That one professor who took 5 minutes to actually listen to me

I had this moment last semester at City College where I was struggling in my intro to marketing class. I went to office hours expecting the usual quick advice, but my professor, Dr. Chen, just leaned back and asked me what I actually wanted to do after school. I told her about my idea for a small local event planning thing I was trying on the side. Instead of brushing it off, she spent a solid 20 minutes brainstorming how I could use the class project to test a real budget for it. She even pulled up a free template on her laptop and showed me how to tweak it for my neighborhood in Austin. It was just one conversation, but it made me realize I was overcomplicating things by focusing on big names instead of small wins. Has anyone else had a teacher or mentor do something small like this that actually changed how you approached your work?

2 comments

2 Comments

michael_patel28d ago

Buddy of mine had a similar thing with his photography professor. Dude spent a whole hour just looking at his crappy landscape photos. Told him to stop chasing sunsets and shoot the alley behind his apartment. Completely changed how he saw light.

the_henry28d ago

Oh man, that's such a good point @michael_patel. I've been thinking about that idea of constraints actually, how having limits forces you to be more creative. Your buddy's professor basically gave him a box and said "make something good in here" instead of endless wide open spaces. Maybe it's the same reason some of those old phone cameras had better composition than the big fancy ones - you had to work with what you got. Idk, but there's something about peeling back the options that really makes you look harder at what's left.