Okay, this is going to be sort of...well, badly worded, because I'm just not as good at getting my point across as the rest of you here are.

A friend of mine is trying to drop a class at school that is just too time consuming and that he thinks is just not worth taking. It is not required for graduation, yet he needs parental consent to drop the class. He's 17 years old and a high school senior taking way more classes than the normal bare minimal that "lazy" seniors are taking, yet his mother won't let him drop the class, and there seems to be nothing he can do about this.

Am I the only one who is bothered by the number of things that require parental consent these days?

I needed parental consent two years ago to drop chorus. You know...where you sing. It was only "required" because I didn't have an art credit yet, and I got that credit with an easy drawing and painting course the next year, but I needed my mom to sign off on my request to take singing out of my daily schedule. I would never put it down, it just wasn't for me, but come on!