they are told to give up or that they should quit. I like that little bit of parallelism as it really shows what the two have in common and how they’ve navigated a world that is frequently awful to POC, especially when they are kids.
Bleugh, I am so bitter that Sal apparently does have crappy taste in men, just because it proved that fucker right. Though he immediately jumped to stereotypical gang names when for all we know she’s just dated condescending pricks like him, which is even worse and god why does Jason suck so much?
Though, really, Sal proved him right about her crappy taste the minute she fucked HIM, so.
I really wish her attitude of “fuck it, I guess you’ll do” had hurt his self esteem rather than his esteem of her (because it should have).
*snorts* Yes. Sal hitting him in his ego is rapidly becoming the highlight go his appearances.
Every incident with him just makes me love the comics where she absolutely calls him out on his shit so much more satisfying.
Ugh, that sentence really jumbled itself there.
It really does, doesn’t it?
We certainly do that the thing.
Wait, crap, this was a reply to the wrong comment. That was supposed to be in response to how satisfying Sal calling Jason out is.
My reading is different. While I don’t deny his attitude is not exactly warm, I think that hat more to do with his stick-in-the-mud personality than him being a pure and complete asshat.
His first statement I don’t read as anything like an encouragement to drop so much as a (maybe mildly annoyed, but Jason just seems to be permanently annoyed at everything, so that doesn’t mean much) deduction: “Oh, NOW you ask for help”. Remember that in their last interaction (Where Jason did seem to want to offer help), Walkie didn’t exactly look his best, or sanest (not that he looks his best or sanest often, but it plays ESPECIALLY poorly for him when confronting Jason). Also, he doesn’t allude in any way (to me) that Walkie should drop. Walkie’s the one who make that inference. If anything, he’s warning him that dropping would be even worse at this stage.
Again, his second statement is not surprising. Walkie’s been doing even worse than his sister. Given that she tried to explicitly get her note fixed by sleeping with him (again, reminder: he’s not just generically mean like Mike, he’s just a complete stick-in-the-mud), I think it’s understandable he has… concerns about where the conversation is headed.
Warning Walkie that a A is not achievable at this point is hardly being a bad teacher: remember that at this point he has NOT implied in any way or form that he’s not willing to help Walkie (he did genuinely try his best with Sal, even if that didn’t work out). Again WALKIE is the one the completely overreact to the idea, even though it’s not exactly a surprising thing to hear: he is WELL aware just how badly he’s doing in the course.
I’m not excusing his final insult, but I put it down more to the necessity of a punchline than to him being a terrible teacher. At no point does he imply that he won’t help him, if anything, each of his statement is more of a explanation why Walkie does need his help and a clarification of what he can expect (i.e. he doesn’t want him to delude himself with reasonable goals).
If anything, it sounds to me like Walkie’s ramblings are the only reason Jason never gets to the point of telling him he will help to the best of his capabilities.
*delude himself with unreasonable goal
argh
I dunno, Jason’s precedented behavior does not push me to be overly charitable for the intention of his actions.
And well, yeah, Walky turned down help before. But so what?
Like when you’re a teacher, that’s just what happens. A student blows off an offer of help or an offer of support one week and then comes in a month later in crisis and needing lots of help.
And when you’re a teacher, you give that. You don’t get petty about being snubbed. You don’t get snarky at them. You don’t take pains to focus only on their failures as a person and a student.
Cause that’s the gig. And if you can’t put your petty shit and your ego away for the period of time that it takes to teach your classes? You have no business being in any way responsible for the academic well-being of students. And if Professor Rees wasn’t a tenured professor who clearly does not give a fuck what his grad students are doing to his student body, they’d both be rightfully removed from the program or at least removed from being able to TA classes until such time as they can prove a willingness to be professional and take the duties of teaching as seriously as they do their theoretical research.
I dunno, this is a field that gets me on my hobby horse a lot.
The point is not that Walky turned down help, it’s that he turned it down in a way that made himself sound unhinged. And I will say it again and again: Jason makes no allusion of any sort to being unwilling to help him. The “worst” he does (as I read it, ignoring the punchline because that’s a writing thing, not an IC thing IMO) is warn him that there’s only so much recovery that can be done at this stage.
I think you’re overreading into what it just Walky overreacting (as he always do) to flatly factual statements, as Jason is only ever really capable of making in a situation like this (cf. the stick-in-the-mud part).
I’m not saying he’s handling it well (honestly, he reads pretty blatantly to me as someone on the autism spectrum, just in a different way than Dina), but then I’m not sure most, if any teacher could handle a Walky freakout very well.
I think your first sentence is more of a reason to why Jason should be willing (and also, less surprised) to help Walky and not be an ass, though.
Oh, I’ve handled worse than Walky freakouts before. Full on manic episodes where the student is barely lucid, really bad cutting relapses, drug overdoses that I had to keep them awake from while the ambulance got there, health crisis that made it impossible for them to leave the bathroom on their own power.
And here’s the thing, if he was put off by the freakout, there’s a million ways to handle it because he’s part of a university. If he’s offput by Walky being “unhinged”, then he can refer him over to CAPS:
http://healthcenter.indiana.edu/counseling/
Heck, the IU website even has “academic concerns” as the top issue on their webpage, so they’re clearly pretty well versed in all forms of grades-related meltdowns.
If he feels incapable or unwilling to support the student owing to said breakdown or a realization that his abilities are lacking and potentially harmful to a student on the edge, he can refers them to the Academic Support Center for much more regular tutoring and support.
And if I student is unhinged about grades, why the fuck would you lead with and center “yup, you sure are fucked academically” as the beginning of the conversation? Like, that’s counseling someone distraught over a breakup and going “yeah, you’re probably not going to be able to find someone new. You’re pretty ugly and you have a bad personality”.
And that context is important because Jason has a pattern of this and these types of little digs, using factually true information to make students feel like shit so he can lord his superiority over them. He did it to Sal repeatedly and now he’s doing it to Walky.
Like, I’m not asking him to be Super Teacher, but I have a base minimum he’s failing by a good 5 kilometers.
I’m kinda curious now, what is your base minimum for teachers?
It’s basically the Hippocratic Oath: “Above all, do no harm”. I.e. don’t by your actions leave the student worse off psychologically, confidence-wise, or in their love for a subject than when they started your class.
Mixed with be professional even if you want to strangle certain students when you’re bongoing in the teacher’s lounge. And with a big heap of “never sleep with or abuse your students, ohmygod why do I even have to say that”.
Basically, a minimally acceptable class should be like a wet fart, a waste of time with no lasting repercussions.
I need to update my pedagogical philosophy document.
That seems reasonable!
That’s pretty much what my teaching style as a sub and as a full time history teacher next year (the old AP-History teacher retired and none of the current teachers in the history department is willing to take over the classes, so I got the opening Woo!) mixed in with a little bit of “spirit of the law” instead of “letter of the law” when it comes to things like tardiness or dress code (it’s a private Jesuit-run high school). The way I view it, so long as student gets in class in time to attend at least 90% of the period, I’m not going to give them detention. Mainly because I don’t want to stress out say the freshman who arrived about five minutes late because the class right before was P.E. and both the gym and pool are on the other side of campus from the classroom. Likewise I don’t need students stressing about how to hide the fact that they forgot to wear a belt (required part of the dress code) because then they won’t focus on the class. Especially if a student’s there on financial aid and doesn’t have a belt for school or a tie for the mandatory Friday Masses (like I said Jesuits). It’s why I always bring a spare belt and a couple of spare ties when I head to work, in case someone needs to borrow one. The dress code is definitely a good thing in my opinion, but I also don’t want the kids stressed because of it.
But then again, Mike, as a human being that has no supernatural powers, has the strength of Bill Cipher, and could probably destroy universes if he tried. So in reality, Mike is knot exactly the best example of who Jason is nicer than
“I’ve never been a disappointment on paper before!”
I love this comic. Walky freaking out is the funniest Walky.
nnooooooooitisheartbreaking!
*MooseHugs to Grethelwvier*
I have no idea what moosehugs are, but
*appreciated*
Read comments by Lars_B on the webcomic Stand Still. Stay Silent. I will send you a MeadMouse and rum once you get there
Weird, but; mission accepted, I suppose. I’m holding you to your digital rum promise when I catch up.
(This actually does seem like an interesting comic, though. This is gonna be good.)
Someone else who reads SSSS! 😀
Yep, my Disqus account is KBoysx1 if you want to know. RukDuk reads it too!
Panel 3: Oh, have you? Cause he’s been skipping a lot of classes of late. So you have some of his tests and work from like a week or two ago, but I would think that the massive gap full of nothing might be a bit of a major warning sign, especially since the last time you interacted with him, he had a minor meltdown about his performance in the class.
Ugh, just everything about this attitude of his sickens me. Like, students that are willing to show determination and a desire to do hard work are fucking rare. So to just throw it away with a sneer and a twitching eye is just disgusting to me. Like someone talking a beautiful piece of origami and blowing their nose into it.
Like, I don’t think he should snow Walky and it is absolutely okay to point out where he is and what his situation is and the limits that he can make up for the early section, but there’s a difference between:
“Awesome! I love that enthusiasm and I know this isn’t going to be easy but I’m willing to help out in my office hours or if you need more, the Academic Support Centers are on Briscoe, Forest, and Teter, with same-day sign-ups at 6pm every Sunday-Thursday. Now, I’m not going to snow you, you’ve got a tough road, you’ve already missed a key midterm and the missed classes really counted against you. But a B or a C in a class is not the end of the world with a start like this and I think with hard work you can manage it and salvage your semester and build good habits for your future math classes as well!”
And well, his way of over-centering the notion of Walky as failure. Not even looking him in the face, the dismissive tone, leading in with how fucked he is with no real encouragement. And like it’s also kind of a nasty follow-up and that is something he did all the time with Sal. Jump on a line of hers to use like a dagger to stab at a perceived weak point.
And well, you just don’t get to be petty like that as a teacher. Like, yes, I know, teachers are human and my standards are very high, but, it’s a job that is very unlike a lot of others. A teacher is often the first line of mentoring and support for a student and holds a lot of power over an often critical aspect of their life and development.
A bad teacher can poison a student out of an entire field they may have loved with a different teacher. Can make a student believe they are inherently a failure in life. Can create massive complexes. I teach a lot of kids who come with a lot of baggage from former shitty teachers and it’s a lot of work to undo those and get a kid to believe in themselves again.
What Jason’s doing is a lot of harm and yeah, Walky’s being a bit of a piece of shit, but that’s kids. They do that. Your role as a teacher is not to rise to that and instead safeguard their education and at the very least be professional.
Like I’m not expecting him to be a great teacher, but honestly, it’d be nice if he was just bad. If he was just a boring idiot who just had his habit of teaching the same way over and over again and referred people to the Academic Support Center when that didn’t work. But he keeps on rising to his students and pulling out just pure petty nastiness that has no place in a classroom, especially coming from an educator.
And it’s hard not to see a racial element in that given the races of Walky and Sal and the world we live in that so routinely shits on the capabilities of anyone of color.
Walky hasn’t even missed that much. He missed Monday’s class and he missed half of this one. So Jason’s extra shitty on that level.
Which means his “you can only get a B is probably also bullshit as well as unless there was a major test, there’s no way some bad unit quizzes and a handful of missed classes is an impossible deficit.
Ugh! Every piece of new information just makes his actions even shittier.
TBF, he’s apparently done badly on 3 or 4 unit quizzes or smaller assignments. I can see an A being out of the question, depending on their weight, but not, say, a high B.
I’m betting that ‘It’s too late to course correct to an A’ has absolutely nothing to do with it being mathematically impossible to get an A (which really shouldn’t be close to true if Walky was doing well the first couple weeks and we haven’t even hit midterms yet) and is just Jason’s assumption about how quickly Walky can turn it around and what his upper limit of ability is.
That’s the way I took it honestly.
Jason also knows that Walky hasn’t been paying any attention at all in class, on the occasions that he’s even present. Math by its nature requires you to know the fundamentals before you can advance, and Walky has consciously ignored the fundamentals.
Him getting an A overall right now would require him learning all the course material up to this point BEFORE the next quiz and then getting everything as it came thereafter. And if he’s been trying in the last week or so, it clearly hasn’t helped.
It may not be mathematically impossible, but everything Jason knows about the guy who thinks telling jokes in class deserves an A (Walky’s own statement) and who draws dinosaurs eating people on the rare occasions he actually comes to class says yeah, this guy’s toast. And really, all he said was that an A is probably not going to happen, saying nothing about any variety of B. (3.8-4.0 probably not, but 3.5 let’s make it happen.)
A) Walky was doing well until 2 weeks ago. He had the fundamentals, he’s having a hard time with the big kids.
B) Walky does not show up ‘occasionally’. He’s been to every class except two and a half (once because he overslept, and the class before this one, plus half this class he spent freaking out)
C) Walky hasn’t been trying the last week or so. That’s kinda his problem.
“all he said was that an A is probably not going to happen”
No, what he said is that an A ISN’T going to happen, CAN’T happen. What he SHOULD be saying is ‘To make an A happen, you’ll need to X, Y, and Z’, regardless whether he thinks Walky is capable of X, Y, and Z, because X, Y, and Z is what Walky should be shooting for. If he falls a little short and ends up with a B, deal with that as it comes, but right now Jason is meeting Walky’s determination to strive for an A with dismissal. That’s not ‘realistic’ by Jason’s assessment (without any time spent working one-on-one with Walky) so don’t even try. Every single statement Jason makes is to tell Walky he’s not capable.
he saw the notes that had a dinosaur eating him I think, but I don’t know if he knew at that point who Walky was, and in any case being bitter about it would be dumb and shitty (so I guess it’s therefor possible)
He tried to talk to him at the end of one of the class not so long ago. He clearly saw where things were headed. It went as well as one might have predicted.
He actually returned those to Dina, apparently thinking “Eh, the dinosaur girl probably drew the dinosaur.” That’s…not a sign of Jason being competent. Because I’m pretty sure Dina would have put her name on her actual work.
That was probably Penny, actually, as Penny is Dina’s TA, per Patreon canon.
Good point. So I’d say it’s Professor… Reed was it? Or was it Reese? Anyway it’s probably his mix up then… which means he could be a “scatter-brained professor” one of the most dangerous types of teacher for a class, without actively trying to bring the class down (lazy teacher on tenure, harsh bullying teacher, and strict stickler for the rules teacher being the other three of what I call the “Four Teachers of the Apocalypse”).
According to Penny (and, awful as she, I see no reason not to believe her, I see no reason she’d lie to Jason about someone they both know) he just regurgitates his lesson plan over and over and then rushes home to fake doing research. Sounds like your ‘lazy tenured prof’.
Ah, so that makes him famine. If he were scatter-brained he’d be pestilence.
Teaching is a legit and difficult skill. This is why you can’t just take somebody who is good at the course material and throw them in front of a class. (Especially if they are not exactly patient or mature to begin with.)
It’s funny but I actually think Penny is a better teacher than Jason. She sleeps with students but not for grades (effectively Sal prostituting herself) then acts like they’re in a relationship (not to mention doesn’t give the grades). She doesn’t CARE about teaching but Jason expects the respect and power of being a teacher (when he’s a TA) as an option to bully students. He’s a TERRIBLE human being.
We haven’t actually seen anything of Penny other than that interaction. She may in fact be a great natural teacher despite sleeping with her students (She may even avoid sex with her students and just do it with random undergrads.)
There’s no indication of it though. She tells Jason that being a good teacher doesn’t matter and that he’s naive for thinking it does.
Confirmed in Patreon that some of the people she’s cultivating an attraction from are some of her students, as she specifically uses her office hours to get some to come and ogle at her.
Panels 4-6 (Walky): Oh fuck, this meltdown is brutal. He’s genuinely terrified by the notion of getting a B (and it’s a guarantee that he’s never gotten one before, though very likely has seen how his parents reacted to his sister getting B’s or C’s).
And this shows the shadow that Linda has placed over the two of them, even in the favored child role, the golden boy, there’s a catch. All his good treatment is based on him meeting their base standards and following her plan for him. And when that doesn’t happen… he knows what will happen to him because he sees what has happened to Sal. It’s why pedestals and “model minority” things are frequently traps, because the punishment for falling off those narrow stereotypes is frequently vile.
And his rant at Panel 5 really hammers home how much control Linda has always had on dictating what his life looks like and how her whims are seen as dominant. Like, I’m willing to bet that it wasn’t Sal or Walky’s decision to try out for a random Christian television acting gig. But nonetheless they were there. And her smirking “oh, he thinks he gets to choose his own major” with the Dean was frickin’ haunting and it really shows here as Walky notes how much she has invested in him becoming a doctor or a lawyer someday and how terrified he is of failure.
And it makes me rethink Walky a bit. I thought he had put a lot of his ego into being the “smart” one and not having to work at things. But when that’s challenged here, he doesn’t melt down about himself. He melts down about his mom and her expectations and her view of him. It’s clear that it isn’t where Walky has placed his ego, it’s where Linda placed his ego…
And ugh, there’s a nasty racist implication there connecting with a really nasty worldview that academically successful black students prove that their not like the “rest of their kind” and are practically honorary white people (until they succeed in ways that make white people feel like they aren’t still inherently better). And now I can’t stop thinking about his comment about being “generically beige” while his sister is black and how in general he seems very distant from any sort of pride in his heritage as a mixed race kid that is by our country’s standards black.
And how likely it was that academic success was related to whiteness in the Walkerton household and how Walky was likely rewarded for acting more “white” in all the ways in which Sal was punished for acting, in their stereotyped estimation as more “black”.
Ugh. Even not appearing in this arc, Linda makes a power play for inclusion in the Worst Parent Figure Face-off.
Panels 4-6 (Jason): Do I even need to say it?
He’s openly telling a student, a student clearly in crisis and having a bad meltdown… a student who is having a meltdown specifically about his mom’s expectations for him and how unforgiving they are, that he should get used to disappointing his mom.
Like… no. No, there’s no excuse for that. Like this would be a shitty thing for a random acquaintance to do. For someone in a position of authority and an educator to say this is… well, still not even in the Top 5 of worst things he has done as a teacher, but in most other teachers, this would top number one.
Like… we’ve all had experiences with shitty teachers. Teachers who bullied us, teachers who didn’t give a shit, teachers who hurt us. I once had to teach half a year of AP Biology, because our Science teacher started openly skipping classes in order to stalk college girls as part of a weird mid-life crisis.
But this is still a vile action to do as a teacher. To say to a student that they should be used to disappointing a parent? Especially a parent that causes this much fear in a student? It’s… inhuman.
And yeah, I think of the damage that shit like that does to a person, especially a person in a really bad head-space. How this could easily precede a suicide attempt in another student in another universe. And I think of the standards I hold all teachers to.
And yeah, it makes me loathe Jason. Because this shit is openly hatefully pettily vile.
And it’s why I think Walky would be better served by a pet rock as a tutor, because at least the rock wouldn’t abuse him in a weak point when he’s at his lowest like this.
I think it started being about Walky’s ego, but as things got worse and worse, he started thinking ‘Oh god, what are other people going to think, like Dorothy or – oh, crap, mom’s gonna find out.’ Because it was originally about how smart he was and how he always had it easy. But now as its getting worse and worse he gets to think about all those arguments he tuned out at home. And yeah, it’s vile.
I’m not surprised about Walky calling himself ‘beige’, though. It’s very much a thing in mixed families that a kid who fits in better with white culture or who are perceived as ‘whiter’ (thanks to racist expectations) will consider themselves ‘beige’ or ‘mixed’, while a child who doesn’t will consider themselves ‘black’ (in this case). I’ve seen it with twins. So this really doesn’t shock me. It’s very much a thing, part and parcel of preferential whiteness.
On the first part, I think it will be very awful with Linda. Even if there wasn’t all the racism behind her, this is where you learn what ‘you’re so smart, of course you can do it’ really means- ‘if you fail this, you are not trying hard enough, and you’re not valuable to me that way.’ And then, obviously, everything you said on top
The way you worded about Jason’s attitude put me straight into a shitty memory and I already knew it was harmful of Jacob, and this has a point I swear. I was at a summer camp, and I got (wrongly) accused of doing something, I started putting in details here but they don’t matter, and the counselors sat me down to talk about disciplining me, and I went into a full panic attack and couldn’t say anything except not to call my parents, I’d do literally any other punishment, because I knew they wouldn’t take my side, even though it was true, and I was way more scared of going home early than being ostracized by everyone else there.
I feel like that moment’s coming for Walky, when he realizes that they not only are strict, but actually don’t have his back any more than they do Sal’s.
I won’t specify, but I know how Walky feels right now. Everyone else seems to loom above him, and he doesn’t want his parents to see him that way. He is afraid not of failure, but the consequences that come from it. He fears what his parents will do, inducing mass panicking in him. (This is probably the deepest and most feely comment I’ll have at the moment)
It is not exactly the same because it is a different axis of privilege but I very often got that pressure to be a model science student for girls growing up. Even now as a pre-everything trans guy, I am usually the only non-cisdude in the room in my field. Sometimes it can get really uncomfortable and I never really forget that most people are surprised to see someone with chesticles in the industry. It is a surprise to everyone when I am good at it.
Sometimes it feels like my life is an exercise in proving people wrong.
I wonder if Walky has a bit of that sense of not only must he succeed at everything, but he must do it so thoroughly that even the racists who think “certain kids” (read: brown kids) just are meant to dig ditches have to give him probationary admittance to the white club (… which is a thing cisdudes have explicitly done “for” me. You’re not a woman, you’re a man now. We need to get you a man card. But it’s always probationary. Challenge status quo at all and you’re back out. Float the idea that you might have some sort of wibbly-wobbly gender-wender stuff and barred for life). Like if his existence doesn’t disprove all stereotypes he is fucked.
*nods* The token minority member is a really easy trap to fall into and I’ve often felt the pressure to be more capable, to be more friendly, to be more willing to go the extra mile than a cis or allo counterpart, because I know if I don’t, it will be used by others as a cudgel against all who share my identities.
Which is why I loved Carla’s “perfect girl” comment, because yeah, that expectation of perfection and having to be an ambassador all the time is super shitty. And often times only buys you “well, you’re one of the good ones” status of being an “honorary majority group member”.
Yeah and not only do you have to be capable but you literally have to be better than everyone to get seen as equal. Like legit, in undergrad the math students did not accept me as “peer” until I beat EVERY single first year on the fucking campus to win a university wide competition. Only then – when my ability was proven better – did I get equal status.
Also when the dudes “gave” me an “honorary man card.” Because girls aren’t good at math, and I hadn’t figured the trans thing out yet so chesticles meant girl, hence my girl status was revoked to them.
Toxic masculinity is weird. I mean they were right I am not a girl but it has got fuck all to do qith my ability to calculus.
Also filed under “how the hell did it take me to 28 to figure out the trans thing?” is how bizarrely happy that man card (it was an actual card. They got it laminated and everything) made me when they gave it to me. Like, I actually cried that night over it, I was so happy.
… and yet it would still be another 11 years before I figured it out. Introspection is apparently not my strong suit.
I feel like i need to say this on every Jason strip, but: he’s not a teacher. He’s not. He’s a socially isolated, thin-skinned, irritable on good days, British kid not much older than the rest of the class who’s likely being forced by the circumstances of his grad program into being a TA. He very specifically has neither the inclination nor the training to be a teacher.
Teaching is HARD. It takes training, practice, and dedication. Cerberus is a teacher, and she’s a great one because she has all three in addition to what I see as an obvious drive to be her best self and bring everyone around her along.
Jason has none of that barring a stubborn little desire to be good at whatever he’s trying to do. (Proof for stubborn desire to be good: he tried to offer Walky help 18 months of real-time ago and got blown off and insulted.) Jason is, compared to an actual teacher, basically a teenage babysitter trying to deal with shit WAY out of his league every time he steps into a job that he likely doesn’t even want.
Jason himself would, I think, agree that he shouldn’t be a teacher if asked outright. (As I said, I doubt he has any real choice in the matter. Yaaay grad programs.) I do think he’s legitimately horrible at it in so many different ways.
But the circumstances around his trying mean that I at least can’t feel ‘a trained, experienced, and dedicated educator is behaving this way with a child, they are human garbage of the lowest level, how dare they’, I feel ‘wow, Jason, why are you not at least shoving away this dude who’s literally physically hanging off you and screaming like a toddler’.
Is he being a jerk? GOD yes. But I have to admit I’d probably be meaner if some guy I’d actually tried to help started screaming and hanging off me in a gigantic tantrum because somehow drawing T-Rexes and skipping class didn’t result in a 4.0. I am not a teacher. There are reasons for it.
I agree with all of this: what Jason is doing WOULD be monstrous if Jason was a teacher by profession and Walky was legally a minor. But Jason doesn’t WANT to be a teacher, he’s only doing what’s necessary to get his Master’s degree and Walky is not a child, he’s legally an adult who is a few years (four?) younger than Jason. Jason is a jerk, but not monstrous
Except he IS a teacher. Right now, currently. And he professes a desire to be a good one, yet he fails to do any of the things that would MAKE him a good one. At some point, either he needs to stop pretending he cares about being a good teacher and be content with sucking or he needs to get his ass in gear and look into how to be a decent teacher because this is not it.
I feel what you and anonymously are saying, but Jason is in a grad program with a major TA component, meaning he’s in a PhD program. And the end result of a PhD program grants you a degree that basically allows you to teach anywhere, certainly at the college level and in most high school levels as well.
Part of the program expectations is that he will leave the program being a good enough teacher that he can walk into any math classroom and provide a quality education.
Now, he wouldn’t be the first grad student to look down on the teaching requirements, especially not the first STEM grad student. And I can sympathize with him being new, poorly trained, and having no real aptitude or love for the job.
But that’s part of his job as a PhD candidate and if he can’t handle that, he needs to drop down to a Master’s program* real fucking quick or start putting as much as he does into his grad classes and thesis research into his teaching, because teacher or not, that’s what his degree is going to certify him to do.
*And heck, even Master’s programs frequently expect you to be able to give a professional and informative school lesson. My thesis defense for my Master’s was an open seminar advertised in the department for weeks where I was expected to give a 45 minute lesson on my thesis topic on the level a typical undergraduate might understand it and was graded on my professionalism as a teacher as well as my competency with the material and ability to answer questions on the thesis afterwards.
Now I have sympathy for him, he’s likely barely older than him and in his mid 20s, he’s part of a field that frequently looks down on “lesser vocations” like teaching, he looks like he’s received next to no training from the perpetually out to lunch Professor Rees.
And deeply buried under all the things that make him a bad teacher is a small spark of what could make him a halfway decent one if he can push through his ego and his distaste for his role.
And I totally see both of your points. But I’m going to be inclined to be biased against him, because like it or not, he is in an educator role and that comes with certain expectations and requirements (like not banging the students because they’re hot and technically an adult). And seeing someone fuck up that role makes me all sorts of bristly.
Jason: “Penny, am I a bad teacher?”
Penny: “It doesn’t sodding matter.”
Jason: “Being a good teacher matters to ME.”
(exchange from http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/02-threes-a-crowd/teacher/ and the following strip)
Furthermore, when Sal called him a bad teacher, he took it as an insult to the core of his identity, later asked what Sal’s new tutor did differently as what he referred to as an ‘important question’. Not once has Jason ever suggested himself that he is ill-suited toward teaching, but simply blamed any of Sal’s failures on Sal being not good enough. That time you’re referring to when he offered Walky help? That was just after Sal called him a fraud of a teacher and it VISIBLY shook his self-identity, leading to him immediately reaching out to the nearest poorly-performing student to try to reaffirm himself.
Every piece of evidence suggests that Jason considers himself a teacher, which means he should absolutely be judged accordingly.
Man, the comments section this week has been absolutely brutal. Here’s hoping we’ll get at least a week of more lighthearted strips, soon.
Here here!
You know what? I need some cheer too, because ughf…
Have a brief window of silliness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgckQGnFEAI
*That was supposed to be a reply. Dammit.
Y’know, I’ve been thinking for awhile now… Jason should really sit down with Danny and Sal to figure out why Danny was a more effective teacher for Sal. Yes, I know Sal said “he listened.” I think Jason needs something more concrete.
Yes. Definitely. Absolutely. But he’s going to have to be the one to take that step. That will be the sign that he can redeem himself. Until then, I will continue to be very sad at him.
Sad? Or mad? Or both at the exact same time?
“I’m not mad. I’m just disappointed.”
But forced humor aside, I am just very sad. I find it hard to be angry for any length of time.
I store my rage, and I’ve only really used it once. Otherwise, I just get a bit icy and depressed
Honestly, I mostly pity the people who’ve truly hurt, or upset me. They’re just kind of pathetic; clawing desperately for validation and status from and over others. And it ends up just, not being worth it to be angry. Like, “this poor asshole doesn’t even have guts to look at themself”, and any modicum of hatred I can find then just feels empty.
His problem is the dry snark. “Shouldn’t you be accustomed to disappointing people” is a terrible thing to say to someone asking you for help.
This assumes Jason cares about his job.
I think he does. His conversation with Penny long ago shows that he does think that being a good teacher is important, he just has no idea how to go about it. And no support structure in his department to help, apparently.
Hmmm, kind of a parallel with Walky there, isn’t it?
That’s the occurring theme, all authority figures are at best incompetent and at worst abusive.
So, it seems that Sal wasn’t the only one abused by Linda Walkerton. Walky suffered his own unique abuses, it seems.
Yeah, turns out when you viciously tear down one kid for failure, the other kid becomes afraid to fail too. Handy little trick, that.
But yeah, this trick ain’t unique. Sal’s said before that when she failed, her parents were….unsupportive to say the least. At least Walky seems to think his dad will be okay. Sal apparently had to take this bullshit from Charles as well (and FUCK do I hate Charles too. He and Linda are just……..GAH, terrible bottom of the bargain bin parents. Like….lowest you can get without dumpster diving, which is where you’ll find Blaine, Ross, Clint, etc.)
Wait… Is Sal the older sibling? Because from others experiences and my own, older siblings are often neglected and younger siblings praised. It would make sense
Uh, Walky and Sal are twins, so if she is the older sibling, it can’t be by much. They are twins, aren’t they?
They are. But as I have a twin, who is but 45 seconds younger than me, somehow is less neglected than me. He is also like 10 years less mature than me, but somehow is treated better even if he throws a fit. I also have another younger brother, and he is treated best because he I’d youngest
Sorry:) (empathizes)
Thank you for empathizing
Sal referred to him as her ‘slacker lil bro’ to Jason, so yeah, Sal is the older twin.
Wow, everyone else here is making really deep analytic comments and I’m just sitting here marveling at how this comic managed to go up just a couple weeks after the withdrawal period ended, making his anxiety that much more realistic to me
Apparently I’m an abusive boyfriend and I never even realised it. I don’t deserve to be alive. Sorry for polluting your community, everyone.
Ouch. What happened?
Don’t say that. Everyone deserves a second chance, even if they’ve done something wrong. You start over, with knowledge of what you did wrong, and share that knowledge with others. Make amends for what you have done, ad move ever onwards. We’ve all made mistakes
No one’s perfect! In fact, I’m a solid user of the silent treatment!
Not sure if you are being serious or sarcastically joking.
If you are serious:
Doesn’t mean you deserve to die. You should get help to change your thinking that leads to your particular set of abusive behaviours/actions so that you will not repeat them in the future.
Not going to lie, it will take work on your part, and you will have to at least try to earnestly make it up to your girlfriend, not just throw her an apology, but actively work on undoing damage you have done and working on improving so you don’t act the same ways again.
Being an abuser is pretty bad, but if you acknowledge it, you can change your ways of thinking and stop being one. It isn’t something you have to be until the end of time.
Taffy-
I don’t know what you’ve done, but no matter what you’ve done, you don’t deserve to die. If you’ve hurt someone, it might be healthier for you to be away from them and for you to get therapeutical help for what made it easy to slip into harmful patterns, but it doesn’t mean you are poison or don’t deserve to be alive.
If you are thinking about hurting yourself or otherwise trying to end you life, I would urge you to read this:
https://www.metanoia.org/suicide/
And reach out the National Suicide Crisis Hotline which will be a nonjudgmental space to discuss what happened and seek immediate care to stay safe:
1-800-273-8255
Please let us know if you need any support in recovery.
Like Cerberus said, call the NSCH for support, and tthyat we will also consult with you for support
Never mind on that second part. I was in a bad head-space and when I get down enough, I’m prone to exaggeration. Alcohol may have been involved. Still need to patch things up with the girlfriend, though. :/
It’s classed as a depressant for a reason, y’know. :/
Glad to hear you’re in a better space now. Good luck sorting things.
Hope things get better
…. huh.
Okay, I’ve been rereading Panel 3.
INITIALLY I thought that this was Jason saying that it was mathematically impossible for Walky to turn his grade around to an A this far into the term, because he’s lost too many points.
But now that I think about it, this doesn’t add up on multiple levels.
First, I highly doubt Jason has everyone’s grades memorized like that, ready for instant recall. He doesn’t strike me as the sort who keeps tables of everyone’s grades and analyze them to the point where he has encyclopedic knowledge of them. And he hasn’t exactly checked a grade book.
But second and more critically… let’s assume that Walky started off getting Bs and dropped down to Ds and Fs, and has been averaging a pessimistic 50% on his classwork, quizes, and homework for the term. For him to be completely unable to get an A (which I’ll assume is 90% minimum, even if some teachers drop that threshold), he needs to have missed 10% of his points so far, roughly halfway through the term. But that would mean that classwork, quizzes, and homework combine for 40% of his total grade, leaving only 60% for midterms and a final. They haven’t had a midterm yet, right? And THAT is if there’s no “drop the lowest” policy.
Which…. is a little bit light on the testing for an introductory calculus class. I mean, I could see it, MAYBE, if they had three tests for three units and no comprehensive, but that’s more of a schema for a quarter system, and I’d expect at least four units from a semester course.
So I think what’s happened here is that Jason HASN’T done the math on Walky’s grade prospects. He’s just come to the conclusion that Walky’s pretty deep in the hole and doesn’t have a chance.
Which is… fair. But I personally have lost count of the number of times when I’ve been a chapter or more behind on the material, only to do five days of marathon studying and end up ahead on it.
Walky has been doing badly for roughly two weeks worth of classes. They’ve been in school for five and a half. He went from As/high Bs, all the way down to Ds and Fs, sure, but this was very sudden, and I doubt that was worth 10% of his grade, otherwise Sal would have been fucked, as she was doing worse for longer.
Jason’s an asshole here on waaaay so many fronts that it proves (for the first time for me) that he isn’t fit to be an educator. But it’s entirely possible that third panel Jason is taking into account the expected grades in the time it’d take for Walky to course correct – but that makes no sense, because Sal apparently did a 180º shift on her grades.
Though: I don’t know how it works in the US, but over here not all parts of the curriculum are worth the same % of your grade. It’s possible that the review materials (which apparently consist the entirety of Walky’s good grades) count very little to the final grade.
Oh Walky… Your parents are fuckers )=
And Jason what the actual fuck. “You should be accustomed to being a disappointment to your parents” WHAT THE FUCK. This is Walky so it rolls off him like water off a duck but JESUS CHRIST YOU DONT TELL THIS TO KIDS. WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK. Worst tutor ever.
Seriously. Like, I frequently end up saying about Jason, this is what you never do as an educator, but… this is what you never do as an educator. Like, that’s some fucked up shit there.
From time to time I need to remind myself that this person is actually in college.
Man, this brings me back.
Come on, Walky. What’s the worst Linda would do to a child that disappoints her? Disown her? Ship her away to couldn’t-care-less? Withdraw any and all support except what she absolutely can’t get away with? Telegraph disappointment at any opportunity?
Um…
And what’s Charles gonna do? Make backhanded insult that sound like compliments for the .2 seconds before you think about it? Pfft, would the Walkertons ever mistreat a child of theirs?
I think Billie is about to become their favourite kid.
Yeah, but that was about a GIRL offspring. Boys are better and deserve more tolerance, because they have more potential. Also, apparently Sal is darker-skinned than Walky (I can’t tell from the comic shadings, but that was a Sal-made accusation that I can’t recall anyone denying).
Not about skin colour, but possibly about other physical traits (Sal has her dad’s hair type, for instance), connections to the predominant (aka white American) culture and about racist ideas of how black people behave vs white people.
So yeah, Walky might get more lenience based on being the younger twin, a boy, behaving ‘whiter’, and on simply being the favourite. Believe you me, once a parent’s picked a favourite, it’s hard as HELL to change it. And it’s a common phenomenon with twins where people will arbitrarily have a favourite from birth – sometimes they justify it by saying they can just TELL one twin won’t/doesn’t like them or that the other ‘looks more like them’ or some other such crap.
Yeah, and it’s not like they’re going to actively ignore the child to their face as if to communicate that they are not even worth acknowledging… aw crap.
Walky, go get Danny to tutor you – Jason is apparently intent on being an asshole.
Well yes, if by “being an asshole” you mean “giving a putative adult the straight facts”. Granted his last comment wasn’t really necessary.
Danny should totally start charging for his tutoring services. He’s good at it and he could get some extra scratch for going on platonic friend dates with Ethan.
Nah, that would imply that he is actually worth something and that is just silly.
Or to be less Danny about it, he want a friend-relationship with Sal, not a tutor-student relationship, which is totally fine.
But I agree that he should start tutor other students as well… although knowing Danny that would just end up with him being in love with student A, student B being in love with him, student C sleeping with all three of them and student D pining for student C… because Drama is how Danny rolls.
It is now my headcanon that Danny’s middle name is indeed “Drama”.
…
I’ve known people with weird middle-names ok.
Pooooooor Walky. Self-image collides with reality. He must be feeling kinda like Trump right now, except he’s not surrounded by sycophants who’ll discount reality, so he has to bear it all himself.
this is why everyone should disappoint their parents as early and often as possible
this is why parents shouldn’t use ‘you’ve disappointed me’ line on kids unless it’s something like torturing small animals or bullying
parental disappointment is a very powerful emotional tool and abusing it is… well, abuse
… yeah, it always feels like the later you leave that, the worse it ends up being… :c
If you already disappointed them enough through school grades does that count for them to be less disappointed when you come out?
…are Dina’s parents the best parents in the strip? >_>
Of the ones that have shown up? Could be. If you include the ones we just know about, Carla’s probably take the cake… and then share it with her.
Carla’s take the cake and serve it to Carla for dessert for the next week. Seriously, if Blaine, Ross, Clint, etc. are dumpster diving and Linda and Charles are bottom of the bargain bin parents, then those two are like premium state of the art certified parents.
I think the general betting pool says it’s currently a competition between Carla’s, Dina’s, Dorothy’s, and Hank. Hank is definitely making up considerable ground, but Carla’s, Dina’s, and Dorothy’s definitely have the long-term advantage.
Hank’s reaction to Jocelyne coming out will be the moment that defines his place in the “good parent” “bad parent” scale. If he accepts Jocelyne, better yet if he protects her from Carol’s reaction, he could very well become “Best Main Cast Character’s Dad”, after arm wrestling Carla’s father for the position. Then again, at this moment I think Dina’s and Carla’s parents have the lead, with Dorothy’s parents in second, and Hank in third but gaining ground.
Everyone loves Hank now, but I’m still not sold on him being a decent father and human being for a week making up for the eighteen years (-plus, however old Jonathan is) before that.
Sierra’s parents seem pretty awesome. Reno Snow unhesitatingly put himself between a large, angry man and a complete stranger just because she needed help. That’s about all we’ve seen of them, though.
Oh very much, he’s making up ground, but he’s got a lot of ground to make up and I agree with Rukduk that a lot is riding on how he reacts to Jocelyne coming out.
And yeah, Sierra’s parents are also in for a shout. Especially her dad.
I do love Hank as he currently stands – it means a lot he recognized he taught Joyce toxic things and he needs to learn how to move along. That’s good.
I’d say he’s currently a light green on the ‘green-yellow-orange-red’ parent scale. He still can backslide though.
As is, Carla’s parents are solid green. it’d take a lot to move them.
Hank gets a special award as “Most Improved”.
He also has the advantage of being the parent of the main protagonist, with lots of trauma in the rest of the family and thus getting a lot of opportunity to show his quality.
Carla’s parents and Dina’s parents and Sierra’s parents may really be better, but they’re only seen as better in small doses or in offstage or in backstory. Hank gets lots of good moments up front.
Yeah, I think Carla’s parents are most likely 100% awesome from the get go from the sound of it, but I am heavily biased in Hank’s favor because of how he was there for Becky.
I have confidence that he’ll follow in his youngest daughter’s footsteps
That begs the question: Should we judge parents — or people in general, in fact — based on aptitude, or advancement?
Betsy deVos: “Advancement of aptitude.”
Ladies and gentlemen, one half of my state’s contribution to the Trump administration. (The other half is Ben Carson.)
*slaps forehead*
…and this is the first time I realized Jason=Jason.
So…Not Enough Disappointment?
I’m wondering… Jason must know that Walky is Sal’s brother. Is it possible that he’s trying to get back at Sal by victimising her brother? It’s the sort of passive-aggressive thing that I’d expect from his personality.
Entirely possible but it feels more like this is just his attitude in general. Imply someone who is struggling should drop the course, insult their ability to improve, snark at their desperation because he honestly doesn’t care.
We should have him Put On A Bus (trope) back to England.
Every one of our advisers and professors has conversations like this, every semester…
As someone who also excelled in school until they suddenly didn’t, I wonder if Walky is going to have any kind of shock/surprise that a teacher is just telling him to eff off. He might chalk it up to being in college now or, if he caused trouble for his teachers in grade school, he might be used to them not wanting to help him.
My personal experience with this was feeling very betrayed that the same teachers who’d praised me suddenly didn’t like me at all. I’d thought they’d liked me as a person when all they really liked was that I made good grades and was quiet. (In hindsight I should have known better; their earlier treatment of me was actually crappy.)
But either way I imagine Walky’s going to wonder why Jason’s refusing to help him now when he was willing to earlier.
Of course, given Jason’s approach this time, I’m starting to wonder if last time he’d just been intending to tell Walky he should drop the class while he still could.
“Never been a disappointment on paper before”
Tell me more, David Walkerton …
*sigh*
Possibly – but then again, Jason has seen more classwork since then.
Sometimes the best thing is to let someone know the truth. Or the facts as Jason sees them.
It’s a fact that David Walkerton’s motivation is suspect. Maths genii tend not to want to snap one’s braces.
Jason wasn’t praising David Walkerton in the first place; he was offering help – a rare thing from a TA – which David Walkerton refused.
Now that the latter comes begging for help, Jason is sceptical and a little stand-offish.
Hmmm…
You’ve got a couple of things confused here.
1) When I said “teacher’s who’d praised me” I was talking solely about my own experience with this. I wasn’t saying that this happened to Walky too. I’m not sure that he’s had praise from teachers at all, which is one of the reasons I’m not sure he’ll have the same reaction.
2) I’m not taking issue with Jason telling Walky he can’t get an A at this point. I’m taking issue with, “I should think you’d be accustomed to disappointing your mum”.
Yeah, if that’s Jason’s response to someone how is obviously distraught and completely panicking, he’s sucking as a person, not just as a teacher.
But Jason does not refuse his help, and isn’t refusing his help here either.
David Walkerton’s cry for help is ambiguous at best.
And oh yeah, I have once again committed a DoA/Whateley Academy fanfic<M, and have yet to be punished for my crimes! Bwhahahaha! (Yeah, I know David can’t read them for legal CYA reasons, but I am egotistical enough to think some of the others here might.)
*groan* I hope Walky doesn’t stoop low to swap grades with his sister in desperation.
this was me freshman year of high school
Shit I lived this in middle school. It sucked
Isn’t Indiana a landlocked state?