153

Studier
Posted on April 17, 2015 by David M Willis

153 thoughts on “Studier”

  1. DarkoNeko

    [general announcement]

    Y’know, I’ve noticed the comment section ambiance has been kinda… cranky, recently.

    So if you feel the urge to go on a rant on one character or the other, PLEASE, remember : this is “dumbing of age”.

    Every characters will do dumb things sometimes.
    It’s in the title.

    1. Van Dyne

      Dumbing Dumbing dumbing dumbing….

      when you say the word a lot it kind of loses its meaning.

      1. Rich

        Dab dab dab

    2. MM

      You realize if Mike were in the comment section, he’d eat you alive right now, right?

      1. DarkoNeko

        I’m taking my chances 😀

        (speaking of Mike, woah, the avatar just above Oo)

      2. John

        Really Mike would say what DarkoNeko said, what better way to sow discord than by telling cranky people they shouldn’t be cranky?

        1. DarkoNeko

          Damn, there goes my secret plan.

    3. HeinousActsZX

      “why doesn’t this character always act perfectly logically 100% of the time I always do harga blarga blarga”

      Am I doing it right?

      1. Disloyal Subject

        It IS fun to dissect motives sometimes, though.

        1. Rich

          Dissection is fine. When it gets to vivisection without benefit of anesthesia that may be going too far.

        2. Torechwen

          Ouch. Quite a picture.

    4. Tenn

      You are not Jen Aside and so I do not trust you.

      😛

  2. Nono

    Boy, Walky sure is smart, putting his nose to the grindstone!

    And that Mike sure is helpful, pointing out Walky could use more progress in his studying!

    1. JessWitt

      I imagine “nose to the grindstone” came to be an expression from a hilariously dumb accident.

      1. Safgaftsa

        It involved Galasso.

      2. Bill

        Keep your shoulder to the wheel, your ear to the ground, your eye on the ball, and your nose to the grindstone.
        Now try working in that position.

        1. HiEv

          OK, OK, I’m putting my foot down before this gets out of hand.

      3. Rycan

        I prefer not to think about it. That would be gruesome.

    2. Tenn

      Get up, get out, you lazy lout,
      Get into your working clothes!
      Up to your knees in oil and grease
      And a grindstone to your nose!

  3. Kernanator

    Oh, hey there me.

    How are you doing?

  4. Stephen Bierce

    Metadata is very important, especially now! If you don’t respect it, it will end you.

    1. Doctor_Who

      This amuses me because I work for a company that sells college textbooks, and I’m currently writing software that will look up metadata automatically online, because some of our sources think Title and Price are all the customer needs, so why send us anything else?

      “Durr, Edition? Why would college students ever need to know what edition this is?”

      1. Bagge

        If someone tried to sell me a textbook without telling me the edition I would assume it was an older edition and they try to pull one over me.

        1. Bagge

          Well, shame on me – Walky would never be fooled like that

        2. Yet_One_More_Idiot

          You know you’re old when….current students’ text books were printed closer to the present day then to when you left school. 😛

        3. Rich

          You know you’re old when…you have an electronics textbook that spends two chapters on rotary phone technology.

        4. Deanatay

          Actually, engineering students should learn about rotary phones, it’s a pretty neat engineering trick.

        5. Rich

          Tue, but two chapters still seems a bit much, barring some kind of “history of technology” course. One of them also deals with 1940’s era switchboard operations, which is kind of nifty but really not very useful these days.

        6. Khrene

          But without extensive knowledge on 40’s tech, how am I supposed to make Folk-Swing Dubstep???

        7. Rich

          Interesting concept. I would pay good money to see someone DJ using a modified old-fashioned manual switchboard to switch between tracks. The tech could probably be made compatible – different “phone lines” feeding different speakers, etc.

        8. Opus the Poet

          You know you’re old when you have an electronics textbook with several chapters on tube circuits. And 8 bit computers.

        9. Yet_One_More_Idiot

          My school lent us science textbooks that said copyright 1975. Wouldn’t have been so bad if I was at school in the 70s, but given I was born in 1982, well you can do the maths…! 😛

        10. Ex_Ian

          That happens at 3 years. New editions come fast and furious.

        11. fogel

          Otherwise students could use used textbooks ….

  5. otusasio451

    He is Captain W: The Study Master!

    1. Deanatay

      Captain Study McStudly!

  6. Kris

    Study study study….it has lost its meaning! ö_ö

    1. John

      Now it sounds like something I should say to myself while trying to balance a unicycle on a rope.

      1. awkweirdness

        While juggling bananas of course!

    2. fogel

      Вот большевиков говорить! Сам Ленин сказал: Учиться, учиться и учиться “.

      1. Kris

        Hey! I stuck this in translate and now feel inclined to learn Russian! Maybe Lenin was right! Thanks! 😀

  7. Felent

    Poor dude.

    1. Kris

      I don’t feel bad for him. The answer is so easy! Dorothy Walky. Fricken ask her!

      1. Rycan

        That won’t help his test grades, however. Dorothy can’t take his tests for him (and wouldn’t even if she could).

        1. Kris

          Studying. She can definitly help him with that. If that doesn’t improve his test score then I don’t know what will.

        2. John

          Going to class?

        3. No Name

          Yeah, well, the way Professor Rees teaches, all that will accomplish is telling him what to study.

        4. Nono

          That’s how Jason tutors, we don’t know how Rees lectures.

        5. Rich

          Badly, according to Penny. She and Jason had an exchange about how Rees is awful at teaching and how teaching didn’t matter anyway.

        6. Kamino Neko

          When have we been given any indication that Walky doesn’t go to class?

        7. No Name

          He skipped once after his night with Dorothy. I don’t think he’s done it since, but if it weren’t for that 26 he got on the test he took the day after he skipped class, he might have done it again.

        8. John

          February 28th, 2014, aka Monday.

        9. Kamino Neko

          Missing one class and discovering that he can actually do that without getting yelled at is not the same thing as skipping classes with any regularity.

          In fact, we see him in class immediately after his epiphany.

  8. A Scientist

    This boy needs study buddies.

    1. DarkoNeko

      Joyce ! Definitly not Dorothy. Well, not until she accidentally discover the truth

  9. Plasma Mongoose

    Is STUDY STUDY STUDY the new WHORES WHORES WHORES?

    1. DarkoNeko

      BROS BROS BROS BROS ?

    2. Smiling Cat

      At least since Golden Boy…

      1. Plasma Mongoose

        Not sure hugging toilets would help Walky in any way… 😀

  10. Spencer

    There’s already too much Mike in this arc.

    1. Cerberus

      Heh. Yeah, he’s being actually pretty nice (for Mike) so far, just pointing out what isn’t working rather than undermining Walky’s self-esteem.

  11. Vex Godglove

    I sympathize with Walky. I breezed through high school and freshman year of college just by being smart, I never learned how to study. Once I got into the second half of uni, it came back to bite mibin the ass. Still don’t know how to do it, I just have to get by on what I absorb naturally.

    1. TheLurkerAbove

      Yea, sorta hit me too, but before university. Walky’s learning it rather late, so he’s going to really struggle here.

    2. Regalli

      Ditto. I at least make up for it by absorbing a LOT by nature, but when I get in over my head I usually don’t recognize how bad it is until it’s way too late. (Particularly since you’re supposed to, like, pace yourself in writing papers and the like, and I can really only write maybe a sentence in a whole day or ten pages in one sitting with no in-between, but I’m a strong enough writer that I still don’t score below 84 unless something’s gone really wrong. End result? I routinely get gripped with anxiety and paralysis the day before a paper’s due because I didn’t work on it until then, and end up finally starting working on it right around 10 PM. When fear of the deadline stopped being enough to get through the fear of failure last year, I kind of completely shut down and had to finish two classes I objectively should have withdrawn from well before I realized I needed to and couldn’t.)

      1. Disloyal Subject

        Ah… My brethren.
        I did learn how to study, since the schools kind of forced it on us, but I hardly ever need to, so I rarely bother until I’m forced to notice that something has somehow gone horribly wrong, rather like Wally here.

      2. Eyebrow

        It’s so good to know you’re not alone. 10pm to 4am before the deadline.

    3. podian

      Same here. First year of uni, and I suddenly discover that I actually have to study stuff…

      1. DarkoNeko

        A pretty cringy for a lot of us, it seems ^^;

    4. Govanator

      I’ve almost finished my degree and I *still* don’t know how to study. By this point, I doubt I’ll ever learn properly.

    5. fogel

      See how wonderful the American high school system is!!!!

  12. Bagge

    Study the SHIT out of that page.

    This is kinda like a cargo cult. He doesn’t know HOW to study but he knows that people who do it spend lots of time reading books, so Walky develops the general mannerism without understanding the true mechanics behind it.

    1. MeghanTheWorldEater

      Story of my life.

    2. Carms

      I appreciate this cargo cult analogy

      (mentions of cargo cults always remind me of terry pratchett….)

      1. StClair

        Dream Park, here.

        1. Rich

          Me too. Some of my grandfather’s stories about his service time in the Pacific, too.

          Should really re-read my Niven books. Been quite a while.

    3. Dean

      Walky has built a primitive imitation desk from bamboo and palm leaves.

    4. fogel

      I belong to a cargo cult. It’s called Amazon Prime. There’s a button on this thing I’m holding right now; I click it and 2 days later I find cargo on the front porch!

  13. Dean

    The word ‘study’ definitely has no meaning when Walky says it.

  14. JessWitt

    Don’t burn out, Walky! It’s not fun. And I’ve still yet to recover completely.

    1. Regalli

      Augh, tell me about it. I’m starting to wonder whether I have some other medical crap going on or if I genuinely did some sort of permanent damage when I crashed last year, because my energy’s still so much less than it was before.

      1. Carms

        man, yea.
        Maybe we should talk to people. professional types.

        1. Rabid Rabbit

          Your first port of call should, of course, be your smiling/scowling bipolar drunken depressed RA, who will provide excellent advice. Though possibly while removing your femurs.

        2. segnosaur

          Minor point: I’m assume you are referring to Ruth. But from what I understand, she is only the RA for the women’s side of the floor

        3. DarkoNeko

          Yeah, they have the huge star trek fan for the men side. (same guy as it’s walky I recon)

    2. Rycan

      And most definitely avoid burning out on the title page.

  15. tim gueguen

    I wonder if Mike actually studies.

    1. Koms

      He studies moms…

      1. DarkoNeko

        And economics.

    2. Kris

      Oh Mike studies. He studies your mom.

    3. Willoughby Chase

      He studies the art of the burn.

      1. Disloyal Subject

        I’d think he teaches it by now.

        1. Tacos

          At this point, I think he has a PhD.

  16. Blue

    Is the hovertext intended to be a play on the year this comic started? 😛

    1. Opus the Poet

      you caught that!

    2. JessWitt

      That sounds right. I didn’t catch on to that !

    3. Random832

      I just went back to the first comic to check and OH MY GOD WHAT’S WRONG WITH BECKY’S FACE.

      On further analysis: Willis’ art style is mostly mature, so 2010 DOA isn’t nearly as unrecognizably different as, say, Roomies, but the way he draws non-sclera eyes has changed significantly over the last five years. They’re like little pinholes staring into my soul. And it’s not just Becky – Walky and Asma two strips later have the same issue. It’s like they’re being impersonated by Ditto.

  17. Cerberus

    Now all he needs is for the next quiz to be about that title page and he’s solid.

    1. awkweirdness

      and the copyright information! Hello?!

  18. kimmibeans

    I think I’ve seen where this is going to go https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1tZ7NZf394

  19. Litch Opus the Poet

    Hi, me again. This comic is much funnier than the one on my side, Walky and Ben are beating Mike up with cricket bats there. Ben is demanding to know where the nickels are.

    1. Opus the Poet

      Neat, I get his grav when I post on the DoA on his side. His bike is black and has fangs. And his skin is pretty much the same color as my jersey.

      1. Opus the Poet

        And I forgot to say that Ben still has red hair and freckles, but instead of being curvy like Becky he is built like a swimmer with lots of musculature showing but not heavily built. Except his abs, his six pack shows through a winter coat… 😉

  20. Urukak

    Strawman strawman, strawman strawman strawman.

    (I hope this counts as using it correctly)

    1. Deanatay

      As ‘strawman’ can be a noun, a verb, AND an adjective, you can pull the old ‘buffalo’ trick:

      Strawman strawman strawman strawman strawman strawman strawman strawman.

      1. Random832

        Not really. The buffalo trick relies on the fact that it can also be a plural noun not requiring an article.

        1. Random832

          Nor an “s” on the agreeing verb form.

        2. Tenn

          And as far as I know, there isn’t any town or city called Strawman.

        3. No Name

          No, but there is a brewery in London.

          Google maps is your friend.

  21. Twilightomens

    I’m usually not a big Walky fan, but I can relate to him here.
    Studying is scary

  22. Keeveet

    I’m really happy we have this storyline. Having a character be effortlessly smart is one thing – it just means he learns and remembers easily and has a knack for logic puzzles. Having him effortlessly *know everything* is not so believable.

    If we’re heading towards that alternate Walkyverse where he stayed with Dorothy, or something like it, he might yet learn to study and become a doctor.

  23. Idon'tcarenomore

    New editions can really be a problem. Especially if they are written by the one teaching the class.
    I went completely through HS years ago, without an error being found in my science- earth thru chemistry/English/German/poly-si/histories/math geo. thru calc.
    My first year of college, my chemisty class prof. wrote the teaching manual. Our first day’s lesson was sitting for the entire class and red penciling the errors in the book: in every chapter and just about every page.
    I’ve often wondered why the expense and cost of new books is permitted. English lit. classes, history classes, language classes, etc. won’t change, so why not stay with a good solid text.

    It would reduce error and cost. But then it would deprive some teacher from getting his master or whatever because he couldn’t write anything better than a hackneyed text book.

    1. Hippoman

      Actually with History keeping up to date with text books is fairly important. New interpretations and evidence is uncovered all the time (it’s what historians do for a living). If you stick with a book that’s a decade or older then odds are you’re using something that’s out-dated. I assume it’s for other humanities subjects as well.

      1. No Name

        Also, as much as we malign the History Channel, history really is made every day. Ten years is a lot of history to not teach.
        With lit though, a good prof doesn’t actually use a text book, just the books you’ll read and write abound in class, maybe a collection of short stories and essays. The whole point of a lit class is draw your own views about the material.

        1. Deanatay

          Maybe writing a single, monolithic history textbook shouldn’t be done. Write a small, ten or fifteen-page pamphlet for each century or decade. That way, it’s easy to make changes when mistakes are discovered.

          Problem with that is, the way textbook prices are inflated right now, it’d cost a student a fortune. Each pamphlet would cost them $40.

      2. ahuh

        A lot of humanities classes dispense with textbooks and just assign various essays.

        1. Cerberus

          My master’s classes for Biology did that too. The theory was a) if you go further in academia you were going to need to learn to stay abreast in your field by reading the latest academic papers, b) it was better to just do that to make sure students were receiving the latest and more accurate information than making the students pay through the nose for the newest edition every few years, and c) it was easier to have translations to other languages for students who needed it. It also allowed the teacher to swap out an upcoming paper if a really new interesting study was released during the time of the class (I think that ended up happening twice).

          I’m actually very much a fan of this method as textbook costs are kind of obscene and it can be easier to show off intra-discipline debates a lot easier than if you’re using one set of textbooks made by one single megapublisher with its own preferred interpretation.

  24. Tacos

    Pfft! Studying… who needs it? Not I!

  25. Well_Played

    You call that Studying? Pfft! Kintaro Oe laughs at you.

    1. Smiling Cat

      Life is study!

    2. Yotsuyasan

      Ha! Exactly who I thought of when I read this comic. Hell, I could practically hear his voice in my head in panel 3. I was going through the comments mainly to see if anyone had mentioned him, and to remedy the situation if no one had.

      But you did, so I see I am not needed. Well played, Well_Played.

      1. DarkoNeko

        Now all Walky needs is a trusty bike.

      2. Well_Played

        Walky will save Japan and maybe the world… Or maybe not.

  26. Leonou

    The date of first publication is a very important information and I curse the names of all the editors who fail to mention it.

    May their soul burn in Hell !

    1. Alex

      Remember when you had to cite a book but the title page left out all the information you actually need.

      Good times.

      G-good times………………….

  27. Joebo

    This just in, Generalissimo Francesco is still dead.

    1. Rich

      Good thing, too. If he wasn’t, narrowing down the list of suspects who might have brought him back would be difficult.

      Well, unless he returned to tell us to bring back Enterprise. That would be a giveaway.

  28. Les

    Walky may be justified in memorizing the title page. My first day of high school chemistry, the teacher made us pile all our stuff in the front of the class then gave us each a sheet of paper. The only question on the pop quiz: “What is the name of your textbook and who is the author?” About half the class had apparently been warned she pulled this quiz every year. Unfortunately, I wasn’t one of them so I started off the year with a zero (and yes, the grade counted…).

    1. Rich

      Huh wha? Did you get issued your textbooks before the first day of class or something? We always had them handed to us for the first time when we walked in. Sometimes they were late or under-ordered and it would be days or weeks before we got them.

      Regardless, that is an impressively petty teacher.

      1. No Name

        Les may have gone to a private school, or else was talking about an experience in college. Both institutions, because the state doesn’t cover their expenses, require the students to acquire their own textbooks. This often means paying for it.

        1. Rich

          Ah. Must have been a private school, he did mention it was HS chemistry. Mine was public, and that would have been the late 70s/early 80s so maybe textbook policies have changed even there. Heck, when I went through, we didn’t even have a separate middle school. Grades 7-12 in one building. That was a joy and a half.

        2. Opus the Poet

          When I was in 7th there was only one American Jr-Sr HS in the entire country and it covered 7-12. It served mostly the US military and the embassy for the country, but we had a few kids from other embassies (the Anglophone countries). There were 57 students in 7th and a graduating class of 14, including the one senior who had to live in the barracks his last semester so that he didn’t have to change schools in the middle of his Senior year. Fun times.

      2. Simberto

        Yes. As someone who is studying to become a teacher, there are so many ways that is a bad idea for a teacher to do that i can’t even begin to start counting them.

        1. Cerberus

          As a teacher, I have to disagree, it’s an absolutely fantastic idea for a teacher to do… so long as your only goal as a teacher is to instill a smug sense of superiority over your students and train them to spend the entire class memorizing as much useless bits of data as you can instead of actually learning anything or if you just want your students to hate and mistrust you the full length of the class.

          If any of those are your goal, it’s the greatest method in the world.

    2. StClair

      Like others, in my HS (public, 84-87) we got our textbooks in class.

      And since I wouldn’t know the answer from my brief inspection, I’d be really tempted to answer (especially as a smart-aleck kid):

      “What does this information have to do with the science of chemistry? Does it alter the rate of reactions, the formation of bonds, or molecular weight? May we expect similar irrelevant and distracting stunts, focusing on the form of the material rather than the substance, for the rest of the course?”

      1. StClair

        I mean… that’s like having the class do a lab, and then testing them not on the observed reaction, its products, etc, but on the color and shape and dimensions of the bottle(s) the reagents came in.

        1. Cerberus

          My first college chem lab graded the labs on how close we got the exact correct amount of products formed, which due to crappy materials and lab equipment was almost a completely random outcome, so instead everyone learned how to falsify lab data by initially calculating what the yield should have been and putting that down for your “observed amount” instead or just straight up copying from previous iterations of the class.

          Luckily my future lab classes did it better and asked for reasons for error to be a significant part of the lab (as it’s a way better lab skill to know why you were inaccurate than to simply always be accurate from the first attempt).

    3. Tacos

      Wow really? I’d have transferred out of that class if I knew the teacher would do crap like that.

  29. Rich

    The only bad grade we’ve seen from Walky was in Jason’s class, right? Given Sal’s earlier problems there, you think part of the problem might be that Jason really is just a bad (as well as hellishly unethical) teacher? This might just be entirely due Walky slacking off, but I wonder how the class as a whole is doing. Bad teachers turn B and C students into D and F ones very easily IME.

    1. Nono

      Jason isn’t the teacher, he’s just a TA. It’s Professor Rees that’s teaching the class, and we haven’t seen any indications that Joyce, Mike or Billie is doing badly.

      1. Rich

        But Penny, Jason’s fellow TA, insisted that Rees is a lousy teacher as well, and she sure doesn’t seem to care about her own duties either. If Rees is doing all the lectures (which isn’t the norm IME – I had a lot of classes from stand-in TAs over the years) then we’ve got a bad prof with bad TAs to boot. Anyone who’s doing well in that environment must be either doing it all on their own or be seeking outside help like Sal wound up doing.

        1. Cerberus

          I wonder if Sal and Walky are more auditory learners while the others are either more both or more visual.

          Basically if you are an auditory learner, you learn better from out loud explanations which would be why Sal worked better with Danny giving her better explanations that make more sense for her and Walky did poorly the test after he missed the class and seems to not know how to read his textbook for information. Which means that what Walky might need more than time studying is a tutor and to learn how to take proper non-dinosaur eating a TA notes, which will both be painful hits to how he’s shaped his pride about being “naturally intelligent”.

          Whereas if the others can work well with visual, they can just learn from the book or the diagrams on the board (a lot of bad teachers are of the type to just read off their powerpoint slides or just write on the board with little actual explanation) which is not very engaging.

          Walky’s other problem is that he needs to be engaged to care about a subject and that’s going to be a harder problem to combat because it means it’s going to be harder to adapt to bad teachers and subjects he has little interest in (which may be most/all of them as he seems like he’s in college mostly because he feels he ought to and his mom would kill him if he wasn’t) especially as the material continues to get more and more complex and faster paced than what he was used to.

        2. Rich

          Good point. I’m more of a visual learner, and tend to forget that many folks actually get something out of lectures.

        3. B.D

          Would the distinction even matter in a maths class?

        4. Rich

          Probably? I’ve had math profs who talked through every step of every problem in class. Never did a thing for me, and if anything it distracted from what I was copying from the board or projected lecture notes. I would assume an auditory-primary learner would experience the reverse.

        5. Nono

          It depends. I had a lot of trouble with math class because the concepts were so abstract. When I moved onto other courses that used those same concepts in real life examples, then it became easier to use those ideas because you can actually realistically apply them to real-world problems rather than go, ‘oh, you do this to the numbers’.

        6. Cerberus

          It can. I teach math and for some of my students, a different style of explanation or a more or less abstract explanation can make all the difference for the auditory learners and writing what I’m talking about on the board seems to help with the visual learners and I try and bring in physical objects when I can for the kinesthetic learners. Basically, as Sal noted when she was learning, different methods work for different students which is why I try and always sit down with the students struggling to figure out what is not working for them and what I can add to my style to help them.

  30. stiney

    How is he possibly looking at the title page and (c) page at the same time? The (c) page appears on the verso of the title page. Even if the book has a half title, the back would be blank.

    This post brought to you by “real life ruining jokes”.

    1. B.D

      Exactly – he’s looking at the title page without realizing it isn’t the copyright page as well.

    2. Rich

      Absurdist answer: He’s just THAT BAD at studying.

      More plausible excuse: He doesn’t know the difference between the publisher info (which is commonly printed below the actual title) and copyright info.

  31. Church

    HE STUDIES SO HARD THAT HE NUKED THE WORD

    FROM ORBIT

    TO BE SURE

  32. Chris Borgars-Smith

    I kinda wonder if he’s got adhd sometimes honestly.

  33. Vree

    Not “studier”, “studer”.

    I’m a good studer.

    Hey dude, are you studier than that studer over there?

  34. Taurin

    I don’t know if you check this late in the game, but I can totally relate to Walky’s situation. For so many years I never had to study, so that when the situation arose that I DID have to, I didn’t really know how to, and I kinda crashed and burned. Not having read beyond this point, I hope Walky does better at recovery than I did.

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