Originally Posted by block30

I'll tell you what, I hear lots of complaining that the cross country requirement is too onerous very frequently. To be honest, that is hard for me to relate to, because I had 500XC pretty easily by 1,500 hours. Besides having the latitude to take students beyond 50 NM, I flew a lot on my own dime. Even as a poor CFI I still rented for a number of reasons, not least of which was to get actual IMC time on IFR cross countries. A pitfall I saw with the other CFIs was that if they rented, it was to take friends or girls on joy rides. If you are going to do that, make a bonafide XC.

With that said, I realize, flight schools and their individual procedures vary, so your experience possibly differs from mine. Since both professionally minded students and CFIs need the XC time, maybe you should attempt to change your school's syllabus or procedures to include plans that kill two birds with one stone as often as possible. Make training flights that will get you to 50 NM and back while integrating flight lesson objectives.