987: Potential

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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Potential
The bunch of disadvantaged kids I was tutoring became too good at writing, and their essays were forcing me to confront painful existential questions, so I started trying to turn them on to drugs and crime instead.
Title text: The bunch of disadvantaged kids I was tutoring became too good at writing, and their essays were forcing me to confront painful existential questions, so I started trying to turn them on to drugs and crime instead.

Explanation

This comic jokes about what a student could potentially create if they were working at their full potential. Instead of something like a better essay or a better science fair project, this student creates a 6-legged, car-destroying, helicopter-shooting monster robot.

The moral of the comic is for students to not live up to their potential, because the havoc that results from doing so far outweighs the benefits of lethargy.

Transcript

Narrator: When teachers complain, "You're not working at your full potential!"
[Explosion in background.]
Narrator: Don't take it too hard.
[Car casually spirals through the air while a crash is heard in the background.]
Narrator: They complain way more when you do.
[A mechanized, 6-tentacled robot rampages around, picking up cars and creating a small warzone before the student inside while the lamentations of people and the building of military forces are in the background.]
Throughout the third frame: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
In the control center of the robot: Click, beep, whirr
Out-of-frame: It's headed this way!
Ponytail: Somebody stop him!


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Discussion

They really do. Even if you end up becoming rich and famous, there's always that one guy who has to complain about you shafting them. Davidy²²[talk] 08:18, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Is there any chance this could be referring to the physics principle of Work? Z (talk) 23:54, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

I wish I could remember the quote from a teacher who supplied Gene Symmons with 50p to get a coffee after he bummed a coffee from a teacher. But I just forgot why. I used Google News BEFORE it was clickbait (talk) 07:45, 22 January 2015 (UTC)