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Dumbing of Age is notable for its highly decompressed and regimented storytelling, with each chapter representing one full day of on-campus life. This timeline is intended to help readers keep track of how much time has elapsed, and what the strip's overall timescale looks like.

You may also be interested in the Dumbing of Age Class Schedule, or the dates of the fan-invented holiday Dumbing Day.

Book Chapter Day Weekday
This Campus is a Friggin' Escher Print Move-In Day August 29 Sunday
Uphill From Here August 30 Monday
Men Are From Beck, Women Are From Clark August 31 Tuesday
The Bechdel Test September 1 Wednesday
Media Rumble September 2 Thursday
Yesterday Was Thursday September 3 Friday
I Beg You, Don't Cast Your Body Into The Cragged Shame Pits of the Lustwolves Pajama Jeans September 4 Saturday
Choosing My Religion September 5 Sunday
The First Step Towards Recovery September 6 Monday
Time Keeps on Slippin' September 10 Friday
Saturday's All Right For Slighting September 11 Saturday
Strange Beerfellows September 12 Sunday
Your Stupid Overconfidence is Nostalgic If The Shoe Splits September 13 Monday
Guess Who's Coming To Galasso's September 14 Tuesday
Answers In Hennessy September 15 Wednesday
Just Hangin' Out With My Family September 18 Saturday
Amazi-Girl is Always Prepared for Anything The Only Dope For Me Is You September 19 Sunday
I Was A Teenage Churchmouse September 20 Monday
Up All Night To Get Vengeance September 21 Tuesday
The Whiteboard Dingdong Bandit September 22 Wednesday
Hey, Guess What, I'm a Lesbian! When Somebody Loved Me September 23 Thursday
Three's a Crowd September 24 Friday
The Butterflies Won't Fly Away September 25 Saturday
Walking with Dina September 26 Sunday
The Machinations of My Revenge Will Be Cold, Swift, and Absolutely Ridiculous To Those Who'd Ground Me September 27 Monday
That Perfect Girl October 1 Friday
When God Closes The Door October 2 Saturday
It All Returns October 3 Sunday
Just Put Down the Ukulele Only Then Can the Healing Begin Glower Vacuum October 4 Monday
Everything You've Ever Wanted Floats Above October 5 Tuesday
The Thing I Was Before October 6 Wednesday
The "Do" List October 9 Saturday
Up Here We Can Be Garbage Face the Strange October 10 Sunday
This Is The Way That We Love October 11 Monday
Faz Is Great October 12 Tuesday
Of Mike And Men October 13 Wednesday
Now Let's Go Commit Something Mildly Subversive Which, at Worst, Will Serve as a Humanizing Anecdote and Not as Anything Truly Threatening to the Power Structures at Hand Flying To The Red October 14 Thursday
But the Sun Still Shines October 15 Friday
Sometimes the Sky Was So Far Away October 16 Saturday
Vote for Robin October 17 Sunday
Renounce Magical Thinking and Embrace Empirical Evidence Birthday Pursuit October 18 Monday
To Remind You of My Love October 19 Tuesday
When It Crumbles October 20 Wednesday
Is a Song Forever? October 21 Thursday
I Excised All my Anxieties into Cartoon Characters Who Definitely Don't Have Feelings for Each Other This Bright Millenium January 9 Sunday
Look Straight Ahead January 10 Monday
See You in the Funny Page January 11 Tuesday
Hompk! January 12 Wednesday
As Long As It's Free January 13 Thursday
Her Hugs Are Traps Sister, Christian January 14 Friday
I'll Leave You A Phantom January 15 Saturday
Trial and Sarah January 16 Sunday
Don't Stop Billie-ving January 17 Monday
This Was Halloween October 31 (Flashback) Sunday
My Peer Group's Smoochy Chart Is Basically Now an Ouroboros Bring Me to Life Drawing January 18 Tuesday
Turning Saints Into the Sea January 19 Wednesday
Joementum January 20 Thursday
But Don't Give Yourself Away January 21 Friday
Book 14 Everybody's Looking for Nothing January 22 Saturday
It's the Love I Haven't Got January 23 Sunday
Trystin' in the Wind January 24 Monday
For Me It Was Tuesday January 25 Tuesday
Book 15 Love Dares You To Change January 26 Wednesday
The One Where Jocelyne Returns January 27 Thursday
Me And Who You Say I Was Yesterday
The Only Exception
Book 16 Not-So-Smooth Criminals
I'm the Problem, It's Me

Notes[]

  • It is worth noting that, because of its sliding timescale, the Dumbing of Age timeline does not necessarily match up to any particular year in the real world. Because of how long the comic has been running and Willis' penchant for pop culture references, characters tend to refer to things that are current to when a strip is released, when such a thing did not exist in 2010 when the series began.
  • Thus, while the days of the week, and the number of days between particular storylines (at least within a single semester), are pretty firmly established by various bits of captions and in-story dialogue, the dates (aside from Halloween) are more speculative, as outlined below.
  • The fall semester dates are based on this Tumblr post, which notes that Willis's commentary ("for Billie it's still August") below this strip places its events in August, while Ruth's dialogue in this strip ("Every October...") suggests that its storyline is in October. If those two facts are true, then the fact that there are exactly 30 timeline days between those two days indicates that those 30 days must all be in September -- placing the Billie strip on August 31 and the Ruth strip on October 1 -- and all the rest of the fall semester dates can be extrapolated from that. This logic rests on a few assumptions, such as (a) Ruth's comment must mean that it is already October and she is not merely musing upon the upcoming October, and (b) Willis would not be willing to contradict his own commentary for the sake of a storyline. In fact, due to his commitment to a sliding timescale, Willis indeed may be willing to contradict previously established dates or avoid anything that would establish dates in stone. Similarly, he may also be willing to contradict real-world conventions for similar reasons. For example, classes in DOA seem to have been held on every Monday in September, despite the fact that the first Monday in September would have been Labor Day, and real-life Indiana University (like most American universities) does not hold classes on Labor Day. Nevertheless, the fact that roctavian's Tumber post was reblogged on Willis's own DOA Tumblr would seem to imply a tacit endorsement of this timeline.
  • The spring semester dates are more speculative (but see below). The assumption that Book 11 starts in early January, specifically the second week of January, is based upon real-life IU's history of starting its spring semester in the second week of January. The specific date of January 9 is based on the previously established dates of the fall semester and the reasoning that if those are correct, then the second Sunday of the following January would be on the 9th, because ... well, that's how dates work. This is of course assuming that the fictional world of DOA has the same number of days in October, November, and December as they do in real life (and that every week has all 7 days). It is also, again, assuming that Willis would not be willing to break continuity.
  • Some commenters have argued otherwise, e.g. that the time skip between Books 10 and 11 amounts to a "soft reboot" and that we cannot assume that date continuity is preserved (see the discussion here, under Lingo's comment). Some have speculated that since the timeline of the fall semester is consistent with the calendar year 2010 -- when the strip started in real life -- the spring semester may be based on the calendar year 2021, because the first strips of Book 11 were published in late 2020 and Willis may have been looking ahead to 2021 to determine their dates. This would place every spring-semester date one day later than what's listed in the table above (e.g. "This Bright Millennium" would fall on January 10). Commenters have noted that this timeline would move Ruth's birthday in the "Hompk!" storyline from January 12 to the 13th, which would make it potentially consistent with the birthday established on Walkyverse Ruth's tombstone -- and Willis has notably seemed to be eager to keep birthdays consistent between the two universes. However, Willis's own commentary on that strip seems to indicate otherwise: "I purposefully didn’t care about Ruth’s Walkyverse birthday when I gave her one in the Dumbiverse, because that shouldn’t be beholden to trivial details like this if I want to tell a story in another universe, but her birthday here seems to definitely be July 13, not somewhere early in January" -- though he concedes that "maybe you can pretend it still says January but whoever carved the headstone is just really shitty at centering text."
  • The bulletin board sign in this strip declaring "97 [d]ays since the [la]st kidnapping" (and Willis' hovertext saying "yeah I counted") narrows down the timeline quite a bit more firmly, because there are indeed 97 real-life days between October 20, the presumed date of the kidnapping storyline ("When It Crumbles"), and January 25, the hypothesized date of this strip ("For Me It Was Tuesday"). By establing a firm relative timeline between the two semesters, this at least confirms that IU's spring semester started in the 2nd week of January and probably confirms the hypothesized dates ... or at least within plus or minus one day, depending on the time of day Ruth (presumably) updates the billboard (this strip takes place early in the morning) and the regularity at which the updates occur.
  • We may never know the precise dates for certain until a specific reference is made to a date-specific holiday, such as Valentine's Day, Leap Day (if the story takes place in a leap year), or St. Patrick's Day -- and in fact Willis may time-skip over those holidays in order to avoid specific dates (just as he skipped over Halloween, Christmas, and New Year's).
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