Surviving the World began on May 31, 2008 at the Fred Paulson Institute in Wincheck City, Pennsylvania, and hopes to run for several years to come.

Q: What is Surviving the World?

A: Surviving the World is a webcomic focusing on all shades of life, from science to literature, politics to sports, romance to religion, and everything else in between.

Q: How often does it get updated?

A: A new lesson or recitation is posted every day, seven days a week, usually before noon ET.

Q: Is there a syllabus available? The topics seem kind of wide ranging.

A: No one really wants to hear about college or religion or bar arguments for seven straight days, so while there is a general plan in place, the topics will be jumping around.

Q: What’s the difference between a lesson and a recitation?

A: Lessons are the usual, straightforward information meant to be driven into your brain each day. On Fridays, the class for that day will focus on your concerns, whatever they may be. This would be a recitation, and is more likely to happen depending on the quality of questions sent in.

Q: How should we send in our recitation questions?

A: There are two options: carrier pigeon, or e-mail to danteshepherd (at) gmail (dot) com. Please provide your name and location along with your submission.

Q: So it’s a webcomic and not a blog?

A: Do you see any emoting and endless talk in chatspeak? As has become my mantra when asked this question, "It's a webcomic, not a blog, goddamnit." I tried to lay out all my reasoning and descriptions of photocomics in this lesson.

Q: Why are some of the comics blurry?

A: I prefer to take all the pictures myself - there have been only four so far where working on a timer wasn't sufficient, and I needed someone else to take the picture. The end result is that sometimes the pose is blurry - which was actually encouraged by a few readers earlier on. Because the camera sometimes autofocuses before I step into the scene, the final image can be just a bit off, which I don't realize until I'm ready to post it several days later.

Q: How many people work on Surviving the World? There's a lot of 'we' slinging going around.

A: At the beginning, I was fighting both a fear of failure and an uncomfortableness with potential success, so it became a lot easier to pretend that there was a creative team developing the comic together. Realistically, there's only me, although I do at times consult with others about the quality of different ideas.

Q: What does “Surviving the World” really mean, anyway?

A: The original name was going to be “101″, but the site was first hosted at wordpress, and that name was already taken. "Surviving The World" was a real-world take on the same idea.

Q: Will you link to my site?

A: Um, maybe? I prefer to only link to other webcomics that I really enjoy, so if you want to see how I feel about yours, sure, send it along. The answer's probably no, though.

Q: Do you accept guest-comics or guest-lectures?

A: Keep an eye on the daily updates - if an 'oral presentation' version of the guest-lectures comes up, you'll be best notified there. Otherwise, please don't just send in random pictures, as I'm probably not going to use them.

Q: Are you always high? You look like you're always high.

A: I wear hard contact lenses for 14-18 hours a day, so my eyes are always red. It's a pretty common misconception.

Q: Will you marry me?

A: While monogamy may be passe, sorry, but I'm already happily married.

Q: Can I plagiarize anything I find here on the site?

A: All content on Surviving the World in any form is copyrighted as of 2008-2010, and all rights are reserved. So, no. But if you give the site proper credit and recognition, feel free to embed or post the lessons elsewhere on the internet with a link back to STW.