Really, President Obama needs to liven things up a bit. We’re looking for change from him, not the same old boring “what the hell is he talking about?” crap! I will say, though, that it was nice to watch the President of the United States and not have to worry about him saying something that made absolutely no sense. On the other hand, while the rest of country goes crazy over Obama’s speaking style, I really, really hate it. I know that the biased liberal media will never publish a negative thing about his speaking style, but this man relies on “ehhh” and “ihhh” WAY too much when he talks. Go back and listen to the entire speech (if you can stomach it) and try to count how many times he interjects “ehhh” and “ihhh” in a single sentence. It’s alarming.

Again, the alternative could be, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…you can’t fool me twice.” Good grief.

But even as I take my own potshot at President George W. Bush, I have to say that it was a little gross that Obama cited the federal leadership of the last eight years as the reason for the current economic downturn. Look, I agree with the rest of the gang that the folks running the world down in Washington were a little goofed up, but that includes the Democrats, too. Further, the biggest perpetrators of our current problems were the greedy people on Wall Street and the ignorant people on Main Street. The root of this downturn is the devastated housing market. The root of the devastated housing market are people who were buying $500,000 homes when they could only afford $150,000 homes. The side-root of that same problem were the bankers who gave mortgages to people who couldn’t afford their homes!

Ugh…it’s not all about Bush! I had hoped that Obama would bring this country past the Bush derangement syndrome, but after his campaign-style speech last night, I guess that real change hasn’t come…yet.

Monmouth University is offering a course that falls directly in line with what I do for a living (it’s about various approaches to fundraising). My company and I felt that it would be good for my “professional development” and that since it was so close to home, I should pursue the course. I agreed and this ultimately led to a huge hassle with the Monmouth University administration (who managed to not only get a $35 application fee out of me, but also to double-charge me for a parking ticket that I apparently received as an undergraduate and would have to have paid already in order to graduate). For those out there in the working world, I can sum up my experiences trying to take this course very simply – Monmouth University is not prepared or ready to offer professional development courses.

Not only was I treated like an 18 year-old kid who was just starting college, but even after establishing that I was an alumnus of the university, a part-time employee of the university, and that I had a Masters Degree and thus was not interested in applying for a Masters Degree program – the folks on the phone still couldn’t fathom what I was trying to do. What was I trying to do? Audit a course for professional development. Simple. Unfortunately, until their professional development admittance procedure is more “professional,” I will not be able to recommend to any of my professional colleagues that they attend MU to learn more about their trades.

Class started this past Monday night and I immediately remembered why I left Monmouth’s Masters Program after one semester a few years ago. The atmosphere in the classroom was uniquely Monmouth. The teacher treated the students as though they were incoming Freshmen and the requirements for the course look almost exactly like what one would expect out of a Freshman Seminar class. There are four 3-page papers, three 3-minute presentations, and a group project all due in the semester. We were lectured for about 20 minutes on the importance of not having a cell phone ring during class time. We were reprimanded in advance for missing any scheduled classes and scolded about how our final grade would be effected. I’m auditing the course, so I’m getting an “AU” as a grade no matter what I do.

But what shocked me the most on the first night was how the course description was changed before our eyes. It’s a little bit hard to explain, but the course description that sold me on the course was changed to include this course as a subsection of a larger study, which wasn’t what I was sold. The thing is, I’ve been through the Monmouth system before I and I realize there is no use in complaining because it gets no where; the system is specifically set up to be hard to navigate and tedious. This is why I loved going to Rutgers so much (in my view, Rutgers handled problems before they even popped up).

But I’m smart enough to realize that the pre-class administrative nightmare should have no bearing on my perception of the course and the first night of class should have little influence on my overall recommendation of the course itself, so I will reserve a final judgment until the course ends. I will say, however, that so far I’ve gotten exactly what I expected out of Monmouth…