Here’s the last Roomies! that was ever published in a newspaper (which a nonzero number of verifiable people read), and it ran January 29, 1999. Â After this, Roomies! was properly a web-only webcomic, published to the lofty perches of Tripod.
Since I am a guy who writes strips about going to college, younger folks often ask me for advice on going to college. Â It makes sense, right? Â I’m that Roomies!/Dumbing of Age guy! Â College stuffs? Â That’s where I’m a viking!
So, sure, here’s my advice for the college-bound out there: Be sociable, leave your room sometimes, maybe even look at people in the face on the rare occasion you break free of your crippling social anxiety to talk to them, and for the love of God — and I cannot stress this enough — it is probably a good idea to actually register for spring semester courses at some point. Â Seriously, don’t freak out and put it off and put it off and eventually it’s too late but it’s probably not actually too late, but at this point it’s pretty embarrassing, so maybe the problem will go away, and oh whoops we’re back after winter break and you still don’t have classes, so maybe you should pretend to go to classes, you know, just take regular leaves of absences so your roommate doesn’t get suspicious?
And then maybe you should top it all off with a tearful call home a few weeks later, describing how you’ve actually had some sort of nervous breakdown and you are in this pit of amazing depression and you don’t know why you’re here or why you’re alive or why anyone does anything at all. Â And so your legitimately concerned parents remove you from school — well, as much as they can remove someone from school who isn’t really registered for school — no, seriously, this should not have worked at all, they have failsafes to catch weirdos like me, and the college rep we spoke to on my out thought I was some sort of college ninja for having been able to have still been there without having been caught at what I’d been doing. Â I had slipped through their cracks swiftly and unseen.
So we packed up all my stuff and I went home. Â But not before drawing this strip and handing it to the lady at the newspaper reception desk.
Y’know, it’s funny. Â All my friends before college were homeschooled. Â La Porte, Indiana, is Homeschooling Capital Of The Universe, and so even though I went to public school myself, all of my actual friends were homeschooled, because all of my friends were from church. Â And in those first few weeks of Freshman Year, I’d hear tales from home of how many of them couldn’t survive college and had to go back. Â And I was pretty self-satisfied, being the smug little jerk I was. Â That’s why you go to public school, ya nerds! Â To get socialized. Â To be able to get along with a world that doesn’t always share your views. Â To learn how to establish eye contact with other human beings. Â And yet here I was, a year and a half later, suffering the same damn fate. Â I was, practically if not technically, a home schooled child.
And in a few months I joined my public high school friend Steve Richardson, who had also left college for his own very different reasons, at an art school outside of Chicago. Â This was what saved my life, I think. Â I am really terrible at making friends. Â I am the terriblest. Â I am a little antisocial weirdo who is afraid to talk to people. Â It was amazingly good for me to go to a school chained to a person I already knew. Â And I was this little uptight dork and he was an aggressive outgoing horndog, and finally I was living that Roomies! buddy dynamic myself, for real.
In the meantime, in the months between schools, I would sit alone and finish out the infamous strips you are about to see. Â You know, the super depressing ones where Important Stuff Happens. Â Because that’s where my brain was at the time, and it’s where my brain lived. Â And out the other end, at my new school, I began to pull myself back together, just as the characters in my strip were.
I’ve never really told anybody. Â And now you all know.
Don’t ask me for advice on how to succeed at college.
Loading ...
…Well that escalated quickly.
The comic, or the commentary? =o
[fwiw, I went to the publickest schools and STILL lock up even in a contained environment where there’s ZERO pressure to be sociable =( …BUTTS]
Commentary. The comic itself was kind of funny. I’m a sucker for people mispronouncing/misunderstanding words.
I came here to say: Jesus Christ, Willis!
I also came here to say: “Jesus Christ, Willis!”
I have Asperger’s. No matter how socially vibrant I’m feeling, looking people in the face makes me feel bad and wrong.
The people who have a problem with that don’t deserve you as a friend anyway.
Hey man, I’ve got Asperger’s Syndrome too
I just wanna say, don’t give up, it takes a lot of effort and time and I know how hard it is… but no matter what the hurdle, it’s always possible to climb it =3
I understand totally. I am lucky that mine is mild; and also I have managed to overcome many of the issues. Even though I can now look people in the eye, it still takes effort and feels weird. But it can be overcome, with time.
I hear that’s the social norm in Japan, not looking superiors (parents, teachers, etc.) in the eye when talking to them.
I have never been diagnosed with any issues and yet I could never meet anyone’s eyes growing up. Even now, when I seem to have overcome that, it is all an act.
Of course, the first time I ever heard the term “Asperger’s” was in my 40s on TV, so I am guessing the diagnosis did not exist back when I was a kid. I never came across the term “Autism” until I was in my late 20s, it might have been discovered after I was an adult as well…
Holy creole. That sounds completely awful. I’m also impressed with your ninja skills.
I went to a public school and still ended up doing pretty much the exact same thing. How do people make it through college unscathed? I think there was a class on that, but I probably skipped it.
Haha, wow. Some of the details are different but that’s basically what happened to me when I tried to go to college away from home. So. I feel you.
Wow. I never actually left my college until graduation, but I can sorta relate.
I got in expecting to be a high school teacher, and all the people in my peer group (we were part of a scholars group called Tomorrow’s Teachers and shared a dorm) were in the same major.
Since the Scholars Group applied to education majors of all stripes, including early childhood, a lot of the people there were…well they were basically exactly Joyce: happy sociable types who wanted to work with kids, and I was an antisocial nerd. It was hell.
My second year I had an epiphany; now that I was no longer a teenager, I realized that teenager actually kinda suck (amazing how you never notice when you are one), and I didn’t want to work with them for my entire adult life. And certainly not younger kids, so maybe being a teacher wasn’t for me.
Switched majors to Computer Science, ditching the Joyces for the Ambers (yes, I met some fine Ambers, heheh), and was much happier. If I hadn’t done so, I’m sure I never would have finished school.
I didn’t have that problem in college because I was that way all the way thru (public) school.
I kept my face in my book the entire time. I went to classes, ate lunch alone, went to classes, went home. I answered if called on in class but never volunteered.
Same routine in college, more or less.
I was a geek plain and simple. I didn’t feel bad about not having friends, I was more freaked out by people who thought I should have them and insisted on bugging me with their opinion on my anti-socialism. Which I think is just me.
In college now and I know I would not be able to survive without the friends I made first semester. I keep the really nerdy, antisocial one in touch with the real world and force her to do things that she enjoys (but interrupt her nonstop studying) and some of my friends drag me out of my comfort zone in front of the computer.
This really resonates with me. I’ve so been there. Dropped out of college because of stupid fuckups. Put off doing stuff because I’d put it off for so long I was afraid of what would happen if I tried to do it that late. I found something I was passionate about that I could study, and it saved my life. I learned there’s a lot you can bounce back from.
I guess what I’m saying is thanks for sharing. It helps sometimes to know you aren’t alone.
I had a… very similar experience. Flunked out second year and managed to hide it from my parents until December of third year. Was back at college, with roommates, “going to class”…
Ugh. Fun time in my life.
I’m right there with you, Willis. I wasn’t homeschooled, but I might as well have been, breezing through public highschool without studying and still getting a 4.0 because public education is a fucking joke, and then I got to college and wasn’t prepared for classed that actually required effort and I crashed and burned and had a huge teary confession in front of important people and had to go to counselling.
I’m right there with you on that one. High school is so insular and requires so little effort, even in AP level classes, that university level classes are painful for those of us who didn’t even have to try. It’s kinda a storyline I’m expecting to hit Walky in DoA eventually, really.
It sounds hilariously pathetic, but hanging out on internet comic forums (including the one for It’s Walky) did more to improve my socialization skills than public school ever did. I imagine I’d be alone and bitter if I hadn’t inexplicably decided to pester people on the Avalon and It’s Walky forums all those years ago. (‘Cuz I was alone and bitter at the time and otherwise would not have ever fixed that.)
Dude, for real. I had a very VERY similar experience (including a lot the religion stuff).
It always makes me feel weird when I hear people talking about how their college years were the “best years of their lives” or whatever. But it helps to know that I’m not the only one, especially from people who are awesome and make really cool art and comics and good things. Thanks for sharing.
So this story made me feel so so sad, because dammit Willis, your comics have been a tremendous force for good in my life and it hurts to hear that someone I esteem went through a time like this – and worse is I can hear it still in your voice how this has not finished leaving its mark on your psyche. Thank you for sharing with us (I think all the above comments show that a lot of readers found solace in hearing their own self-fears discussed) and thank you for years of stories that have kept me going at hard times.
As someone still currently in college, you make me feel as though I’m doing pretty well…that sounds like it was a horrible time.
I could see myself suffering a similar fate in college. I’ve always been socially awkward, terrible at making friends, and generally content to sit in my room alone with a book or video game if I don’t see a compelling reason to go out and socialize, which I pretty much never do on my own.
I probably dodged a bullet when I managed to strike up a conversation with the computer lab tech I overheard discussing a homebrew Beast Wars RPG in the computer lab my first night on campus. She turned out to be the president of the school’s board gaming / role playing club, and I never lacked for fellow socially awkward dorks to hang out with for the rest of my time in college.
I’m unable to figure out something to say that doesn’t seem weird, so: thank you for sharing your story.
I love reading all three of your webcomics because you are awesome and sometimes, honestly, I wish you wrote and drew the other webcomics I read too. (Not because I want you to die from over-exhaustion. Just because I really like your art style and story writing.)
Love you, Willis.
Having spent years with social anxiety coupled with an autism spectrum disorder, I can relate. Just now getting out of it with therapy and it’s kind of terrifying.
Thanks for sharing. Sometimes I’m scared of everything and it helps knowing other people have been through similar stuff and made it out okay.
Thanks for sharing David. Forces a lot of memories and thoughts. If we go back 2 generations or so, I was in college, trying to figure out all the same stuff. The big difference I think, is that I got a “greetings” in the mail, and a chance to stand naked in a line of 50 young guys and bend over, all in a line. Fascinating experience. After that, one way or another, my path was fixed, I was going in the military, I could choose; a – rifle and jungle boots, or b – join ROTC and try to graduate in 4 years, and go into the Air Force. I chose “b”, with the threat of “a” hanging over my head should I fail. So, after 13 years, 120 combat missions, and a stint hooked up with the Army, I was finally able to attempt to choose what I wanted to “do”. Not a lot of choice at that point, married, kids, and all that. Not sure I ever got or found what I really wanted to do, and now I’m retired, laughingly, again not by my choice. So, to all those searching for their path in life, I say, search diligently, try with all your heart to figure out what it is you truly want, and then, DO IT! Do not take the path someone chooses for you, work to find that little tickle that gives you a sense of accomplishment and pleasure from your actions, and try to make that work. I think David has done that, perhaps painfully, but I sense success in him. And I have a silly little thing I enjoy, and I’m good at, certainly could never survive on it, but I don’t have to at this point. Kind Regards to all.
Closest thing to an off-colour joke in the newspaper strips?
Harsh stuff to go through. University is really not set up for introverts, which is a bloody perverse state of affairs.
I think I was saved from dropping out only because my department was small, close-knit and very, very tolerant of oddity- I never did learn how to communicate with the terrifying denizens of the rest of campus, though I stayed long enough to do half a PhD….
Whoa! never would’ve figured something like that happened to you, Willis. I always thought you had a great shcock, but pulled out without dropping out in the end. Thank you for sharing.
Wow. I mean wow.
And come think of it, I’m not that far away; I mean, never left college in fact, I haven’t left college and now I’m 25 and depressed and not graduated and have no idea what I’m doing with my life
In my case, the break came in highschool. For 1st – 4th grades I went to three different public schools. Then, for 5th through half of 7th, I was homeschooled, after which I reluctantly went to public school again, and started living with my mother. Dropped out in junior year of highschool, unable to do my work, start conversations, or do much of anything that wasn’t playing video games or watching cartoons. I went back to my father, and retreated into myself. For five years I hardly talked to anyone who wasn’t family, followed by four years where I didn’t talk to anyone who wasn’t family or a therapist.
So:
THANK YOU, WILLIS!
The things you talk about here and with your other comics help.
Tripod? Dear Cheese, I had forgotten that site ever existed!
Another reader here who went through the exact same thing, though I just bailed at the end of fall semester instead of becoming a ninja. If I hadn’t made a friend early on who basically became my entire social support (and occasional girlfriend) for those five semesters I don’t know how I would have lasted that long. Leaving behind everyone you’ve known for years and suddenly discovering you have severe social anxiety and depression is never good.
Four aimless semesters of community college, two years of unemployed living with parents, and several temporary jobs later, my life is finally back in a state I’m relatively happy with. But I still wonder how things would have been different if I had just stayed in my hometown and gone to community college with my friends, or if things at private college had gone differently and hadn’t screwed me up so much.
Thank you for sharing, Mr Willis, it sounds like it has resonated with a lot of your readers. What a special gift you have for being in real life human connectivity with your readers.
Did you do the art program at Northern? I have a few friends that were at NIU doing art around that time.
I never left college, though I failed many classes (didn’t do homework…), and it took me almost 8 years to get a 2 year… But things are pretty good now, good job, still far from an extrovert, but I have moved past a lot of my social issues, thank goodness.
Apart from the homeschooling (and just about avoiding the quitting and moving schools), that’s quite close to my own college experience.
tl;dr version: people, on the whole, are generally pretty chill, and will give you the time of day if you reciprocate that. Get out and talk to them. Even if it’s through a stuttery haze of adrenaline and cortisone yelling at you to “RUN”.
If nothing else, if you’re in a hole, go talk to the college support staff before things get intractible. Dragging students out of holes is, after all, literally (well ok, figuratively) what they’re paid to do.
Hmm.
Kinda wish that the UK system worked a bit more like the US one though, in terms of class registration. Here it’s largely pre-registered, apart from picking a few optional course modules. Maybe if I’d had a week or two to cool down away from my parents’ influence, I’d have chosen a more suitable course. Possibly even switched colleges altogether… and not made a complete hash, academically at least, of the next 3 years. Maybe gone somewhere with a bit more sunlight and not ended up with 9 months of SAD every year.
Incidentally the page is still there, a good 14 years later, though it redirects to the snappier http://walkerton.tripod.com/ now.
Was I the only one who tried that? *scrolls* … yep, seems that way. Guess I’m just a sucker for interweb history.
Like so many others here, your story is so very similar to my own, at least to start. Penn State, November of 2000, I was going for Art, possibly Art Education. I didn’t even make it through to the end of the third semester. I crashed out about Thanksgiving or so, just stopped going to classes at all. Got into it with my parents, went to see a doctor, then a shrink, diagnosed with depression, and ultimately Bipolar Disorder and possible Aspergers.
Unfortunately, I did NOT have a friend to help me pick up the pieces. I should have. I almost did. My best friend crashed out of college too, though for completely different reasons (he joined a booze-frat), and though we planned to move into a place together to start rebuilding in the Fall of ’01 . . . .
Well, we know what happened in the Fall of ’01. And my best friend decided to join the Marines, something my weight, knee injury, and psychological issues would not allow me to do, so I was left putting it all back together on my own.
And I couldn’t. Kept getting halfway up and someone would kick my legs out from under me. Bought a home . . . a trailer, but it was mine. But the land wasn’t, and it got rezoned by the county, and I couldn’t afford to have it moved, so they knocked it down (didn’t even pay me for it, couldn’t fight it in court). Got a great delivery job for a local newspaper, then the newspaper industry started folding, I got laid off. Got a great delivery job, with benefits even, shipping bank mail, then the banking crash and I was out again. Got a nice apartment on the east side of town, great space for a low, rent-controlled price, affording it all on my own, then that place gets rezoned to make way for a new hotel, and I can’t afford anywhere else and I’m basically homeless. Met the girl of my dreams, fell madly in love . . . .
She committed suicide a few months after we got together.
That was several years ago, and I’ve only recently started to recover from that one, in the last year or so. Took a long time to come to terms with all this, but things have been going great lately. Two new jobs (one delivery, one webmaster, and freelance art on the side), renting a whole house, just generally finding the place in the world that I was always looking for. And I’ve even got a new girlfriend on top of it all!
Point is . . . been reading these comics for about a decade now, and they’ve provided me with many small, bright moments during some of my darkest years. And reading your story here . . . knowing that you’ve been through some of the same stuff I do, and now you make a living on your art, and have just this amazing life . . . makes me feel better about what a bumpy road I’ve been traveling. So I figured I’d share, on the off chance you read it, and say thanks. I know I occasionally comment with some snarky jab or pointless complaint, but really . . . I do love your work, and it’s nice to learn about your past and whatnot. Thanks for doing what you do.
It’s been roughly 15 minutes since I red your comment and still I’m unsure weather or not to answer, though I very much feel like I have to. I’m not sure what I want to comment on – the inspirational parts or the parts that resonate with me on a more personal note.
I… well, just… damn. That’s some hard-hitting stuff there mate. I might not have been quite there, but I do get a good portion of it. Especially the first girlfriend part… mine thankfully never did do what I feared/what she wanted to do, but she came very close a few times. Had to put myself between her and a blade more then once, and she hated me for it for a while. I’ve lived with that fear for years, but these days she says she’s happy with her job and with who she’s with, and she knows she can talk to me if she wants to.
Point is… well, I can empathize. Thanks for sharing, Jay. Best of luck to you.
jesus and here i was all “you should basically not spend all your time talking to other dorks on IRC and go talk to girls in person” as college advice
If it makes you feel better, I had one of those horrible depressing not going to college for an entire year sort of years, had to go back home, face all the people who thought I was going to “make it,” etc., etc….
….now I teach college. Go fig.
This is completely off-topic, but who was the the lady at the newspaper reception desk? I might know her, having worked at the IDS for three years.
Also, props for keepin’ on. You’re an inspiration to all us introverts.
I have no memory of her. I don’t think I even ever got her name at the time.
This story is amazing. Thanks for sharing.
For me it was the opposite — college and living on campus helped me break out of my shell. I started out living at home and commuting to school (they do call UNM the “University Near Mom,” after all), but realized about two years in that I didn’t know anybody except the one dude I’d connected with from my high school. I spent those two years going to class, staring at my books, hiding in the student union basement, or in my room at home, without ever forging a meaningful relationship with anyone new. So I moved on campus, went into enough debt to cripple my ability to stay there, and ended up letting the university garnish my wages as a freshman orientation leader by like 70% so I could stay in school.
But yeah, I was a freshman orientation leader. Later I was an RA, an officer in three different student clubs, and an unofficial section leader in the marching band. Plus I met the girl I’d eventually marry. So actually being there helped me more than it hurt, I think.
You should at least update your tripod URL… you know, for the readers that go back.
Well, sure, just as soon as I have the login access which has been missing for probably 13 years.
Wait… walkerton? There were no Walkertons in “Roomies!” yet!
Actually, Sal’s Walkerton-ness was established sometime in the late 80s.
Plus I’m pretty sure “Walkerton” was Willis’s name on alt.toys.transformers at the time.
It’s awesome to hear more about you, David Willis. Being currently in university, and suffering from some similar issues, I see what I can do about taking your advice.
… Ah, so you had the depression and emotional breakdown and the not registering for spring semester and crippling social anxiety leading to dropping out too. I thought that was just me.
I guess I’m in good company. Had I known this before I met you at SPX, Mr. Willis, my conversation would have been far more interesting than “I want to take a picture of you so I can spite my friend, Wack’d with the fact I met you and he hasn’t.”
So which of the schools is Dumbing of Age and even Roomies based in? Still the first school, or are there elements of the second your brought in?
Both Roomies! and Dumbing of Age are set at Indiana University Bloomington
Parts of this sound similar to my current (and late in my life, comparatively) College experience, but High School was far worse for me.
Wow. Thanks for sharing.
The strip above was not in the joyceandwalky.com archives.
Although, given it would advertise a move that had already happened, I don’t see why it would…
Onward!
As so many others have said, thanks for sharing something so personal.
I WAS homeschooled, and didn’t actually drop out of college, but I got hit by a major depressive episode in my second semester. I withdrew socially, coasted through my classes, and was pretty constantly miserable until graduation. After that I went through a couple of even rougher years of breaking away from my religious past, but along the way made some really important friendships I’d missed out on in (Bible) college. (The one friendship I tried to maintain post-college attempted to turn me into his spiritual project, so really I was better off waiting to find good friends.)
I do wish I had known about your comics back then, as I’m sure they would have helped me through some rough times too. But hey, I’m having a blast reading the back-catalog now along with your commentary. I see a lot of past me in past-Willis, but like to think I’ve evolved as drastically as you have. Keep up the good work!
The stories I heard about my peers’ experience in college I heard in high school; we had periodic assemblies for seniors where some alumn would tell us about college and give us advice. The first one was about alcohol, and it was a fairly reasonable talk about not drinking to excess or in unsafe situations, et cetera. Thing is, though, I went to a private school where most of the kids had very controlling parents, so there was a (deserved) stereotype that when we went off to college we tended to handle the independence particularly badly. Thus despite there being a different topic scheduled for each assembly, all of the alumns chose (independently, so far as I know) to just talk about alcohol in increasingly dire horror stories. The last one could pretty much be summarized as “Don’t drink or you’ll get raped and die.”