I hate my professor

The professor in my college writing class gave us some short stories to read. One of them was absolutely GOATED and I loved every word of it. It was, no joke, perhaps the best short story I have ever read. It had two amazing main characters with distinct voices and personalities, a wealth of philosophical discourse, amazing ideas framed as stories within the story, beautiful prose, the occasional humor, and absolutely jam-packed deep symbolism. The ending was shocking but also made total sense based on the characters' wants/needs, and a major tear-jerker as well.

We had to write a big essay on a story of our choice. I immediately decided on this. But when I told the professor about how I wanted to explore how the story's symbols work... He shot me down saying that my analysis is not nearly cultural enough, and our class NEEDS to explore things from a cultural perspective. So I had to abandon like the 4 author interviews I found as supporting sources and the hundreds of words of analysis I have already written, pivoting to a less competently written story instead

The title is kinda lying. I don't HATE hate him, but I really wished I could have written about the story I loved. I feel super conflicted about the story I have to analyze right now :(