It’s not at all about the Benjamins. In fact it is all about the minute hands. Professors all have different ways of managing and interacting with their students. I tend to prefer the professors who have a model most dissimilar (in their own various ways) to a business model of management. I don’t really want to think of my professor as my employer (Hooray I won’t need to anyways!). Even the professors that run their group most unlike a business, there is still the reality that this professor has a limited amount of time. How much time should a new student, especially one who has not chosen a particular professor as their adviser, take from that professor? Depending on how the professor manages its time, the new student is just stealing time from existing students. Ethically how much time can I take from a professor without declaring them my adviser? A professor has to spend some time recruiting new students, but at what point is the student exploiting this fact and taking more than their unfair share of professors’ time?