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anything-3

2022-07-20 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
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anything-3
Votey panel for anything-3
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Explanation

This comic satirizes the "I would do anything for a better grade" trope by taking the student's offer literally in an unexpected direction.

A student tells a professor: "Professor, I would do ANYTHING for a better grade." The professor, rather than making any inappropriate suggestion, responds with an earnest academic proposal: "Would you take our keynote course for pre-med students? It's so degrading." He continues: "But they won't listen! Then nothing! Then require them to take it!" The student's companion says: "It's the only way to bring me back to our..." and the student concludes: "I think I'm gonna throw up."

The comic subverts the expectation of the "anything for a grade" scenario. In movies and sitcoms, this setup typically implies sexual or otherwise scandalous propositions. Instead, the professor's idea of "anything" is far more tedious and soul-crushing: dealing with the bureaucratic nightmare of academic course requirements and trying to convince indifferent pre-med students to take a course they don't care about. The student's nausea at the end suggests that this mundane academic drudgery is actually worse than whatever scandalous thing they had imagined.

The joke highlights how the real horrors of academia aren't salacious — they're administrative.

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