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Some college professors seem to think that they are too important for their students.

What would you do if your professor said that he was too busy to run a class you wanted to take, and if you didn’t like it, you could go to the dean?

That is what happened to the student in 07this story, so he went to the Dean, who forced the professor to run the class. Then, when the professor tried to assign him an impossible assignment, the student found a way to complete it anyway.

Read through the full story below to see what you think of how this was handled.

Try Going to a Different School

This story takes place when I was about to graduate from community college a few years ago.

Getting into the legal field can be very lucrative.

I went to school for Political Science intending to move on to law school and become either a paralegal or a lawyer.

I attended a small community college to pay my way through gen ed courses before signing my life away to debt collectors.

Some teachers really seem to be self-important.

Unfortunately, and unknown to me at the time, the schools political science department was basically empty and they had only one individual in charge, lets call him Mr. B.

Mr. B thought highly of himself and wanted the utmost levels of work, even for intro classes.

This would be pretty upsetting.

During the intro course I wrote well over 60 pages for him and spent hours reading every political theorist no matter how irrelevant.

I was entering into my final semester before graduating when I went to the Registrars office to sign up for one of my last two courses to graduate only to be told by my “advisor” that since the department was downsized and rolled into the history department, both of those classes were no longer available and hadn’t been for years.

So I went to Mr. B.

Well, teachers only have so many hours in the day, just like the rest of us.

Mr. B was “working” on a paper he wanted to publish and told me in no uncertain terms that he could not help me, the department budget had been cut and he was struggling to rebuild.

He didn’t have time to hold any more classes or independent studies, so it was best if I “looked into taking a course at another university or talk to the Dean.”

Apparently, the Dean didn’t think he was too busy.

MC 1: So, I went to the Dean of History, an older woman with slate grey hair. I had never met her before, she listened to me just long enough to hear me repeat what Mr. B had said and stormed off, leaving me alone in her office.

Fifteen minutes go by and she returns, thanks my for my concern and says Mr. B has agreed to run an independent study so I can graduate.

Yikes, that is a lot of work

We meet every two weeks, on top of having another class with him.

He issues a 50 page research paper for the other class but for the independent study he issues an open ended review of the last 20 years of county voting records.

Well, this could actually be interesting.

And an analysis of polling data to determine whether or not people truly understand the views of the political parties they claim to identify with or if there is a strong gap between ideology.

While there is no page requirement he states “A satisfactory paper will likely need to be around 70 pages.”

Oh, now I see why he made that the assignment.

Now I was working full time while going to school to be able to pay off community college and this was simply too much for a low level course.

Not only that, but it was, in essence, his own proposal. Mr. B handed me all the work he wanted done for his paper as the linchpin for me to graduate.

This sounds very inconvenient.

County records are not available online, they are only available in person at the county courthouse 2 hours away from my home and they close Monday through Friday at 4.

I don’t get out of class or work until after 6 so I meet with Mr. B and ask if there is any way he could get a hold of the records.

He is asking the impossible.

Mr. B was “too busy” to do that, I would have to find a way. I told him it would require altering the plan and he reiterated “find a way.”

MC 2: I created a survey. It was simple and I pulled core party beliefs from Democrats and Republicans and asked random strangers to fill it out.

This technically meets his requirements.

They passed if they could identify seventy percent of the ideals correctly. To my surprise, not a single person succeeded out of a 150 surveyed.

I focused my open ended review on the failings of survey data and the difficulties of analyzing political beliefs making sure absolutely no portion of my 15 page report was usable for his analysis.

I bet this person was happy with the B.

He gave me a B, citing how I needed to work better with superiors and manage my time or I wouldn’t succeed.

Teachers often forget that the whole reason they are there is to teach their students.

Keep reading to see what the people in the comments have to say about this story and how it was handled.

How does this even make sense.

If he uses this information, it should be exposed.

Why do some professors think that their time is so valuable? Their whole job is to teach the students, but that seems to be the one thing they don’t want to do.

Students are paying a lot of money for their education, and they deserve to be taught by the professors.