Tutoring Be Like

Remember when you thought photosynthesis was just "sunlight + water = plant food"? Top panel shows the simplified version they teach 10-year-olds. Bottom panel reveals the biochemical nightmare waiting for you in college—complete with electron transport chains, ATP synthase, and the Calvin cycle that haunts biology majors' dreams. Nothing says "growing up" quite like discovering that the simple processes you learned in elementary school are actually complex enough to make you question your career choices.

When your mathematical universe collapses because you decided to invent your own axioms! In mathematics, axioms are the fundamental assumptions that form the foundation of a logical system—they're supposed to be self-evident truths that don't need proving. But this brave soul decided to go full mathematical anarchist and create their own reality! The professor is having an existential crisis trying to follow proofs built on a foundation of "trust me bro" while the student sits there like a mathematical supervillain. It's basically the mathematical equivalent of saying "I reject your reality and substitute my own!" Next up: proving 1+1=3 and watching the department implode.

The brutal reality of physics summed up in one comic. Our bearded adventurer discovers the mythical "Sword of Truth" only to be utterly destroyed by its philosophical beatdown. Physics doesn't reveal ultimate truths—it just methodically eliminates wrong ideas while leaving us forever uncertain about what's actually correct. That's the scientific method for you: a perpetual cycle of disproving things rather than confirming absolute truths. The final panel showing our hero crumpled in existential despair is basically every physics grad student at 3 AM wondering why they didn't just go into finance.

The eternal struggle of dating someone who doesn't share your passion for calculus! She's texting him all excited about finding the derivative of π³ (which is 3π²), but his lackluster "Ok, Cool" response might as well be a mathematical constant for "I'm not really listening." The crushing reality hits an hour later when she realizes her differential enthusiasm didn't quite... differentiate itself in his mind. Classic case of mathematical ghosting—when your function approaches zero interest as time approaches infinity!

The scientific community's relationship with arXiv is beautifully summarized here. It's simultaneously our savior from paywalled journals and our collective chaotic notebook. Nothing quite matches the thrill of finding a groundbreaking paper that might be completely wrong. My personal favorite: "academic version of 'trust me, bro' but with LaTeX" - because nothing says credibility like properly formatted equations in a paper that hasn't been peer-reviewed yet. Those unsolved math conjectures? We've all "solved" them as undergrads... before realizing our fundamental error on page 2.

The math majors in the room are silently nodding right now. In complex mathematics, i and j both represent the square root of -1 — literally the same imaginary number. Engineers use j instead of i to avoid confusion with electrical current notation, while mathematicians stick with i . So yes, they're identical twins with different names, like corporate's pointless rebranding exercise that fools absolutely no one. The real difference? Which department you work in and how much you enjoy arguing about notation at faculty parties.