Okay, proffies, you really don't get it. We don't want to be your friends -- we're not interested in "collaborating," and we KNOW we're not "real peers." We're kissing your ass because getting into med/law/business school requires a high GPA and if that means we have to look deeply in your eyes and feed your ego, so be it. Some of us are insecure, still emotionally in high school, and want a surrogate mommy. Some of us just enjoy fucking with you. A few of us are actually nice, and we're genuinely this nice to everyone -- classmates, custodians, cafeteria ladies. Most of us are some combination of all of these.
In my freshman year, I had a proffie relationship much like the one you've been discussing on RYS. I was a stupid, insecure freshman who'd had a substandard high school education, and he saw a lump of coal he could make into a diamond. Long story short, I ended up hearing all about his abusive mother while he was drunk and he intimidated me into picking a major/department that was well outside my talents and interests. Eventually I grew a spine, changed majors/departments, and started avoiding him.
Now I'm in a major I love, and this semester my GPA was a 4.0, up from a low of 1.7 in the other major.
My point? I don't think students should be influenced in that way by an authority figure -- we need space to figure out what we want to do with our lives, and the fear of letting a professor/"friend" down can lead to delays in doing what we really want to do. Certain opportunities (such as double-majoring or even getting a minor) are closed to me because I spent so much time in the wrong major, taking classes that count only as electives in my current major.
Yeah, it's my fault and my responsibility, but I'm saying it so profs realize that their influence on students may not always be positive.
