Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for December 02, 2023

Twelve years in the future, he can use the smooth talking at his college interviews.

Before anyone says something like, "A “D”? New record!" I’ll point out that Calvin miraculously did get a better grade on an assignment before.

Tried smooth-talking the teacher once. It didn’t work out too well.

Calvin seems to have failed to notice that his smooth-talk was so good that instead of a “D” he got a “D.”

You could write the best on tyrannosaurus in a giffy . The thinking cup did delay iit unnecessarily. Mrs Wormwood cannot fathom the depth, neglect her grades.

A bit like in CLUELESS when Cher told her father that she improved a poor grade through grade-grubbing and he said “What did I tell you? That’s what I want you to be doing!”

Isn’t Calvin in first grade? In our school we didn’t get letter grades (A, B, C, D, F) until third or fourth grade. Before that it was either Satisfactory (S) or Unsatisfactory (U).

Looks like Calvin has something in common with Peppermint Patty.

A lot of effort for a minor bump in grade, but he’s happy thinking he put one over on teacher. Thing is he’ll never see it that way. Lots of us like that.

Today’s strip in which Calvin is pleased to get a D rather than the D Minus he was going to get is a good contrast to the time when he was angry at Hobbes for writing an insulting story about him which he had had to read out to the class having not read it before.

Calvin: You made me the laughing stock of the class!

Hobbes: What did you get?

Calvin: Uh, A+. She wrote, “Very good, Calvin. The tiger narration was a clever touch. Glad to see you applying yourself.”

Hobbes: A+. Maybe I should send it to the New Yorker.

Good job. Be proud of your new grade. Now go talk mom into some ice cream or a cinnamon roll.

Calvin, some day you’ll grow up and smarten up. The two are not mutually exclusive.

“We learned a lesson”…Hobbes, you do know you’re talking to Calvin here?

Re: smooth talking: When she was in 6th grade, my older daughter was invited to apply for a special college-prep program called “Breakthrough”. They only took 30 kids from the entire city. The process included a 10-page application, notes from teachers, an interview, and an essay. She got in. When we went to orientation, her younger sister fell in love with the program & wanted to apply. I reminded her that, just because her sister was invited, doesn’t mean she will. Her answer: “But I might!” Two years later, she was. The essay theme she chose was, “What was a goal you wanted to reach, and how did you reach that goal?” She wrote that her goal was to get into Breakthrough. She ended her essay with, “As for how I reached that goal, that is now up to you.” She got in.

My high school English teacher taught us what she herself unabashedly referred to as “The Glorious Art of Bullshi**ing”. It got me "A"s all the way through college English.

Looking back, I wonder, who asks a gang of grubby kids to write reports? With no instruction? More than once I asked how? “Just write it.” was always the answer. I suspect that they had no more idea how to do it, than I did.

But smooth-talking Mom doesn’t. Somehow I don’t think that’s the lesson you should’ve learned, Calvin.

You’ll make a great politician someday Calvin, or a great salesman!

And now he could use AI to write the paper.

A lesson which, knowing our lad here, will be quickly forgotten…

I wouldn’t say it pays off but it’s better than nothing.

Calvin was WAY ahead of his time… today he could be an ideal Gen Z underachiever. ;-)

He should have used the illustrations

So, “My tiger ate my homework” didn’t work?

Once again, the wrong lesson is learned. No wonder ‘Seinfeld’ eschewed the idea of its characters learning anything.

Another instance of common sense flying over Calvin’s head. Zooooom! ;-p

When I returned to college in (or maybe past) mid-life, I had a prof who told me that the real key to success in higher education was having a connection with the teachers.

As he had a grey beard & ponytail, wore jeans & flannel, and brought his Golden Retriever to class, I figured (correctly) that I was a lock for an A……………..

Smooth-talking is ok. But it has limitations. I managed to pass high school calculus by taking the teacher’s daughter to the prom.

His dad will flip when he has to sign his report card, unless he makes the "F"s into "A"s

Well, Miss Wormwood did assign too complex a homework assignment for a first-grade class…

So, the answer to Hobbes question in the last panel is “No.”

“Be realistic, demand the impossible”

Oh yes, it worked wonders.