The Dude explains to Brandt what he did in college and how he came to be The Dude. For you kids and grandkids of flower children, we'll say this was a pretty typical thing for college students to do in the days of the Vietnam War. There were a lot of serious political, antiwar college students in the '60s and '70s, but a lot of them used the antiwar movement and its student "strikes" (refusing to go to class) as a way to get out of studying and to instead smoke weed on the lawn of the college administration buildings. Drug use was identified with the antiwar movement because both were rebellious countercultural activities and part of the whole "make love, not war" thing.