BS”D
to serve G-d as I understand the concept,
Cantoresq, your many comments here and your constant need for validation when you know full well you are doing things wrong show that sadly, you do not understand “the concept”. Instead, you and others like you have indeed turned Shabbos into a Sunday without driving, and Judaism into a Protestant style religion. That, unfortunately, is the flip side of living amidst the American culture of “whatever floats my boat”.
And at Columbia University from 1984-8, the MO dropout rate was a good 15%, with 10-15 kids dropping out in every class every year. (Contrast that to about 2-3 baalei tshuva each year.) The dropouts formed a social circle of their own, just as OTD teens do at the fringes of large communities.
I knew of only one dropout among the many whom I was familiar with who had indeed already dropped out before college and was just waiting to get away from her parents in order to make the final break. I think there was one more who had begun his descent in EY. When it came to the rest, many of us were shocked that they left and it was clear that they could not stand up to the intense kefira that was taught as part of the required curriculum at Columbia. A nominally “Orthodox” campus rabbi (now retired) who himself was of YCT type hashkafah did not help matters; his attitude toward frumkeit was such that he hardly cared whether students dropped out and in fact he urged students to study philosophy and not just what was needed for parnossoh or admittance to graduate school.