How many different kinds of teachers have you had in your entire life? How many different places have you been a student at, regardless of your age now or at that time? From boring teachers to entertaining ones, from strict professors to lenient and friendly teachers, and from nonsocial professors to teachers who ask everyone out to parties, we’ve all seen different kinds of instructors, and also different environments of learning, that has affected what we learn, and how we learn it.

We go to seminars, classes, discussions, lectures and other sessions to follow the guidelines set by the instructors. We can’t have cell phones, nor can we talk in class. We have to sit in a certain manner, and we also have to participate in class discussions in a certain way. Whatever the rules are, we have to follow them. For if we don’t follow them, we won’t have a good time in the class. We might even be dropped from the class.

You pay the instructor through the institution of learning that you go to, for teaching you, and you have to follow everything the instructor says. You pay them not only to teach you something, but also to dictate every aspect of your life while you’re being instructed by that person. When we meet any other person on campus who’s not an instructor and works for the campus, we’re treated like annoying customers who’re asking for more. The admission staff always says “Next customer” when dealing with students who’re paying for their classes, but these same students are still treated as if they’re annoying kids who keep asking for more favors and just won’t shut up. We never get the full rights as either a student or a customer, but something in between; a student who doesn’t know anything and needs to be taught, and a customer who’s paying less but asking for more.

Have you every thought of imposing rules on the instructors, since you’re paying them and they’re actually working for you? How about you telling the professors to stop walking while giving lectures, or to tell the instructors to speak louder all the time? How about you telling them to change their current way of teaching because you don’t like it? How about you telling them to teach you something again, in a different way, if you don’t understand it and even if it means postponing the exam dates as long as your requests have substantial evidence to back them up? What happened to the idea of meeting an instructor anytime during the normal academic or business hours to ask any question you might have? These days we have to ask for an appointment and even in an appointment if you don’t come to the instructors office with good questions, you’re going to be sent away quickly.

How about you dropping a teacher from the class and requesting a replacement teacher, if the teacher has a list of requirements longer than the list of people waiting at the unemployment office, and those requirements have nothing to do with the course but everything to do with the fact that the instructor is imposting those rules simply because he/she can? Why does an instructor require you to call them “Mr.” or “Mrs.” or even “Doctor McPhee” when they have a degree, but they’ll slaughter your name and call you either by your first or your last name in the weirdest ways possible whenever they read it from their roster sheet?

Any changes to such typical features of todays level of instruction are probably not going to happen quickly, or even at all. We pay thousands of dollars to the institutions of learning every year, yet we have to request to see if we can get appointment with the dean, we have to request to see if we can change a class, we have to request to see if an instructor will change their teaching habits, we have to request to see if we can get academic counseling on a certain day, we have to request a degree on a piece of paper in the end even after completing each and every course with good results, and on top of everything, we have to act as if we’re asking more than we should, like a favor, even after paying the school everything to give us all of these in return. A teacher can skip a class anytime because of personal reasons or change the exam dates, but if you want to skip a class or don’t want to take an exam on a certain day, even your grandmas death is not a sufficient enough justification.

It does make you wonder about one thing: did it turn into this big situation during the past few decades, or has it always been like this? Overall, out of anyone else on campus, I think students make the biggest sacrifices in the weirdest things simply to get a good education.