I was on academic probation last year.This Saturday, my efforts to redeem my situation will pay off with the help of 92,599 of my closest friends.Taking a semester break from pissing off half of the campus and all of Student Government in my columns was the second toughest decision I’ve made as a University student, just after resigning from the University after Hurricane Katrina.With my GPA below 2.0 and probation in place, I walked up to Tiger Stadium last fall hoping the ticket counters simply wouldn’t notice.They did notice and politely — read: sarcastically — asked me to step away from the Valley.As grateful as I can be about being stopped from witnessing a lackluster 8-5 season, it hurt to be prevented from getting that feeling when the entire stadium shakes after the Golden Band from Tigerland steps onto the field.I vowed, right then and there, I would return to Tiger Stadium to regain that feeling for the Fall of 2009.I set a “Geauxl.”This Geauxl — and kudos to my cousin for coining this term for me — sits at the heart of President Obama’s speech to the nation’s schoolchildren yesterday, along with the idiocy of the conservative argument against said speech. I’ve never heard the word “indoctrination” used so flippantly.Most of the complaints about the leader of the free world speaking to the nation’s schoolchildren on the first day of class had to do with needless politics. In a “lesson plan” sent out by the White House, schoolteachers were encouraged to facilitate discussion among the children by asking such awful questions like, “What is the President trying to tell me,” “What is the President asking me to do,” and “What new ideas and actions is the President challenging me to think about?”The controversy was spurred by anti-intellectuals who fear that the president actually will indoctrinate their kids and brainwash them into falling hook, line and sinker for the entire Obama agenda.God forbid our third graders agree with the need for health care reform.The most prominent critic of the speech was Jim Greer, Chairman of the Florida Republican Party, who made the rounds on CNN and MSNBC all weekend. He argued, before the remarks were posted on the White House Web site, it was unfair for Obama’s “socialist ideology” to be imposed onto students.After reading his remarks, Greer had no problem with Obama’s remarks, adding, “It remains to be seen if it’s the speech he’s going to give,” according to the New York Times.His and other inflammatory remarks about the president giving a speech to schoolchildren — which other socialist pigs as Ronald Reagan and Bushes I and II did as well — sparked so much controversy, parents actually kept children home from school yesterday to protest.This raises an important question about whether these parents were worried their kids would listen to Obama — and not just his Fox News caricature parroted by their parents — and actually understand what he said.The message he did give to schoolchildren had to do with personal responsibility and their potential successes being dependent on hard work. Toward the end of the speech, Obama laid down the gauntlet. “If you’re quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.”I quit on myself a year ago, but it took a ban from Tiger Stadium to make me get my act together.Goals are what you make of them and are unique to each individual. The promise of financial success wasn’t enough to get me to want to do well in school. But I found my own reason to want to be successful, embodying the same message Obama wanted to get across to our nation’s children.This Saturday, when the band walks on the field and plays the first four notes of “Four Corners,” 92,599 fans will lose their minds and scream with every fiber of their being.Look out for me.I’ll be the one who looks like he just saw a Geauxl become a reality.Eric Freeman Jr. is a 22-year-old political science senior from New Orleans. Follow him on Twitter@TDR_efreeman.—-Contact Eric Freeman Jr. at [email protected]