I would've hated me in college

I was digging through some old archives of stuff I wrote in college. I had a weekly opinions column in the main rag for about 2 and a half years. Then, senior year, we started up a short-lived left-wing activist newspaper and I wrote regularly for that. For that second paper, most of my articles can be summed up by the title "The world is going to hell, learn about it." But for that first paper, I apparently decided to be the world's biggest jerk-off. In every article I skimmed (I couldn't bring myself to read any start to finish), I was saying how awful the administration of the school was, how terrible the students were, and how pissed off I was about the whole thing.

Reading it now, I don't really recognize myself. I remember writing that stuff, and I remember that, particularly by senior year, when I was fairly happy and content, I had to listen to Nine Inch Nails and other angry music to psyche myself up to write that garbage. I'm not sure why I kept it up.

I first got into journalism in high school, wanting to be a humor columnist or an arts critic. Then, somewhere around sophomore year of college, I got really angry. I'm just glad that's over now.

But then, looking at the other stuff in the old newspapers, remembering the obnoxious people I went to college with (before discovering a large contingent of relatively grounded people senior year), it starts coming back to me. They were mostly blonde-haired, blue-eyed, rich, Northface-wearing, Nalgene-bottle carrying, ski and/or get sloshed every weekend, live oblivious to the world type people. I better stop thinking about it before I turn into a raving jerk-off again.