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“Because I don’t actually have any chemistry background, I shall instead recruit chemistry students by explaining how the electron spin notation is actually partial derivative notation, the way their teachers didn’t.”
I mean, it sounds like he’d be in the same situation anyway even if he hadn’t slept with Sal, because his coworker/ex is a dick who thought it was funny to make him lose a job when she didn’t even know he was doing what she accused him of.
Jason certainly deserves what’s coming to him, but it wouldn’t play out too much differently, I feel.
Though then he’d be able to go to whoever she accused him of having sex with and have them tell the tribunal it was bullshit. Assuming she did pick Sal, based on needing the office and such.
Jason lost his job as a T.A. A job he was spectacularly shitty at and didn’t need for financial reasons from all appearances. This is a First World Problems sort of ruined.
On the one hand, he lost his job as TA, a job he needs in order to stay in his program at college. No college, no student visa, and he goes back to England with no way to complete his education and no marketable skills.
On the other hand, he could easily save this job if he would get over himself, not be a shit, and think before he acts. So I really can’t feel too sorry for his creepy ass.
He has a bachelor degree, probably in math. What kinda jobs can you get for that? I’d imagine he could probably at least go into something to do with money.
Well, as somebody who has a Bachelor’s Degree in Maths…I actually found myself near-unemployable for many years, right here in London. So yeah, maybe Jason’s working life really is ruined in the short-to-medium term. xD
To continue the story though, after a few years in a shitty job in a high street betting shop, and several more years of unemployment, I went back to college to study accounting. Because Accountancy job roles want actual Accountancy qualifications, not just some nebulous shit like Maths degree.
And now I’m – finally – a newly-qualified junior accountant.
I was under the assumption that TAs like him(that is- non lab TAs) were independent of the programs and were actually employed as a way of earning the masters and PhD students money while they obtain their degrees…him losing his job wouldn’t directly impact him but could cause the department to take his papers under closer scrutiny.
I think we’re a bit harsh on TAs and academics in general seeing as none of us are trained teachers and are rarely hired for our teaching skills. You take someone who is excellent at maths and say “now you need to teach maths” and expect magic to happen. The whole system is idiotic.
Jason sleeping with a student is a separate issue and obviously wrong but I can’t hold poor teaching skills against him as that’s an issue with the system.
That’s changing, at least at PhD-granting institutions in the U.S. Many are introducing clear pedagogical projects to make sure that TAs (and potential future faculty) are actually trained in the scholarship of teaching and learning and pedagogy. Because I received more intentional training in pedagogy and the scholarship of how people learned, I actually made extra money while in my PhD to help train people in disciplines with less of that formal scaffolding (often math and science disciplines, but not exclusively in those areas).
It is a long time coming – my second year was totally messed up by a prof on the way out that had negative sum skill at transmitting valid information.
When I switched majors after a brief hiatus to work so I could afford to eat, I ended up Tutoring half the classes I was taking at the time. The instructors for the most had passable to good communication skills, the TAs had little grasp of the subjects and even less capability to communicate [a two way endeavor]
People keep saying Jason was a bad T.A., but do we really know for sure? Yes, he had sex with a student (which was wrong), but he did give her work for others to grade (so he recognized that he needed to avoid any sort of bias).
As for his ability to teach, we really only have 2 data points: Walky and Sal. Walky was a horrible student that I don’t think ANYONE could get through to. And while Sal has done better under Danny than under Jason, she was likely coming from a situation where she may not have had a decent foundation for the subject (something universities often require).
And it should be pointed out that Jason was actually upset when Sal said he couldn’t teach. So at the very least he is aware of his limitations and wants to improve his skills in the area.
He’s a lousy teacher. (Which to be fair to him, isn’t that surprising. He’s likely a first year TA, has no training in teaching and quite likely no way to fit any into a demanding program. And the professor he TAs for is also lousy and uncaring, so he’s got no mentor or support.)
That said, he denigrated Sal when she first came to him for help, after his initial way out of line flirting comment. And pretty much kept it up throughout the session. It’s hard to tell since we haven’t seen much detail of his tutoring, it seemed he simply kept repeating the same point even when she clearly wasn’t getting it. No attempt to try different ways to explain or to approach the subject or even to try to figure out why she wasn’t getting it.
And he apparently didn’t give her work to someone else until after she confronted him the first time – it was the one she did better on that he made the comment about knowing it was real because he didn’t grade it.
All that said, he does seem to want to be a good teacher, which puts him above Penny or the Professor, even if he’s not actually doing anything about it.
I’m pretty sure sleeping with your student kinda immediately checks off the ‘bad teacher’ box. It’s not just frowned upon, it’s an actual ethical no-no.
Given that he had sex with a student despite knowing that that’s against the rules and generally being shitty at his job, I’m disinclined to feel sympathy for him.
Actually that seems to imply that he wouldn’t in fact have done that except in the hypothetical. He intentionally sent her paper to somebody else so there was no question about the grade’s integrity, but he’s insulted that she thinks he’d only give her that score if he was in fact being bought off with sex.
He still wouldn’t have actually done it, which is why he gave her grade to another TA in the first place.
Mind you he already crossed way, way over the line and now we are just measuring distance away from the line, but if he was intending to do that one would have assumed he’d have just done it in the first place.
I would think if that were what he meant, he’d have just said ‘I was being hypothetical’ when Sal pointed out he gave her a crappy grade instead of ‘Are you ALWAYS going to be sore over that?’ (Also: You brought it up you asshole – you being Jason, not you insanenoodlyguy, you seem great).
I thought he was saying that if he was grading her on sex instead of math, it would have been higher. Not in a hypothetical trade of sex for grades, but in regards to how much he enjoyed it.
His life isn’t ruined. He just lost a TA job. He can get another one at one of several dozen universities, provided that he is at least a little bit competent in his field.
oh jeez i somehow misread it as “availed to”. which i read as just like, “made myself available to provide tutoring”. “availed of” is… actually horrifying
I used to do that, then I realized worrying about every little thing is exhausting. And as it took someone calling me out to realize it, I will do the same to anyone else I see going down that road.
Assuming those people are exactly like you used to be (they’re probably not), and assuming that your calling out will influence them (it won’t).
I have yet to meet someone that responds well to being “called out” by a total stranger (hell it rarely works on close friends). It generally creates defensiveness and hostility.
I have been in communities where I’ve seen people called out/in and that gone well. I’ve been called out on things myself and worked to address them.
I wouldn’t put this in the same category as those things. It was a shitty thing that made me feel shitty, and I am deeply skeptical of any actual helpful intention. I suppose I’ll hope that that intention did exist, for whatever that’s worth.
Okay, I’ll put it in a way that’s nicer. I worry that you worrying about a movie will only serve to cause you unneeded emotional distress. You can’t change the fact that the movie exists. I thought your were making the same mistakes that I used to make, but I know realize we essentially have the opposite problems, I would worry about things I couldn’t change, and would depress myself, I imagine you worry about things you can’t change to hide from much bigger problems.
Congratulations, your noble intentions of telling people not to care about things has turned me into a sobbing mess.
You know what I did last night? It probably falls under the category of a little thing for you not to care about, but I’ll tell you anyone: I was up until 4am crying my eyes out about how much I wanted to die. If you had made this comment last night, I’d be bleeding right now– in an attempt way, but in an “I also struggle with self-harm” way. And that wouldn’t have been your fault, but you certainly wouldn’t have helped the situation.
You know what can help the situation? Feeling things. Feeling annoyed, feeling angry, and getting to express those feelings. Caring about things is not useless, and I am grasping at what I can to stay alive. So I don’t really care about your intentions, just please don’t bring that attitude my way again for at least a while.
Why do you think I don’t care? If I didn’t care I wouldn’t have the made the comment. I wasn’t trying to be mean, I’ve just made mistakes, and I was scared someone else ran the risk of making those mistakes. Please get help, anyway you can. I know I can’t make up for what I did, but please forgive me, I just wanted to help.
I do care, I’m just really bad at showing it. Or perhaps I don’t care because I’m afraid to care, because caring will only remind me of my failures. The people I never confronted, the people I never helped, all because of my own cowardice. I just wanted to help one person. Just one.
you are in the minority there. I’m pretty sure most people find such comments irritating at best, and it makes it *harder* to do the work required to *actually* get over the thing.
hell, if being told to “get over it” actually worked, zillions of therapists would be out of a job. that would be nice, but it’s not the world we live in :/
We were initially talking about a movie, if someone told me they were suicidal and depressed (like Yumi told me after I was dick) I wouldn’t tell them to get over it, because that’s a serious problem that requires help, and care and support. Telling someone to get over something small isn’t necessarily a bad thing, imagine things like depression as a giant wall, I can understand how difficult that wall is to surpass, and as much as I hate it, I can only push a person up that wall a little bit. Now imagine something like a movie was a waist high fence. I made the mistake of failing to realize that the movie wasn’t a fence this time, but a single brick in the wall. I sat upon the wall, and dropped that brick on her head.
haha that’s a great analogy .. or maybe it isn’t, my brain is starting to fall asaleep on me. but… I think you’re underestimating the impact of even small things? and like… even if someone *isn’t* angry, the language you used at first was likely to *make* them angry.
I’m glad you’re trying to learn, anyways wish I was awake enough to explain more…
Congrats on generating a ton of drama by fixating on pointless shit. Because taking the time to call out other people being bugged by pointless shit is in fact more pointless and more shit then the original “offender” could ever be.
Stop trying to help until you get over your own pointless shit. Right now you are really, really bad at it.
What do you want me to say? That I fucked up? that I should have been nicer? I don’t care what you think of me, or if you hate me, because nothing you think about me can ever compare to how much I hate myself in this moment. Have you ever felt guilt? That feeling that if you had said something slightly differently, someone could have killed themselves and you would have never fucking known!? That feeling of blood on your hands from a single mistake? I don’t give a shit I “generated drama” I care that I hurt someone I considered a friend.
That bristling you no doubt did as soon as you read that? That’s because I invalidated your feelings.
I’d rather next time you think you are helping to consider this: It’s generally not a great idea to tell other people what their emotions should be about anything. You “called out” somebody on how they felt. Now, I don’t really know Yumi, but even before we got any contest to how she was feeling, when you responded to her this was always going to end one of two ways before a single additional comment was made or context found:
1. She was being sarcastic or engaging in hyperbole. In which case, your assistance on telling her how she should feel about it is not required. Commenting on how she shouldn’t sweat it doesn’t help her or anybody else.
2. This Blockers movie, for whatever reason, has left her frothing with rage. In which case, TELLING HER HOW TO FEEL ABOUT IT IS NOT REQUIRED. COMMENTING ON HOW SHE SHOULDN’T SWEAT IT DOESN’T HELP HER OR ANYBODY ELSE.
It never really helps anybody when you invalidate their feelings. People feel how they feel. Telling them they should stop feeling one way and feel how YOU think is not about them. It’s about you. It’s not helping. Don’t try to use it to help. It doesn’t work.
You’ll note I never actually said you shouldn’t get bugged about pointless shit. You are who you are, what annoys you annoys you. I told you you should stop calling other people out over pointless shit. Your ACTIONS, not your feelings. That’s what we can more reliably comment to others about . Keep that in mind next time you want to help, because it will actually make you a better helper. Kicking yourself about screwing up is all well and good but only if you own your mistakes and learn from them. Most folks care less about you feeling bad so much as they want you to not repeat your mistakes.
TL;DR: what I want you to say isn’t that you fucked up, it’s “Oh, I really invalidated somebody else’s feelings because of my own peeve’s and while I thought I was helping, doing that doesn’t help squat! Sorry Yumi, sorry folks, I’m going to do better at not telling other people how they should feel!”
Stop engaging with Yumi. Just stop. People are allowed to look at movies and go ‘Has anyone else seen this trailer? It really annoyed me because of X issue which it appears to be portraying poorly/offensively/in a way I think will affect people negatively.’
People are allowed to care about these things that you don’t put a second thought into. Especially if they actually enjoy movies or want to inform people that ‘hey, this movie that may say it is X, but from the trailer, it seems like an inaccurate/harmful/offensive portrayal that you might want to avoid if you were on the fence about seeing it.’
Letting go of things helped you, for others it can be more cathartic to express that they care and feel anger, to have their opinion and feelings validated by others and try to reduce the number of people likely to go see/buy/pay attention to the thing which seems dislikable/harmful/offensive/badly portrayed to them.
Like I would want to know if a video game I was interested in was ableist/sexist/racist/otherwise harmful because I personally care about video games as a form of media. My boyfriend would want to know if a wrestler was tweeting awful stuff because he cares about wrestling as a form of entertainment and he will tell me if one of them is because venting about it helps calm him down.
Yumi is not a younger you or someone for you to save/fix especially when just because something worked for you, that doesn’t mean it will work for other people. You need to back off because you sound like you are projecting.
that sounds… weird. and not very entertaining. but I barely watch any mainstream movies these days. … which reminds me, I think I’m still not caught up on star wars.
No, holy crap, this looks like some potentially lifesaving stuff. I know a couple of people who really might have loved having this information as kids.
My nephew is on them now. If you are lucky enough to get them on blockers before puberty and introduce hormones after then they look and sound like their actual gender without insane surgeries and such (except bottom obviously). Awesome stuff.
It absolutely is life saving. An Australian study found that 48% of trans youth had attempted suicide. And a different study out of (iirc) Sweden found that trans kids who are given GnRH antagonists (medicine that blocks the onset of puberty) have suicide rates that mirror the general teenage population (less than 3%).
Same…having read the movie’s wiki article, I am actually LESS annoyed by it than I was, since it isn’t what it seemed like it might have been based on that title and the brief description that came up (‘parental angst turns to R-rated laughs’ was…worrying)…
I have never even heard of the movie (thankfully), but after your comment I’ve watched the trailer and it’s just…awful not really describes my feelings for this thing, but let’s go with that.
As with ambiguity in the title…at least in my language it got the title “Sex Pact 2018” – probably more fitting…maybe…
I’ll just stop thinking about this movie, hoping I’ll never have to see the trailer again during a cinema visit.
I haven’t bothered with the trailer, but from a couple articles I looked at just now, it seems like it might not be that bad. At least for the teen sex-comedy genre, which I’ve got little to no interest in in the first place.
If nothing else, it seems to give its female characters some agency, which isn’t at all common in the genre.
If that’s true than that’s something…at the least.
The plot is: the (I think it’s just them) daughters of the adult protagonists all want to lose their virginity at prom night, and the parents get wind of that and want to stop them. Which might be a funny movie for some people, but for me, it’s definitely not my type of humour.
I somehow can’t stop considering how creepy it is for parents to a) monitor (albeit it by accident, according to the trailer) the chats of their near-adult children, and to b) invade their private (sexual) life to that extent that they want to stop them in doing any kind of actions.
If the movie’d be more about, you know, social pressure for the teenagers to HAVE to have sex at their age, or at a certain event (prom night), because being virgins in college would be a ‘disaster’ for them – or anything like that, and the movie going into it by some kind of intelligent humorous way, like the parents wanting to stop them because they’ve seen how much pressure the children are putting onto themselves, then I might consider watching it. Or if they’d use any kind of intelligent humour, for that matter.
But for now it seems as if the children actually want to have sex (and probably are ready for it) and the parents are like “WHAAAAAAT? No way, they aren’t old or intelligent enough to make this decision, we have to stop them!”
I think that’s exactly what the plot is. But it sounds like it’s trying to not make it either “the parents are right to control their lives and prevent them from having sex” or “it’s a disaster to still be a virgin in college”.
It looks like at least some of the girls really want the sex, but at least one of them might be being pressured into it. And the parents are freaking out – which while not cool, certainly isn’t unrealistic.
Not my type of movie either, but it doesn’t sound as awful as it’s being portrayed.
The best possible light I can cast it in is “you get to come laugh at a whole lot of stupid people being stupid”, and even then only if the trailer’s being deceptive about two elements (controlling parents and the sex pact).
In other news and for contrast, caught a sneak peak of Love, Simon on Saturday. Much better than Blockers looks like it will be.
I guess Jason’s general shame makes him more endearing. For my part, I tend to relate to people who isolate themselves from everyone around him through their own bad choices, so I relate a lot to both Jason and Sal in that way.
Shitty person? Between being terrible at his own job when others count on him, haranguing students for his own failure, and sleeping with a student, definitely.
As bad as Penny? No. He’s doesn’t revel in pointless sadism.
A TA being terrible at teaching isn’t really a personal failing considering they have next to no teaching training and often no desire to be a teacher. All the other reasons Jason sucks are perfectly valid but him being bad at his job is more a failing of the system.
Eh, I largely agree with you. But he was aware of the problem, aware that others were counting on him, and made zero effort beyond a bit of whining and angst to do anything about it.
Bearing in mind it’s been maybe a month, his immediate boss doesn’t care and though we haven’t seen it, he’s likely buried in work of his own, both graduate studies and his other TA duties
People have different views on and opinions on characters and their actions.
I personally don’t understand what’s so hateable about him. But we all connect to different character differently. I for one hated the shitty ex-girlfriend of the dentist, the lady Leslie went out with once (the girl Leslie immediately crushed on when she got insulted by her), and many other people actually… liked her or defended her and I just didn’t get it.
How are people giving Jason this much shit? He made a stupid decision and he’s frustrated. I fail to see how people are this angry at him for ranting. It’s clear he isn’t able to deal with things that break his orderly little world, and that little world just got upended on him.
Sure, it’s his own fault. But that just makes him stupid, not terrible.
I dunno – if Walky is Rei, then that makes Sal the pilot of Unit 01, and somehow I think Sal would do a better job of it than Shinji.
… now, the real question is, who is Asuka?
If Sal is Shinji, then I imagine Asuka has to be either Danny or Marcie, though I imagine that scene in the hospital would be significantly different regardless.
… I think Jason is actually Asuka in this context. He *is* belligerently attracted to Sal, our Shinji analogue, is very hostile to Walky, our Rei analogue, and he’s currently experiencing a complete career failure like Asuka near the end of the TV show.
Man, you brought it on yourself, Jason. Admittedly, Walky’s flippant attitude probably isn’t helping your emotional state, so I can understand the outburst, but Sal obviously didn’t sic him on you.
People like to say that Jason’s racist, but I don’t think he is, if anything his bigotry is more focused on regionalism and accent then race. It would make far more sense for the man from England to be biased against people with thick American accents then just black girls in general.
If you look up his first interactions with Sal and Walky, he’s not actually rude and condescending to either of them. His first interaction with Sal is a little rocky, because she catches him staring at her (which he apologizes for), and them scheduling an appointment.
His first interaction with Walky is him approaching Walky about his grades. To which Walky responds by yelling at him how he’s doing his job wrong (which, at that point, he actually isn’t).
Not “she catches him staring at her”, but the blatant “ethics prevent me from changing my office hours to right the hell now” while staring at her tits. Though he does apologize.
Which is sort of Jason’s shtick: spend a lot of time talking about his ethics while not actually living up to them. Ethics should prevent you from saying anything like that to a student, even if you catch yourself looking. Not to mention not actually having sex with them, of course.
Next time they really interact on screen, after her first off screen tutoring session, he makes a joke out of her bad grade (ignoring his failure to help her) “I see the problem. You’re positively hopeless.”
Not a good approach to a student you’re supposed to be helping and encouraging.
I wasn’t making an argument against him being an elitist jerk, or an argument at all, really. But if there was an argument to be made, it would be, he’s a jerk, but I don’t see any evidence of him being a racist one.
David Walkerton should be treated with contempt and condescension. When you show up supposedly to learn and just harass your TA instead, you shouldn’t be surprised when said TA stops giving a shit about you.
the approproate response to that isn’t contempt and condescention though. the appropriate response is to address the harassment by confronting the student, and if this doesn’t work, blocking their access to you, possibly reporting the harassment.
They’re also the only two characters we’ve seen who are having trouble in his class, and have had trouble learning from his tutoring. Most of his contempt seems to be targeted at those factors. Which isn’t good, but if that is the source of his contempt then it isn’t racism, except MAYBE in the most broadest sense of societal racism (demographic statistical link between race, low income and poor schools leading to people of color more likely to earn his contempt for failing math), but that wouldn’t reflect much on Jason as an individual racist and also doesn’t easily fit with rich kids who got expensive private schooling.
That doesn’t rule out him being a racist, but it leaves me grasping for anything that indicates it.
A) Sal and Walky went to public school right up until Sal was sent away (which seems to have been a judicial thing not a rich girl thing)
B) They’re the only two students we know of who’ve come to him for tutoring so we don’t have anything else to judge him on.
C) He really shouldn’t get credit for everyone else (seemingly) understanding the class – that’s a credit for Professor Rees, who teaches it, not to him.
They went to public school? Huh. Where’d I get the idea that it was a private school?
In any case, I was responding to the idea that Jason was racist because of the contempt with which he treated the two black students that came to him for help. I wasn’t giving him any credit, just noting that I didn’t see much basis for saying it was racism (rather than a snobby math-elitism awfulness) that was leading him to be like that.
He did notice that they are similar-looking people of approximately the same age and with the same last name. He probably guessed that they are twins, or maybe siblings a year apart or cousins, but definitely related. That’s why he said “male clone”.
Not everyone is as clueless as Danny.
The joys and sorrows of writing believable characters, them having times of weakness and stupidity. I was kind of hoping Jason could be redeemed for what happened with Sal, as I did see he did want to help but made a mistake. It also seemed that he wanted to try and be a good teacher in a system that was kinda screwed up. I guess we will see if that is still possible, but here is a question, if Sal did decide to help him (mostly out of spite for authority) Could Jason be redeemed? (I felt at least he had a better chance than Penny)
I don’t think he blames Sal (not for his current predicament, anyways). I think he’s blaming Sal for Walky’s existence. Which, I mean, it’s not Sal’s fault that Walky is… Walky. And I don’t think Sal ever told Walky to get tutored by Jason (pretty sure she’d tell him the OPPOSITE in fact).
Joyce is the one who told him to get tutored by Jason. She didn’t know that it was actually Danny who helped Sal, so she thought Jason had proven to be a help to Sal.
I wonder how much the “male clone” element is Jason projecting his attraction.
*pause*
Just me? I’ll get my coat.
On an unrelated note, aren’t Walky and Sal supposed to look different? I mean, on the account of them dismissing Sal because of their different skin tones. Or am I overthinking this?
Sal and Walky have the same skin tone, height, and hair. They dress and act completely different, which is what people pick up on(generic teen boy vs punk biker girl) See below for them next to each other.
My recollection is that they have the same physical skin tone – that they project and are perceived as different, even racially, is based on other factors but not their literal skin tone iirc.
It’s not about skin tone, it’s about other features (presumably something regarding nose and/or lip shape which most people don’t pick up on, and probably hair types as well as social factors – Sal might be more connected with Black American culture and we know that she has features that racists tend to see as ‘black’ such as being rebellious)
Yep, hence her going to a salon appointment which takes hours to ‘murder the curls’ out of her hair (right after her father insults her natural hair to her face holy shit do I have words for the Walkerton parents because FUCK those two).
Their skin tones are similar, but Sal has kinky hair that she relaxes while Walky’s hair is straighter, and as of the family weekend arc that seems to be one of the main reasons Walky gets tagged as “whiter.”
To be fair, the only ones we been seeing him trying to improve is Sal and Wally and let’s face it,Walky’s attitude does hurt his profess in the tutoring session. With Sal I am mixedm. Sex aside, (that would have been a better answer) he could have made a better effort to try and tutor Sal in a way she could understand, but with Sal’s attitude, I do wonderif she would have been receptive ether way.
I get he had a sample size of two and I don’t know all the details but if they didn’t need help they would not need help. Sal was F-ing trying and his attitude was to insult her for not already having good grades.
Well, his first attempts with Sal failed, but in the end he did succeed (she went from 43 to 76 after their last session). Of course his methods for achieving this are what got him fired.
When Sal got tutored by Jason, she didn’t understand, got frustrated, and had sex with him thinking her grades would improve.
The next week, when they didn’t, she got in his face, they argued, and had sex again. I’m pretty sure she didn’t get any more tutoring from him and that it was Danny who helped her grades to improve. That’s why she rubbed it in Jason’s face that she got some real help.
Sal received help from Jason multiple times (which also resulted in various sexual encounters). The first time there was no improvement in Sal’s grades (causing Sal to become upset, thinking the sex ‘earned’ her an A.
The second time Sal’s grades improved to a 76. This was before she started getting tutoring from Danny.
The last time we heard about her grades (after the tutoring from Danny) she had improved to an 83.
So, despite Jason being considered a ‘bad’ T.A., he did manage to help Sal improve her grades from a failing mark to 76. Danny has helped her too (although I suspect Danny did a better job at helping her understand, and Jason probably got her to do more of a memorization/repetition).
She did get tutored twice. The first time was offscreen, with no sex and no improvement. It was when she got the grade back from that that she dragged him back to his office for more tutoring, which led to the first sex incident.
That led to the “upgraded myself” bit and their second angry sex, but there’s no indication there was any more tutoring from Jason before her grades improved on the next assignment.
After than, as you say she got even better with help from Danny.
It’s possible something from the earlier tutoring sessions sunk in and helped her on the later assignment, but there’s no indication of that or of another session that started her improvement.
The first time her grades went up she hadn’t talked to Danny yet. That one was all her (because I seriously doubt she went back to tutoring after that first time they screwed).
…really? Dude just started screaming at the twin of a student he had sex with? Generally insults the intelligence of those he fails to teach (seemingly everyone)? Just said he ‘availed’ himself of a student as though they’re a commodity for the taking?
If you are talking about all he has said now, technically he is all but fired and with this on his record his career is pretty much destroyed, so he is pretty hysterical. Also note that all of this does make him a horrible person, but not so much a horrible teacher
Really? You’re going to judge him for being angry after hearing he’s been fired?
Sure, he’s rude. He also genuinely tried to help people, and when he failed he tried to learn what he did wrong. He wants to be a good teacher. That’s more than can be said for a lot of teachers nowadays.
He says he does but he’s done nothing to try to improve. Also, he’s a jackass to his students before he got fired so I’m not trucking with that as an excuse.
Honestly, I have had a far worse teacher than Jason. This one dude was a teacher of Java (the programing language) and the guy tried to teach at us, not to us, whenever anyone asked him a question he would ignore it or just answer as fast as he could and move on, he never had ANY office hours when he should have and to top it off, he skipped the last week of class. There were also other rumors, but those were just that, rumors. The only reason I got a B in the class was because his teaching assistants were decent teachers and tried to help.
I guess I hoped that Jason would eventually get better. Yeah it was crappy what he and Sal did, and he wasn’t successful with her, but it looked he genuinely wanted to help Walky. I was hoping with time he would eventually learn to teach well and maybe someday make it up to Sal.
At the very least, Jason was a better teacher than Penny or the teacher i just mentioned.
I hoped Jason would get better too, but while Walky needs to put more effort to learn in, Jason also needs to work on improving his method. He can’t just do what didn’t work with Sal, hope it works with Walky, and call it a day. We’ve seen no evidence he’s changed or improved his teaching methods at all, so I’m hard pressed to be sympathetic when he keeps saying he wants to be a good teacher but doesn’t do anything about it.
“Avail”? You choose the fucking word “avail”? People aren’t Goddamn services put on this world for you, you entitled snobbish shit!! Go back to England and stay on that side of the Atlantic you unrepentant bastard. Maybe this will teach you something about responsibility, though I highly doubt it given your self-centered narrative. In short Jason; blow it up your ass!!!
How was he supposed to know the student desperate not to fail he’d been calling stupid all night’s sudden offer of sex was transactional? Clearly, he thought she just needed him sexually but it was a TRAP! A TRAP FOR HIM!
He used the same word when referring to other people having sex. Over here in England it’s not an uncommon term to use, and doesn’t carry the negative connotation you Americans seem to attach to it.
Oh and really? He realised the sex was intended to be transactional, but he never wanted to agree to the transaction. Sal clearly didn’t mind, because she keeps screwing him after he quite clearly states he has no intention of bumping up her grades.
“clearly didn’t mind” is an exaggeration. There’s certainly some kind of attraction there and she does have angry sex with him after she finds out he didn’t change the grade, but not again after that and her interactions since then haven’t been real friendly – except when she was drunk.
Jason brought this on himself and I’m not feeling any sympathy for him. I do hope Walky finds a decent tutor and actually tries to learn from them though.
Yeah, after this, I wouldn’t be surprised if this makes it to the Dean and back to Linda if Sal’s name came up.
If that’s where this goes, I only hope Sal gets a heads up first because otherwise that poor girl is gonna be in for a brutal phone call at the very least.
Sweet muppety Jesus, how do you people get so mad over a word choice? It’s a manner of speech. He’s used the same term for other people’s sexual exploits.
How a person talks about something like sex more often than not reflects their attitude about it, and he’s describing it as “making use of” another human being, as if they were some sort of appliance.
Jason is probably describing it that way because he’s so uptight that he has to make it sound completely mechanical and un-sexy in order to feel comfortable talking about it at all, but it still sounds way too much like he views Sal as a object, whose primary function is providing sex.
There are so many other ways he could’ve phrased that to satisfy his prudishness without sounding so misogynistic.
As said above, Yeah, he’s used it before. When denigrating Sal by suggesting she make use of the local thugs and hoodlums. You’re not exactly helping your case.
Yes, and I specifically said that him being uptight is probably the main reason why. But even if it is, that phrasing still reeks of misogyny, or at the least, really crappy views about consent.
And as thejeff noted, since in that same sentence you’re referring to, he was insulting her by implying that she hung out with trashy, low-class criminals for some reason, it definitely doesn’t make him look better.
Man Jason is really making it hard to like him.
Like, even more so than in parts of Its Walky! before he got some character development.
Jeez man. I understand you’re very emotional rn but freak out at home and not at a student who can now be a witness to you admitting the fact you bonked a student…
He admits twice to banging a student. I think Walky is intelligent enough to understand *that* (… I hope). Whether he realises it’s *Sal*, on the other hand…
If we didn’t know that Jason had sex with Sal, would we be able to understand that from his words?
Would Walky catch than Jason means he had sex with a student by the words “availed myself of one student”? It’s not a common turn of phrase.
I read Walky’s reaction as “cool words but what on earth are you taking about”?
I’ll give Jason this – those were really cool nicknames.
On the other hand – STUDENTS ARE NOT “SENT” TO DO ANYTHING WITH YOU. NOT SEDUCE, NOT TORMENT, NOT ANYTHING EXCEPT LEARNING MATH, BOWTIE.
And I mean, right now understandably sucks big deal for him, but I’m pretty sure he had the same attitude during earlier tutoring sessions – with Walky as a penance he had to endure as punishment for boffing his sister. And that is not a good foundation for teaching.
I do wonder what Jason’s career goals are. He clearly doesn’t like teaching but he must be doing a course where you get extra credit with helping and tutoring.
He does not like TEACHING but he wants to be a good TEACHER. He has this image in his head about himself a wise sage below the fig tree, with worthy students respectfully prostrating themselves for crumbs of his wisdom… or something.
With the right tutoring and a course or two in pedagogics he would probably be a decent teacher, but the problem is that no one as far as we can see has told him a single scrap of advice about how to be a good teacher (and quite a bit of bad advice, if Penny is any judge).
So he tries to be a teacher by going through the motions and wishing very hard, rather than walking the walk and learning the ropes. Very similar to Walky’s strategy how to be a good student, in other words.
That’s also why he is so quick to blame Sal and Walky for everything. Because if HE is a good teacher, and his students fail miserably, then the fault has to be with them.
to be perfectly fair, both Walky and Sal are far from good students, Walky in particular because at least with Sal she was actually trying to learn at first before resorting to “lets have sex with the TA as a bribe”
Not saying Jason is a good teacher/tutor, cause he’s not. ut he’s not 100% wrong about his students being problematic.
Not a course where you get extra credit teaching, but a grad program where you’re expected to assist the teacher in exchange for tuition. Pretty standard.
And generally done without any formal training in teaching – or only minimal training. Often it was the only training or experience teaching college professors got too.
I honestly never heard anyone used “avail” in a sentence like this (English is my second language) I see a lot of previous commentators disgusted by this word choice, but I do not fully understand the significance of Jason using “avail” over here. My understanding so far is that because it’s a verb used for objects, thus Jason basically dehumanized Sal. Is that correct?
Ah! So, that was Jason’s ultimate problem with Walky: He’s never got over Sal so having her spookily-similar twin brother around freaked him out too much to be entirely at ease around him.
As I predicted, Jason feels guilty about his affair with Sal too. That can’t help. Nor can Walky’s tendency to be… well, Walky.
….. Is he really, though? Or will we soon see Walky blackmailing Jason for his silence? (I mean, that’d be very bad on Walky, but he’s desperate enough.)
Nah, Walky’s just really at reading a situation. Honestly, he’s probably one of these characters that become LESS hilarious by being put in a realistic world setting.
Kinda like Mike, though in this case it’s less “abusive asshole” and more “self-absorbed manchild”. Works in a sci-fi comedy comic, but you DON’T want to deal with this kind of person in real life, in my experience.
Walky is unexpectedly observant. He’s the only one who figured out Ethan was gay and in a shame relationship with Joyce based on lack of physical contact.
I feel the opposite. Walky was way worse in the sci-fi setting because his attitude and irresponsibility were getting people killed. Here he’s just an annoying little shit.
There is a sweet innocence about Walky’s self-centredness that I suspect is something Dorothy finds endearing. He hasn’t really got it in him to be particularly malicious, it’s just he literally doesn’t get any perception of reality that doesn’t have him at the geometric centre of the universe and has this puppy-like puzzlement at any other understanding of things.
See that’d be cute if it weren’t the single biggest collective threat to human society. When people can live, conditioned to believe–passively, non-malevolently, innocently, wholly unquestioningly, without even realizing that is the case–that their own, tiny sphere of the world and how they feel about it matters by definition more than any other portion outside of it.
And that it’s seen as unfortunate yet endearing or cute or hopeless when it is seen–and so often it isn’t. Walky is an extreme case but he’s certainly not unique to this attitude, except for his total willingness to 100% forego any accompanying social etiquette that would mask the worst of his outlook from outright public scorn). He takes refuge in audacity and gets enough laughs by taking it as far as he can that his insensitivity loops back around into ‘childish’ and becomes funny to people instead of…well, really shitty in so many situations like this when he says the worst thing at the worst time and Dorothy and Joyce aren’t there to tell him how bad that actually is.
Jason you did the crime, have some respect for yourself, for Sal and for the position of power over students you hold and take the punishment. Also off topic question, how do these kids support themselves? Like clothes and necessities and such?
When I was in undergrad, I had work study positions, which are considered financial aid, and loans can be used for housing and food. In grad school I was a TA, so I was paid in tuition and a small stipend, but I also needed a part-time job and another loan on top of that. It’s kinda rough. Although some kids are lucky to have parents with a lot of disposable income so… -shrug-
What I find curious is that Jason seems to think that Sal and Walky’s only motives had been to harm him in some way. That’s a rather paranoid viewpoint based on very little evidence. Something tells me that he isn’t really cut out for a customer-facing role of any kind.
These are both very apt comments. Interesting indeed that Jason is so concerned with being liked and considered good at his job when he clearly has so little interest in the well-being of those his job exists to serve. In fact, he’s got a lot of disdain for them. It’s almost like he doesn’t realize that teachers exist to help students learn things, and not just as a hierarchical structure.
He throws around phrases like ‘foolish indiscretions’ and ‘my failure’. There is definitely some recognition in the hoisting of his own petard, as it were.
“How dare you look like the student I unwisely hooked up with and unintentionally make me feel guilt over it while seeking academic help?? Now I will refuse to give you that help despite the fact that it’s my job, which is what I’m upset over potentially not being able to do in the future!”
A dizzying sense of logic. Well, I suppose we can hope that life is a better teacher to Jason than Jason is to anyone.
Given the fact that Walky has: 1) shown little interest in actually being tutored, 2) constantly makes fun of the TA with nick names, and 3) took the opportunity to ask someone suffering a major crisis (i.e. Jason) to help him (even if Jason’s crisis was mostly self inflicted), I certainly can’t blame Jason for not being willing to jump in and start teaching Walky right away.
Had Walky shown more interest in learning math before, had he shown at least a little empathy for someone who may be losing his job and his career then perhaps I may be less sympathetic to Jason.
Ehhh I don’t know. Walky certainly hasn’t been holding back on Jason, and that’s understandably frustrating in all kinds of ways, but based on seeing Jason work with both him and Sal, I personally don’t feel that Jason has ever put in any real effort with either of them. Either that or Jason is just really not a good teacher – remember, a couple sessions with Danny had Sal making some pretty nice improvement. Just because Walky has a hard time focusing, and some stress/anxiety coping mechanisms that work against him, doesn’t mean that he doesn’t want to improve or is undeserving of help. And Jason is the professional – it’s his job to teach Walky and help him if asked.
That said, you’re absolutely right that emotionally Jason is in no condition to teach right now. So instead of blowing up and throwing a tantrum and flinging all kinds of unnecessary blame on Walky – who, remember, is going through a certain crisis of his own – he should really be taking a deep breath and saying, “I’m so sorry, I can’t help you at the moment, if you need someone right now I’m sure there are tutors in the library” or something to that effect. Reject politely, offer a meager scrap of assistance in exchange (even if it’s total bull), and depart.
The main issue, really, is that Jason has brought all of this down on himself and is lashing out. He’s scared. He’s unwilling to accept that he’s made mistakes and that he ought to receive the consequences. Plus being unprofessional and screaming at a student. No matter how annoying Walky is, none of this has anything to do with him. It’s just poor timing for him. And yeah, asking Jason to tutor him RIGHT NOW is rude and selfish, but again, he’s going through his own personal crisis and his priorities are probably a little skewed. I don’t think it warrants Jason’s temper tantrum.
I have some sympathy for Jason. Yes, before we go any further, it was wrong of him to sleep with a student, but he didn’t actually abuse his position: Sal (an adult, at least in the eyes of the law) propositioned him, not the other way around, and he made sure to have her paper graded by another T.A.
Walky’s lack of empathy starts to grate on me. I know he isn’t a sociopath, he cares a lot about his friends and family, but he seems to be at that mental stage of childhood when people who aren’t your family aren’t “real”.
You know what I mean, little kids learn that their teacher’s mom has died of cancer and their reaction is “cool! no math classes this week!”
Walky is, emotionally speaking, just like that. Combine that with his inability to resist impulses in order to avoid future negative consequences, and you have to wonder if he has some kind of emotional developmental issue… I mean, he couldn’t even stop himself from disrespecting the teacher who grade him AND who he was speaking for help… He acts like a little kid who thinks the world will bend to him because he is mom’s cute little child…
About Jason, I think he has a good chance of avoid being fired. I mean, if they take Penny’s word, what is stopping him from accusing other teachers of doing the same? He can plead his case in front of a tribunal… do they know about Sal? He shouldn’t mention Sal, he should deny everything, and quietly speak with her to ask her to keep it quiet. She hates authority, she doesn’t want to upset her parents and she was willing ask him for better grades in exchange for sex, so she will probably be willing to lie in exchange for better grades…
Hell, why didn’t Penny resist? All they had against her was some student online bragging. Joe has been studing at the college for like two weeks and claims that he has slept with like half the female students… that sounds like a lying braggart unless you actually are living next to him…
About getting a new job… If the tribunal can’t prove he is guilty, think he can convince the ruling body of the governing board to give him an honourable discharge… they get rid of him, he gets a clean curriculum…
Just to clarify. What I mean, is, if they can fire him without proof, on just the accusation of Penny, anybody can do the same, so all the faculty could be fired any day…
I said it in the last strip but I think they are just trying to pre-emptively protect their reputation. The school had a lot of PR disasters recently (Roz’s sex tape, Becky’s Dad, Rapey McStabby, Leslie “Seducing” Robin) so they might just want to get rid of this problem before it becomes public. Some people have mentioned that TAs are basically interns when it comes to their position in the school hierarchy so they hardly have much power to defend themselves.
The “interns” thing is very much true. The lowest people in the academic hierarchy are the TAs/GAs, followed closely by the non-tenure-track faculty – that is, the adjunct professors and lecturers (that’s me!). It’s only when you get tenure that you have some semblance of job security. Grad students only sometimes have collective bargaining agreements, and some of the unions are… less than helpful (our rep didn’t show up to the meeting they called).
As Jason is (I’m pretty sure…) a grad student, he should have access to the university’s arbitration process for this sort of thing. He won’t be immediately fired without a defense. Now, the process could drag Sal into this mess, and she won’t be happy about it.
Walky does seem to elevate immaturity to a high art. It’s a big part of his development as a comic strip character, though. He’s already learned a lot, from questioning his initial rather misogynistic attitudes, seeing more nuance in internalized racism, and just general responsibility. His world is turning from a Saturday morning cartoon, with all of its carefree lack of consequences and clear lines between heroes and villains, to the messy reality we all have to confront at some point. But, as we see from the past few strips, our dear Duke of Thingley still has a lot of growing to do.
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“so… when’s math?”
No math just meth.
Breaking Bollocks, a Jason-centered spinoff, coming soon.
“Because I don’t actually have any chemistry background, I shall instead recruit chemistry students by explaining how the electron spin notation is actually partial derivative notation, the way their teachers didn’t.”
And then sleep with them.
And/or musth.
Dave, autumn in the air
Jason will find a new job easily. He’s such a people person.
Jason will work as Galassos and get angry at the fact Becky is the Assistant Manager before him.
Eventually the entire cast will be working at Galassos.
Dumbing of Shortpacked?
Shortpacked of Age?
Walky just totally ignoring that Jason’s entire life is basically ruined is actually really annoying
Given Jason ruined his own life by sleeping with Walky’s sister, I’m finding it hard to be sympathetic
Walky still sucks at reading a situation, so he really comes off as a twat here.
“Oh hey, you have to deal with some shit – BUT WHAT ABOUT ME!”
If he didn’t suck at reading the situation, he’d have understood his sister was banging Jason.
I mean, it sounds like he’d be in the same situation anyway even if he hadn’t slept with Sal, because his coworker/ex is a dick who thought it was funny to make him lose a job when she didn’t even know he was doing what she accused him of.
Jason certainly deserves what’s coming to him, but it wouldn’t play out too much differently, I feel.
Though then he’d be able to go to whoever she accused him of having sex with and have them tell the tribunal it was bullshit. Assuming she did pick Sal, based on needing the office and such.
Well, he definitely deserves to get fired, he did break the rules, but I still feel bad for him.
Given Jason is also ignoring what Walky’s saying, I’m saying turnabout is fair play.
Jason lost his job as a T.A. A job he was spectacularly shitty at and didn’t need for financial reasons from all appearances. This is a First World Problems sort of ruined.
On the one hand, he lost his job as TA, a job he needs in order to stay in his program at college. No college, no student visa, and he goes back to England with no way to complete his education and no marketable skills.
On the other hand, he could easily save this job if he would get over himself, not be a shit, and think before he acts. So I really can’t feel too sorry for his creepy ass.
He has a bachelor degree, probably in math. What kinda jobs can you get for that? I’d imagine he could probably at least go into something to do with money.
I’d say he could be an accountant, but he doesn’t seem to have a very good grasp on the concept of accountability.
…does that play work?
I vote for: Yes
Well, as somebody who has a Bachelor’s Degree in Maths…I actually found myself near-unemployable for many years, right here in London. So yeah, maybe Jason’s working life really is ruined in the short-to-medium term. xD
To continue the story though, after a few years in a shitty job in a high street betting shop, and several more years of unemployment, I went back to college to study accounting. Because Accountancy job roles want actual Accountancy qualifications, not just some nebulous shit like Maths degree.
And now I’m – finally – a newly-qualified junior accountant.
And @Delicious Taffy, that pun was brilliant.
He can open a formula repair shoppe.
Given that he got caught schtoinking a student I’d say he’s probably not gonna qualify to be a math teacher somewhere.
i’ve never heard “schtoinking” before but it’s really good
Schtoink is a Psychic-type Pokémon. If it stops bouncing, it goes into cardiac arrest.
Actually, I’m still not sure he’s been caught. Penny accused him, but Sal didn’t. If nobody can produce the student, then he’s off the hook.
I think he should just challenge the accusation. Nobody even knows her name. But he’s feeling pretty guilty and so he won’t.
Also it requires Jason to be decent enough at lying.
The intelligence community loves recruiting math majors for cryptology.
… provided, you know, that they don’t have strong indicators of loyalty to other nations.
Also scruples, a sense of justice, conscience, belief in democracy and the constitution [not according to the CBP though]
Software development. I know this because REASONS.
With the right kind of math, he could become a quantum mechanic?
–Dave, repairing timelines for fun & profit
I was under the assumption that TAs like him(that is- non lab TAs) were independent of the programs and were actually employed as a way of earning the masters and PhD students money while they obtain their degrees…him losing his job wouldn’t directly impact him but could cause the department to take his papers under closer scrutiny.
Sometimes masters and PhD programs have a TA component as a requirement.
And Jason already told Sal if they were caught, he’d get kicked out of his program. Whether he meant the TA program or his grad program, I’m not sure.
As someone who has a PhD, it’s kinda both.
teeechnically he hasn’t lost it *yet*.
I think we’re a bit harsh on TAs and academics in general seeing as none of us are trained teachers and are rarely hired for our teaching skills. You take someone who is excellent at maths and say “now you need to teach maths” and expect magic to happen. The whole system is idiotic.
Jason sleeping with a student is a separate issue and obviously wrong but I can’t hold poor teaching skills against him as that’s an issue with the system.
That’s changing, at least at PhD-granting institutions in the U.S. Many are introducing clear pedagogical projects to make sure that TAs (and potential future faculty) are actually trained in the scholarship of teaching and learning and pedagogy. Because I received more intentional training in pedagogy and the scholarship of how people learned, I actually made extra money while in my PhD to help train people in disciplines with less of that formal scaffolding (often math and science disciplines, but not exclusively in those areas).
It is a long time coming – my second year was totally messed up by a prof on the way out that had negative sum skill at transmitting valid information.
When I switched majors after a brief hiatus to work so I could afford to eat, I ended up Tutoring half the classes I was taking at the time. The instructors for the most had passable to good communication skills, the TAs had little grasp of the subjects and even less capability to communicate [a two way endeavor]
People keep saying Jason was a bad T.A., but do we really know for sure? Yes, he had sex with a student (which was wrong), but he did give her work for others to grade (so he recognized that he needed to avoid any sort of bias).
As for his ability to teach, we really only have 2 data points: Walky and Sal. Walky was a horrible student that I don’t think ANYONE could get through to. And while Sal has done better under Danny than under Jason, she was likely coming from a situation where she may not have had a decent foundation for the subject (something universities often require).
And it should be pointed out that Jason was actually upset when Sal said he couldn’t teach. So at the very least he is aware of his limitations and wants to improve his skills in the area.
He’s a lousy teacher. (Which to be fair to him, isn’t that surprising. He’s likely a first year TA, has no training in teaching and quite likely no way to fit any into a demanding program. And the professor he TAs for is also lousy and uncaring, so he’s got no mentor or support.)
That said, he denigrated Sal when she first came to him for help, after his initial way out of line flirting comment. And pretty much kept it up throughout the session. It’s hard to tell since we haven’t seen much detail of his tutoring, it seemed he simply kept repeating the same point even when she clearly wasn’t getting it. No attempt to try different ways to explain or to approach the subject or even to try to figure out why she wasn’t getting it.
And he apparently didn’t give her work to someone else until after she confronted him the first time – it was the one she did better on that he made the comment about knowing it was real because he didn’t grade it.
All that said, he does seem to want to be a good teacher, which puts him above Penny or the Professor, even if he’s not actually doing anything about it.
I’m pretty sure sleeping with your student kinda immediately checks off the ‘bad teacher’ box. It’s not just frowned upon, it’s an actual ethical no-no.
True, but I think it’s worth separating the two and clarifying that he’s not only ethically bad, but he lacks the skill and ability as well.
Fair enough!
Given that he had sex with a student despite knowing that that’s against the rules and generally being shitty at his job, I’m disinclined to feel sympathy for him.
I remind you he also told the student, who was feeling proud at her earned grades that he would have given her a better grade if she’d “asked.”
… citation?
His “I would have given you a better grade than that.”
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/02-i-was-a-teenage-churchmouse/genuine/
Here we go!
And then he immediately turns it around when she calls him on it too.
Once again: Fuck off, Jason.
Actually that seems to imply that he wouldn’t in fact have done that except in the hypothetical. He intentionally sent her paper to somebody else so there was no question about the grade’s integrity, but he’s insulted that she thinks he’d only give her that score if he was in fact being bought off with sex.
He still wouldn’t have actually done it, which is why he gave her grade to another TA in the first place.
Mind you he already crossed way, way over the line and now we are just measuring distance away from the line, but if he was intending to do that one would have assumed he’d have just done it in the first place.
I would think if that were what he meant, he’d have just said ‘I was being hypothetical’ when Sal pointed out he gave her a crappy grade instead of ‘Are you ALWAYS going to be sore over that?’ (Also: You brought it up you asshole – you being Jason, not you insanenoodlyguy, you seem great).
I thought he was saying that if he was grading her on sex instead of math, it would have been higher. Not in a hypothetical trade of sex for grades, but in regards to how much he enjoyed it.
His life isn’t ruined. He just lost a TA job. He can get another one at one of several dozen universities, provided that he is at least a little bit competent in his field.
No, Walky, you can’t. This is the Math department, not the psych department.
Actually Walky will only be able to get extra credit for this kind of thing when Mike Warner University is established.
Bent, Bowed, and Broken…Bow chicka Wow wow!
Does that mean someone is going to get a fairy?
(Those are the opposite of dragons, right?)
Is he observant enough to make it in the Psych department? Can he find the pineapple hidden in every room?
This was amazing.
“Congratulations!”
“Congratulations!”
“Congratulations!”
“Congratulations!”
David Walkerton, like Judgement Day, cannot be stopped. Only delayed.
But… the future refused to change.
serves you right jason
I love that Walky wasn’t even trying to pester Jason this time, he just happened to show up at a bad time.
In all fairness, Jason, you could have just not fucked a student.
“Availed” himself of a student.
Honestly, that terminology makes it worse.
When he used the phrase the first time, Sal said it dried up her “cooter”.
It seemed to have no discernible effect on Walky, though.
Clearly, it’s because Walky has no cooter.
Probably.
Of course, Walky did just finish availing himself with Dorothy. If it had been an hour earlier, maybe he’d be affected, too.
Ew, she was like basically passing out before they ran into each other. “Avail” has even creepier undertones in that context.
yeah… ew. she’s not a resource. she’s a person.
oh jeez i somehow misread it as “availed to”. which i read as just like, “made myself available to provide tutoring”. “availed of” is… actually horrifying
Yeah, that made me cringe. That’s not actually British slang, is it? Anyone know?
Remember how Sal was just a bad student who needed to drop the class? Everything is someone else’s fault to Jason.
She seduced him to ruin his life, that vile math-dumb temptress.
Well, not entirely. He’ll cop to “foolish indiscretions”.
And “violating all my deeply ingrained principles”. ….. though apparently they weren’t that deeply ingrained.
*looks for some Alan Parsons Project to play*
psssht keep following him and make a heartbeat sound combined with the Jaws theme, Walky
Heyyy, 314 comments, and today’s 3/14? We can’t have that.
Rather than Rei Ayanami, he’d make a good Sadako if he grew his hair
“Seven days…until midterms, c’mon, man!”
Those are way cooler nicknames.
I hear psychologically breaking someone gets you high grades with Professor Lecter.
Just don’t show up when he invites you to dinner
Has anyone here seen a preview for the movie Blocked? I just saw one, and I am so annoyed.
I saw a 5 second teaser that was basically just the title and have been trying to arrange a hit on the writers ever since.
No? Why should I be mad?
I think you mean Blockers?
I do mean Blockers. I was too busy frothing with rage to catch the title correctly, apparently.
Get over it and stop wasting your life worrying about pointless shit. Do you not have anything better to waste energy on?
Wow, that’s needlessly confrontational.
I used to do that, then I realized worrying about every little thing is exhausting. And as it took someone calling me out to realize it, I will do the same to anyone else I see going down that road.
Well, that’s a quick turnaround. Took you all of 8 minutes, color me impressed.
Assuming those people are exactly like you used to be (they’re probably not), and assuming that your calling out will influence them (it won’t).
I have yet to meet someone that responds well to being “called out” by a total stranger (hell it rarely works on close friends). It generally creates defensiveness and hostility.
I have been in communities where I’ve seen people called out/in and that gone well. I’ve been called out on things myself and worked to address them.
I wouldn’t put this in the same category as those things. It was a shitty thing that made me feel shitty, and I am deeply skeptical of any actual helpful intention. I suppose I’ll hope that that intention did exist, for whatever that’s worth.
Okay, I’ll put it in a way that’s nicer. I worry that you worrying about a movie will only serve to cause you unneeded emotional distress. You can’t change the fact that the movie exists. I thought your were making the same mistakes that I used to make, but I know realize we essentially have the opposite problems, I would worry about things I couldn’t change, and would depress myself, I imagine you worry about things you can’t change to hide from much bigger problems.
“I have yet to meet someone that responds well to being “called out” by a total stranger.”
Well, I guess it’s a good thing you aren’t doing that then.
Congratulations, your noble intentions of telling people not to care about things has turned me into a sobbing mess.
You know what I did last night? It probably falls under the category of a little thing for you not to care about, but I’ll tell you anyone: I was up until 4am crying my eyes out about how much I wanted to die. If you had made this comment last night, I’d be bleeding right now– in an attempt way, but in an “I also struggle with self-harm” way. And that wouldn’t have been your fault, but you certainly wouldn’t have helped the situation.
You know what can help the situation? Feeling things. Feeling annoyed, feeling angry, and getting to express those feelings. Caring about things is not useless, and I am grasping at what I can to stay alive. So I don’t really care about your intentions, just please don’t bring that attitude my way again for at least a while.
Why do you think I don’t care? If I didn’t care I wouldn’t have the made the comment. I wasn’t trying to be mean, I’ve just made mistakes, and I was scared someone else ran the risk of making those mistakes. Please get help, anyway you can. I know I can’t make up for what I did, but please forgive me, I just wanted to help.
I would think you wouldn’t care because of horribly rude and dismissive tone of your earlier comments when it came to the act of caring about things.
I am getting help. Some days are still struggles.
I do care, I’m just really bad at showing it. Or perhaps I don’t care because I’m afraid to care, because caring will only remind me of my failures. The people I never confronted, the people I never helped, all because of my own cowardice. I just wanted to help one person. Just one.
you are in the minority there. I’m pretty sure most people find such comments irritating at best, and it makes it *harder* to do the work required to *actually* get over the thing.
hell, if being told to “get over it” actually worked, zillions of therapists would be out of a job.
that would be nice, but it’s not the world we live in :/
We were initially talking about a movie, if someone told me they were suicidal and depressed (like Yumi told me after I was dick) I wouldn’t tell them to get over it, because that’s a serious problem that requires help, and care and support. Telling someone to get over something small isn’t necessarily a bad thing, imagine things like depression as a giant wall, I can understand how difficult that wall is to surpass, and as much as I hate it, I can only push a person up that wall a little bit. Now imagine something like a movie was a waist high fence. I made the mistake of failing to realize that the movie wasn’t a fence this time, but a single brick in the wall. I sat upon the wall, and dropped that brick on her head.
haha that’s a great analogy
.. or maybe it isn’t, my brain is starting to fall asaleep on me. but… I think you’re underestimating the impact of even small things? and like… even if someone *isn’t* angry, the language you used at first was likely to *make* them angry.
I’m glad you’re trying to learn, anyways
wish I was awake enough to explain more…
Congrats on generating a ton of drama by fixating on pointless shit. Because taking the time to call out other people being bugged by pointless shit is in fact more pointless and more shit then the original “offender” could ever be.
Stop trying to help until you get over your own pointless shit. Right now you are really, really bad at it.
What do you want me to say? That I fucked up? that I should have been nicer? I don’t care what you think of me, or if you hate me, because nothing you think about me can ever compare to how much I hate myself in this moment. Have you ever felt guilt? That feeling that if you had said something slightly differently, someone could have killed themselves and you would have never fucking known!? That feeling of blood on your hands from a single mistake? I don’t give a shit I “generated drama” I care that I hurt someone I considered a friend.
I mean, yes, admitting your mistake would be a good step.
Well that’s easy Some1, just stoop feeling sad!
That bristling you no doubt did as soon as you read that? That’s because I invalidated your feelings.
I’d rather next time you think you are helping to consider this: It’s generally not a great idea to tell other people what their emotions should be about anything. You “called out” somebody on how they felt. Now, I don’t really know Yumi, but even before we got any contest to how she was feeling, when you responded to her this was always going to end one of two ways before a single additional comment was made or context found:
1. She was being sarcastic or engaging in hyperbole. In which case, your assistance on telling her how she should feel about it is not required. Commenting on how she shouldn’t sweat it doesn’t help her or anybody else.
2. This Blockers movie, for whatever reason, has left her frothing with rage. In which case, TELLING HER HOW TO FEEL ABOUT IT IS NOT REQUIRED. COMMENTING ON HOW SHE SHOULDN’T SWEAT IT DOESN’T HELP HER OR ANYBODY ELSE.
It never really helps anybody when you invalidate their feelings. People feel how they feel. Telling them they should stop feeling one way and feel how YOU think is not about them. It’s about you. It’s not helping. Don’t try to use it to help. It doesn’t work.
You’ll note I never actually said you shouldn’t get bugged about pointless shit. You are who you are, what annoys you annoys you. I told you you should stop calling other people out over pointless shit. Your ACTIONS, not your feelings. That’s what we can more reliably comment to others about . Keep that in mind next time you want to help, because it will actually make you a better helper. Kicking yourself about screwing up is all well and good but only if you own your mistakes and learn from them. Most folks care less about you feeling bad so much as they want you to not repeat your mistakes.
TL;DR: what I want you to say isn’t that you fucked up, it’s “Oh, I really invalidated somebody else’s feelings because of my own peeve’s and while I thought I was helping, doing that doesn’t help squat! Sorry Yumi, sorry folks, I’m going to do better at not telling other people how they should feel!”
Stop engaging with Yumi. Just stop. People are allowed to look at movies and go ‘Has anyone else seen this trailer? It really annoyed me because of X issue which it appears to be portraying poorly/offensively/in a way I think will affect people negatively.’
People are allowed to care about these things that you don’t put a second thought into. Especially if they actually enjoy movies or want to inform people that ‘hey, this movie that may say it is X, but from the trailer, it seems like an inaccurate/harmful/offensive portrayal that you might want to avoid if you were on the fence about seeing it.’
Letting go of things helped you, for others it can be more cathartic to express that they care and feel anger, to have their opinion and feelings validated by others and try to reduce the number of people likely to go see/buy/pay attention to the thing which seems dislikable/harmful/offensive/badly portrayed to them.
Like I would want to know if a video game I was interested in was ableist/sexist/racist/otherwise harmful because I personally care about video games as a form of media. My boyfriend would want to know if a wrestler was tweeting awful stuff because he cares about wrestling as a form of entertainment and he will tell me if one of them is because venting about it helps calm him down.
Yumi is not a younger you or someone for you to save/fix especially when just because something worked for you, that doesn’t mean it will work for other people. You need to back off because you sound like you are projecting.
Hi, let me introduce you to this concept called “hyperbole.”
Secondly, let me introduce you to this concept called “not being a dick.”
I’m torn between “you could day that about anything” and “says the person ranting in a webcomic comment thread”
I guess I’ll go with option 3: dont be a dick, dude
Parents try to keep their kids from losing their virginity at prom after hacking their phones.
that sounds… weird. and not very entertaining. but I barely watch any mainstream movies these days. … which reminds me, I think I’m still not caught up on star wars.
Nobody’s actually caught up on Star Wars. We’re all just sort of familiar with bits and pieces of it.
Also, when I think “blockers,” my mind goes to “puberty blockers,” which is not what this movie is about.
Blocking puberty? Are there benefits to that?
*cough* trans children *cough*
*cough* also other uses but not ones I’m as familiar with *cough*
Wow, that really does sound beneficial.
No, holy crap, this looks like some potentially lifesaving stuff. I know a couple of people who really might have loved having this information as kids.
My nephew is on them now. If you are lucky enough to get them on blockers before puberty and introduce hormones after then they look and sound like their actual gender without insane surgeries and such (except bottom obviously). Awesome stuff.
It absolutely is life saving. An Australian study found that 48% of trans youth had attempted suicide. And a different study out of (iirc) Sweden found that trans kids who are given GnRH antagonists (medicine that blocks the onset of puberty) have suicide rates that mirror the general teenage population (less than 3%).
They’re helpful for trans and nb kids so they don’t go through dysphoric puberty.
Same…having read the movie’s wiki article, I am actually LESS annoyed by it than I was, since it isn’t what it seemed like it might have been based on that title and the brief description that came up (‘parental angst turns to R-rated laughs’ was…worrying)…
I have never even heard of the movie (thankfully), but after your comment I’ve watched the trailer and it’s just…awful not really describes my feelings for this thing, but let’s go with that.
As with ambiguity in the title…at least in my language it got the title “Sex Pact 2018” – probably more fitting…maybe…
I’ll just stop thinking about this movie, hoping I’ll never have to see the trailer again during a cinema visit.
I haven’t bothered with the trailer, but from a couple articles I looked at just now, it seems like it might not be that bad. At least for the teen sex-comedy genre, which I’ve got little to no interest in in the first place.
If nothing else, it seems to give its female characters some agency, which isn’t at all common in the genre.
If that’s true than that’s something…at the least.
The plot is: the (I think it’s just them) daughters of the adult protagonists all want to lose their virginity at prom night, and the parents get wind of that and want to stop them. Which might be a funny movie for some people, but for me, it’s definitely not my type of humour.
I somehow can’t stop considering how creepy it is for parents to a) monitor (albeit it by accident, according to the trailer) the chats of their near-adult children, and to b) invade their private (sexual) life to that extent that they want to stop them in doing any kind of actions.
If the movie’d be more about, you know, social pressure for the teenagers to HAVE to have sex at their age, or at a certain event (prom night), because being virgins in college would be a ‘disaster’ for them – or anything like that, and the movie going into it by some kind of intelligent humorous way, like the parents wanting to stop them because they’ve seen how much pressure the children are putting onto themselves, then I might consider watching it. Or if they’d use any kind of intelligent humour, for that matter.
But for now it seems as if the children actually want to have sex (and probably are ready for it) and the parents are like “WHAAAAAAT? No way, they aren’t old or intelligent enough to make this decision, we have to stop them!”
I think that’s exactly what the plot is. But it sounds like it’s trying to not make it either “the parents are right to control their lives and prevent them from having sex” or “it’s a disaster to still be a virgin in college”.
It looks like at least some of the girls really want the sex, but at least one of them might be being pressured into it. And the parents are freaking out – which while not cool, certainly isn’t unrealistic.
Not my type of movie either, but it doesn’t sound as awful as it’s being portrayed.
The best possible light I can cast it in is “you get to come laugh at a whole lot of stupid people being stupid”, and even then only if the trailer’s being deceptive about two elements (controlling parents and the sex pact).
In other news and for contrast, caught a sneak peak of Love, Simon on Saturday. Much better than Blockers looks like it will be.
I was gonna say something funny but I’m too busy FROTHING with rage at Jason for those first two panels.
Fuck off all the way back across the pond, you insufferable jackass.
People keep acting like Jason isn’t a spectacularly shitty person every bit as awful as Penny.
He is.
I…guess it took slightly more appearances to suss out the exact nature of his awfulness, while Penny wears it on her sleeve?
They’re just different flavors of terrible, and neither have shown much of anything to make them sympathetic.
I guess Jason’s general shame makes him more endearing. For my part, I tend to relate to people who isolate themselves from everyone around him through their own bad choices, so I relate a lot to both Jason and Sal in that way.
Shitty person? Between being terrible at his own job when others count on him, haranguing students for his own failure, and sleeping with a student, definitely.
As bad as Penny? No. He’s doesn’t revel in pointless sadism.
He also doesn’t slander other people just to take them down with him.
That Penny was accidentally right doesn’t absolve her of what she did.
A TA being terrible at teaching isn’t really a personal failing considering they have next to no teaching training and often no desire to be a teacher. All the other reasons Jason sucks are perfectly valid but him being bad at his job is more a failing of the system.
Eh, I largely agree with you. But he was aware of the problem, aware that others were counting on him, and made zero effort beyond a bit of whining and angst to do anything about it.
What should he have done?
Bearing in mind it’s been maybe a month, his immediate boss doesn’t care and though we haven’t seen it, he’s likely buried in work of his own, both graduate studies and his other TA duties
At this point, I’d settle for him googling tutoring tips and him not insulting students to their faces.
This. He’s clearly got free time to park himself at a pub, he can watch “how to” videos on his phone as he nurses his beer.
People have different views on and opinions on characters and their actions.
I personally don’t understand what’s so hateable about him. But we all connect to different character differently. I for one hated the shitty ex-girlfriend of the dentist, the lady Leslie went out with once (the girl Leslie immediately crushed on when she got insulted by her), and many other people actually… liked her or defended her and I just didn’t get it.
It was the dentist who Leslie crushed on and who insulted her. And who she’s apparently seeing now, though we’ll see how long that lasts.
The ex-girlfriend she went on one date with didn’t insult her, IIRC.
Yes, that’s what I meant, and I REALLY hope she’s not seeing the rude girl. She’s a step-down from Robin, and that’s saying something.
How are people giving Jason this much shit? He made a stupid decision and he’s frustrated. I fail to see how people are this angry at him for ranting. It’s clear he isn’t able to deal with things that break his orderly little world, and that little world just got upended on him.
Sure, it’s his own fault. But that just makes him stupid, not terrible.
Nah, it’s the shit he says to and about his students that makes him terrible.
Sometimes people only see the worst in characters they already don’t like.
If Walky is Rei Ayanami, then the Human Instrumentality Project is so borked.
On another note: “availed” himself of a student? That’s fucking creepy.
Well she clearly is a woman of loose morals. Look at her!
*beat*
She smokes!
Ugh. I feel that’s not sufficiently sarcastic enough in today’s academic environment toxicity.
I dunno – if Walky is Rei, then that makes Sal the pilot of Unit 01, and somehow I think Sal would do a better job of it than Shinji.
… now, the real question is, who is Asuka?
If Sal is Shinji, then I imagine Asuka has to be either Danny or Marcie, though I imagine that scene in the hospital would be significantly different regardless.
I don’t think Sal would respond well to being told to get in the robot.
… I think Jason is actually Asuka in this context. He *is* belligerently attracted to Sal, our Shinji analogue, is very hostile to Walky, our Rei analogue, and he’s currently experiencing a complete career failure like Asuka near the end of the TV show.
Man, you brought it on yourself, Jason. Admittedly, Walky’s flippant attitude probably isn’t helping your emotional state, so I can understand the outburst, but Sal obviously didn’t sic him on you.
Not that he knows that.
Walky, this doesn’t get you extra credit, but it might set you up as an apprentice to your roommate, which is much more interesting.
Eventually, Walky’s going to have another think about that “male clone” comment.
I just wonder what he’ll do. Talking to Sal could end badly…
Wait. They’re siblings. They share a last name. How the FUCK has Jason, a teacher who sees their notes on a regular basis, not noticed that fact?!
Because Jason is an awful teacher, awful person, and probably a little racist.
People like to say that Jason’s racist, but I don’t think he is, if anything his bigotry is more focused on regionalism and accent then race. It would make far more sense for the man from England to be biased against people with thick American accents then just black girls in general.
Maybe but he’s interacted with multiple characters and so far, he treats the two black students with the most blistering contempt and condescension.
Hey, Willis, is there a racial element to Jason or is he an asshole to the twins for other reasons?
neither Sal nor Walky have called themselves black, maybe let’s call them mixed race or people of colour
He treats the two people of color with blistering contempt and condescension.
If you look up his first interactions with Sal and Walky, he’s not actually rude and condescending to either of them. His first interaction with Sal is a little rocky, because she catches him staring at her (which he apologizes for), and them scheduling an appointment.
His first interaction with Walky is him approaching Walky about his grades. To which Walky responds by yelling at him how he’s doing his job wrong (which, at that point, he actually isn’t).
Not “she catches him staring at her”, but the blatant “ethics prevent me from changing my office hours to right the hell now” while staring at her tits. Though he does apologize.
Which is sort of Jason’s shtick: spend a lot of time talking about his ethics while not actually living up to them. Ethics should prevent you from saying anything like that to a student, even if you catch yourself looking. Not to mention not actually having sex with them, of course.
Next time they really interact on screen, after her first off screen tutoring session, he makes a joke out of her bad grade (ignoring his failure to help her) “I see the problem. You’re positively hopeless.”
Not a good approach to a student you’re supposed to be helping and encouraging.
I wasn’t making an argument against him being an elitist jerk, or an argument at all, really. But if there was an argument to be made, it would be, he’s a jerk, but I don’t see any evidence of him being a racist one.
Walky referred to Sal as black. Sal has called Walky whiter than her, but that’s all I think she’s said on the matter.
In fact, Sal does refer to herself as black
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/highstrung/
David Walkerton should be treated with contempt and condescension. When you show up supposedly to learn and just harass your TA instead, you shouldn’t be surprised when said TA stops giving a shit about you.
the approproate response to that isn’t contempt and condescention though. the appropriate response is to address the harassment by confronting the student, and if this doesn’t work, blocking their access to you, possibly reporting the harassment.
The proper response to Walky’s behavior is to leave. “Come back when you can be respectful and listen.”
So, never, but it would be the right call.
They’re also the only two characters we’ve seen who are having trouble in his class, and have had trouble learning from his tutoring. Most of his contempt seems to be targeted at those factors. Which isn’t good, but if that is the source of his contempt then it isn’t racism, except MAYBE in the most broadest sense of societal racism (demographic statistical link between race, low income and poor schools leading to people of color more likely to earn his contempt for failing math), but that wouldn’t reflect much on Jason as an individual racist and also doesn’t easily fit with rich kids who got expensive private schooling.
That doesn’t rule out him being a racist, but it leaves me grasping for anything that indicates it.
A) Sal and Walky went to public school right up until Sal was sent away (which seems to have been a judicial thing not a rich girl thing)
B) They’re the only two students we know of who’ve come to him for tutoring so we don’t have anything else to judge him on.
C) He really shouldn’t get credit for everyone else (seemingly) understanding the class – that’s a credit for Professor Rees, who teaches it, not to him.
They went to public school? Huh. Where’d I get the idea that it was a private school?
In any case, I was responding to the idea that Jason was racist because of the contempt with which he treated the two black students that came to him for help. I wasn’t giving him any credit, just noting that I didn’t see much basis for saying it was racism (rather than a snobby math-elitism awfulness) that was leading him to be like that.
It was a common theory in the comments that they went to private school, tossed by Willis on tumblr.
I can see that, though some of his comments about Sal’s sex life have made me wary since they’re pretty based in stereotypes.
Jason seems to live in Jason-land, where everyone else is just an extra.
See also: his dramatic, self-centered rant in the first 2 panels.
He did notice that they are similar-looking people of approximately the same age and with the same last name. He probably guessed that they are twins, or maybe siblings a year apart or cousins, but definitely related. That’s why he said “male clone”.
Not everyone is as clueless as Danny.
Wow, he blames Sal. Color me unsurprised.
If this were in novel form, this would be the point where I flung the book at the wall because I was so mad at the character.
I’m reading on my phone, so I threw it at my pillow
He’s utterly unrepentant AND dismissive of her. Good job at being doubly shitty, Jason.
Just because it’s on a fragile piece of tech worth hundreds of dollars doesn’t mean you can’t throw it at the wall.
The joys and sorrows of writing believable characters, them having times of weakness and stupidity. I was kind of hoping Jason could be redeemed for what happened with Sal, as I did see he did want to help but made a mistake. It also seemed that he wanted to try and be a good teacher in a system that was kinda screwed up. I guess we will see if that is still possible, but here is a question, if Sal did decide to help him (mostly out of spite for authority) Could Jason be redeemed? (I felt at least he had a better chance than Penny)
I don’t think he blames Sal (not for his current predicament, anyways). I think he’s blaming Sal for Walky’s existence. Which, I mean, it’s not Sal’s fault that Walky is… Walky. And I don’t think Sal ever told Walky to get tutored by Jason (pretty sure she’d tell him the OPPOSITE in fact).
Joyce is the one who told him to get tutored by Jason. She didn’t know that it was actually Danny who helped Sal, so she thought Jason had proven to be a help to Sal.
You can, but not in Math. Intro to Psychology, maybe.
Yep. Maybe “Math for Psych Majors”. Is that a class?
No, but it’s a psychological experiment meant to look like a class.
In my school, first year statistics was math for arts/humanities majors
Walky has Goku hair, where the sides of his style (watch the two tendrils) switch depending on where his head is turned. I like it
I wonder how much the “male clone” element is Jason projecting his attraction.
*pause*
Just me? I’ll get my coat.
On an unrelated note, aren’t Walky and Sal supposed to look different? I mean, on the account of them dismissing Sal because of their different skin tones. Or am I overthinking this?
Sal and Walky have the same skin tone, height, and hair. They dress and act completely different, which is what people pick up on(generic teen boy vs punk biker girl) See below for them next to each other.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/03-when-god-closes-the-door/care/
Also, Walky actually has straight hair, while Sal irons it straight, if I recall correctly?
My recollection is that they have the same physical skin tone – that they project and are perceived as different, even racially, is based on other factors but not their literal skin tone iirc.
It’s not about skin tone, it’s about other features (presumably something regarding nose and/or lip shape which most people don’t pick up on, and probably hair types as well as social factors – Sal might be more connected with Black American culture and we know that she has features that racists tend to see as ‘black’ such as being rebellious)
This is me maybe misremembering but I think Willis said they had a different skin-tone in-universe but artistically it’s hard to render.
I thought he said he used the exact same colours for them and that Sal was not referring to skin colour when she said her infamous line.
This, and also, Sal has textured hair (heavily implied to be type 4, but I’m not going to guess from illustrations).
Yep, hence her going to a salon appointment which takes hours to ‘murder the curls’ out of her hair (right after her father insults her natural hair to her face holy shit do I have words for the Walkerton parents because FUCK those two).
Their skin tones are similar, but Sal has kinky hair that she relaxes while Walky’s hair is straighter, and as of the family weekend arc that seems to be one of the main reasons Walky gets tagged as “whiter.”
Their skin tones are exactly the same — (206,168,126). This has been brought up many times before.
We’ve seen Jason weirded out by it before. Just can’t find the link…
Jason is a bad teacher.
What an incredible understatement
I am curious why you think that
For one thing, he generally fails to improve his pupils’ performance.
To be fair, the only ones we been seeing him trying to improve is Sal and Wally and let’s face it,Walky’s attitude does hurt his profess in the tutoring session. With Sal I am mixedm. Sex aside, (that would have been a better answer) he could have made a better effort to try and tutor Sal in a way she could understand, but with Sal’s attitude, I do wonderif she would have been receptive ether way.
I get he had a sample size of two and I don’t know all the details but if they didn’t need help they would not need help. Sal was F-ing trying and his attitude was to insult her for not already having good grades.
Well, his first attempts with Sal failed, but in the end he did succeed (she went from 43 to 76 after their last session). Of course his methods for achieving this are what got him fired.
When Sal got tutored by Jason, she didn’t understand, got frustrated, and had sex with him thinking her grades would improve.
The next week, when they didn’t, she got in his face, they argued, and had sex again. I’m pretty sure she didn’t get any more tutoring from him and that it was Danny who helped her grades to improve. That’s why she rubbed it in Jason’s face that she got some real help.
If I remember the timeline…
Sal received help from Jason multiple times (which also resulted in various sexual encounters). The first time there was no improvement in Sal’s grades (causing Sal to become upset, thinking the sex ‘earned’ her an A.
The second time Sal’s grades improved to a 76. This was before she started getting tutoring from Danny.
The last time we heard about her grades (after the tutoring from Danny) she had improved to an 83.
So, despite Jason being considered a ‘bad’ T.A., he did manage to help Sal improve her grades from a failing mark to 76. Danny has helped her too (although I suspect Danny did a better job at helping her understand, and Jason probably got her to do more of a memorization/repetition).
The relevant cartoons are:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/03-answers-in-hennessy/robust-2/ (Sal fails)
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/02-i-was-a-teenage-churchmouse/genuine/ (Sal’s grades improve)
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/02-i-was-a-teenage-churchmouse/gawkin/ (Sal gets help from Danny)
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/02-threes-a-crowd/congrats/ (Sal’s grades improve even more)
She did get tutored twice. The first time was offscreen, with no sex and no improvement. It was when she got the grade back from that that she dragged him back to his office for more tutoring, which led to the first sex incident.
That led to the “upgraded myself” bit and their second angry sex, but there’s no indication there was any more tutoring from Jason before her grades improved on the next assignment.
After than, as you say she got even better with help from Danny.
It’s possible something from the earlier tutoring sessions sunk in and helped her on the later assignment, but there’s no indication of that or of another session that started her improvement.
The first time her grades went up she hadn’t talked to Danny yet. That one was all her (because I seriously doubt she went back to tutoring after that first time they screwed).
…really? Dude just started screaming at the twin of a student he had sex with? Generally insults the intelligence of those he fails to teach (seemingly everyone)? Just said he ‘availed’ himself of a student as though they’re a commodity for the taking?
If you are talking about all he has said now, technically he is all but fired and with this on his record his career is pretty much destroyed, so he is pretty hysterical. Also note that all of this does make him a horrible person, but not so much a horrible teacher
Really? You’re going to judge him for being angry after hearing he’s been fired?
Sure, he’s rude. He also genuinely tried to help people, and when he failed he tried to learn what he did wrong. He wants to be a good teacher. That’s more than can be said for a lot of teachers nowadays.
He says he does but he’s done nothing to try to improve. Also, he’s a jackass to his students before he got fired so I’m not trucking with that as an excuse.
Honestly, I have had a far worse teacher than Jason. This one dude was a teacher of Java (the programing language) and the guy tried to teach at us, not to us, whenever anyone asked him a question he would ignore it or just answer as fast as he could and move on, he never had ANY office hours when he should have and to top it off, he skipped the last week of class. There were also other rumors, but those were just that, rumors. The only reason I got a B in the class was because his teaching assistants were decent teachers and tried to help.
I guess I hoped that Jason would eventually get better. Yeah it was crappy what he and Sal did, and he wasn’t successful with her, but it looked he genuinely wanted to help Walky. I was hoping with time he would eventually learn to teach well and maybe someday make it up to Sal.
At the very least, Jason was a better teacher than Penny or the teacher i just mentioned.
I hoped Jason would get better too, but while Walky needs to put more effort to learn in, Jason also needs to work on improving his method. He can’t just do what didn’t work with Sal, hope it works with Walky, and call it a day. We’ve seen no evidence he’s changed or improved his teaching methods at all, so I’m hard pressed to be sympathetic when he keeps saying he wants to be a good teacher but doesn’t do anything about it.
“Avail”? You choose the fucking word “avail”? People aren’t Goddamn services put on this world for you, you entitled snobbish shit!! Go back to England and stay on that side of the Atlantic you unrepentant bastard. Maybe this will teach you something about responsibility, though I highly doubt it given your self-centered narrative. In short Jason; blow it up your ass!!!
How was he supposed to know the student desperate not to fail he’d been calling stupid all night’s sudden offer of sex was transactional? Clearly, he thought she just needed him sexually but it was a TRAP! A TRAP FOR HIM!
He used the same word when referring to other people having sex. Over here in England it’s not an uncommon term to use, and doesn’t carry the negative connotation you Americans seem to attach to it.
Oh and really? He realised the sex was intended to be transactional, but he never wanted to agree to the transaction. Sal clearly didn’t mind, because she keeps screwing him after he quite clearly states he has no intention of bumping up her grades.
“clearly didn’t mind” is an exaggeration. There’s certainly some kind of attraction there and she does have angry sex with him after she finds out he didn’t change the grade, but not again after that and her interactions since then haven’t been real friendly – except when she was drunk.
Jason brought this on himself and I’m not feeling any sympathy for him. I do hope Walky finds a decent tutor and actually tries to learn from them though.
Yeah, after this, I wouldn’t be surprised if this makes it to the Dean and back to Linda if Sal’s name came up.
If that’s where this goes, I only hope Sal gets a heads up first because otherwise that poor girl is gonna be in for a brutal phone call at the very least.
And Jason soon bursts into a puddle of LCL.
“avail myself of”
Yeeaaaaaaaah I’m gonna go knee Jason in the nads, who wants to come with
RIGHT??????????
I’m in
Sweet muppety Jesus, how do you people get so mad over a word choice? It’s a manner of speech. He’s used the same term for other people’s sexual exploits.
Specifically Sal’s. And in a very denigrating way.
You don’t “avail yourself of” people. It’s a word choice, yes, but it’s a really terrible choice and it deserves to be called out as such.
How a person talks about something like sex more often than not reflects their attitude about it, and he’s describing it as “making use of” another human being, as if they were some sort of appliance.
Jason is probably describing it that way because he’s so uptight that he has to make it sound completely mechanical and un-sexy in order to feel comfortable talking about it at all, but it still sounds way too much like he views Sal as a object, whose primary function is providing sex.
There are so many other ways he could’ve phrased that to satisfy his prudishness without sounding so misogynistic.
This manner of speaking has came up before.
It’s really his way of talking about having sex.
As said above, Yeah, he’s used it before. When denigrating Sal by suggesting she make use of the local thugs and hoodlums. You’re not exactly helping your case.
Yes, and I specifically said that him being uptight is probably the main reason why. But even if it is, that phrasing still reeks of misogyny, or at the least, really crappy views about consent.
And as thejeff noted, since in that same sentence you’re referring to, he was insulting her by implying that she hung out with trashy, low-class criminals for some reason, it definitely doesn’t make him look better.
Gods Below, thank you for making me a frigid bastard by nature and reducing the chance of ever making as big of an error in judgement as this to nil
And then Jason burst into tang.
That’s what got him into this mess.
Wait, people in this comic use protection, don’t they?
Yes. (Slipshine has proof)
Right, well I suppose that sorta wrecks my innuendo.
Man Jason is really making it hard to like him.
Like, even more so than in parts of Its Walky! before he got some character development.
Jeez man. I understand you’re very emotional rn but freak out at home and not at a student who can now be a witness to you admitting the fact you bonked a student…
Do you think Walky understood what he was saying?
He admits twice to banging a student. I think Walky is intelligent enough to understand *that* (… I hope). Whether he realises it’s *Sal*, on the other hand…
Walky’s problem has never been intelligence, but that he doesn’t pay attention.
If we didn’t know that Jason had sex with Sal, would we be able to understand that from his words?
Would Walky catch than Jason means he had sex with a student by the words “availed myself of one student”? It’s not a common turn of phrase.
I read Walky’s reaction as “cool words but what on earth are you taking about”?
In context of “sex list” and “were also boffin’ students”, I think it would be pretty clear.
Just strictly from his words in today’s strip, maybe not.
This is a loss for the math teaching at IU.
Sadly, the bar really is that low for all we can tell.
The moral I take from it is to not boff students.
You know, I was feeling kinda sorry for Jason until “avail myself of”.
you beat me to it
So you were feeling sorry until you realised he wasn’t American?
It’s objectifying.
Alright let’s be straight here Jason, “avail myself of one student” is a very creepy way to put it
Presumably, Blade Dog and Destroyer were unavailable.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/01-if-the-shoes-split/avail/
Nah still got ways to go to get to Mike’s level of breaking people.
I’ll give Jason this – those were really cool nicknames.
On the other hand – STUDENTS ARE NOT “SENT” TO DO ANYTHING WITH YOU. NOT SEDUCE, NOT TORMENT, NOT ANYTHING EXCEPT LEARNING MATH, BOWTIE.
And I mean, right now understandably sucks big deal for him, but I’m pretty sure he had the same attitude during earlier tutoring sessions – with Walky as a penance he had to endure as punishment for boffing his sister. And that is not a good foundation for teaching.
I do wonder what Jason’s career goals are. He clearly doesn’t like teaching but he must be doing a course where you get extra credit with helping and tutoring.
I’m convinced it’s about his self image.
He does not like TEACHING but he wants to be a good TEACHER. He has this image in his head about himself a wise sage below the fig tree, with worthy students respectfully prostrating themselves for crumbs of his wisdom… or something.
With the right tutoring and a course or two in pedagogics he would probably be a decent teacher, but the problem is that no one as far as we can see has told him a single scrap of advice about how to be a good teacher (and quite a bit of bad advice, if Penny is any judge).
So he tries to be a teacher by going through the motions and wishing very hard, rather than walking the walk and learning the ropes. Very similar to Walky’s strategy how to be a good student, in other words.
That’s also why he is so quick to blame Sal and Walky for everything. Because if HE is a good teacher, and his students fail miserably, then the fault has to be with them.
Those who can’t do, teach. Those who can’t teach, blame the students.
And a lot of those who can do, can’t teach to save their sorry hides.
Lordy me but do I hate the “those who can’t, teach” aphorism.
*With the right tutoring, a course or two in pedagogy, AND A MAJOR ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT.
Well, yeah, that would have to be the most important part of the tutoring.
to be perfectly fair, both Walky and Sal are far from good students, Walky in particular because at least with Sal she was actually trying to learn at first before resorting to “lets have sex with the TA as a bribe”
Not saying Jason is a good teacher/tutor, cause he’s not. ut he’s not 100% wrong about his students being problematic.
He presumably just has a teaching assistantship to fund his PhD, no?
Not a course where you get extra credit teaching, but a grad program where you’re expected to assist the teacher in exchange for tuition. Pretty standard.
And generally done without any formal training in teaching – or only minimal training. Often it was the only training or experience teaching college professors got too.
Which makes it so sad that Jason actually DOES more teaching than he strictly needs, has zero support and does a crap job out of it.
I’ve broken people before, they weren’t filled with lovely cream like a Cadbury egg though. :^(
I honestly never heard anyone used “avail” in a sentence like this (English is my second language) I see a lot of previous commentators disgusted by this word choice, but I do not fully understand the significance of Jason using “avail” over here. My understanding so far is that because it’s a verb used for objects, thus Jason basically dehumanized Sal. Is that correct?
That’s the gist of it boss
Yep. You avail yourself of free chocolate in the supermarket, not people.
Thanks guys for the clarification and confirmation! Damn that’s pretty gross of him to say that, even if it were a slip of a tongue.
I don’t get it, why is everyone so mad?
*reads definition*
Oooooooh… yeah, no, Jason you suck
This is basically me.
Jason, honey, no. Don’t blame Walky. Blame the Slipshine subscribers who REALLY wanted to see Sal naked twice.
And yourself too, but you have the rest of your fictional life to figure THAT put.
Ah! So, that was Jason’s ultimate problem with Walky: He’s never got over Sal so having her spookily-similar twin brother around freaked him out too much to be entirely at ease around him.
As I predicted, Jason feels guilty about his affair with Sal too. That can’t help. Nor can Walky’s tendency to be… well, Walky.
Jason has a lot of issues with the fact he’s attracted to Walky. He just has to admit it.
Good thing Walky is too self absorbed to notice that Jason referred to him as his tryst’s “clone…”
….. Is he really, though? Or will we soon see Walky blackmailing Jason for his silence? (I mean, that’d be very bad on Walky, but he’s desperate enough.)
Nah, Walky’s just really at reading a situation. Honestly, he’s probably one of these characters that become LESS hilarious by being put in a realistic world setting.
Kinda like Mike, though in this case it’s less “abusive asshole” and more “self-absorbed manchild”. Works in a sci-fi comedy comic, but you DON’T want to deal with this kind of person in real life, in my experience.
Really…. good? Really bad?
Walky is unexpectedly observant. He’s the only one who figured out Ethan was gay and in a shame relationship with Joyce based on lack of physical contact.
Also he noticed that being a “drama hurricane” is sexually transmitted, iow the nature of the relationship between Alice and Billie.
Though that may have been more apparent back in high school.
I feel the opposite. Walky was way worse in the sci-fi setting because his attitude and irresponsibility were getting people killed. Here he’s just an annoying little shit.
Okay, that alt text broke me a little bit. I was not ready for that reference. That’s funny.
Also, fuck Jason.
I bet that Mike would be more than happy to give him extra credit for breaking people.
There is a sweet innocence about Walky’s self-centredness that I suspect is something Dorothy finds endearing. He hasn’t really got it in him to be particularly malicious, it’s just he literally doesn’t get any perception of reality that doesn’t have him at the geometric centre of the universe and has this puppy-like puzzlement at any other understanding of things.
See that’d be cute if it weren’t the single biggest collective threat to human society. When people can live, conditioned to believe–passively, non-malevolently, innocently, wholly unquestioningly, without even realizing that is the case–that their own, tiny sphere of the world and how they feel about it matters by definition more than any other portion outside of it.
And that it’s seen as unfortunate yet endearing or cute or hopeless when it is seen–and so often it isn’t. Walky is an extreme case but he’s certainly not unique to this attitude, except for his total willingness to 100% forego any accompanying social etiquette that would mask the worst of his outlook from outright public scorn). He takes refuge in audacity and gets enough laughs by taking it as far as he can that his insensitivity loops back around into ‘childish’ and becomes funny to people instead of…well, really shitty in so many situations like this when he says the worst thing at the worst time and Dorothy and Joyce aren’t there to tell him how bad that actually is.
…Yes, even when it’s directed at Jason.
Walky suffers the afluenza. You know, what we used to just call “spoiled.”
Man, Walky, can you get more dense?
Jason you did the crime, have some respect for yourself, for Sal and for the position of power over students you hold and take the punishment. Also off topic question, how do these kids support themselves? Like clothes and necessities and such?
Some get allowances from their parents; lots of them try to get low-level jobs like waiting tables.
Ok cool. Thanks for the info.
He does seem to be taking the punishment. He doesn’t seem to intend to contest the charges because he knows he did it, after all.
He just also seems to be in kind of hysterics about it.
When I was in undergrad, I had work study positions, which are considered financial aid, and loans can be used for housing and food. In grad school I was a TA, so I was paid in tuition and a small stipend, but I also needed a part-time job and another loan on top of that. It’s kinda rough. Although some kids are lucky to have parents with a lot of disposable income so… -shrug-
What I find curious is that Jason seems to think that Sal and Walky’s only motives had been to harm him in some way. That’s a rather paranoid viewpoint based on very little evidence. Something tells me that he isn’t really cut out for a customer-facing role of any kind.
Jason always makes himself the blameless victim of whatever happens.
These are both very apt comments. Interesting indeed that Jason is so concerned with being liked and considered good at his job when he clearly has so little interest in the well-being of those his job exists to serve. In fact, he’s got a lot of disdain for them. It’s almost like he doesn’t realize that teachers exist to help students learn things, and not just as a hierarchical structure.
Blameless I don’t necessarily think so.
He throws around phrases like ‘foolish indiscretions’ and ‘my failure’. There is definitely some recognition in the hoisting of his own petard, as it were.
Jeez I always knew Jason was an Asshole but this comic really drives it home.
Yup.
“How dare you look like the student I unwisely hooked up with and unintentionally make me feel guilt over it while seeking academic help?? Now I will refuse to give you that help despite the fact that it’s my job, which is what I’m upset over potentially not being able to do in the future!”
A dizzying sense of logic. Well, I suppose we can hope that life is a better teacher to Jason than Jason is to anyone.
Given the fact that Walky has: 1) shown little interest in actually being tutored, 2) constantly makes fun of the TA with nick names, and 3) took the opportunity to ask someone suffering a major crisis (i.e. Jason) to help him (even if Jason’s crisis was mostly self inflicted), I certainly can’t blame Jason for not being willing to jump in and start teaching Walky right away.
Had Walky shown more interest in learning math before, had he shown at least a little empathy for someone who may be losing his job and his career then perhaps I may be less sympathetic to Jason.
Ehhh I don’t know. Walky certainly hasn’t been holding back on Jason, and that’s understandably frustrating in all kinds of ways, but based on seeing Jason work with both him and Sal, I personally don’t feel that Jason has ever put in any real effort with either of them. Either that or Jason is just really not a good teacher – remember, a couple sessions with Danny had Sal making some pretty nice improvement. Just because Walky has a hard time focusing, and some stress/anxiety coping mechanisms that work against him, doesn’t mean that he doesn’t want to improve or is undeserving of help. And Jason is the professional – it’s his job to teach Walky and help him if asked.
That said, you’re absolutely right that emotionally Jason is in no condition to teach right now. So instead of blowing up and throwing a tantrum and flinging all kinds of unnecessary blame on Walky – who, remember, is going through a certain crisis of his own – he should really be taking a deep breath and saying, “I’m so sorry, I can’t help you at the moment, if you need someone right now I’m sure there are tutors in the library” or something to that effect. Reject politely, offer a meager scrap of assistance in exchange (even if it’s total bull), and depart.
The main issue, really, is that Jason has brought all of this down on himself and is lashing out. He’s scared. He’s unwilling to accept that he’s made mistakes and that he ought to receive the consequences. Plus being unprofessional and screaming at a student. No matter how annoying Walky is, none of this has anything to do with him. It’s just poor timing for him. And yeah, asking Jason to tutor him RIGHT NOW is rude and selfish, but again, he’s going through his own personal crisis and his priorities are probably a little skewed. I don’t think it warrants Jason’s temper tantrum.
I have some sympathy for Jason. Yes, before we go any further, it was wrong of him to sleep with a student, but he didn’t actually abuse his position: Sal (an adult, at least in the eyes of the law) propositioned him, not the other way around, and he made sure to have her paper graded by another T.A.
Walky’s lack of empathy starts to grate on me. I know he isn’t a sociopath, he cares a lot about his friends and family, but he seems to be at that mental stage of childhood when people who aren’t your family aren’t “real”.
You know what I mean, little kids learn that their teacher’s mom has died of cancer and their reaction is “cool! no math classes this week!”
Walky is, emotionally speaking, just like that. Combine that with his inability to resist impulses in order to avoid future negative consequences, and you have to wonder if he has some kind of emotional developmental issue… I mean, he couldn’t even stop himself from disrespecting the teacher who grade him AND who he was speaking for help… He acts like a little kid who thinks the world will bend to him because he is mom’s cute little child…
About Jason, I think he has a good chance of avoid being fired. I mean, if they take Penny’s word, what is stopping him from accusing other teachers of doing the same? He can plead his case in front of a tribunal… do they know about Sal? He shouldn’t mention Sal, he should deny everything, and quietly speak with her to ask her to keep it quiet. She hates authority, she doesn’t want to upset her parents and she was willing ask him for better grades in exchange for sex, so she will probably be willing to lie in exchange for better grades…
Hell, why didn’t Penny resist? All they had against her was some student online bragging. Joe has been studing at the college for like two weeks and claims that he has slept with like half the female students… that sounds like a lying braggart unless you actually are living next to him…
About getting a new job… If the tribunal can’t prove he is guilty, think he can convince the ruling body of the governing board to give him an honourable discharge… they get rid of him, he gets a clean curriculum…
Just to clarify. What I mean, is, if they can fire him without proof, on just the accusation of Penny, anybody can do the same, so all the faculty could be fired any day…
I said it in the last strip but I think they are just trying to pre-emptively protect their reputation. The school had a lot of PR disasters recently (Roz’s sex tape, Becky’s Dad, Rapey McStabby, Leslie “Seducing” Robin) so they might just want to get rid of this problem before it becomes public. Some people have mentioned that TAs are basically interns when it comes to their position in the school hierarchy so they hardly have much power to defend themselves.
The “interns” thing is very much true. The lowest people in the academic hierarchy are the TAs/GAs, followed closely by the non-tenure-track faculty – that is, the adjunct professors and lecturers (that’s me!). It’s only when you get tenure that you have some semblance of job security. Grad students only sometimes have collective bargaining agreements, and some of the unions are… less than helpful (our rep didn’t show up to the meeting they called).
As Jason is (I’m pretty sure…) a grad student, he should have access to the university’s arbitration process for this sort of thing. He won’t be immediately fired without a defense. Now, the process could drag Sal into this mess, and she won’t be happy about it.
Walky does seem to elevate immaturity to a high art. It’s a big part of his development as a comic strip character, though. He’s already learned a lot, from questioning his initial rather misogynistic attitudes, seeing more nuance in internalized racism, and just general responsibility. His world is turning from a Saturday morning cartoon, with all of its carefree lack of consequences and clear lines between heroes and villains, to the messy reality we all have to confront at some point. But, as we see from the past few strips, our dear Duke of Thingley still has a lot of growing to do.
Wow, I got the alt-text reference without having to look it up. Doesn’t happen very often.