Unfiltered Story #143060

This story takes place over my entire four years of undergraduate work. I’ve decided I want to go into a certain medical field, but the school I’m at doesn’t have a major for that, so I major in biology so that I can have my name on a fancy paper at the end of it.

My advisor for the biology program… well. He prided himself on being very “cool” and “hip” but he had one favorite theory that you couldn’t pass a class without pandering to. Now, this theory had been a pet study of mine in high school and I had some doubts about it that were just increased the more often this professor held forth about it, because… cell biology really doesn’t work that way. At all. But he was determined that it was THE ONE AND ONLY TRUTH of the cell. Whatever, I could play the game.

Eventually, though, this professor started making fun of “those backwater students” who didn’t subscribe to his pet theory, and that was the last straw for me. I let him know that I wasn’t fond of having my conclusions mocked in class. He acted pretty nice still, but he definitely started treating me like a kid. For a guy who prided himself on being “just like all my students” and being the “cool” teacher, treating someone like a kid was a BIG deal. That happened in the Spring semester of my second year; I had this guy every year after that, sometimes multiple times.

My last semester with him, our final project was to write a grant proposal. At this point, it was pretty clear that this guy didn’t like me, and I didn’t like him. My grade wouldn’t let me just not submit the project, so I decided that it was time to write the best grant proposal ever.

I ended up turning in a ten-page first draft of a neurology epigenetics proposal, basically checking to see if developmental changes in the brain caused by too much of a chemical could be passed down to later generations. Epigenetics is weird, but I digress. I had an itemized list of everything I would need, and the budget for that list, down to rat anesthetic, going rates for a lab, and assistant wages (because I’m not taking care of forty-odd rats all by myself.) I spent probably forty late-night hours working on it in the two weeks we had. This thing was SERIOUS business.

We had two weeks left after turning in our proposals to present them to the class. During those two weeks, this professor basically avoided talking to me at all. I’m going to consider that revenge and continue to be pleased and proud about those glorious two weeks of awkward, embarrassed silence.