Professors at university often have to keep pretty strict schedules to ensure their classrooms move along at a good pace.

What would you do if your professor said each group needed to present on a specific day, no exceptions?

That is what happened to the students in this story, so when the professor’s class went long, they demanded that they still be able to present, even though the rest of the students had left for the day.

Here are the details.

Professor demands we stick to schedule. We stick to schedule.

It was a history course, and one of the assignments was a group project wherein we presented in front of the class.

This sounds like a challenging assignment.

There was a three hour seminar taking place in a lecture hall, the last hour of which was reserved for two groups to go up and present at a half hour apiece.

This would involve a Q and A session afterwards, just to keep us on our toes, I suppose.

Professor really emphasized that we pick the week and topic we’re going to present in and that’s that.

It’s first-come-first-serve and if you miss your spot, you get a zero.

Thought nothing of it at the time, seemed fair. Didn’t like his attitude, but whatever, right?

She is very lucky, group assignments often don’t work out this well.

Well I won the lottery with the group I was assigned. They were grand lads and a dream to work with.

We decided on an advantageous week to present (given our schedules) and we spent the run up fine-tuning this presentation and really getting it to work.

We used a stopwatch and everything, we even brought in outsiders to ask questions we might not predict. All was well.

Looks like things won’t go according to plan.

Except we were presenting in week five, and a disturbing pattern had emerged during the seminars in weeks two, three and four.

For all his talk about keeping things constrained and everyone working within a schedule, whoever went second was screwed.

The first group always ran long and the second group had to make do with, at-most, 20 minutes.

You could see the stress on their faces.

He has an idea.

So, come week five the rest of my group, a little bit more nervous than I am, worries aloud about whether all of our careful planning will be for pot. I decide to throw a hail Mary thinking that the worst I could get is a “no”, right?

So, I go up right before class stars and ask the prof what are the odds we might go on first out of the two, after all, we’re sure we have this down to 30 minutes.

The dude proceeds to rake me across the coals in front of everyone.

Sometimes a normal speaking voice is worse than yelling.

It was a normal speaking voice, but the podium was right by the door, and people were filing in. Tells me not to ask such a stupid question and to go back to my seat.

I go back, tail between my legs, upset and sit with steam shooting out of my ears for the next two hours.

Sure enough, the other group goes first. And sure enough, they run long. We shoot concerned looks to the professor who is too busy watching the other group to notice. Come 50 minutes in and the first group is just about wrapping up. The guys in my group are silently freaking out about this.

Nightmare, right?

Wait…what?

That’s when the prof stands up, polite applause all around and then says “Well I guess we’re finishing early today, huh?”

Like a scene out of a courtroom drama the four of us stand up like a shot and ask what the heck is going on. He can’t quite hear us from back, and we’re all talking at once so he asks “What’s going on?” I charge down those steps like King Kong.

How did he not realize this?

In the same tone of voice, in front of the same door that people were now filing out of, I tell this guy that we’re booked for the assignment today and we have something prepared.

“W-what!?” Turns out he totally plum forgot that we were presenting today, and that’s why he was so mad at my suggestion earlier.

So, I tell him we’re presenting now, to an empty room, or he’s giving us 100.

The professor is scrambling.

The poor guy sure did try. Insisted we hadn’t signed up this week (we had), insisted that he could schedule us in next week (even assuming two of four of our group weren’t away on placement for their teaching degree, we booked for this week as ordered), insisted that he had somewhere to be (not my problem, mate).

Dude just had to wear it. After making a phone call to (presumably) his next appointment, he had to stand there, white as a sheet, and wear it. I’ll never forget the look on his face.

At least a couple students stayed around.

So we presented to a lecture hall empty of all but the professor and two students who, I guess, wanted to see more of the show.

We got a great grade, to boot.

This is too funny.

Hopefully the professor learned to not be so ridged with the rules in the future.

Read on to see what the people in the comments think of this story.

This would have been a great option too.

It was very well written.

This commenter loved the story.

I agree with this commenter.

This is a better practice, it teaches students to stick to time limits.

But will the professor do the right thing?

The jury is still out.

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