In some schools (dunno if IU is one of them) some professors have tree branches stuck SO FAR up their asses that they have the TAs essentially teach the classes.
This happens a lot in Computer Science classes, where the professor teaches vague concepts and the TA (who is the one actually telling you how to make the computer WORK) is actually teaching you how to write the code.
I’m a tenured college prof and if I had my TA actually teach my classes rather than run study sessions, I’d be out the door – and I’m at a _huge_ R1 state university.
My Calc course started with the prof teaching. As the year want on he had the TA take over more & more. By the ethird quarter the TA was doing all the teaching. My comprehension declined in parallel: the prof was excellent, because of his thick Hungarian accent as much as despite it, the TA a disaster. On the other hand, it didn’t help that the prof chose a text we nicknamed “Calculus by Magic” because it was written by a friend. The prof could explain what the book didnt, the TA couldnt.
We always got the impression that lectures in the US were so much more made to actually teach you something (as opposed to the prof flipping slides faster than you can read them and talking in a hard to understand mumble) than in Germany 😉.
Seems like the run of the mill German professor was compared to an outstanding professor in the US then?
(Nobody would have managed maths without the tutorials, even though some TAs sucked at teaching, the at least managed to present the step by step ways to solutions).
TAs sometimes teaching classes has been established, but regarding this class and Jason specifically, I’m fairly sure it has been implied or stated that Professor Reeves (the professor for this course) does little to no actual teaching. Actually, I think some strip or another had a joke that some students (e.g., Walky) were unaware Jason wasn’t the professor because Professor Reeves has never shown up at class before.
No, the issue with Reeves is he regurgitates one method and then rushes home to pretend to do research rather than help out. He shows up, he’s just likewise a crappy teacher.
As I referenced in an earlier comment, my recollection of the comic’s seven-year run is hazy in places. (Like, all of the places prior to approximately November 2017.) I made my comments too hastily; later I looked back on past strips to refresh my memory and discovered that I was not only mistaken about his name but also his level of classroom involvement. So yes, if that “He’s so terrible” was sarcasm… well, it’s warranted, but I’m aware I was wrong and willing to admit it, so don’t razz me too harshly, please.
I was a graduate student at Ohio State in my PhD program for 5 years. In those 5 years, I taught ten classes that I was entirely responsible for teaching and I was a TA/recitation leader for one semester, which meant that I taught 1 of the 3 days a week that the class taught. Most grad students aren’t graders, we are fully-credentialed instructors.
Dang. One reason I picked my college specifically was that the professors actually taught the courses, there were no TAs or grad students around. I gather this was a pretty solid idea.
Walky was up for hours last night researching online to find the perfect non-English European character that would get the maximum outraged reaction from Jason. Tintin just barely beat out Asterix.
I can suggest some others over Tintin :
Benoit Brisefer (a blond naive schoolboy)
the blond one from Quick & Flupke (still hergé, but comedic comics, so that may annoy Jason a tad more
and of course Fantasio, who is always wearing a bowtie himself
Trying has two meanings:
1. An attempt at performing an action. ie. Walky is trying to do better.
2. A person is wearing down on a someone else’s patience. ie. Joyce finds putting up with Walky to be a very trying exercise.
Not sure why you would consider it arrogant/condescending.
Someone said they didn’t understand the joke. The poster assumed they were being honest and explained it. Not sure how they could have done so any different.
There’s a lot of concepts that might not apply when black holes are around. For instance, the concept of “inside” a black hole might not even make sense (since there isn’t really a spacetime path from the outside of the event horizon to the inside that doesn’t violate the speed of light)
Since it takes infinite time for something to fall into a black hole, and since black holes eventually decay due to Hawking radiation, technically nothing ever enters a black hole.
Yes. If you are falling into a back hole with the mass of the sun, from your viewpoint you will fall from the event horizon to the center in 10^-5 seconds. No need to hold your breath.
Also one couldn’t have a black hole with only the mass of the sun; the star would need to be I think it’s at least 30% larger for it to have the smallest minimum mass required to collapse into a black hole.
I’m pretty sure that time dilates only from the perspective of the object falling into the black hole, and doesn’t actually stop.
An object traveling at high speed does the same thing. The closer your speed is to the speed of light, the slower time passes relative to an outside observer. GPS satellites actually move fast enough that they have to account for that in order to make accurate calculations.
It’s not possible for matter to actually reach the speed of light, so even though the black hole’s gravity would cause you to accelerate to incredibly high speed, time would never actually come to a stop for you.
The real reason you wouldn’t need to hold your breath is that you would’ve been reduced to superheated plasma long before you got anywhere near it
Nearly 49% of Alabama voters who turned out. There’s the potential to hope (for humanity, not so much for politics) that the margin may have been larger were there not so much voter suppression in place.
Democrats managed extraordinarily high turnout for this election, while Republican turnout was pretty depressed. Over 94% of Alabama Hillary voters showed up to vote, while less than 50% of Trump voters did. Getting national Presidential election turnout numbers for a special Senate election from your base is basically unheard of and it happening in Alabama is even more impressive.
Like most races, this one didn’t turn on changing the minds of anyone’s hardcore supporters. I doubt many people who would normally have voted for the GOP candidate voted for Jones, despite everything. But they stayed home. And people who wouldn’t normally have bothered showed up.
England *is* in Europe. But it’s not in mainland Europe. And that means there are some things that apply to other European nations that don’t apply to us (although it’s 5 am and other than “easier travel between countries”, driving on the other side of the road, and stuff related to the EU I can’t think of many… It meant that historically our borders were more secure and shifted less, I guess (not been successfully invaded since 1066) so it was easier to view ourselves as separate. And our navy was pretty darned effective and helped us build up a lot of clout as a nation, so it was easy to view ourselves as important and to be comfortable being separate).
But I wouldn’t expect the average 18 yo American to know or care about those subtleties, and think Jason is being unreasonable to do so. Even if he has noticed that Walky isn’t OK
England was successfully invaded in at least 1399, 1460, 1471 and 1689, in the sense of a contested armed incursion leading to regime change; and you could at least make an argument for 1139 and 1470.
Pretty much. If that moron had stepped down like literally EVERYONE TOLD HIM TO Jones wouldn’t have a chance. But nope. He had to very poorly ride in on an unhappy horse and lost. Narrow margin, but it’s fucking Alabama. I’m liberal so I ain’t crying but seriously the idiot did it to himself. I guess he was convinced nothing would happen because nothing happened in the past. What a toad.
It’s from the Greed Island arc, when Killua’s talking to the one guy who’s guiding them through the psychology of the test that the business is putting them through, and Killua says that guys who act smart usually fail
Well, it’s less common, but not uncommon. When it’s being used as wordplay as in this strip, I can see it being harder to get. And of course if English isn’t someone’s first language and depending on one’s specific environment…basically all the factors that could go towards one’s development of a vocabulary.
But basically what I’m getting at is that this example from Joyce doesn’t stand out to me as saying anything about her lexicon.
Oh, I agree that it’s not an unheard-of word and it doesn’t say a lot about her lexicon that she knows it. But the only time most people use it is when describing times.
You people have ridiculously high standards for characters you don’t like, and then characters you do like just need to get out of bed, and you’re overjoyed.
Danny, in his spare time, is a better teacher to Sal than Jason was, and would probably be a better teacher to Walky too, if given the chance. But he shouldn’t have to. That’s Jason’s job, and an undergrad with no training can do it better.
Students like Walky can annoy teachers like Jason.
Teachers like Jason can destroy students like Walky.
So yes. I expect more from Jason than I expect from Walky. I do not find this to be an unreasonable stance to hold.
If they were peers, engaging on an equal level? That would be something else. But they are not. Walky’s sass means nothing. Jason’s is a reinforcement of Walky’s sense that he is worthless and trying isn’t worth the trouble.
I do agree Walky is being a tool. The solution to that isn’t for Jason to be a tool back because, as you point out, he’s the authority figure here, whether he accepts that or not. The solution is for Jason to say “I don’t have to take this nonsense from you. Get out of my office and don’t come back until you’re ready to take this seriously.’
Nightsbridge: You have my total agreement. That being said, it is worth noting that Jason is a TA; that’s important because, while he is being made to teach the class, he isn’t a fully-fledged teacher yet and still has time to learn what he’s doing wrong and what’s really important. Unfortunately for Walky, Jason may not get it right in time for it to benefit Walky. Professor Reeves, the professor for this course, should be here to teach Jason about teaching and the ethics thereof, but Jason appears to be on his own, possibly because Reeves is a shitty teacher himself.
As a former CS TA at IU, I think it likely that Jason has minimal training in teaching, if any at all. Teacher training is something you need for high school and below. For college we assume that any researcher (professor or grad student) can also teach… or we just don’t care if they can’t.
Also, being TA isn’t something a grad student seeks out, usually. It’s something you get assigned to for funding, if your research professor can’t get researching funding for you instead. Jason could only quit by dropping out of grad school or taking massive loans.
For some reason (well, specifically me never going to college and having no idea how college works), I wasn’t aware that grad students have to become TAs. I probably misread somewhere, but I thought Jason was a TA because he was pursuing a career in education.
…But a career in education wouldn’t require a graduate degree, would it. Wow, I’m dumb…
No, you aren’t dumb. Teaching at the K-12 level doesn’t require a graduate degree, but if you want to teach at the college level, then a Masters is the minimal degree you would need and a Ph.D is more typical at a college or university level.
Many graduate students end up as TAs at one point or another, depending on the department. For the most part, they receive very little actual training as a teacher,though this varies from institution to institution, and some schools are now starting instructional “boot camps” to help TAs get more practical teaching skills.
Teaching may not require a graduate degree, but many teachers do have one, especially if they’re in a specialty like library science, special education, etc.
Speaking as someone going into education, the graduate degree K-12 teachers get is generally in education (or a closely related discipline), not the field they might (at the secondary level) actually teach. If you were a math teacher you’d be getting an M.Ed. or Ed.D. as opposed to a Masters or Ph.D. in math, which is Jason’s program.
I do know there are some teachers who didn’t go into education, but rather their preferred field. Education isn’t a particularly transferrable degree, so Jason could’ve gone the ‘field of choice’ route but it’s less likely than him wanting to go into … whatever the fuck math degrees go into (I am not in STEM, clearly).
I TA now and we just get a few workshops on the equality act, what our role is and how to mark. There is basically zero training in teaching and that’s typical in the UK. Some of us are naturally good at it (I’m planning to pursue HE teaching as my career so I count myself as one) but the students are playing Russian roulette education-wise, though that applies to lecturers as well who tend to learn on the job.
Well, it’s good to see that Joyce is at least keeping her toe wrapped only in a sock. Put it in footwear, especially footwear that doesn’t breathe well, and it can rot and fester and get…
Oh I don’t know Jason maybe because your job is to teach people things that you know and they don’t ? Mike is right, matter of fact this feels appropriate : https://youtu.be/g3sq-Y_3RIY
Agreed. Especially if you’re a graduate TA, where you’re paid a fraction of your worth to teach a class (or to do the work for a class the professor didn’t want to do, more likely) so you can do a full-time-job’s worth of research every week for free.
Honestly, his best move with a student like Walky is to grant no additional help, but it’s really hard to refuse when asked, because most grad students have also internalized the idea that they’re not working enough, and when a student plays on your desire to be a good academic as Walky did, it’s impossible to step away.
But one of the things Jason needs to learn if he’s going to be a good teacher (and there are many, but this is one), is that his time is ill-spent on students like Walky, who refuse to properly engage with the material and take the work seriously. Target the kids who care and work but are struggling; they’re the ones you can actually make a difference with. And allocating time to Walky makes him less able to better serve students who could *actually* benefit from his help.
Is Jason a crappy teacher? Yeah, he is. But he’s also likely overworked and under-trained, and he at least tries, which likely makes him a better teacher than most of his peers already. I’m fortunate to have done my graduate work in a program which put an actual emphasis on training their TAs and monitoring and adjusting their workload to prevent it from getting too cumbersome. Most TAs do not have that luxury, and are largely left to figure things out on their own. And absence natural emotional intelligence, communication skills, etc., that’s really freaking hard to do, especially when faced with typically at least half your class being disinterested and disengaged no matter how hard you try to reach them.
Yeah, pretty much this. I give Jason a lot of grief, but I’d be hard pressed to be mad at him for telling Walky not to come to office hours unless and until he’s ready to take things seriously, or for turning down appointments for extra (as in, non class, non office hour) help.
All right, first off: I’m sincerely trying to be as polite and civil as possible. I firmly believe in that, and make it a point to keep my mouth shut (and keyboard untouched) when I can’t be civil. I sometimes fail at that, and regret it. So if I sound a little terse here, it’s not intended, it’s something I’m actively trying to avoid but it can be difficult.
When I read you saying essentially that Jason should give up on Walky, I felt an urge to write a fuck-you comment. You were totally right that Jason’s job is super hard and Walky is being an immature prick. But I feel strongly that the situation is not so black-and-white, and Walky should be cut a little slack. I will openly admit that I feel that way because of my own personal experiences.
So here is some life context on that personal experience of mine. I coasted through school with zero effort in my early academic career. Then I transferred to an advanced placement program, where I encountered, for the first time, material that was, if not necessarily challenging, at least intellectually stimulating. At the same time, I was walloped by a massive double-whammy onset of severe mental AND physical health issues. My grades nosedived harder than a fighter jet going down in lurid flames. I had not corrected this (or the underlying causes) by high school, and my figurative plane finally hit the ground at high speeds. With no exaggeration: I flunked almost every single class I took, such that I dropped out in early senior year, because there was no way I could graduate without tacking on an extra three years in HS to retake all those required credits.
Eleven years after my stream of academic failings began, I am deeply, pants-shittingly afraid of the mere concept of college. In this day and age it is practically a requirement to get a job with remotely decent pay. Yet I have heard nothing but an endless litany of how extraordinarily hard college is, and I am cripplingly aware that I am not in any way prepared and I have absolutely zero of the skills I would need to succeed. I have not experienced academic success in eleven years; how could I ever succeed again?
So, and this might get dangerously close to rude territory, I do somewhat agree with the Walky criticism because I am not blind to his flaws as a character, but I also think it is incredibly easy to cast the stones of shame from — and I know this is bad, but assuming a little about most of the commenters here — the high ground of someone who has struggled but triumphed over those struggles. I think that it is likely that at least some of the criticism stems from the view that Walky’s behavior is because he is immature and lazy. I think there is far more to it than Walky being LAZY. Is he lazy? Yeah, probably. So am I. I’m lazy as fuck, and I’m kept awake at night by the idea that maybe all of my failures are because of that laziness.
Jason should not give up on Walky. Walky may not seem like he is trying, but sometimes appearances can be deceiving. Sometimes, a student needs to be pushed to even understand that it is possible for them to succeed. And if they do not receive that push, then of course they will fail.
I’m neurotic and can’t stop qualifying my statements with “I am paying close attention to your views and trying to be as understanding as possible” clauses, so here we go again, some more.
I know you did not explicitly say Jason should give up on Walky. I meant more that it seemed implied. You actually stated that teachers should prioritize students who are trying, and that is a fair assessment, no moral argument there. However, I got a lot of flak in school from teachers who decided I wasn’t trying, and… that was hurtful. Really hurtful. I wanted badly to try, but I was practically unable. Walky reads to me as someone with serious ADHD, even if Willis is not actually portraying him that way intentionally, so his seeming lack of effort even sort of reads to me as him being incapable for learning-impairment reasons as much as other stuff.
Yeah. A good part of Walky’s problem is that he doesn’t know how to try. He’s never had to. So just saying “You’re not trying. Come back when you are.”, isn’t helpful.
Being Walky, he’s also extremely insecure about it and covering that up with stupid jokes and distractions. But the stupid jokes aren’t why he’s failing.
He might actually be better off going elsewhere for more basic help in learning to study, rather than going to the Math TA for specific help in the math.
yup. last time the walky/jason thing came up there were loads of comments like yours from people with ADHD.
and like, fuck, I can’t even seem to go to the gym and have a shower in the same day without my brain freaking the fuck out at the moment. WHY can’t I just DO things!?!@?! 🙁 “trying harder” just gave me a goddamn permanent migraine… damned if I do, damned if I don’t. :/
…I’ll probably have optimism again in a few days. but right now I just… I really don’t enjoy existing, and it sucks that I can’t stop existing without, like, dying. I’m not interested in that 😛
Gonna stop airing out my unique personal entourage of psychological issues to everybody on the Internet who might view this page in curiosity. Sorry, people who are reading. Sometimes you stay up way too late and get… heart-poury-outty. I am too far past critical sleep deprivation levels to think of an adjective that can be found in a real dictionary.
Hmmmmm…. maybe Jason’s less offended by the idea that England is in Europe, and more offended by equating it to Belgium? That is, after all, a very rude insult.
Belgian bier is really good for lagers, dark lagers, and wheat beers, and has a great history of strong Trappist beers. The UK is really good for various Ales; Stouts are generally great from Scotland and Ireland, and England has lots of great pale ales, amber ales and dark milds.
The two don’t have a lot of overlap in styles, and a UK dark beer is very different to a Belgian dark bier ; )
Am I supposed to be on Jason’s side in this? Because Walky isn’t warranting any sympathy here. If you want someone to help you. you don’t get to insult them. He’s like the entitled millennial stereotype that actually exists rather than being a product of Generation X bias.
As with most things in this comic I imagine you are just suppose to read it. If you choose to identify with anyone you are free too. Though I would imagine Joyce is the character to identify with..
Walky has the problem that he never really learned studying acumen because he didn’t have a hard time in school, getting good grades without really needing to study. Dorothy isn’t necessarily any smarter than Walky, for instance, but more disciplined and driven.
Jason’s problem is similar to the one he had with Sal, which is that he knows the material, but he isn’t very good at engaging with his students. It’s like a star athlete who isn’t a good coach because they don’t really know how to show someone the way to do what may have come very naturally to them.
Neither of them is blameless here, and both have ample reason to be frustrated, but Jason’s probably the one who ought to budge first here for his sake, as his fellow TA held him in pretty low esteem, both for being unliked and for not being terribly good at his job.
Jason, your arrogant twattery is showing. Cover that up before you get arrested for public indecency.
Seriously though, I love that all the DoA characters are so realistically flawed. Jason is far more of an elitist prick than he seems to realize. He’s teaching an advanced mathematics course and yet he treats Walky and Sal like they’re idiots for struggling with it. If Walky could coast through high school without studying, he’s actually very smart. Lazy, but smart. Jason just assumes Walky is intellectually inferior based on his performance in a single, difficult subject. How telling.
Also, Walky’s and Jason’s experiences in DoA so far are fairly relatable to me, personally. As a kid I was like Walky: I didn’t need to study much, if at all, because I often understood the material very quickly, with no difficulty. I didn’t necessarily think of my classmates who struggled as inferior, but I knew I was smarter than them, and my sense of self-worth wholly revolved around it. When I transferred to an AP (Advanced Placement) program, designed for kids like me, suddenly I was forced to confront the realization that I wasn’t such a special snowflake. Because the transfer to AP coincided with my developing severe depression, unfortunately that realization destroyed my self-worth entirely. But later, after battling past the worst of the depression, I was able to reevaluate things, and decide what I felt really mattered. These days, I try to take pride in traits like my compassion towards others, something I feel is genuinely meaningful and important, unlike book-smarts.
I don’t get the impression at all that he thinks Walky is unintelligent. His frustrations with Walky revolve almost entirely around Walky being either unwilling or unable to engage in their tutor sessions. He doesn’t think poorly of Walky’s performance; he thinks poorly of Walky sidetracking every effort–however flawed–Jason has made to help him, usually into some manner of insulting Jason.
Yeah, I don’t think he thinks Walky is stupid. He thinks he is immature and uncouth, probably, but he can tell that Walky isn’t meeting him halfway, even if he probably isn’t doing the best job of doing that, either.
If you want to teach, you have to be open to learning from your students, too, and hopefully, Walky can teach him that lesson in a way Sal began to, but didn’t finish. Or did, phrasing…
That is a fair assessment. He did seem to think Sal was dumb, though, didn’t he? (Er… my memory of previous storylines is a bit hazy.) He made a lot of assumptions about Sal because of her delinquent persona (and possibly other factors as well), but she was making a genuine effort for the most part, until she gave up and fucked him instead anyway.
Students like Sal (troublemaker, or acts like one) and Walky (miniscule attention span) are extremely commonplace challenges for teachers. Part of Jason being a TA is learning how to properly and effectively deal with students like them. He can be forgiven for lacking the knowledge to help them succeed, but the fact remains he doesn’t view himself as being in any way culpable for their failing, and is somewhat callous on the matter, as if it isn’t really his problem. He is trying harder to be a better teacher to his students, but to me, it seems like he has a long way to go.
(Side note to maybe add context to my opinions: My aunt is a teacher, and she is superb at it. She works in a district with many disadvantaged children, including quite a few who barely speak English, and even some who MAY live in Mexico and be crossing the border illegally every day to obtain American education. She has very strong opinions about the ethics of teaching, and would probably be even harsher on Jason than I am. A lot of my opinions about teaching are heavily influenced by her.)
Just looked back and learned it’s Rees, not Reeves. Sigh. And he has been shown to be teaching somewhat, although he sort of disappeared after the introduction of Jason…
Jason, like many people without the proper skill-set or temperament for their occupation, is convincing himself that the under-performance of his class is is students’ fault, not anything to do with his own abilities.
And in the specific case of Walky, he is right. Walky says he wants to improve, but does everything he can to sabotage any attempt Jason made to help him. As opposed to Sal who genuinely tried and was badly taught, Walky doesn’t even listen and seems to preemptively fight back by insulting Jason as often as he can and uses all his energy to do just that rather than actually try and improve.
British exceptionalism is such a noxious notion. I’m astonished by the number of Brits who don’t consider the UK to be a part of Europe. Not the EU mind you, but Europe the continent. As if the channel is big enough to push them next to the coast of Virginia.
Unless he’s comparing England to Belgium. Then I can certainly see his point.
That’s like saying Japan isn’t really Asia, Newfoundland isn’t really North America, or the Falklands aren’t really South America. Oh, I see the appeal. 😉
A dozen millennia ago Britain was barely separated enough to count as a peninsula. Now there is a channel that few can swim across, but the flora and fauna are still similar, and the humans are mostly descended from people like Celts and Germans who still have relatives on the mainland. You have to have a very short never to think it never belonged.
maybe it’s not too late to have another referendum retracting the previous referendum?
also maybe we across the pond can still impeach Trump? let’s make this a race
Pence is worse domestically, Trump is worse internationally.
Provided we live through it, we can fix poor domestic policy within a decade or two. (Except for the people who die. They stay dead.)
International screw-ups tend to stick around for a century and ripple all over the world in ways we can never fix.
So, as thoroughly horrible as he is, I’m ready for President Pence.
Also, the internal power struggle necessary to oust Trump and put Pence in charge would tear the party apart. Pence would be much weaker because the crazy part of the base would be in open revolt over the establishment taking down their beloved leader.
Also, Pence, for all his nasty theocratic leanings, is a wet blanket. He’s just not nearly so dangerous.
And yeah, there’s a good chance he’ll go down with Trump, he’s in it up to his eyeballs.
Women and LGBTQ+ people are on his chopping block.
He’s virulently opposed to Planned Parenthood and birth control, and wants to overturn abortion and gay marriage rights. He thinks conversion therapy is a good idea for gay folks (it involves literally torturing people to pray away the gay). He’s very anti-trans* people, no surprise there.
So, the usual shitty hater-republican domestic bouquet, but even moreso.
Maybe he is following that classic English mindset of “We might be part of Europe geographically but we aren’t European.” You used to hear it a lot in the 90s. And it isn’t something that really went away remainer or brexiter since there was always plenty of but we want a special exception because (insert reason here, like how islands are different for free movement).
(I know because I read Tintin comics as a kid.)
So in addition to being correct in that both Jason and Tintin are lanky, blonde Europeans, he can also make a case that he was referring to the movie.
Heh, this reminds me a bit from a lecture about cultural translations. About how Bible was translated into Inuit languages and replaced sharing bread with sharing fish.
When I was a kid Tintin in the Congo just didn’t exist.
I don’t remember translated Tintin being from anywhere particularly, but maybe that’s just because I’m British, so as a kid I’d have just assumed any British-specific stuff was actually universal.
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because you’re teaching
And because he’s not as smart as he thinks he is
Because maybe…it’s his job?
He’s not actually. There is a professor here for this class. Jason is a TA.
In some schools (dunno if IU is one of them) some professors have tree branches stuck SO FAR up their asses that they have the TAs essentially teach the classes.
This happens a lot in Computer Science classes, where the professor teaches vague concepts and the TA (who is the one actually telling you how to make the computer WORK) is actually teaching you how to write the code.
I’m a tenured college prof and if I had my TA actually teach my classes rather than run study sessions, I’d be out the door – and I’m at a _huge_ R1 state university.
That definitely depends on the school. In mine, the TAs are responsible for leading tutorials, which often involve no small amount of teaching.
* The TAs are USUALLY responsible for leading tutorials. I’ve never had one where they weren’t.
My math TA had to explain the lectures to us because no pne understood the professor’s accent. Yeah, TAs can and do teach courses.
My Calc course started with the prof teaching. As the year want on he had the TA take over more & more. By the ethird quarter the TA was doing all the teaching. My comprehension declined in parallel: the prof was excellent, because of his thick Hungarian accent as much as despite it, the TA a disaster. On the other hand, it didn’t help that the prof chose a text we nicknamed “Calculus by Magic” because it was written by a friend. The prof could explain what the book didnt, the TA couldnt.
Amused that not one but two comments about Math professors and their accents
We always got the impression that lectures in the US were so much more made to actually teach you something (as opposed to the prof flipping slides faster than you can read them and talking in a hard to understand mumble) than in Germany 😉.
Seems like the run of the mill German professor was compared to an outstanding professor in the US then?
(Nobody would have managed maths without the tutorials, even though some TAs sucked at teaching, the at least managed to present the step by step ways to solutions).
TAs sometimes teaching classes has been established, but regarding this class and Jason specifically, I’m fairly sure it has been implied or stated that Professor Reeves (the professor for this course) does little to no actual teaching. Actually, I think some strip or another had a joke that some students (e.g., Walky) were unaware Jason wasn’t the professor because Professor Reeves has never shown up at class before.
No, the issue with Reeves is he regurgitates one method and then rushes home to pretend to do research rather than help out. He shows up, he’s just likewise a crappy teacher.
This seems as good a place as any to drop Prof. Rees’s very short list of actual appearances. He’s so terrible.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/tag/professor-rees/
As I referenced in an earlier comment, my recollection of the comic’s seven-year run is hazy in places. (Like, all of the places prior to approximately November 2017.) I made my comments too hastily; later I looked back on past strips to refresh my memory and discovered that I was not only mistaken about his name but also his level of classroom involvement. So yes, if that “He’s so terrible” was sarcasm… well, it’s warranted, but I’m aware I was wrong and willing to admit it, so don’t razz me too harshly, please.
I was a graduate student at Ohio State in my PhD program for 5 years. In those 5 years, I taught ten classes that I was entirely responsible for teaching and I was a TA/recitation leader for one semester, which meant that I taught 1 of the 3 days a week that the class taught. Most grad students aren’t graders, we are fully-credentialed instructors.
Dang. One reason I picked my college specifically was that the professors actually taught the courses, there were no TAs or grad students around. I gather this was a pretty solid idea.
Walky was up for hours last night researching online to find the perfect non-English European character that would get the maximum outraged reaction from Jason. Tintin just barely beat out Asterix.
If Jason had a moustache, it would have been Asterix all the way.
He’s even blond. Shame about the height.
I can suggest some others over Tintin :
Benoit Brisefer (a blond naive schoolboy)
the blond one from Quick & Flupke (still hergé, but comedic comics, so that may annoy Jason a tad more
and of course Fantasio, who is always wearing a bowtie himself
Fantasio would have been perfect. Down to his bursting a blood vessel. Which means that Walky is his Gaston. Obviously.
good wordplay
I had to read this comic twice to notice it.
I still don’t get it
I hate explaining jokes… seems I must.
Trying has two meanings:
1. An attempt at performing an action. ie. Walky is trying to do better.
2. A person is wearing down on a someone else’s patience. ie. Joyce finds putting up with Walky to be a very trying exercise.
It was excellent wordplay indeed
It *was* excellent wordplay, but your comment is condescending and arrogant. Please don’t be rude.
Not sure why you would consider it arrogant/condescending.
Someone said they didn’t understand the joke. The poster assumed they were being honest and explained it. Not sure how they could have done so any different.
“I hate explaining jokes. It seems I must.” is condescending. Nobody MUST. You hate it? Don’t do it. Someone else will.
The first sentence wasn’t necessary.
Cool story, bro
Joyce reads the comment section.
Her innocence would have been destroyed long ago if that were the case.
Joyce is a secret agent undercover as a webcomic character.
If Mike and Jason’s eyebrows extended forever, would they ever intersect?
Given that they have mass and could therefore in sufficeint quantity might produce a black hole? Ye…
…. er, wait. I’m not sure if the euclidean concept of “intersect” applies in non-euclidean singularities.
There’s a lot of concepts that might not apply when black holes are around. For instance, the concept of “inside” a black hole might not even make sense (since there isn’t really a spacetime path from the outside of the event horizon to the inside that doesn’t violate the speed of light)
From the outside, you never see anything pass through the event horizon, it just approaches it asymptotically and gets red-shifted to invisibility.
Since it takes infinite time for something to fall into a black hole, and since black holes eventually decay due to Hawking radiation, technically nothing ever enters a black hole.
But doesn’t it take inifinite time only for an outside observer?
Yes. If you are falling into a back hole with the mass of the sun, from your viewpoint you will fall from the event horizon to the center in 10^-5 seconds. No need to hold your breath.
Can I just say I absolutely love how quickly this thread went from eyebrows to the physics of black holes? XD
Also one couldn’t have a black hole with only the mass of the sun; the star would need to be I think it’s at least 30% larger for it to have the smallest minimum mass required to collapse into a black hole.
Well, strictly speaking, the black hole will accelerate an infinite amount and decay before you ever fall into it.
I’m pretty sure that time dilates only from the perspective of the object falling into the black hole, and doesn’t actually stop.
An object traveling at high speed does the same thing. The closer your speed is to the speed of light, the slower time passes relative to an outside observer. GPS satellites actually move fast enough that they have to account for that in order to make accurate calculations.
It’s not possible for matter to actually reach the speed of light, so even though the black hole’s gravity would cause you to accelerate to incredibly high speed, time would never actually come to a stop for you.
The real reason you wouldn’t need to hold your breath is that you would’ve been reduced to superheated plasma long before you got anywhere near it
are you making a parallel to something I don’t get?
Well, it’s supposed to be a joke, so obviously someone’s getting skew-ered.
This is acute pun thread.
Angle puns are pretty common; I don’t know if Euclid come up with one that isn’t overused.
No need to be obtuse…
OK I got nothing better, my math stopped functioning.
Better is of course just a matter of degree …
Let’s see your proof of that.
I have a truly excellent one that is tangentially related, but sadly it won’t fit within the margins of this comment box.
tyresome: +1 Internet
🙂
So that remark was of no cosecants.
… and thus will be cosined to oblivion.
Of course not, there’ll be re-pi-cussions.
…and with that, things have come full circle
Are you claiming this is thread is a tautology?
Maybe its just a reflex…
It’s certainly a Trig..er.
Joyce’s shade should always be appreciated.
Yeah, they don’t like it much when you say England is in Europe. Boyfriend got over-the-top mock-offended the first time I did that.
So, turns out 2017 had one surprise left in it! And this one’s even a good one! All rejoice for the Democratic senator from Alabama!
It’s like an early Christmas gift.
Oh shit he won!?
That’s a good oh shit btw
Well, Roy Moore is declaring a recount, but he lost by 200% too large a margin for that to work
Despite the votes of evangelicals, who 4:1 made a firm moral stand in favor of a pedophile.
…..
These are the same people who think we need religion in school to teach kids morality.
Yeah, let’s not lose sight of the fact that nearly 49% of Alabama still voted for a pedophile–but right now I’m taking every little victory I can get.
Nearly 49% of Alabama voters who turned out. There’s the potential to hope (for humanity, not so much for politics) that the margin may have been larger were there not so much voter suppression in place.
Also, the reason Jones won? Mobilization of black voters by the NAACP.
So successfully prosecuting Klansmen can actually pay off in Alabama … and we didn’t murder Obama in office …
Maybe I’m overly cynical about this country … or possibly I’ve merely managed to minimize my expectations sufficiently …
Turned out and didn’t get blocked from voting.
Also, lets all keep in mind that, in keeping with patterns, the majority of white voters who showed up voted for the white supremacist.
White supremacist, homophobe, misogynist, Islamophobic.
Let’s not skip over his other qualities.
And theocrat! Cant’s forget that one!
Black voters — especially Black women — saved the day again!
Democrats managed extraordinarily high turnout for this election, while Republican turnout was pretty depressed. Over 94% of Alabama Hillary voters showed up to vote, while less than 50% of Trump voters did. Getting national Presidential election turnout numbers for a special Senate election from your base is basically unheard of and it happening in Alabama is even more impressive.
Turn out is the key.
Like most races, this one didn’t turn on changing the minds of anyone’s hardcore supporters. I doubt many people who would normally have voted for the GOP candidate voted for Jones, despite everything. But they stayed home. And people who wouldn’t normally have bothered showed up.
England *is* in Europe. But it’s not in mainland Europe. And that means there are some things that apply to other European nations that don’t apply to us (although it’s 5 am and other than “easier travel between countries”, driving on the other side of the road, and stuff related to the EU I can’t think of many… It meant that historically our borders were more secure and shifted less, I guess (not been successfully invaded since 1066) so it was easier to view ourselves as separate. And our navy was pretty darned effective and helped us build up a lot of clout as a nation, so it was easy to view ourselves as important and to be comfortable being separate).
But I wouldn’t expect the average 18 yo American to know or care about those subtleties, and think Jason is being unreasonable to do so. Even if he has noticed that Walky isn’t OK
England was successfully invaded in at least 1399, 1460, 1471 and 1689, in the sense of a contested armed incursion leading to regime change; and you could at least make an argument for 1139 and 1470.
gee we found something Jason is being unreasonable about. shocker
I’m not exactly delighted about a Democrat senator. I am, however, very happy that the theocratic shitweasel lost.
Pretty much. If that moron had stepped down like literally EVERYONE TOLD HIM TO Jones wouldn’t have a chance. But nope. He had to very poorly ride in on an unhappy horse and lost. Narrow margin, but it’s fucking Alabama. I’m liberal so I ain’t crying but seriously the idiot did it to himself. I guess he was convinced nothing would happen because nothing happened in the past. What a toad.
Since when do we care? England is in Europe. Signed, confused Brit
PS “continental” is used to describe things from or typical of mainland Europe.
Jason’s face in the third panel melts my heart. He does give a damn. D’aww.
Jason needs you to know how wrong you are always.
…oh crap, I’m Jason.
Alt-text: I dunno. Neither of them seem to be in a “sharing” mood.
*plays Thomas Dolby’s “Europa And The Pirate Twins” on the hacked Muzak*
*followed by “Sweet Home Alabama”*
I prefer Todd Steed & The Suns of Phere’s “Freebird 2”.
What Happened To Rock?
It died with Tom Petty.
If image tags were turned on I would have the PERFECT Hunter x Hunter screencap for this comic
It’s from the Greed Island arc, when Killua’s talking to the one guy who’s guiding them through the psychology of the test that the business is putting them through, and Killua says that guys who act smart usually fail
ADMIRE MY COMEDY
From the first panel it looks like Joyce is still hopping everywhere. I’m surprised she hasn’t fallen over multiple times by now.
Joyce has hopscotch skills for days.
I think she’s just limping severely.
Although on second look maybe not.
Definitely not, it looks like she’s not letting that foot touch the ground. You’d think she would have gotten a crutch or something by now…
Considering we last saw her hopping to the class she’s now leaving, I’m not sure when.
I…
I don’t get it…
Trying? I can only imagine it as sarcasm…
I feel like an idiot right now…
As an adjective, trying means “difficult or annoying; hard to endure.”
It’s definitely a less common use case, but Joyce has a rather erudite (read: “archaic”) lexicon
Well, it’s less common, but not uncommon. When it’s being used as wordplay as in this strip, I can see it being harder to get. And of course if English isn’t someone’s first language and depending on one’s specific environment…basically all the factors that could go towards one’s development of a vocabulary.
But basically what I’m getting at is that this example from Joyce doesn’t stand out to me as saying anything about her lexicon.
Oh, I agree that it’s not an unheard-of word and it doesn’t say a lot about her lexicon that she knows it. But the only time most people use it is when describing times.
Or when repeating this particular joke.
Yeah, that’s when I hear it most often in that sense, these days, myself: “Well, at least he’s trying. And sometimes, he’s very trying.”
It’s been so long since I heard it as an adjective that I forgot it could be used as such…
Good to know, I’ll try to keep it in my head this time.
Mike was talking across the fourth wall. At me!
And I resemble that remark!
Students are below your level. That’s why they’re students.
If you can’t deal with that, quit.
Actually, quit anyway.
You people have ridiculously high standards for characters you don’t like, and then characters you do like just need to get out of bed, and you’re overjoyed.
Danny, in his spare time, is a better teacher to Sal than Jason was, and would probably be a better teacher to Walky too, if given the chance. But he shouldn’t have to. That’s Jason’s job, and an undergrad with no training can do it better.
Students like Walky can annoy teachers like Jason.
Teachers like Jason can destroy students like Walky.
So yes. I expect more from Jason than I expect from Walky. I do not find this to be an unreasonable stance to hold.
If they were peers, engaging on an equal level? That would be something else. But they are not. Walky’s sass means nothing. Jason’s is a reinforcement of Walky’s sense that he is worthless and trying isn’t worth the trouble.
I do agree Walky is being a tool. The solution to that isn’t for Jason to be a tool back because, as you point out, he’s the authority figure here, whether he accepts that or not. The solution is for Jason to say “I don’t have to take this nonsense from you. Get out of my office and don’t come back until you’re ready to take this seriously.’
Nightsbridge: You have my total agreement. That being said, it is worth noting that Jason is a TA; that’s important because, while he is being made to teach the class, he isn’t a fully-fledged teacher yet and still has time to learn what he’s doing wrong and what’s really important. Unfortunately for Walky, Jason may not get it right in time for it to benefit Walky. Professor Reeves, the professor for this course, should be here to teach Jason about teaching and the ethics thereof, but Jason appears to be on his own, possibly because Reeves is a shitty teacher himself.
> an undergrad with no training can do it better.
As a former CS TA at IU, I think it likely that Jason has minimal training in teaching, if any at all. Teacher training is something you need for high school and below. For college we assume that any researcher (professor or grad student) can also teach… or we just don’t care if they can’t.
Also, being TA isn’t something a grad student seeks out, usually. It’s something you get assigned to for funding, if your research professor can’t get researching funding for you instead. Jason could only quit by dropping out of grad school or taking massive loans.
According to Jason, being a TA is part of his program, and if he gets fired from being TA (say, for fucking Sal) he will be kicked out of the program.
For some reason (well, specifically me never going to college and having no idea how college works), I wasn’t aware that grad students have to become TAs. I probably misread somewhere, but I thought Jason was a TA because he was pursuing a career in education.
…But a career in education wouldn’t require a graduate degree, would it. Wow, I’m dumb…
No, you aren’t dumb. Teaching at the K-12 level doesn’t require a graduate degree, but if you want to teach at the college level, then a Masters is the minimal degree you would need and a Ph.D is more typical at a college or university level.
Many graduate students end up as TAs at one point or another, depending on the department. For the most part, they receive very little actual training as a teacher,though this varies from institution to institution, and some schools are now starting instructional “boot camps” to help TAs get more practical teaching skills.
Many states require, or at least strongly encourage, that you work on getting a Master’s, but you don’t need it to start teaching K-12.
Teaching may not require a graduate degree, but many teachers do have one, especially if they’re in a specialty like library science, special education, etc.
Library Science usually only available as a graduate program in the US. All degreed public librarians has graduate degrees.
Speaking as someone going into education, the graduate degree K-12 teachers get is generally in education (or a closely related discipline), not the field they might (at the secondary level) actually teach. If you were a math teacher you’d be getting an M.Ed. or Ed.D. as opposed to a Masters or Ph.D. in math, which is Jason’s program.
I do know there are some teachers who didn’t go into education, but rather their preferred field. Education isn’t a particularly transferrable degree, so Jason could’ve gone the ‘field of choice’ route but it’s less likely than him wanting to go into … whatever the fuck math degrees go into (I am not in STEM, clearly).
I TA now and we just get a few workshops on the equality act, what our role is and how to mark. There is basically zero training in teaching and that’s typical in the UK. Some of us are naturally good at it (I’m planning to pursue HE teaching as my career so I count myself as one) but the students are playing Russian roulette education-wise, though that applies to lecturers as well who tend to learn on the job.
It’s not a great system.
What do you mean “7 years in”?
…Oh!
..oooohh god…how have I been reading this for seven years? >.>
I know! And Fuckface only JUST appeared? Like, what took so long?
Well, it’s good to see that Joyce is at least keeping her toe wrapped only in a sock. Put it in footwear, especially footwear that doesn’t breathe well, and it can rot and fester and get…
…. what’s that word….
BOOTULISM.
At least it isn’t E. sole-i.
Jason, something you need to learn: Grad students and Ph. D’s aren’t necessarily smart, they’re just persistent.
Oh I don’t know Jason maybe because your job is to teach people things that you know and they don’t ? Mike is right, matter of fact this feels appropriate : https://youtu.be/g3sq-Y_3RIY
Try being a TA for five fucking seconds. You will lose all that sass remarkably quickly.
Agreed. Especially if you’re a graduate TA, where you’re paid a fraction of your worth to teach a class (or to do the work for a class the professor didn’t want to do, more likely) so you can do a full-time-job’s worth of research every week for free.
Honestly, his best move with a student like Walky is to grant no additional help, but it’s really hard to refuse when asked, because most grad students have also internalized the idea that they’re not working enough, and when a student plays on your desire to be a good academic as Walky did, it’s impossible to step away.
But one of the things Jason needs to learn if he’s going to be a good teacher (and there are many, but this is one), is that his time is ill-spent on students like Walky, who refuse to properly engage with the material and take the work seriously. Target the kids who care and work but are struggling; they’re the ones you can actually make a difference with. And allocating time to Walky makes him less able to better serve students who could *actually* benefit from his help.
Is Jason a crappy teacher? Yeah, he is. But he’s also likely overworked and under-trained, and he at least tries, which likely makes him a better teacher than most of his peers already. I’m fortunate to have done my graduate work in a program which put an actual emphasis on training their TAs and monitoring and adjusting their workload to prevent it from getting too cumbersome. Most TAs do not have that luxury, and are largely left to figure things out on their own. And absence natural emotional intelligence, communication skills, etc., that’s really freaking hard to do, especially when faced with typically at least half your class being disinterested and disengaged no matter how hard you try to reach them.
Yeah, pretty much this. I give Jason a lot of grief, but I’d be hard pressed to be mad at him for telling Walky not to come to office hours unless and until he’s ready to take things seriously, or for turning down appointments for extra (as in, non class, non office hour) help.
Jason also falls down for his treatment of Sal – not just having sex with her, but pretty much all his early interactions with her.
And Sal was trying, but Jason wasn’t having any more success teaching her than teaching Walky.
All right, first off: I’m sincerely trying to be as polite and civil as possible. I firmly believe in that, and make it a point to keep my mouth shut (and keyboard untouched) when I can’t be civil. I sometimes fail at that, and regret it. So if I sound a little terse here, it’s not intended, it’s something I’m actively trying to avoid but it can be difficult.
When I read you saying essentially that Jason should give up on Walky, I felt an urge to write a fuck-you comment. You were totally right that Jason’s job is super hard and Walky is being an immature prick. But I feel strongly that the situation is not so black-and-white, and Walky should be cut a little slack. I will openly admit that I feel that way because of my own personal experiences.
So here is some life context on that personal experience of mine. I coasted through school with zero effort in my early academic career. Then I transferred to an advanced placement program, where I encountered, for the first time, material that was, if not necessarily challenging, at least intellectually stimulating. At the same time, I was walloped by a massive double-whammy onset of severe mental AND physical health issues. My grades nosedived harder than a fighter jet going down in lurid flames. I had not corrected this (or the underlying causes) by high school, and my figurative plane finally hit the ground at high speeds. With no exaggeration: I flunked almost every single class I took, such that I dropped out in early senior year, because there was no way I could graduate without tacking on an extra three years in HS to retake all those required credits.
Eleven years after my stream of academic failings began, I am deeply, pants-shittingly afraid of the mere concept of college. In this day and age it is practically a requirement to get a job with remotely decent pay. Yet I have heard nothing but an endless litany of how extraordinarily hard college is, and I am cripplingly aware that I am not in any way prepared and I have absolutely zero of the skills I would need to succeed. I have not experienced academic success in eleven years; how could I ever succeed again?
So, and this might get dangerously close to rude territory, I do somewhat agree with the Walky criticism because I am not blind to his flaws as a character, but I also think it is incredibly easy to cast the stones of shame from — and I know this is bad, but assuming a little about most of the commenters here — the high ground of someone who has struggled but triumphed over those struggles. I think that it is likely that at least some of the criticism stems from the view that Walky’s behavior is because he is immature and lazy. I think there is far more to it than Walky being LAZY. Is he lazy? Yeah, probably. So am I. I’m lazy as fuck, and I’m kept awake at night by the idea that maybe all of my failures are because of that laziness.
Jason should not give up on Walky. Walky may not seem like he is trying, but sometimes appearances can be deceiving. Sometimes, a student needs to be pushed to even understand that it is possible for them to succeed. And if they do not receive that push, then of course they will fail.
I’m neurotic and can’t stop qualifying my statements with “I am paying close attention to your views and trying to be as understanding as possible” clauses, so here we go again, some more.
I know you did not explicitly say Jason should give up on Walky. I meant more that it seemed implied. You actually stated that teachers should prioritize students who are trying, and that is a fair assessment, no moral argument there. However, I got a lot of flak in school from teachers who decided I wasn’t trying, and… that was hurtful. Really hurtful. I wanted badly to try, but I was practically unable. Walky reads to me as someone with serious ADHD, even if Willis is not actually portraying him that way intentionally, so his seeming lack of effort even sort of reads to me as him being incapable for learning-impairment reasons as much as other stuff.
Yeah. A good part of Walky’s problem is that he doesn’t know how to try. He’s never had to. So just saying “You’re not trying. Come back when you are.”, isn’t helpful.
Being Walky, he’s also extremely insecure about it and covering that up with stupid jokes and distractions. But the stupid jokes aren’t why he’s failing.
He might actually be better off going elsewhere for more basic help in learning to study, rather than going to the Math TA for specific help in the math.
yup. last time the walky/jason thing came up there were loads of comments like yours from people with ADHD.
and like, fuck, I can’t even seem to go to the gym and have a shower in the same day without my brain freaking the fuck out at the moment. WHY can’t I just DO things!?!@?! 🙁 “trying harder” just gave me a goddamn permanent migraine… damned if I do, damned if I don’t. :/
…I’ll probably have optimism again in a few days. but right now I just… I really don’t enjoy existing, and it sucks that I can’t stop existing without, like, dying. I’m not interested in that 😛
Gonna stop airing out my unique personal entourage of psychological issues to everybody on the Internet who might view this page in curiosity. Sorry, people who are reading. Sometimes you stay up way too late and get… heart-poury-outty. I am too far past critical sleep deprivation levels to think of an adjective that can be found in a real dictionary.
Yeah, I heard that Walky performs all right
Thanks Mike.
IKR
Seriosly though even if Jason was as smart as he think he’s still not on Mike’s level.
Once again, Mike speaks truth to douchebags.
Is it just me or does Jason seem a bit… elitist?
No. He doesn’t seem A BIT elitist.
He’s driven by denial of his wild lust for Walky.
Yep. It’s a character flaw
He reminds me of an older, snooty Briton I know, minus the bowties.
Hmmmmm…. maybe Jason’s less offended by the idea that England is in Europe, and more offended by equating it to Belgium? That is, after all, a very rude insult.
Yeah, curse those Belgians and their delicious waffles and chocolate.
Don’t forget the beer l-)
Belgium’s pretty amazing actually, England could stand to be a bit more like it.
I’m not really into beer. Unless it’s a stout – are Belgian stouts great?
Belgians so good at beer they have their own style of beer.
http://drinks.seriouseats.com/2014/03/guide-to-belgian-beer-styles-what-is-dubbel-quad-saison-wit-lambic-gueuze.html
Which is totally not stout-like, but still rather enjoyable. If you like a sour taste, anyway.
As far as I know, we don’t brew stouts in Belgium, but we do have some strong, bitter beers. The Orval and the Westmalle come to mind.
Belgian bier is really good for lagers, dark lagers, and wheat beers, and has a great history of strong Trappist beers. The UK is really good for various Ales; Stouts are generally great from Scotland and Ireland, and England has lots of great pale ales, amber ales and dark milds.
The two don’t have a lot of overlap in styles, and a UK dark beer is very different to a Belgian dark bier ; )
Brilliant
“Ah yes, Belgium. Mecca for the performance motoring enthusiast.”
– James May, sarcastically
I see Jason voted leave, then.
Am I supposed to be on Jason’s side in this? Because Walky isn’t warranting any sympathy here. If you want someone to help you. you don’t get to insult them. He’s like the entitled millennial stereotype that actually exists rather than being a product of Generation X bias.
As with most things in this comic I imagine you are just suppose to read it. If you choose to identify with anyone you are free too. Though I would imagine Joyce is the character to identify with..
Walky has the problem that he never really learned studying acumen because he didn’t have a hard time in school, getting good grades without really needing to study. Dorothy isn’t necessarily any smarter than Walky, for instance, but more disciplined and driven.
Jason’s problem is similar to the one he had with Sal, which is that he knows the material, but he isn’t very good at engaging with his students. It’s like a star athlete who isn’t a good coach because they don’t really know how to show someone the way to do what may have come very naturally to them.
Neither of them is blameless here, and both have ample reason to be frustrated, but Jason’s probably the one who ought to budge first here for his sake, as his fellow TA held him in pretty low esteem, both for being unliked and for not being terribly good at his job.
Jason, your arrogant twattery is showing. Cover that up before you get arrested for public indecency.
Seriously though, I love that all the DoA characters are so realistically flawed. Jason is far more of an elitist prick than he seems to realize. He’s teaching an advanced mathematics course and yet he treats Walky and Sal like they’re idiots for struggling with it. If Walky could coast through high school without studying, he’s actually very smart. Lazy, but smart. Jason just assumes Walky is intellectually inferior based on his performance in a single, difficult subject. How telling.
Also, Walky’s and Jason’s experiences in DoA so far are fairly relatable to me, personally. As a kid I was like Walky: I didn’t need to study much, if at all, because I often understood the material very quickly, with no difficulty. I didn’t necessarily think of my classmates who struggled as inferior, but I knew I was smarter than them, and my sense of self-worth wholly revolved around it. When I transferred to an AP (Advanced Placement) program, designed for kids like me, suddenly I was forced to confront the realization that I wasn’t such a special snowflake. Because the transfer to AP coincided with my developing severe depression, unfortunately that realization destroyed my self-worth entirely. But later, after battling past the worst of the depression, I was able to reevaluate things, and decide what I felt really mattered. These days, I try to take pride in traits like my compassion towards others, something I feel is genuinely meaningful and important, unlike book-smarts.
I don’t get the impression at all that he thinks Walky is unintelligent. His frustrations with Walky revolve almost entirely around Walky being either unwilling or unable to engage in their tutor sessions. He doesn’t think poorly of Walky’s performance; he thinks poorly of Walky sidetracking every effort–however flawed–Jason has made to help him, usually into some manner of insulting Jason.
Yeah, I don’t think he thinks Walky is stupid. He thinks he is immature and uncouth, probably, but he can tell that Walky isn’t meeting him halfway, even if he probably isn’t doing the best job of doing that, either.
If you want to teach, you have to be open to learning from your students, too, and hopefully, Walky can teach him that lesson in a way Sal began to, but didn’t finish. Or did, phrasing…
That is a fair assessment. He did seem to think Sal was dumb, though, didn’t he? (Er… my memory of previous storylines is a bit hazy.) He made a lot of assumptions about Sal because of her delinquent persona (and possibly other factors as well), but she was making a genuine effort for the most part, until she gave up and fucked him instead anyway.
Students like Sal (troublemaker, or acts like one) and Walky (miniscule attention span) are extremely commonplace challenges for teachers. Part of Jason being a TA is learning how to properly and effectively deal with students like them. He can be forgiven for lacking the knowledge to help them succeed, but the fact remains he doesn’t view himself as being in any way culpable for their failing, and is somewhat callous on the matter, as if it isn’t really his problem. He is trying harder to be a better teacher to his students, but to me, it seems like he has a long way to go.
(Side note to maybe add context to my opinions: My aunt is a teacher, and she is superb at it. She works in a district with many disadvantaged children, including quite a few who barely speak English, and even some who MAY live in Mexico and be crossing the border illegally every day to obtain American education. She has very strong opinions about the ethics of teaching, and would probably be even harsher on Jason than I am. A lot of my opinions about teaching are heavily influenced by her.)
Just looked back and learned it’s Rees, not Reeves. Sigh. And he has been shown to be teaching somewhat, although he sort of disappeared after the introduction of Jason…
If I remember correctly he also seemed to argue that her bad grades justified looking down on her desire to get better grades.
Jason, like many people without the proper skill-set or temperament for their occupation, is convincing himself that the under-performance of his class is is students’ fault, not anything to do with his own abilities.
And in the specific case of Walky, he is right. Walky says he wants to improve, but does everything he can to sabotage any attempt Jason made to help him. As opposed to Sal who genuinely tried and was badly taught, Walky doesn’t even listen and seems to preemptively fight back by insulting Jason as often as he can and uses all his energy to do just that rather than actually try and improve.
Is it sad or frightening that my response to calling Jason “Tintin” was the same as Jason’s own… (ie. that Tintin is Belgian)?
I really think that Jason needs to ask himself if this is the career for him! :-p
Meanwhile, I have to congratulate Joyce on her quip! That was unusually quick-witted humour on her part!
She’s sharp, but her innocent lack of real-world context holds the punning back.
His desired career is probably to be a research mathematician. Teaching is something such careers ask you to do along the way.
It’s not. He probably has no interest teaching. He’s T.A., so he’s a grad student.
British exceptionalism is such a noxious notion. I’m astonished by the number of Brits who don’t consider the UK to be a part of Europe. Not the EU mind you, but Europe the continent. As if the channel is big enough to push them next to the coast of Virginia.
Unless he’s comparing England to Belgium. Then I can certainly see his point.
So what continent do they think they’re part of?
The continent of Her Majesty the Queen.
Their own special snowflake continent.
We’re the Alabama of Europe.
Can we please stop using “Brit” for “English”.
Britain is not England, and England is CERTAINLY not Britain.
If this Brexit nonsense goes tits up, then there won’t be a Britain left.
As long as there’s a Scotland… 🙂
Well it IS an island, close to but detached from the European mainland. So there’s that.
There is a tunnel these connecting the UK to the mainland.
Make Doggerland Dry Again!
As a Brit I am shocked that these people actually exist. I’ve never actually met one so Jason’s objection has been confusing me all day.
The first comic tagged ‘tintin’! But will it be the last? Tune in tomorrow. Same Dumb-Time, same Dumb-Channel!
Dude.
Dude.
Dude.
As belgian comics characters go, Jason looks more like a Fantasio (morally and physically) than an Tintin to me.
I hate Jason so much. So much.
Tintin IS pretty apt, visually at least.
Well, it’s not in Europe any more. Good job, England.
Eh, it never really was.
That’s like saying Japan isn’t really Asia, Newfoundland isn’t really North America, or the Falklands aren’t really South America. Oh, I see the appeal. 😉
A dozen millennia ago Britain was barely separated enough to count as a peninsula. Now there is a channel that few can swim across, but the flora and fauna are still similar, and the humans are mostly descended from people like Celts and Germans who still have relatives on the mainland. You have to have a very short never to think it never belonged.
I mean, unless you also just meant the EU… :/
It is, it’s just not in the EU (and, as Cyberdance points out, it never really was).
To be fair it IS still in EU. They are only starting to figure out how to exit it.
maybe it’s not too late to have another referendum retracting the previous referendum?
also maybe we across the pond can still impeach Trump? let’s make this a race
Well from what I’ve seen in news outlets it seems like there is a big chance you’ll be able to kick the Annoying Orange out of the office.
The problem with that is that then Pence gets to be president. There were some earlier comments about theocrats . . .
Pence is worse domestically, Trump is worse internationally.
Provided we live through it, we can fix poor domestic policy within a decade or two. (Except for the people who die. They stay dead.)
International screw-ups tend to stick around for a century and ripple all over the world in ways we can never fix.
So, as thoroughly horrible as he is, I’m ready for President Pence.
There’s also the chance Pence might be arrested with Trump. Of course, I believe that puts McConnel in charge.
Nope, Paul Ryan, my bad.
Also, the internal power struggle necessary to oust Trump and put Pence in charge would tear the party apart. Pence would be much weaker because the crazy part of the base would be in open revolt over the establishment taking down their beloved leader.
Also, Pence, for all his nasty theocratic leanings, is a wet blanket. He’s just not nearly so dangerous.
And yeah, there’s a good chance he’ll go down with Trump, he’s in it up to his eyeballs.
Wonder what people are worried Pence would do on his own, that wasn’t already hidden somewhere in the tax bill.
Women and LGBTQ+ people are on his chopping block.
He’s virulently opposed to Planned Parenthood and birth control, and wants to overturn abortion and gay marriage rights. He thinks conversion therapy is a good idea for gay folks (it involves literally torturing people to pray away the gay). He’s very anti-trans* people, no surprise there.
So, the usual shitty hater-republican domestic bouquet, but even moreso.
Wait and see.
Many a slip etc.
Jason’s a Rick and Morty fan comfirmed
Not even remotely WHAT? In Europe? Is he a Brexiteer?
Belgium’s gotta be like the fourth closest country to England as well.
Maybe he is following that classic English mindset of “We might be part of Europe geographically but we aren’t European.” You used to hear it a lot in the 90s. And it isn’t something that really went away remainer or brexiter since there was always plenty of but we want a special exception because (insert reason here, like how islands are different for free movement).
In the translated versions of Tintin, he’s from England. Which is why he’s English in the movie.
(I know because I read Tintin comics as a kid.)
So in addition to being correct in that both Jason and Tintin are lanky, blonde Europeans, he can also make a case that he was referring to the movie.
Tintin isn’t Belgian in the English version?
How does that work in Tintin in the Congo? Was it changed to Tintin in South Africa?
Heh, this reminds me a bit from a lecture about cultural translations. About how Bible was translated into Inuit languages and replaced sharing bread with sharing fish.
So instead of loathes and fishes. It was fish & fish?
And the water was turned into slush puppies that are my blood.
(Yeah, I don’t know anything about Inuit beverages)
I think it was Just fish. It was just a simple example.
When I was a kid Tintin in the Congo just didn’t exist.
I don’t remember translated Tintin being from anywhere particularly, but maybe that’s just because I’m British, so as a kid I’d have just assumed any British-specific stuff was actually universal.
RE: alt-text – And Mike lights him up….!
the look on Joyce’s face is unsettling 🙁
I don’t miss you Mike.
I see you’ve been checking with English people. England is still in Europe, no matter what they think. And that’s not even talking about the EU.
I can’t believe we’re 7 years in and it’s still like, November.
They’re going to have to put up with crappy Christmas music foreeeever 😉
Actually, its only mid October. We’re still couple years out from November