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Unnecessary Complications: People Who Should Not Be Pursuing an Advanced Degree

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Later on tonight I’ll be giving a presentation in this class that I’m taking for free at the local college where I teach. And while it’s a bit of a pain in the ass to be saddled with a measly five minute presentation when I already have my advanced degree, such is the way of graduate school and I accept that part of the deal. Hey, it’s a free class and it puts me closer to a free graduate certificate so fine, whatever, I’ll do the presentation.

And tonight, giving the presentation won’t even annoy me. In fact, I like giving presentations because once I start presenting an issue I turn into one of these people that like to hear themselves talk. That’s the perfect quality for a presenter to have and I have that quality! What I will be annoyed at tonight, though, is this one moron girl who is enrolled in the same class as me. This girl (and I say “girl” because she is in no way mature enough to be termed a “woman”) is completely unprepared for graduate school work. I’ve been sitting on this entry for a while, but now I intend to share with you why this girl drives me absolutely crazy (and not in a hot, sexy way, either).

First, let me set the scene. As of Fall 2009, I enrolled in a graduate program at the local college where I teach. However, I first enrolled in this program way back in Fall 2003. I left the program after a single semester for a variety of reasons – one of which was that some of my classmates were incredibly unprepared for graduate level work and the thought of sharing the same degree with them made me sick.

Case in point: There was a girl in one of my classes back in Fall 2003 who was a complete freak show. I’m not sure what her disability was, but she cried at the drop of a dime. If you looked at her, she cried. If she raised her hand to answer a question and you called on her, she cried. If she raised her hand and someone else was called to answer the question, she cried. And it wasn’t a gentle weeping. No. This was an angry, frustrated, hateful type of crying – like she was hungry for your soul or some shit.

It was fucking scary.

One time I was assigned to the same group as this weirdo and I’m pretty much the nicest guy on the planet when it comes to working in groups (even though I, like every other graduate or undergraduate student, hate working in groups). The group had to divide up specific parts of the project to complete the work. Fine. Easy enough. Everyone knew that the crier was going to be a problem so we asked her what she wanted to do first. The tears started welling up and a look of incredulous rage came over this girl’s face. One of the women in the group became extra nice and sincere and helpful and told her that it was okay and that she could do whatever she wanted for the group if she just told us. Well… You would have thought that this other girl told the crier that she was a filthy cunt because the look on the crier’s face was the look you’d see on the face of a woman who just had her cat fall into a shredder. Her rage was palpable.

And that was her attitude in every class. She would have been better off enrolled in Michael Meyer’s School of Mass Murder.

Needless to say, I saw that a person like this was accepted into the graduate program and I told myself that I didn’t want to be associated with freaks like that in the job market. Thus, I went to Rutgers, earned my Masters Degree, and moved on.

But now I’m in this program again (because it’s free). I’m taking one class each semester and believe it or not, my class this semester takes place in the same room where I had class with the crier. Go figure.

I’ve surveyed my current classmates and they seem to be of a much higher quality than the group from back in Fall 2003, which is good to see. However, there is an idiot moron girl in this class who makes my fucking skin curl every time she speaks. Why, you ask? Imagine you’re in a graduate level class and you have an idiot who prefaces almost every comment with the word “like.” That’s what this girl does. Further, imagine that each sentence is trailed with either “you know” or “and stuff like that.” That’s what this idiot does. A typical sentence may sound like this:

“Like, what type of theory of communication should we research and stuff like that?”

What the fuck does that even mean?! And better yet – how is this asshole in a graduate program for communication!? Wait! I have the answer to that question because this bimbo told us why she’s there!

During the first class icebreaker/introductions (another waste of time), this dummy said that she’s in the class because her parents selected the program for her and are paying for her to go to graduate school. She went on to say that she didn’t want to go to graduate school, but her parents told her that they were going to pay for her to get an advanced degree to help her out in the job market, and stuff like that. The poor professor was baffled and didn’t know what to say; as a fellow professor sitting in the back of the room, I was shocked at what this girl was revealing to the class.

Frankly, everyone must have been surprised. One of her classmates asked her why she enrolled in a Masters Degree program when she didn’t want to do it, but the professor cut off Idiot Girl before she could respond. Folks, I gotta tell ya – this is the type of person that I would never, EVER hire! And if I was in charge of admissions at the local college, I would have never allowed this woman to get her dummy self in the door to begin with. This girl will be a black mark on the program that she’s in for years to come – mark my words.

It gets worse. So I have to give this presentation tonight. The assigned length of the presentation is 5 minutes. Fine – who can’t do a 5 minute presentation, right? THIS GIRL CAN’T DO A FIVE MINUTE PRESENTATION! In fact, when she gave her presentation a few weeks ago it lasted almost half an hour. As a professor, I appreciate when students go above and beyond, but this girl should have failed the assignment on time management alone. But wait…it still gets worse. Not only did this derelict go on for an additional 23 minutes beyond the time limit, she copied and pasted her entire research paper into the PowerPoint and those 23 minutes consisted of her reading the presentation word for word!

After the first 30 seconds of this bullshit my mind was blaring with: Unacceptable! Unacceptable! Failure! Failure!

If I was the professor of this class, I would have cut the student off at the ten minute mark and failed her immediately. And if she wanted more time, I would have publicly embarrassed her by saying that we can all read and we don’t need her to read her paper to us since it’s up on the PowerPoint screen (albeit it in fine print because she had WAY too much text on each slide).

Sooooo…

As you’re hanging out doing what you do tonight, know that at around 7:00pm EST tonight I’ll be ready to punch the wall in the classroom where I’m listening to an idiot prattle on in a program that she doesn’t want to be in and performing at a level that is unacceptable for even undergraduate work.

Have You Ever Felt Like You Needed an All-Nighter?

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Initially, I wrote the headline of this entry at the beginning of last week – Tuesday, March 16th to be exact – and stopped writing because I was getting tired. But I felt like the point was still relevant enough to be made so here we are eleven days later and I have a shortened entry for your reading pleasure!

The impetus to write this entry comes from the fact that I often find myself ramping up my quality productivity as the day goes on. Sure, I hit the 3:00pm slump just like the rest of us (we’re actually biologically engineered to need a nap at 3:00pm – more on that in a coming entry). However, I find that as I begin to wind my day down from 9:30pm to 10:00pm, there are often times when I feel like I can really dig into a project and get something completed.

I’ve complained numerous times on this blog about how much I hate my commute. Not only is it physically draining and exhausting, but it eats up a large portion of each day. I think I’ve gotten to place now where I’m ready to pounce on certain action items at 10:00pm – once my body has recovered from the exhaustion of commuting and working all day. And while that might be good information for me to know, it is not necessarily something that I can act on when I have to get up again the next morning and get back to work!

I’ll figure something out. I think that an all-nighter (in my case, I’m talking about staying up until 2pm or 3pm) is necessary every once in a while, especially when you think you can knock out a bunch of tasks during that extra time frame.

Unnecessary Complications: Graduate School Work

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In case you don’t already know, I have a Master of the Arts Degree in Public Policy with two concentrations – one in nonprofit management and the other in community economic development. Since I have this degree (it’s called an MPP degree for short), I’m allowed to teach undergraduate courses in Public Policy and related disciplines.

Well, since I have some bills that need to be paid (i.e. student loans) and since I always thought that I would make a great teacher or Professor, I decided to accept an adjunct teaching post at the local college. It’s a lot of fun and you can usually come to this blog to read some of my observations with respect to teaching today’s undergraduate students.

Everything seems okay thus far, right? Good!

Well, one of the perks of teaching at the local college is that you can take a certain number of credits for free during the semester that you teach. Again, as I racked up over $120 thousand in student loan debt on my way to my MPP degree, it’s very hard for me to turn down the possibility of taking free classes that will ultimately lead to a graduate certificate in a discipline that I am interested in pursuing as a future career. Further, it is hard to say no to these free classes when they might also lead to me receiving a second Masters Degree in this same discipline. And yes, that would be a free Masters Degree…

Anyway, the unnecessary complication that is related to this scenario is the work that comes along with being a graduate student! I should fully explain this, though. I’m not suggesting that graduate students should do less work. In fact, I would argue that graduate students should do a higher difficulty level of work than the undergraduate student population. Makes sense, right? And I’m not saying that the work that I have to do in this graduate program is either too hard or too remedial. Actually, the two professors that I’ve chosen to take most of my classes with are excellent, former real world practitioners who “get” that graduate school isn’t about busy work. They assign projects that are of real use in the real world – and that’s really important if you ask me.

However, I think that I get a bit exasperated with the work that is assigned because of the fact that I already have an advanced degree. Maybe it’s an inner elitism or a subconscious knowledge that I don’t really need the additional graduate certificate or potential Masters Degree – I don’t know. On a conscious level, I do know that I don’t particularly have the time in an already overcrowded schedule to set aside hours for researching and writing papers.

But that’s what you get when you enter this type of program, so I won’t complain about the work associated with the classes too much. I will, however, complain about some other observations that I’ve made while being in this program…more on that to come in a future entry!

Are High School Guidance Counselors Doing Their Jobs?

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There was a time when if you wanted to get my Mother, who reads this blog (hi Mom!), really pissed off all you had to do was ask her about my high school guidance counselor. Forget about it! My Mom used to get really fired up over what my high school counselor did, or more aptly didn’t do, for me when I was a high school student.

Oh, this is going to be one of those longer entries that deals with a personal story from my past which I think you might find entertaining. So sit back and relax and read a little bit of my history…

Before I get started with my story, I thought that I would let you know how this memory was dug out of the recesses of my mind. The other day the New York Times published an article that talked about how high school guidance counselors are receiving failing grades from their students. The article says:

Most people who graduated from high school in the last dozen years believe that their guidance counselors provided little meaningful advice about college or careers, a new study has found. And many said the best advice on their futures came from teachers.

“Most young adults who go on to college believe that the advice of their high school guidance counselors was inadequate and often impersonal and perfunctory,” according to the study by Public Agenda, a nonprofit research organization.

I just fall into that category of people who have graduated high school in the last twelve years. And I can safely say that my high school guidance counselor strongly falls into the category of someone who never gave me “meaningful advice about college or careers.” She definitely “was inadequate and often impersonal and perfunctory.” Frankly, she absolutely sucked at her job and I hope that she didn’t do to other students what she did to me.

Intrigued yet? Read on!

Let me set the stage. I was always an outstanding student. I swept the eighth grade graduation winning almost every academic award that Mount Arlington Public School offered including the Academic Excellence award. It was the same story in high school, where I routinely received straight A’s in honors and advanced placement classes. On top of being a great student, I was a highly involved student, too. I was Vice-President of my Freshman class and then President of my class through Junior year when I became the President of the Student Council for my Senior year. I was a varsity starter on the football, wrestling, and spring track teams and captain of the wrestling team in my Senior year. I was the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association scholar athlete of the year my Senior year in high school. I was in a bunch of honor societies including the National Honor Society. I even wrote for the school newspaper!

Needless to say, I was clearly a highly involved student – and not just “involved” with bullshit clubs that had two or three members. I was one of the leaders in my high school of approximately 1800 students.

So we’ve set the stage.

When a kid like me is getting ready to start applying to colleges, he obviously gets offers from all over the place. Now, I could go into how we were bombarded at my house with letters and packages from colleges who wanted me to apply, but that would detract from the story about how inept my old guidance counselor was during my senior year. So we’ll focus on a few schools – Muhlenberg College, Bloomsburg University, Harvard University, Princeton University, Rutgers University, and Monmouth University. Why focus on just these schools? Because these are the ones that I applied to when I was in high school.

In truth, I really wanted to go to Muhlenberg College because my football coach had worked out an arrangement for me to get, essentially, a free ride at the school where I would be playing football and possibly even wrestling in the off season. That’s what I wanted to do and I was glad that an arrangement was being worked out – I even remember meeting with the Muhlenberg College coaches on one of their visits to Roxbury High School my Senior year. In fact, I only applied to the other schools just because I wanted to see what the responses were (although I did apply to Monmouth University because they were also recruiting me to play football – which is a story for another time).

Like any overachieving student, I prepared all of my college applications well in advance of their due dates and brought them to my guidance counselor at Roxbury High School at the beginning of October in my Senior year (this would be October 1998). The reason I had to bring them to my guidance counselor was so she could attach my official transcript and get them out during the early admission period. Roxbury High School also had a service where they sent the entire application package out on behalf of the students, which was great! So, I brought my applications to the guidance counselor, she told me they would be sent off by the end of the week, and that was the end of that process. She also mentioned that sometimes colleges take weeks or even months to get back to the applicants, so I should sit tight for a while.

And I sat tight…

My senior year of football was incredible. We were going at a million miles an hour and we wound up winning the first state championship in Roxbury High School history which was major news in our town. From that victory I went on to become the captain of the wrestling team and I even won one of the winter tournaments that the wrestling team went to each year. I was pretty packed with things going on and while the college letters continued to come in, they eventually stopped coming in altogether at some time in January 1999. I thought this was weird so I asked my guidance counselor what was going on and I also brought up that I hadn’t heard from any of the schools that had I applied to yet. She told me that the applications were sent and that she would follow up with the colleges to see if they had accepted me yet.

My guidance counselor never got back to me with an update.

The months kept going by and I never heard from any of the colleges. Finally, at some point at the end of March 1999 I went in to my guidance counselor’s office and asked her what I should do. She said that she would follow up with the colleges and get back to me (sound familiar?). At this point, I began to get the impression that she was incompetent and that something must be up. I should also comment that I had been keeping my Mom apprised of the situation the entire time…

About two weeks after I went to see my guidance counselor (we’re in the middle of April 1999 at this point), I was called to her office where she told me that I had to sign some paperwork. I signed the paperwork and nonchalantly asked her what it was for. She said that it was for my transcripts to be attached to my applications so they could be sent out.

You guys putting the pieces together here? Can you see what happened here yet? If not, let me make it very clear for you…

My guidance counselor received my college applications in October 1998 and did not send them to the colleges until April 1999!

This idiot finally got around to sending out my college applications half a year after I gave them to her in the first place and months after she had already told me that the applications were sent out! My reaction at the time was, “WHAT?!”

I almost immediately knew that my chances at getting that free ride/double sport package at Muhlenburg College were gone. However, at the time I couldn’t comprehend how this woman even had a job bad of a position my guidance counselor put me in…but my Mom knew what this woman did to me. And Mom took action!

I went home and told my Mom what my guidance counselor told me and, from what I remember, all Hell broke loose! My Mom may need to refresh my memory on what happened next, but she either physically went to the high school or called the high school and went ape shit on this idiot guidance counselor. Like most Moms, my Mom is good at going crazy when other people’s incompetence negatively affects her children. Hey – you don’t mess with someone’s kids, you know? As I recall, I’m pretty sure my Mom threatened this woman with lawsuits and possibly with some physical damage (my Mom doesn’t take any shit from any one – she’ll smack a bitch if the situation calls for it).

From what I remember, after Hurricane Mom dealt with my guidance counselor I was called back into the useless counselor’s office and the woman promised me that she would be calling each college personally to admit that she made a major mistake and that my applications shouldn’t be viewed negatively because of her incompetence. She was also going to try to get me the dual sport package back at Muhlenburg College as well as the various scholarship money that I was eligible for given the fact that I was averaging a perfect 4.0 on a 4.0 GPA basis.

Well, Muhlenburg wasn’t interested so that whole package was gone. Rutgers said that they were interested, but that I was past some deadline for certain types of financial aid and that I’d have to pay most of the tuition. Bloomsburg said that they would take me, but only if I was in their History program (which I didn’t want to be in at all). Harvard never responded. And Princeton said they would be interested, but that they couldn’t offer a financial aid package and that I would have to be in an academic program that I didn’t want to be in (I don’t remember which one it was – something with science, I think). The only one who accepted me on the spot and offered multiple thousands of dollars in scholarship funds was Monmouth University. I accepted the Monmouth University offer and that was the end of my dealings with my completely incompetent high school guidance counselor.

My Mom thought that I had a legitimate lawsuit against the high school and the guidance counselor and I agreed (she probably still thinks I have a legitimate lawsuit). In fact, I think that the incompetence of the woman who was my guidance counselor cut short what was an otherwise meteoric academic rise for me throughout my younger years. I mean look – I was on a roll! And I was going along at the speed of light until I hit the brick wall that was the incompetence of my high school guidance counselor.

Looking back, I was pretty aggravated at how this whole thing went down. At the time, I really wanted to play football in college and I thought that with my grades and extracurricular involvement that I should be qualifying to go to school for free (and I still believe that I should have gotten a free ride in college). Granted, I did have an opportunity to play football at Monmouth University, but it didn’t work out – which, again, is an entry for another time (which most of you will find pretty interesting).

However, I’ve learned many things from my experience with my inept guidance counselor. First, I’ve learned the ins and outs of the entire college admissions process. This is something that no one in my family really knew inside and out prior to me going to college and this fiasco with my guidance counselor. Second, I learned that most high school guidance counselors cannot be trusted to be effective at their jobs (also proven by the New York Times article linked above). And third, I learned that when it comes time for my kids, my nieces, and my nephews (when they’re all born) to apply to college that I would like to take an active role in their application process so that they aren’t screwed over by their guidance counselors like my counselor screwed me over.

I wonder how many other students were academically harmed by this woman’s inability to perform the basic functions of her job. I wonder why she was able to keep that job for so long. I wonder how many students could have gone to Ivy League schools if this woman knew how to do her job correctly. Isn’t it amazing to consider how many lives one person’s incompetence has either ruined or negatively affected?

To end on a good note, though, the other day I went to my old high school’s website and the incompetent moron who served as my guidance counselor is no longer employed by Roxbury High School. Thank God no one else has to suffer getting their legs cut out from underneath them because of that horrible, miserable woman.

Celebrating President’s Day with a Trip Down Memory Lane

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In recognition of America’s great Presidents, most people have off from work today. And though today is a day to remember the great lives of men like Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Ronald Reagan, and Franklin Roosevelt, I thought I would take today to talk about all of the times that I was President of an organization. I figure the shoe fits, somewhat…

Once upon a time I was the Vice-President of the eighth grade class back in Mount Arlington Public School. At the same time I was President of the school’s band. I really can’t remember much about either position, so I don’t have anything to comment on here. Sorry.

High School
When I got to Roxbury High School, I ran for Vice-President of the Freshman class and won that election. I don’t recall much about what we did Freshman year other than maybe a fundraiser or two. I wasn’t overly pleased with the position of being “Vice-President” so as Sophomore year came closer I ran against the sitting President for her position and won. As I recall, being President of the Sophomore class was very much like the being Vice-President of the Freshman class – we didn’t do much. You know, sometimes these high school kids run for office on platforms of being able to change the food in the cafeteria or being able to get better parking situations for the students. The reality is that all of that stuff is off limits to the students and handled by teachers and unions.

Anyway, I ran for President of the Junior class (won that one, too) and at least in this position I was able to plan our Junior Prom. That was a lot of fun because we had a certain budget to work within (I don’t remember how much it was now, but it was thousands of dollars) and we managed to come in under budget. That was a good accomplishment and something that I don’t think normally happened when planning these things.

As my Junior year came to a close I had to choose between running for President of the Senior class or running for the President of the Student Council. There were two things that swayed my decision. The first was that the President of the Senior class is the President of the class for life. In other words, you have to horde all of the memorabilia for the class, you have to plan the reunions, you have to try to stay in touch with everyone…not for me. The second thing that swayed my decision was that the President of the Student Council was a more prestigious position.

So I ran for Student Council President and won (there’s a pattern here, guys). One of my good friends from grade school was running for the President of the Senior class so I endorsed her candidacy and she wound up winning, too.

I liked being Student Council President because it gave me direct access to the Principal and allowed me to plan some of the school-wide events like spirit days and some of our community-based events. For example, Roxbury High School holds a dance every year at the high school for the local senior citizen center. I helped to plan that event and it was really a lot of fun. Also, Roxbury has a winter dance for all students every year and that was a lot of fun to plan, too. And since my buddy was the President of the Senior class, I helped her plan our Senior Prom.

Being President of the Junior class and Student Council President was great training on how to work within a budget, how to manipulate a budget, how to advertise and publicize events where people need to purchase tickets to attend, etc. I really enjoyed those positions. Oh, and on my way out of Roxbury High School I was in charge of the school-wide elections so I convinced a bunch of the younger football players and wrestlers who I had been mentoring to run for positions and I think almost all of them won. I thought that was a good way to leave a lasting impression on the school.

Monmouth University – Sigma Pi Fraternity
When I arrived at college I could have kept climbing the ladder and eventually become President of the Student Government, but I really had no interest. In fact, I had no interest in being “involved” other than doing my school work and making new friends. And that’s what I did for my first semester – met new people, scored a 3.9 GPA, had a whole lot of fun – typical college stuff. But sometimes you can’t hold down the urge inside…

When my second semester began, I decided to pledge Sigma Pi Fraternity (there’s another story behind that, which I might get to at some point). I think there were 9 or 10 guys in my pledge class – I don’t remember any more. However, I do remember that they made me the President of the pledge class and I remember that because they elected me as the President due to my high grades, but the position of President meant that I was quizzed and questioned before the rest of the guys. No big deal, I learned the fraternity history pretty quickly so I didn’t mind.

After I was initiated (almost ten years ago), I didn’t really come around to any of the meetings or events until the week before the semester ended (and at that, I only really remember going to a party and eventually passing out on a couch that was broken and busted). When I began my first full semester as a member of the chapter it had been quite some time since I was in a position of real power (over a year since I was Student Council President). So the urge to do something substantial was bearing down on me and at the end of the semester I opted to run against the sitting President of the fraternity (who was a very well-respected Senior).

That guy dropped out of the race before the guys cast their ballots and I won by default. That was December 2000. I kept running for re-election and remained the President of the chapter until January 2003 (which was actually one month too long, but we did the transfer ceremony to the next President late).

There are a bunch of reasons why I remained President for so long. At its core, I think the reason is because I needed the challenge that the Presidency gave to me and the chapter needed the professionalism that I demanded of myself and the organization. It was a good, symbiotic relationship that was helped by this thing in my head that demands that I become the best at what I do, period. So while I was President, we ended a lot of the bad traditions in the chapter and started (or brought back) some better ones. More than anything else, I remember that being chapter President was more like running a small town than a small business. I say that because when you run a small business you have your actions and maybe the actions of two or three other people to worry about in addition to your finances, advertising, planning for the future, etc. Running a fraternity chapter, though, encompasses all of those things but to a much higher degree. Plus, you had to work within regional and national structures as well as with local officials. Also, at one point we had over 50 guys (which is a substantial number for Monmouth University’s campus – about 2.5% of all men on the campus were members of our fraternity) and all of the guys were out there doing their own thing.

One of the reasons that I was an effective leader, I think, was because I delegated responsibility and didn’t get bogged down in the nitty gritty bullshit that takes place in fraternity chapters. When the guys wanted to have a party, I had people that took care of the parties. When the guys wanted to have a rush event, I had a committee that took care of the rush event. When we had to teach the new classes about the fraternity, we had guys to do that, too. I saw my job as managing the fraternity’s relationship with the external communities and training/guiding the rest of my leadership team on how to manage the chapter.

It was pretty damn successful, too. We dug ourselves out of a $9,000 debt, more than tripled the size of the chapter, and skyrocketed up the national rankings (the chapter was eventually ranked #1 in the nation while I was the Chapter Director a.k.a. local advisor). Plus, our image on campus was heightened by all of the great things we were doing to the point where I won my final election to become President of the InterFraternity Council…and I wasn’t even present at the election!

Being IFC President was fun because when the university told us that we couldn’t do certain things that are fundamental parts of self-governing, I dissolved the IFC. That spark was part of what eventually lead to a somewhat reform of Greek Life at Monmouth University, but that’s an entry for another time.

So there you have it, folks. Those are all of the times (that I can remember) where I was President of an organization. Happy President’s Day!