Background: I was a senior at a very prestigious, high-ranking university in the US. At the time my GPA was around a 3.9 and had never had any issues with professors (and actually socialized with a few outside of class).
Fall semester I ended up getting pinned taking two classes from a female professor that had a reputation for being an extreme feminist. I only mention the "feminist" part because this reputation preceded her around campus. My adviser who was female, basically said "sorry about this" but I have to put you in her classes. I also mention it because the department head (later in story) is very quick to pull me from her class with little discussion. I am not anti-feminist nor did I care. If anything it made me act more cautious around her.
Both of the classes were very basic so I figured, whatever. Well I get my first few papers back and there is little feedback other than very minor sentence rewording. "C"s. No notes.
I ask her about her office hours (after class) so I can talk about the issues on the papers. She simply told me she finds me intimidating and that she would rather talk to me in class with other people around. This was my first direct interaction with her, and I was standing beside a few friends.
So I ask her what I need to do to not get a "C". She says that she doesn't feel comfortable talking to me because she feels threatened—again I have two or three female friends standing a few feet from me. That's it. She wouldn't talk to me because I was a big male. (At the time I was boxing professionally but I really doubt she knew this. As a 6'3" 200-pound white male, she just would not talk to me based on how I looked.)
Next step was going to the department chair. Basically he looked at a few of my papers and we went around in circles over the grades. But that didn't matter. The professor basically told him exactly what she told me. And she told him that it was the first time I had ever talked to her.
He offered to grade the rest of my papers and give me grades for the classes. I opted out of that because basically I would have started off with a 70% in each class (he could not change my grades, I was told). So he offered pass/fail. I took that option. Didn't go to class. Turned in a bunch of papers and passed both classes.
My question is did I handle this correctly? Should I have paid for those two classes? What would be the norm in this situation from a student's perspective?
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