So I met this guy.

It was this typical boy-meets-boy, one boy is a smartass writer for The Miami Student while the other boy is a psycho, right-wing sh*t show type of deal. For anonymity's sake I'll call this guy "John Ashcroft's Skid Mark" (or "Jasm" for short, which is really close enough to "Jasmine" to just call it a day). I met Jasmine when he left a Facebook message for me following the publication of my article on state Rep. Tom Brinkman who is suing Miami over its same-sex partner benefits. It said, and this is a direct quote, "Hey man sweet article about brinkman! (sic) ... but a least youre scoring points with all the fags and losers of our school (sic). you must have like ... 800 new boyfriends by now huh!? anyone one of which you could get domestic benefits with ... until Miami LOSES the lawsuit of course! (sic, sic, sic, sic)."

Never one to shy away from the opportunity to be a flagrant asshole, I spent the next month or so shooting back smarmy messages to Jasmine and showing his responses to my friends and family for my own sick giggles, but finally I got a little tired when he heaped praise upon John Ashcroft for his thought-provoking speech about how terrorists hate us because of our freedom (if you'd like to be a speech writer for Mr. Ashcroft you can go to his Web site, just so long as you can make a political argument as if you're talking to a mentally-handicapped 5-year-old).

So I took the time to explain to Jasmine all the fallacies of Ashcroft's argument regarding the Bush wiretaps, even including some really good magazine articles that made my point better than I could. Jasmine wrote me back to say that not only did he not look up these swell articles I'd helpfully cited for him, but he didn't bother to read the message. And furthermore he told me that while I was good for a chuckle every now and then, no one takes me seriously.

Ouch. After the tears had slowed, the snot had dried to my face and I'd held my stuffed bear Mr. Blinkers for a while, I recovered.

The point of this story is not to single out this one guy (although if you've read some of his other Facebook work, most of you would agree he certainly deserves it). The point is to leave you a little advice. We'll call it a Markley public service message. Here's the deal: I've been at Miami for four years now and probably the best thing I've learned is that there is a big difference between "learning" and learning.

People like Jasmine take their classes, they have majors and they're all getting degrees, but they haven't learned anything the way some people I know have. I have a friend who went to Nicaragua where banana and sugar cane workers protest a dangerous work environment by threatening to kill themselves because nothing else gets anyone's attention. He's learned something and it's something a lot more god damn profound than anything I can claim.

But you don't have to go to Nicaragua for that. You can read a newspaper and understand that there are things going on in this world where words like "injustice" don't really do the job. Read a Rolling Stone article about the reconstruction of New Orleans (the issue's got Jack Bauer on the cover and I won't deny that I read about him first). Read this book called Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins, and trust me, it'll blow your damn mind into separate blood-soaked halves with skull fragments still dangling from your scalp.

This is not about ideology either. It's much more challenging to listen to those who disagree with you when developing your own ideas. I spent a year doing this at The Miami Student with my co-editor, Chris Gardner. Chris and I have virtually no common political opinions, yet listening to my own ideas challenged during editorial board helped me discover ways to defend my own world view. It made me a stronger thinker, and as hard as it may be to believe, a better person (I quickly negated this "better person" nonsense when I got into a fist fight with an elderly leukemia patient and broke his clavicle in four places; I won't go into the details, but that son of a bitch had it coming).

All I'm saying is don't be complacent in your beliefs or your view of the social, economical, political and human worlds. It's so easy to just sit back in this awesome, incredible, beautiful life we've all been given (and I'll be the first to admit, I live the sh*t out of that life) and never take that extra step. Don't do it. I'm telling you right now, from the scared freshman girl hoping to make friends by joining a sorority to the man sitting in a $3,000 suit in the White House, every one of us will be worse off for it.

As for Jasmine, I'd like to offer him the olive branch by saying that I'd like to get a beer with him sometime. We could just sit down and hash out our differences, really get to know each other. Perhaps after that we could go back to my place and continue our drinking and discussion. Who knows? Maybe we'd be up late. Perhaps we could put on some music, relax and take our shirts off. My neck has been sore lately, so maybe he could massage it a little. I even have some special oils I just got from Bath and Body Works. … Maybe I could find a very special relationship with someone other than the "fags and losers" of our school?