Especially with math. Anything actually related to his telecommunications degree, she’d probably love, since it would force him (via her nagging) to consider changing to a major that’s more desirable (to her). But math he’d need to get into doctoring (as she mentioned to Dotty’s parents), or engineering, or whatever else would be acceptable to her.
thejeff
Maybe, but I suspect for Walky the consequences of Linda finding out would be worse than any practical consequences of failing a class. And of course he wouldn’t tell her ahead of time, so she wouldn’t be able to do it until after the fact, when it was already in his record.
This is super relatable. My senior year I was utterly convinced I was flunking an elective I needed to graduate, which would mean disaster. After a terrible midterm I basically ran screaming into the professor’s office asking for advice, opportunities for extra credit, recommendations for tutors, does your car need washed, anything.
He went through my record and told me that I was getting a B-. Wasted a perfectly good panic attack.
My Freshman year I dropped out of math when I got a 50% on the first test, not knowing that an F in high school can easily become a C with a college curved grading system
Ah yes, the magic of grading on a curve. In my freshman year of engineering, my very first midterm (physics) I got 26%, I was in shock and ready to drop out of university completely. Then I discovered that the class average was 12%, and I had actually passed. It was an effective wake-up however, and I quickly learned how to study properly.
foamy
Oh yeah. If you ever want to terrify people get an engineer to discuss what their weeder course absolute test scores were.
thejeff
My professor explained to me that he could write tests to set the class average wherever he liked and he liked to do so around 50, so that there was more room to distinguish how the students at the top are doing. Set it at 80 and half the class is crammed at the top only a few points apart.
It’s logical and makes sense, but it’s sure demoralizing. Even when you know there’s a curve and everyone is struggling, when you’re taking the test you feel like you don’t know anything.
This is a good example of the other side of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Dunning-Kruger is not just about incompetent people thinking they’re more competent than they really are; it’s also about competent people thinking they’re less competent than they really are (cf. “Impostor Syndrome”).
But Walky’s grade was adjusted upward by Amber. Of course, Walky has the intelligence to pass math; he just needs some competent tutoring and also how to study effectively.
Ok so, this has become a pet peve of mine but that is not what the Dunning-Kruiger study suggests at all, one people repeat it all the time despite it’s incorrectness. For a one sentence tldr: the sturdy suggest that people tend to judge themselves as average. For better learning check this link https://graphpaperdiaries.com/2017/08/20/the-real-dunning-kruger-graph/amp/
Sunny
I dunno… I tend to think I’m average while at the same time thinking that other people are doing it wrong.
Michael Haneline
Those charts all indicate that most people tend to think of themselves as above average, though? “Students performing in the bottom 25% among their peers on tests of grammar, logical reasoning, and humor tended to think that they are performing above the 60th percentile”
Like, no it doesn’t say they think they’re experts, but they think they’re competent.
I’m not sure it will come up. I checked to be sure and Amber actually stole the hard copies. So there’s no evidence of tampering. As far as I can tell she’s the only one who knows, unless she admits to it herself. I think they’re both in the clear.
It absolutely will come up again, even if it’s only Walky confronting Amber about it. They may get away with it, but it’s not going to be dropped without some fallout.
Would Walky be in trouble, if Amber said it was her and they both say Walky didn’t know? Even if the uni is suspicious that Walky was involved, it doesn’t seem like there’s much they can do purely on suspicion.
Also reminded me of the time I ate a midterm report instead of showing it to my parents bc I didn’t wanna get yelled at for “bad” grades. (Was making like a 94 or 95. Their standards at the time were… high.)
My mom told me how her brother once hid a bad report card by shoving it in…I guess the cafeterias of the time had apple dispensers? Like, you’d put in a coin and out would come an apple?
Which just means the next kid who wanted an apple got a free report card with it, and turned it into the office. With brilliant ideas like that, it’s no wonder my uncle was getting lousy grades.
thankfully my mom* only checked report cards and not assignments, so the anxiety about her finding out only came a couple times a year.
-less relevant background info below-
(I was a ‘gifted’ kid, so like most gifted kids, I peaked academically around the age of 14-15, then continuously plummeted due to stress, not knowing how to learn when I wasn’t just picking stuff up immediately, and mental health issues becoming more prominent every day. Still got decent grades in Grade 12 and went to college (where she couldn’t monitor grades) until I dropped out for health, but not good enough grades for my mom when I was a straight-A elementary and middle schooler, esp with an older brother who did manage to keep up the grades)
*dad dropped out of school and turned out fine and had (has) a good job, and was chiller about grades
I actually got a 95 average at the end of the year in Biology. My teacher put “Does not work up to full potential” on my report card every semester. I kept an A the entire year, but somehow wasn’t working up to my full potential. I never understood what she expected, since I was fulfilling almost everything she was looking for by her own testing criteria.
I’ve just had a lot of personal experiences about this very same thing. Failing to study and not going to class because I can’t understand the material and obviously I’m hopeless and I’m obviously going to fail this course, so why even try? Only to then discover that actually, I somehow managed to achieve a (barely) passing grade!
And from the sheer relief, I would go “well, I guess I wasn’t doing as bad as I thought! If I could miss all those classes and not study, and still get this grade, then I guess I’m doing fine and therefore I don’t need to change my ways at all!”
I never understood that train of thought, but maybe that was just me back when I thought a C meant I didn’t pass but I would haft to repeat the class which was no different to me than failing. If I was in Walky situation I’d still be panicking I still being holding on to some desperate glimmer of hope.
If it was a B- then I’d relieved.
BBCC
You don’t have to repeat for C’s, generally, unless it’s a required class. This one isn’t for Walky’s major. It is for his mom, but his mom can go fuck herself so.
Drake
American grading systems sound weird.
LeslieBean4shizzle
Re: “don’t have to repeat for C’s”
That very, VERY much depends on the school. The one where I teach does not give any credit for any grade less than C… and that includes C-. Less than a 74% and you get no credit for the class and have to repeat. And no, not just for major classes – it applies to all classes taught by the English and Math departments (and maybe others? – I only know those two for sure because that’s where I work/where my friends work).
Roborat
So you can fail a course with a 73? That seems a little harsh, anything above 70 is a pretty good mark.
BBCC
That IS weird, but it’s also why I said ‘generally’. Most people don’t consider C a failing grade.
Ron
To me a barely passing grade would mean I could get an actully good grade so it motivated me to do better. I guess even after panicking I still wanted to get good grades.
I wish I had reached that conclusion instead. Instead, I used my sense of relief to continue justifying my laziness and to continue putting off any efforts to improve my situation.
TheWanderingMist
Assuming a Willis character will reach an intelligent decision quickly…how naive.
Walky, I know you said you didn’t want Amber to change your grades but right now you should be happy she did and take this chance to fix your grades before no amount of hacking can save your ass.
Not really… Hackers are self taught, but without an honest academic degree, or even something for a public college you can’t get a job with certainty. To make money as a hacker you would have to work as a freelancer, and still have to show a portfolio of your skills.
As for having a hacker as an ally, Walky isn’t a supervillain or anarchist in need of max haxx, nor he is Joker from Persona 5.
How is Walky going to react if Amber reveals she modified his grades in an illegal way? Maybe he wouldn’t care about academic dishonesty, but he would care about his loved one doing something stupid for him after weeks of self hatred and nihilism.
146 thoughts on “Dead man”
Ana Chronistic
C for… consequences
as in, when Walky fails to realize this nudge from Amber is keeping him aloft and ends up bombing out again
…nah, he won’t face any consequences, I bet Mrs. W can just BUY Walky some passing grades with all the money they saved neglecting Sal
abysswatcher1993
Linda isn’t into academic dishonesty, but she is into xenophobia and the genocide of all martians.
newllend(henryvolt)
Honestly I can actually see her doing that, she’s close enough to the Dean and I wouldn’t be surprised if she was planning on doing it in advance.
Axel
Especially with math. Anything actually related to his telecommunications degree, she’d probably love, since it would force him (via her nagging) to consider changing to a major that’s more desirable (to her). But math he’d need to get into doctoring (as she mentioned to Dotty’s parents), or engineering, or whatever else would be acceptable to her.
thejeff
Maybe, but I suspect for Walky the consequences of Linda finding out would be worse than any practical consequences of failing a class. And of course he wouldn’t tell her ahead of time, so she wouldn’t be able to do it until after the fact, when it was already in his record.
Diner Kinetic
Mike made a pun and now I respect him
Br44n5m
As law states it must be
Doctor_Who
This is super relatable. My senior year I was utterly convinced I was flunking an elective I needed to graduate, which would mean disaster. After a terrible midterm I basically ran screaming into the professor’s office asking for advice, opportunities for extra credit, recommendations for tutors, does your car need washed, anything.
He went through my record and told me that I was getting a B-. Wasted a perfectly good panic attack.
BBCC
I had a similar experience on Saturday. I was getting my first grad on an assignment from grad school back and I was terrified I’d failed it.
I was only two points off from an A. Screw you, brain weasels.
Zero
“Brain Weasels” is a phrase I’d never think I’d actually hear.
And this coming from the guy who regularly says “Son of a shit weasel!”
Clif
Who would have guessed they weren’t metaphors?
Sunny
The brain moles know.
Woomy
My Freshman year I dropped out of math when I got a 50% on the first test, not knowing that an F in high school can easily become a C with a college curved grading system
thejeff
I’ve got nothing against grading tests on a curve, but it should definitely be made clear on the returned test what that percentage actually means.
Woomy
Haha, yep!
But it never was, in any class.
Am I gonna pass biochem and graduate this quarter? I cannot say anything, one water or the other, until a full week after finals.
Kamino Neko
Man, the American system is so strange…
Mister Sparkle
In America, an 18% tip is automatically included for classes of 10 students or more, so a 50% becomes a 68%, that’s a passing grade.
thejeff
Just to be clear for foreigners who might be confused – that’s not true. 🙂
Professors can choose to curve or not curve grades. It’s generally based on how hard they want to make their tests.
Delicious Taffy
Tipping is good in a lot of situations. Academic evaluation is not one of them.
Roborat
Ah yes, the magic of grading on a curve. In my freshman year of engineering, my very first midterm (physics) I got 26%, I was in shock and ready to drop out of university completely. Then I discovered that the class average was 12%, and I had actually passed. It was an effective wake-up however, and I quickly learned how to study properly.
foamy
Oh yeah. If you ever want to terrify people get an engineer to discuss what their weeder course absolute test scores were.
thejeff
My professor explained to me that he could write tests to set the class average wherever he liked and he liked to do so around 50, so that there was more room to distinguish how the students at the top are doing. Set it at 80 and half the class is crammed at the top only a few points apart.
It’s logical and makes sense, but it’s sure demoralizing. Even when you know there’s a curve and everyone is struggling, when you’re taking the test you feel like you don’t know anything.
Marsh Maryrose
This is a good example of the other side of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Dunning-Kruger is not just about incompetent people thinking they’re more competent than they really are; it’s also about competent people thinking they’re less competent than they really are (cf. “Impostor Syndrome”).
Norah
But Walky’s grade was adjusted upward by Amber. Of course, Walky has the intelligence to pass math; he just needs some competent tutoring and also how to study effectively.
Home
Ok so, this has become a pet peve of mine but that is not what the Dunning-Kruiger study suggests at all, one people repeat it all the time despite it’s incorrectness. For a one sentence tldr: the sturdy suggest that people tend to judge themselves as average. For better learning check this link https://graphpaperdiaries.com/2017/08/20/the-real-dunning-kruger-graph/amp/
Sunny
I dunno… I tend to think I’m average while at the same time thinking that other people are doing it wrong.
Michael Haneline
Those charts all indicate that most people tend to think of themselves as above average, though? “Students performing in the bottom 25% among their peers on tests of grammar, logical reasoning, and humor tended to think that they are performing above the 60th percentile”
Like, no it doesn’t say they think they’re experts, but they think they’re competent.
Nono
Did you also date a vigilante with sweet hacking skills?
BBCC
Walky, you haven’t even had a midterm yet. Your grade was probably recoverable BEFORE Amber changed it.
Which – again, that’s gonna have to come up at some point, if only because it risks both of them being tossed out of school on their ear.
Sirksome
I’m not sure it will come up. I checked to be sure and Amber actually stole the hard copies. So there’s no evidence of tampering. As far as I can tell she’s the only one who knows, unless she admits to it herself. I think they’re both in the clear.
BBCC
Well, yeah, it’s only if the school finds out, but that still seems like the kind of risk Walky should know about.
thejeff
It absolutely will come up again, even if it’s only Walky confronting Amber about it. They may get away with it, but it’s not going to be dropped without some fallout.
Reltzik
Also, Walky’s been destroying the evidence of his returned papers.
Charlie
Would Walky be in trouble, if Amber said it was her and they both say Walky didn’t know? Even if the uni is suspicious that Walky was involved, it doesn’t seem like there’s much they can do purely on suspicion.
BBCC
I men this is the same school that fired Jason on hearsay, so I wouldn’t be surprised.
ian livs
Relatable.
Also reminded me of the time I ate a midterm report instead of showing it to my parents bc I didn’t wanna get yelled at for “bad” grades. (Was making like a 94 or 95. Their standards at the time were… high.)
Woomy
You guys do know there are alternative ways to dispose of thing other than eating them, right?
AGV
Fuck alternatives, eat those bad grades, absorb their negative power
Clif
Consume your failure and let it make you stronger. Maybe add paste for flavor and vitamin content.
Doctor_Who
My mom told me how her brother once hid a bad report card by shoving it in…I guess the cafeterias of the time had apple dispensers? Like, you’d put in a coin and out would come an apple?
Which just means the next kid who wanted an apple got a free report card with it, and turned it into the office. With brilliant ideas like that, it’s no wonder my uncle was getting lousy grades.
Slartibeast Button, BIA
Whoa, Langoliers flashback.
Axel
thankfully my mom* only checked report cards and not assignments, so the anxiety about her finding out only came a couple times a year.
-less relevant background info below-
(I was a ‘gifted’ kid, so like most gifted kids, I peaked academically around the age of 14-15, then continuously plummeted due to stress, not knowing how to learn when I wasn’t just picking stuff up immediately, and mental health issues becoming more prominent every day. Still got decent grades in Grade 12 and went to college (where she couldn’t monitor grades) until I dropped out for health, but not good enough grades for my mom when I was a straight-A elementary and middle schooler, esp with an older brother who did manage to keep up the grades)
*dad dropped out of school and turned out fine and had (has) a good job, and was chiller about grades
JBento
YOU’re relatable. My parents’ response to my 94% was “What happened to the other six?”
Kat
I actually got a 95 average at the end of the year in Biology. My teacher put “Does not work up to full potential” on my report card every semester. I kept an A the entire year, but somehow wasn’t working up to my full potential. I never understood what she expected, since I was fulfilling almost everything she was looking for by her own testing criteria.
Deadjolras
I fear Walky will start thinking that, as long as he can scrape by, then he’s doing fine and shouldn’t put any effort into studying.
newllend(henryvolt)
It’s not like this is his finale grade for the class though.
vivid grim
is that……… different from what he’s been doing
newllend(henryvolt)
He was about to just lay up in bed all day and mope about how hopeless he was.
Deadjolras
I’ve just had a lot of personal experiences about this very same thing. Failing to study and not going to class because I can’t understand the material and obviously I’m hopeless and I’m obviously going to fail this course, so why even try? Only to then discover that actually, I somehow managed to achieve a (barely) passing grade!
And from the sheer relief, I would go “well, I guess I wasn’t doing as bad as I thought! If I could miss all those classes and not study, and still get this grade, then I guess I’m doing fine and therefore I don’t need to change my ways at all!”
I hope Walky doesn’t reach the same conclusion.
newllend(henryvolt)
I never understood that train of thought, but maybe that was just me back when I thought a C meant I didn’t pass but I would haft to repeat the class which was no different to me than failing. If I was in Walky situation I’d still be panicking I still being holding on to some desperate glimmer of hope.
If it was a B- then I’d relieved.
BBCC
You don’t have to repeat for C’s, generally, unless it’s a required class. This one isn’t for Walky’s major. It is for his mom, but his mom can go fuck herself so.
Drake
American grading systems sound weird.
LeslieBean4shizzle
Re: “don’t have to repeat for C’s”
That very, VERY much depends on the school. The one where I teach does not give any credit for any grade less than C… and that includes C-. Less than a 74% and you get no credit for the class and have to repeat. And no, not just for major classes – it applies to all classes taught by the English and Math departments (and maybe others? – I only know those two for sure because that’s where I work/where my friends work).
Roborat
So you can fail a course with a 73? That seems a little harsh, anything above 70 is a pretty good mark.
BBCC
That IS weird, but it’s also why I said ‘generally’. Most people don’t consider C a failing grade.
Ron
To me a barely passing grade would mean I could get an actully good grade so it motivated me to do better. I guess even after panicking I still wanted to get good grades.
Deadjolras
I wish I had reached that conclusion instead. Instead, I used my sense of relief to continue justifying my laziness and to continue putting off any efforts to improve my situation.
TheWanderingMist
Assuming a Willis character will reach an intelligent decision quickly…how naive.
Deadjolras
I didn’t make intelligent decisions either so I guess I’m hoping this fictional character won’t be as much of a dumbass as I am.
Kyrik Michalowski
Walky, I know you said you didn’t want Amber to change your grades but right now you should be happy she did and take this chance to fix your grades before no amount of hacking can save your ass.
Stephen Bierce
*plays Weird Al’s “Eat It” on the hacked Muzak*
Slartibeast Button, BIA
Advisory: If you don’t know what vore means, don’t look it up. Trust me on this.
Clif
We can give you a list of other terms to look up.
Ana Chronistic
It’s Kirby, right??
Kamino Neko
Except Waddle Doo enjoys it.
Roborat
I second this. I accidently stumbled upon vore while exploring some back alleys of the internet and was traumatized for weeks.
Shane Wegner
C’s get degrees. Even if Amber hacking is a factor. Knowing a hacker willing to help you is a valid life skill.
Slartibeast Button, BIA
Lord Thingly would never dream of getting anything but a “gentleman’s C”.
abysswatcher1993
Not really… Hackers are self taught, but without an honest academic degree, or even something for a public college you can’t get a job with certainty. To make money as a hacker you would have to work as a freelancer, and still have to show a portfolio of your skills.
As for having a hacker as an ally, Walky isn’t a supervillain or anarchist in need of max haxx, nor he is Joker from Persona 5.
Madock345
Truuuth. Never underestimate the value of skilled friends. Especially in a bureaucratic nightmare system like college.
abysswatcher1993
How is Walky going to react if Amber reveals she modified his grades in an illegal way? Maybe he wouldn’t care about academic dishonesty, but he would care about his loved one doing something stupid for him after weeks of self hatred and nihilism.
“We were supposed to not care!”
“Well,. I care, Walky!”