Questionable Content XIX: Give Jeph Just A *Little* Credit, Here

[Wraith]

Okay, so we have established that Ayo did not, in fact, actually flunk out of school, because the semester hasn't even ended yet (also, I guess it's late may right now?).

I asked about this a couple of pages ago. University terms are Sept-Dec, Jan-Easter, and April-June (unless you have extended exams, resits or a thesis to publish, it technically goes into July in many cases).

We're expected to believe that the most recent time-skip wherein Claire worked at the coffee shop and yet people are still talking about that stupid vtube stream non-troversy like it was days ago, was several months long.

Frankly, I refuse to believe that anyone would be talking about that crap nearly 10 months later. Surely it must only be mid-December? The trees are only just browning.

Ayo has literally been at college for less than *one* semester, let alone a school-year.

[Beelzebub1111]

Ayo is just the worst. She's still trying to pass the blame onto her supposed "new best friend". Just keep a level of personal deniability from any suggestion in case it's rejected. Then it's not your idea anyway and you can say it's also dumb.

[Traab]

Okay, so we have established that Ayo did not, in fact, actually flunk out of school, because the semester hasn't even ended yet (also, I guess it's late may right now?). So yeah, the solution, as others mentioned upthread, is to go back to school and beg, plead, and otherwise grovel for assistance. This would probably include meeting with a school-affiliated counselor, getting a referral to a psychologist, and acquiring a legit diagnosis of executive dysfunction, which could be then used by Ayo's presumably helicopter parents - because you don't get into an elite college in the first place without decent grades from means she was able to perform academically rather recently in the past - to wrangle an accommodation of said dysfunction from the school. I recall having a student in my major in college who almost never came to class, and I majored in biology with 'mandatory attendance or you fail' written on the syllabus for most courses, who graduated just fine because they had some kind of medical accommodation.

This is a problem that can be solved with a doctor's note, some phone calls, some shouting, and a suitable method to allow Ayo to get her work done while finding ways to live with this condition. Given that she's presumably not in STEM, since those fields will make noise long before the end of the semester is a student never shows up, she may not need to physically attend class at all.

Technically she hasnt flunked but it seems like thats only because the official grades havent been released yet. She already failed due to not actually going to college. I really dont think there is anything that can be done to "fix" this other than maybe to beg to be allowed to come back next semester and try again instead of just being deleted from the school records. The sort of accommodations you are talking about need to be setup BEFORE the start of school, not after you already flunked out. I would also assume that your fellow student passed because they did the work as well as got the accommodation. If it had just been absences and she finished all the course work somehow, then maybe an exception could be made, but with literally nothing done whatsoever, thats a hard fail.

[Ionathus]

Alright, Ayo has pretty much lost any remaining goodwill from me. I was fine with her freaking out with Hanners (not thrilled, but fine about it), but now she's talking to her sister and saying exactly the same things, it's the same conversation, we haven't covered any new ground (besides the fact that end of semester is tomorrow) in weeks of this arc. Endless repetition of the same goshdanged four talking points. Say something new already.

I can handle mediocre writing, and I can handle mediocre pacing. But slogging through both at the same time is agony.

I asked about this a couple of pages ago. University terms are Sept-Dec, Jan-Easter, and April-June (unless you have extended exams, resits or a thesis to publish, it technically goes into July in many cases).

I'm pretty sure most universities in the US only have two terms: Sep-Dec and Jan-Apr (sometimes Feb-May).

We're expected to believe that the most recent time-skip wherein Claire worked at the coffee shop and yet people are still talking about that stupid vtube stream non-troversy like it was days ago, was several months long.

Frankly, I refuse to believe that anyone would be talking about that crap nearly 10 months later. Surely it must only be mid-December? The trees are only just browning.

Ayo has literally been at college for less than *one* semester, let alone a school-year.

Yeah I have no idea what time of year it's supposed to be. "Trees are just turning and everyone's in light autumn clothes (Claire has bare arms in your linked comic)" does not make me think it's the end of any semester.

Technically she hasnt flunked but it seems like thats only because the official grades havent been released yet. She already failed due to not actually going to college. I really dont think there is anything that can be done to "fix" this other than maybe to beg to be allowed to come back next semester and try again instead of just being deleted from the school records. The sort of accommodations you are talking about need to be setup BEFORE the start of school, not after you already flunked out. I would also assume that your fellow student passed because they did the work as well as got the accommodation. If it had just been absences and she finished all the course work somehow, then maybe an exception could be made, but with literally nothing done whatsoever, thats a hard fail.

She is probably completely shot for this semester and her tuition money has been wasted, yes, but it's likely that she can still negotiate to mark the semester some version of "incomplete" or "did not finish due to [Legitimate Reasons]" so it doesn't affect her scholarship or her GPA. The universities want your money -- they'll play ball to get you to stay if they can.

[BRC]

My level of sympathy for Ayo is going to heavily depend on the degree to which she is being hyperbolic.

If she showed up to college, put in a good effort, and hit a mental health wall when the combination of lack of structure and no immediate consequences to skipping class meant that it became impossible for her to motivate herself to get to class, and then the panic/depression/shame spiral of "I haven't been to class in a month" kicks in, which make it even HARDER to get to class. That I can understand. That's executive dysfunction.


If she went off to college, and then literally didn't attend a single class? That's a different story. If she's so incapable of self-motivation that she went full shutdown day 1, I find it hard to believe that didn't get noticed beforehand. Unless her parents are so controlling by default that they didn't notice she couldn't be counted on to do work on her own, or DID notice, but decided not to do anything about it.

[Wraith]

Bear in mind that this is probably QC's SMIF we're talking about - There's a perfectly likely chance that some Dean will go "What, you missed the ENTIRE semester? Well, you did pay for it, so I guess you can just resit over the summer and we'll call it even."

Because reasons.

I'm pretty sure most universities in the US only have two terms: Sep-Dec and Jan-Apr (sometimes Feb-May).

Lazy good-for-nothing part-time Zoomers and their namby-pamby part-time Universities charging them colossal full-time prices for only 2 terms per year WHY IN MY DAY-...

...It probably wouldn't have made much difference and I'd still end up with a 2:2 in a subject that has had no objective use in the last 18 years of my life....

[tomandtish]

I'm pretty sure most universities in the US only have two terms: Sep-Dec and Jan-Apr (sometimes Feb-May).

Ionathus is correct that the default for universities in the US is a fall and spring semester. There are some exceptions/variations:

Colleges (as opposed to universities) are moremore likely to offer summer classes. Some refer to that as the summer session, although you generally take only 1-2 classes during it. My college (Austin College in Sherman, TX) had some summer classes, esp. for their one Masters Program (Teaching) which I graduated from. Universities tend to have their summer classes be related to graduate level work. (Obviously there are exceptions).

AC also had what was called Jan Term. Fall semester was Sept - Dec, Spring was Feb - May, and in January you spent 4 weeks taking one course that you were in every day, but it was often unique. Examples included:

London Theater tour: 4 weeks in London seeing plays 5 nights a week (and writing reviews).

Central American Policy Studies: A week class prep then 3 weeks in in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras learning about the politics of the region from people who actually live it.

Student Teaching: 1 month filling in as a teacher in whatever subjects you were certifying in (only those in the teaching program could take it).

Socially condoned violence: 4 weeks discussing, doing presentations, and writing papers on violence that is considered acceptable by society.

(Yes, these were the 4 I took).

It's a lot of fun and was part of your education (you had to take at least 3 during your 4 years).

[Rodin]

My university was divided up into 3 10-week terms. You took fewer classes at once but those classes were more compressed. They went something like September-November, December-February, March-May. Then during the summer you could either do another 10 week term that was June-August or you could do 6-week classes that were even further compressed - not advisable to do a difficult class during this period (and often they weren't offered as the professors want their summer off) but you could often get irritating-but-necessary classes like Technical Writing out of the way during this period, or you could fill out your Arts requirement (I did Theatre Appreciation in one of the 6 week sessions).

And yes, I'm talking about university minutia because it's way more interesting than the comic right now. It's taken an entire week to explain the situation, and we're no closer to resolving it.

[Willie the Duck]

In your conception, what is a faaaaaan, and how are they different from a fan?

For one thing, they've got more A's. There isn't a second thing.

Because I used to like it and I'm holding out the probably-delusional hope I'll start liking it again if I stick out the parts I don't like? I can't exactly know if it's getting better if I don't read it at all, can I? And I basically don't trust other people's opinions on almost any media, so "Hey, it's getting better lately, you should revisit the thing" means about as much to me as "The artist drew a car in the background today".

Mobile Chrome doesn't let you do that, for some reason. I've got Firefox on my phone now, largely because of how outright disgusting the ads were getting on the comics I read, but I occasionally slip up and read it on Chrome still, like a moron.

Okay. Well, you have been framing this discussion with hypothetical statements from Jeph and his fans (sorry, faaaaaans) in the format of whining. Now, there has been whining going on, but it's from characters in the comic (particularly two recent additions to the strip to which one likely shouldn't find particularly sympathetic). Based on the evidence we have before us, neither Jeph nor his fans are doing any whining.

This is a personal pet peeve, so take it with a grain of salt over whether anyone else feels this way, but I don't find this type of action as helpful in swaying me to your position (which honestly I otherwise share). It's hard to discuss on this board, but there used to be a politics radio host who would do this often -- state a supposed position of his opposition in the most whhhiiiinnneey way possible. It was all very good at reinforcing oneself to people who already agreed with him, but to everyone else, it was easy to notice that the only person there who was actually whining was him. I always found that not very intellectually honest of him. Firstly because it was suggesting that someone else was whining without actually showing that they were, and second because it was basically pretending that their supposed whining invalidated whatever complaint they actually had (if indeed it was an accurate representation of what they would complain about) instead of actually addressing their positions.

The current situation is different (in part because, as I mentioned, there are actual whiners in the mix, just not Jeph/his fans). Still, I posit that the whole whining in his place bit of your arguments likely isn't changing any hearts or minds. Mostly it comes off as you whining about the quality of the product you are receiving for your money/ad-viewing. To which I agree that yeah, without a doubt, the comic was once better than it is now. There's nothing that won't make that not be true. And also true that you can't trust others' judgement about any quality change, so keep checking up with adblockered Firefox.

Re: Colleges and Universities and term ends: -- US Colleges and Universities are all over the place in terms of when they start, how many primary terms there are, and where and how many optional/secondary terms there are. I've seen places with standard Autumn-December and February-Spring terms, with an optional 'J term' in January and summer courses for those who want them. Others are on the 'quarter' system with 3 primary quarters (yeah, they should be called trimesters) where there is no J term, but in summer again some people took classes and others went home/had jobs/did internships (rather amusingly I think there were two summer terms, so it didn't even work as being the 4th 'quarter' for the quarter system). My nephew is at a music conservatory and there they finish up a term by Thanksgiving, since so many people want to perform in various holiday ensembles back home or the like, so they instead have a 'D term' for those that don't. Also, some places have a one-month term at the beginning of the year just for Freshmen, often consisting of strictly remedial, colloquium courses, and 101 intro courses. That would actually line up best with the clothing being worn, but you would think it would be mentioned if that's what happened (also, flunking out of those courses would be foolish, but also unlikely to completely derail you).

[DavidSh]

What I'm trying to guess is whether Ayo is registered (I won't say attending) up here in Smif College, or somewhere else, such as in her home state of New Jersey. Then I could more authoritatively talk about the term schedule of Smith, Rutgers, or Princeton.

[Mechalich]

If she went off to college, and then literally didn't attend a single class? That's a different story. If she's so incapable of self-motivation that she went full shutdown day 1, I find it hard to believe that didn't get noticed beforehand. Unless her parents are so controlling by default that they didn't notice she couldn't be counted on to do work on her own, or DID notice, but decided not to do anything about it.

Yeah, there's a weird disconnect here. Especially given that if she does have super-controlling helicopter parents the lack of geographic proximity will reduce but not outright eliminate said control and her parents will probably do things like call her every day. There's no way someone like that gets away with no going to class for an entire semester.

Also, most college courses have assignments and/or exams prior to the final and missing those will involve some level of interest from the professor or at least TAs. The days of being able to pass a college course by blowing off everything an just showing up for the final - which was a thing, once upon a time, in certain subjects - are pretty much gone.

What I'm trying to guess is whether Ayo is registered (I won't say attending) up here in Smif College, or somewhere else, such as in her home state of New Jersey. Then I could more authoritatively talk about the term schedule of Smith, Rutgers, or Princeton.

Presumably not Smif, or any of the other colleges (Amherst, UMass, etc.) in the immediate vicinity, since if that were the case her popping in to see Yemisi on some random evening would just be a normal thing to do. Though that does raise the question of where all her stuff is. Does she have a van parked over by Coffee of Doom?

[DavidSh]

Presumably not Smif, or any of the other colleges (Amherst, UMass, etc.) in the immediate vicinity, since if that were the case her popping in to see Yemisi on some random evening would just be a normal thing to do. Though that does raise the question of where all her stuff is. Does she have a van parked over by Coffee of Doom?

I would believe that she just has the clothes on her back, and a few personal items in her purse. (Or is the term "handbag", or "pocketbook"?) In that scenario, she came up by bus, and left most of her clothing back at the dorm. In a different scenario, she has a used car that she drove up, and brought what little possessions she has in that. I doubt a passenger van, and strongly doubt a moving van.

[Shadow of the Sun]

Given today's strip, I'm giving her a little bit of leeway because she's obviously very emotional and thinks she's effectively ruined her life. She was jumping on Hanners a bit too much but I can forgive her for that, as someone who signed up for classes at uni and then never went to them for a variety of reasons myself.

[Ionathus]

Ah. Okay. Yeah, context from this latest comic makes it a little more clear.

Given today's strip, I'm giving her a little bit of leeway because she's obviously very emotional and thinks she's effectively ruined her life. She was jumping on Hanners a bit too much but I can forgive her for that, as someone who signed up for classes at uni and then never went to them for a variety of reasons myself.

My read on this latest comic is that Ayo may not actually want to be in college at all - she’s just following the expectations of her family or society or whatnot. Puts an interesting wrinkle into her character: where before it was just “whoopsie I forgot to go to class xP” and some hand waving about a half-understood psychology term, now it makes a little more sense how quick she was to abandon it and how eager she was to embrace any excuse that lets her abandon it and walk away.

And honestly, knowing this explosion was coming even makes me more forgiving of the tedious buildup. Like, yeah it could’ve still gone faster, but getting frustrated with Ayo and pushing her to a breaking point seems to have been intentional.

So yeah, I’m hopeful that there’s gonna be a bit more narrative to chew on here (and even a bit of actual drama?? This strip is the most tense it’s been since at least Faye saying “goodbye” to Marten, and probably even earlier, and that has me excited!). It still would’ve been nice if we could’ve had a bit more time to warm up to Ayomide as a character before jumping straight into an overdrawn issues-heavy story as her introduction to the cast, maybe do a teensy bit of work to show us why we should care, but still. It’s got me wondering if the comic’s actually about to GO somewhere, and that alone is exciting.

[Mechalich]

My read on this latest comic is that Ayo may not actually want to be in college at all - she’s just following the expectations of her family or society or whatnot. Puts an interesting wrinkle into her character: where before it was just “whoopsie I forgot to go to class xP” and some hand waving about a half-understood psychology term, now it makes a little more sense how quick she was to abandon it and how eager she was to embrace any excuse that lets her abandon it and walk away.

I mean, that does seem to be where this is going, but from where I'm standing that actually makes Ayo less sympathetic. If a person is going to a decent college on a scholarship (meaning you aren't accruing any debt in doing so), then whether they want to be there or not, they'd better buckle down and deal with it. The investment in their economic future is too important. If there are issues, find a way to fix them, even if that involves taking a semester off or transferring or making special arrangements to handle earning a degree. This can include, btw, hardly ever going to class (the entire world just conducted a two year long experiment in making that possible). Abandoning college without even trying some kind of modification is almost certainly a bad decision, especially if there's not some other specific, non-college, dream to be pursued. Given that Ayo applied to be a barista at a random coffee shop she happened to walk past, this would not seem to apply in her case.

Someone has responsibility for some bad stuff here, and it's either Ayo herself, or her parents. I suspect, given the generalized nature of QC, that it's the parents. But, unfortunately, the parents aren't onscreen. This is, in many ways the Liz scenario from the alternate side. Liz's problems were traced to having insufficiently present parents to allow their child to basically disappear from their life into a bizarre robot-cult. Ayo's parents seem to have been (with evidence including the very fact that she went to her sister's and not home, and her bizarre reaction to Dora's question about attendance) sufficiently hyper-controlling that they left her broadly unable to function without constant supervision.

And hey, I'm all for a good critique of helicopter parenting, but it's really hard to do that in the absence of the parents or any direct reference to their actions.

[Wraith]

On the one hand, this almost has the ghost-like form of an actual story, clutching by the tip of its fingernails to intrigue. There's the promise of conflict, and mystery, and actual consequences for actions...

...It's just a shame that its all being created for this one character who we have sort-of known for all of two weeks, that we have little-to-no sympathy for, and no investment in whatsoever.

This is a good story for almost any other character but the one its being applied to.

Clinton is still in University studying AI, why not have HIM have this same crisis in his final year and actually risk losing something of consequence?
Sam is 14-ish and therefore at the start of High School, she could be having this exact problem in reference to her SATs or something.
Tai has graduated and is in her job apparently because no one has anything to say about it, what if she suddenly had a crisis of direction because she has a 'useless' Masters unrelated to her job or her long-term goals?
Heck, we could be finishing Liz's story, about how she disengaged with her job and is at risk of losing her Fellowship, dropping out of academia and starting work in a coffee shop. Like, maybe the coffee shop that Marten is looking to open!?

Instead, the focus of this uncannily familiar story is on yet another cookie-cutter "helpless child-coded" character who may or may not be vaguely neuro-atypical depending on what page of webMD and/or Reddit that Jeph has opened this week. The situation is poorly defined, what we do understand is alien and nonsensical, and its about a person we have no stakes in. Again.

And hey, I'm all for a good critique of helicopter parenting, but it's really hard to do that in the absence of the parents or any direct reference to their actions.

This is further to the above, I think. If this was a story about helicopter parents, or a Ayo having trauma derived from unrealistically high expectations pushing her past a breaking point... Well, it's still be a carbon-copy of Liz's story, but at least it would have details and a grounding in cause and effect.

But Ayo hasn't once mentioned her parents, not even in a broad "oh god, they're gonna kill me when they find out!" kind of sense.
Everyone else in the comic is only too glad to point out their crappy parents as soon as they can - Marten's untraditional lack of boundaries, Faye's insistently Christian Mom, Marigold's flighty Dad, Dora's (imagined?) perception of favouritism for Sven, Hannelore's wreck of a family, etc.

Ayo's lack of concern for her parents is actually notable in its absence. It almost gives the impression that we should assume they won't care, or that their unwavering support is guaranteed and thus not a concern. An 18 year old who has just crashed out of their golden ticket opportunity to a better life should be worrying about what her parents will say about it.

Maybe its part of Ayo's characterisation that she is so impulsive and short-sighted that she hasn't yet thought far enough ahead to telling her parents, and that this is another horrible epiphany that she's about to have. There's time for it to become A Thing. I'm not optimistic that it's a part of her lore that Jeph feels inclined to explore; Ayo's parents aren't 20-something neurotic messes, why would he need them in his comic?

[Rodin]

I don’t know that I would characterize any of those as crappy parents other than Hannelores. Marten’s mother is astonishingly embarrassing but that’s about the extent of it, and even though they got divorced both parents seem to have tried their best for Marten throughout. Faye’s mother comes from a conservative Christian background which caused her to react poorly to her daughter coming out, but they got through that and she learned to be accepting over time. Dora’s situation is a case of sibling rivalry and if her parents did show favoritism it’s clear they still loved and supported Dora.

None of the parents are perfect, but we shouldn’t expect them to be. They all look like normal people doing their best to me. The only exception is Hanners parents, both of whom didn’t know what to do with their daughter and fobbed her off on assistants and AIs. I’ve got a lot more sympathy for her dad than her mom, but neither did a stellar job.

[Wraith]

Allow me to rephrase; the characters have complained about their perception of their parents' failings, even though in some cases that might be exaggerated or even imagined.

Dora is the good example here. She's complained about favouritism, but has also shown irrational and neurotic behaviour about just about every aspect of her relationship with her brother whether true or not. Her criticism of her parents in this case is probably very unfair, but she's done it anyway.

Faye, too - she has complained about her southern, conservative mom and that's one of the reasons as to why she doesn't visit home very often, but Mrs Whittaker has been shown mostly as being open-minded and forgiving of her wayward kids, when pushed. She wasn't even particularly angry about her daughter being gay specifically, more that she caught her in the act, while also underage and drinking. It's not that she's a bad mother, just that she's different to Faye which is enough to prompt 'complaints' in casual conversation.

But Ayo has basically disregarded them entirely. She's not shown concern for their opinion or input, when even the well-adjusted characters have something to say about their upbringing in normal conversation, let alone during crisis.

I'm honestly half-expecting it to turn out the Yesimi is/was Ayo's legal guardian because they were orphans, or something; that'd be an unusually dark twist for QC, but it would explain why Ayo has only shown concern for her sister's approval and not the rest of her family.

[Mechalich]

This is further to the above, I think. If this was a story about helicopter parents, or a Ayo having trauma derived from unrealistically high expectations pushing her past a breaking point... Well, it's still be a carbon-copy of Liz's story, but at least it would have details and a grounding in cause and effect.

Liz's story also had the advantage of being buoyed by circumstances. While Cubetown takes absolutely everything way to far, a post-doctoral researcher or independent research scientist attached to some kind of museum or remote lab facility really can have a tremendous amount of operational freedom and minimal oversight. Add in a few panels were Liz BS's her way through three or four semi-annual performance reviews or even a shot of a stack of drafts with 'rejected' stamped on the top implying that Moray didn't bother to check that all Liz's 'in-press' material got sent back and her story becomes really quite plausible (pump up her age by a few years and it does even better).

Ayo's story is much harder to justify, in many ways, at least as currently described. The thing is, college freshmen quite often have problems adjusting to their new lives, and in the 21st century colleges know this and work to prevent it. That's why freshmen get roommates, and RAs, and academic advisors. Heck, I got mono in my first semester as a freshman, missed two days of class (mild case, I was lucky and responded well to meds) and must have had a half-dozen people check on me physically and been emailed by every one of my professors.

So while there are certainly mental illnesses, pathologies, and traumas a university can and will miss 'didn't go to class, ever' is not on the list.

[Cikomyr2]

I think at this point Ayo is just spiralling in her crippling lack of confidence causing her to think matters are outside of her control, which causes her to disengage mentally.

[Beelzebub1111]

I think at this point Ayo is just spiralling in her crippling lack of confidence causing her to think matters are outside of her control, which causes her to disengage mentally.

Well yeah. I've used this deflection before. the self pity "You're right about me, I'm worthless I'll never amount to anything. Yadda yadda yadda". While ignoring every opportunity to try and make things right. It's still a deferral of responsibility, just to move past any blame or need to take action or self-correct. Sometimes you believe it yourself, but it's still just trying to get past all the parts where you have to do stuff or admit that it was your choice to do the wrong thing.

[BRC]

I was wondering about Ayo's lack of any luggage.

[geoduck]

But Ayo has basically disregarded them entirely. She's not shown concern for their opinion or input, when even the well-adjusted characters have something to say about their upbringing in normal conversation, let alone during crisis.

I'm honestly half-expecting it to turn out the Yesimi is/was Ayo's legal guardian because they were orphans, or something; that'd be an unusually dark twist for QC, but it would explain why Ayo has only shown concern for her sister's approval and not the rest of her family.

If the parents are alive, there is the fact that Ayo evidently didn't even think for a second about going to them for help.

[Ionathus]

I mean, that does seem to be where this is going, but from where I'm standing that actually makes Ayo less sympathetic. If a person is going to a decent college on a scholarship (meaning you aren't accruing any debt in doing so), then whether they want to be there or not, they'd better buckle down and deal with it.

(emphasis mine)

First off: 99% of US college/university scholarships are not full rides. Ayo is still definitely spending some amount of money -- even if she has a very good scholarship, she's still probably paying at least 1/3 (likely more) of the total cost out of pocket/in loans.

Second off: I know it's only natural to be mad when you see somebody waste a great opportunity. But when it comes to mental illness there is nothing less helpful than saying "just buckle down and deal with it." I have gripes about the way Jeph writes mental illness (as others have said, he uses too many buzzwords and surface-level knowledge), but that doesn't change how unfair it is to blame someone for the way their brain is misfiring and trapping them in a spiral of self-loathing (which is evident given today's comic). If Ayo has an undiagnosed mental illness then it impacts everything about her ability to function, including her ability to realize something is truly, deeply wrong and her ability to seek help. Throw in family and societal pressures to never mess up or need help, and you've got one of the most relatable situations I've seen in the comic in years.

And speaking of seeking help...

The investment in their economic future is too important. If there are issues, find a way to fix them, even if that involves taking a semester off or transferring or making special arrangements to handle earning a degree. This can include, btw, hardly ever going to class (the entire world just conducted a two year long experiment in making that possible). Abandoning college without even trying some kind of modification is almost certainly a bad decision, especially if there's not some other specific, non-college, dream to be pursued. Given that Ayo applied to be a barista at a random coffee shop she happened to walk past, this would not seem to apply in her case.

These options are still mostly on the table. Ayo walking into the coffee shop and nervously asking "ha ha when can I start (btw I dropped out of college)" is basically the first action she's taken towards improving. She confessed to somebody, even if it was a stranger. She enlisted somebody's help in going to actually talk to a family member who can help her. She actually confessed to the family member of some degree of authority. The secret is out now and she can potentially get the help she needs. It may not look like it (and it may have been a frustrating experience to get this far thanks to the writing/pacing of this arc), but she moved towards fixing the problem rather than actually truly running away -- i.e. getting on a bus and skipping town, or trying to stay with a friend without ever confessing to Yemisi about college.

...It's just a shame that its all being created for this one character who we have sort-of known for all of two weeks, that we have little-to-no sympathy for, and no investment in whatsoever.

This is a good story for almost any other character but the one its being applied to.

Yup. Clinton would be the best one honestly -- especially because his sister just fell backwards into one of the most prestigious/exclusive AI opportunities in existence, for pretty contrived B.S. reasons. I can see that really getting under Clinton's skin, especially with Claire's (totally one-sided and hypocritically unfair) sibling rivalry in the mix.

Instead, the focus of this uncannily familiar story is on yet another cookie-cutter "helpless child-coded" character who may or may not be vaguely neuro-atypical depending on what page of webMD and/or Reddit that Jeph has opened this week. The situation is poorly defined, what we do understand is alien and nonsensical, and its about a person we have no stakes in. Again.

Minor nitpick, but I really don't consider Ayo child-coded at all. I don't think she's been set up as such: in her initial appearances she seemed pretty even-keeled aside from her specific college dropout hangups. The fact that she's behaving erratically/irresponsibly now is because she's in a high-stress situation, which could honestly happen to anyone. Finally, she has adult proportions (yes, the bar is that low).

And hey, I'm all for a good critique of helicopter parenting, but it's really hard to do that in the absence of the parents or any direct reference to their actions.

This is further to the above, I think. If this was a story about helicopter parents, or a Ayo having trauma derived from unrealistically high expectations pushing her past a breaking point... Well, it's still be a carbon-copy of Liz's story, but at least it would have details and a grounding in cause and effect.

But Ayo hasn't once mentioned her parents, not even in a broad "oh god, they're gonna kill me when they find out!" kind of sense.
Everyone else in the comic is only too glad to point out their crappy parents as soon as they can - Marten's untraditional lack of boundaries, Faye's insistently Christian Mom, Marigold's flighty Dad, Dora's (imagined?) perception of favouritism for Sven, Hannelore's wreck of a family, etc.

If the parents are alive, there is the fact that Ayo evidently didn't even think for a second about going to them for help.

I'm not dinging this storyline for not immediately pushing info about the parents. Maybe they're absent, maybe they're dead, maybe they're emotionally abusive, maybe they've just always been more or less useless and Yemisi is the one she relies on for guidance. Or maybe they're fine, even exceptional parents who did everything right. I'm not dying to find out in any case.

If her parents are relevant, they'll show up. If not, they won't. I don't feel like the story suffers from lack of reference to them, nor do I think it would improve just by their mention alone. Basically, I don't "need" to know more about Ayo's parents (yet) for the storyline to work for me; there are a bunch of other complaints I'd prefer be addressed first.

I'm honestly half-expecting it to turn out the Yesimi is/was Ayo's legal guardian because they were orphans, or something; that'd be an unusually dark twist for QC, but it would explain why Ayo has only shown concern for her sister's approval and not the rest of her family.

I'd be here for that. Get some representation for non-standard family units, deepen the connection to the current cast (much as I don't care one way or the other about Willow, Iris, and Yemisi, if we're destined to have to keep running into them I'd much prefer Yemisi of the three of them). It would also compound Ayo's sense of failure -- it's not just that she had everything going for her (happy and supportive family, financial stability, etc) and she blew it anyway, it's that she worked so hard to beat the odds and then blew it anyway.

[Rodin]

So while there are certainly mental illnesses, pathologies, and traumas a university can and will miss 'didn't go to class, ever' is not on the list.

For a third time, this is directly contradicted by my own university experience.

My best friend in high school busted his ass to be able to salvage bad grades to be able to get a scholarship to attend university with additional loans. As soon as he hit the university environment he cracked, and didn't make it through a full school year. The university did not have a student retention program. If you failed out, you failed out. I haven't seen him since.

I had a breakdown in my fourth year of university. I stopped going to class a few weeks into the semester and did not return. Despite maintaining my scholarship to that point, the university did not come to me to try and get me to stay. I didn't get a second chance at my scholarship. I effectively dropped out. I was only able to finish university because my parents still had the college fund I had not previously required and were able to fund the conclusion of my degree.

I'm willing to concede that a high-end New England university might have such a program (and indeed, Yemisi seems to think it may). But until people in this thread brought up the possibility, I didn't even know that was a thing. I have known several people who dropped out, and have stories of other family friends whose children did the same. Ayo's story is entirely plausible to me.

[Mechalich]

Second off: I know it's only natural to be mad when you see somebody waste a great opportunity. But when it comes to mental illness there is nothing less helpful than saying "just buckle down and deal with it." I have gripes about the way Jeph writes mental illness (as others have said, he uses too many buzzwords and surface-level knowledge), but that doesn't change how unfair it is to blame someone for the way their brain is misfiring and trapping them in a spiral of self-loathing (which is evident given today's comic). If Ayo has an undiagnosed mental illness then it impacts everything about her ability to function, including her ability to realize something is truly, deeply wrong and her ability to seek help. Throw in family and societal pressures to never mess up or need help, and you've got one of the most relatable situations I've seen in the comic in years.

I think I wasn't properly clear. I was specifically responding to the 'I don't want to go to college, I hate college!' side of the issue and not the 'I can't handle college!' side. This admittedly is me anticipating an argument that hasn't fully been articulated, but that I expect we will get given things Jeph has said in the past. There is a strain of thought among that kind of intellectual space that college is, broadly, a scam to trap people in debt and that they'd be better off without it and that no going to college or dropping out is a perfectly okay choice. And while, at a policy level I'm very sympathetic to problems with the academic-industrial complex in the US, at the personal level, anyone who gets into college and has a chance to graduate without taking on debt (or even just a little debt), needs to give their absolute utmost to make that happen. It is almost certainly going to be the most important professional action they will undertake in their entire lives. Yes, colleges sell this frankly somewhat bizarre idea of the 'college experience' as this academic idyll that should be the best time of your life and other garbage, but even if college is massively unfun, it's still worth it to finish in any sort of personal economic calculation.

If Ayo legitimately can't handle going to college because of her mental illness, fine, okay, that's a thing that happens. It's unfortunate, especially since colleges are generally a lot more accommodating than the sort of jobs a college dropout is likely to be able to get and therefore unless she's able to get really effective help she's liable to be broadly unable to handle life going forward, but mental illness is what it is. However, the character, as presented, doesn't feel that way. Yemisi proposes possible fixes and Ayo immediately and emphatically shoots them down.

[Durazno]

Is she going to end up staying with Hannelore?

I'm getting that feeling.

[geoduck]

Is she going to end up staying with Hannelore?

I'm getting that feeling.

In its way, that would be a bigger change to the status quo than the Big Move To Cubetown, and I would be surprised if Jeph did it.

[Beelzebub1111]

If Ayo legitimately can't handle going to college because of her mental illness, fine, okay, that's a thing that happens. It's unfortunate, especially since colleges are generally a lot more accommodating than the sort of jobs a college dropout is likely to be able to get and therefore unless she's able to get really effective help she's liable to be broadly unable to handle life going forward, but mental illness is what it is. However, the character, as presented, doesn't feel that way. Yemisi proposes possible fixes and Ayo immediately and emphatically shoots them down.

I mean, she could learn a trade or go to a community college to learn some kind of specialized skill instead of going into academia. We don't know what her major was, but she'd probably make more in sanitation than whatever liberal arts thing she probably tried to get her degree in. Would also probably contribute more to society.

[Mechalich]

I mean, she could learn a trade or go to a community college to learn some kind of specialized skill instead of going into academia. We don't know what her major was, but she'd probably make more in sanitation than whatever liberal arts thing she probably tried to get her degree in. Would also probably contribute more to society.

The college wage premium currently stands at something like 90%, and while it has show declines in recent years for men, for women it's higher than ever. Getting a college degree is still almost always the best thing a person can do between the ages of 18-21, especially if they can do so debt free. Certain trades are among exceptions, though most of those explicitly or implicitly require an associates degree now due to legal credential requirements.

Now, there are strong arguments, as I mentioned in the most you quoted, that this is a bad state of affairs. I am personally sympathetic to those arguments and I strongly believe the Jeph embraces them full-throttle. However, irrespective of that (which forum rules prohibit discussing in any real detail anyway), the fact that the game of life is rigged doesn't mean not playing is an option.

Ultimately, dropping out of school by choice, is generally a bad decision. It creates a mark on the record going forward that is difficult to overcome in the future should that person try to go back to school later. And yes, Ayo clearly needs time to sort things out, but since it's impossible to know where her head will be at when that's done the best choice right now is to do whatever possible to keep her options open. For example, racing ahead to get some kind of diagnosis (even one that's only partially correct) and using that to wrangle a leave of absence for the next semester would push the axe back by nine months (assuming it is currently December). She is entirely too eager to burn this bridge.