petty_griper

This has nothing to do with the parent's point. Being the "gadfly" may have value, but it's also inherently aggressive. That's why they killed him, after all. You have to be prepared to defend the value of your particular aggressive provocation- maybe it leads to enlightened self-reflection, but maybe it leads to someone shooting up a mosque.

Everyone is a political activist, even people just going about their day. The only difference is the degree to which you're honest with yourself and others about it.

It's clearly agenda-driven reporting, but it's that agenda is also very clearly rooted in the facts they report.

Ironically, I think you may dislike it because it's exposed you to an uncomfortable truth, which is that some political agendas are rooted in facts and others are not.

This is bizarrely instrumental reason. Few of my classmates are now captains of industry or even in my career field, but I have extremely fond memories of my college experience because it was a nurturing, supportive environment where I had a close-knit community of friends, access to a lot of different resources to pursue my interests and the freedom to experiment and explore how I wanted to live life, all relatively free of stress and serious obligations.

Granted, I went to a smallish regional state school. The experience there, or at, say, Small Liberal Arts College, may be very different from Big State Engineering or Pressure Cooker Elite U.

There are plenty of studious music majors, plenty of liberal arts majors capable of catching up with their C.S. major peers with a year or so of dedicated study, and plenty of people who party hard and are still qualified and capable to do the work that you do.

Your comment reads more like sour grapes about your own college experience than anything else ;)