class-2
Explanation
The Joke
A professor welcomes students to "Medieval Contemporary Media Studies for Non-Majors," cheerfully noting that there is "no such thing as an easy class." She acknowledges what all the students are thinking: they signed up expecting an easy elective to boost their GPA, and she admits the university "tricked you into taking it so that all the other classes would contain only motivated students." The university has essentially created a honeypot course that filters out students who are just looking for a GPA boost.
The professor then reveals the course assignment: students must go home, stare at a screen for five hours, and "feel shame for a brief moment" -- essentially recreating the experience of mindless internet browsing, which is what they would be doing anyway. In an ideal world, she says, they would recognize their "previous folly" and reform. The final panel shows the students all texting on their phones, completely ignoring her, with one asking "Is any of this gonna be on a test?" -- proving exactly why they were filtered into this class.
The Humor
The comic satirizes multiple targets simultaneously: lazy college students who hunt for easy-A electives, universities that cynically design their course offerings around student behavior, and the futility of trying to get disengaged people to be self-reflective. The deepest layer of irony is that the professor's assignment (stare at a screen and feel brief shame) is a perfect description of social media use, which the students are already doing in class while ignoring her lecture about doing exactly that. The joke is also a commentary on the general structure of higher education, where non-major requirements often become a sorting mechanism rather than a genuine educational experience.