I am currently on holiday from studies in my second liberal arts university degree. While this is nice, I certainly am not experiencing the intense cathartic release that many undergraduate students feel when they can remove from their shoulders the yoke of a labour so loathsome they can't wait to be free. This is because I love my studies.

Even when I was a lowly undergrad, people questioned my motivation for educating myself about the world. Having trained myself in the use of my brain's creative capacity, I often answered passive aggressive comments like "What will you be when you're done?" with "Smart." Probing queries like "What are you going to do with your degree?" received something along the lines of "Frame it." When the inquisitors got more persistent and specific, asking such things as "No, what does your education qualify you to do?" I just got more sarcastic with something like "Have an opinion."

My point is that I am NOT in a career-training program. I just want to learn. I love to learn, so I'm doing what I love. I have some skill when it comes to stringing sentences together, so I'm doing what I'm good at. I'm making myself happy, and intelligent too.

I like to converse with people. Not chat, but converse. I cringe at weather talk. I like to talk about things that reflect culture, society, people. You know, art, music, film, news, etc. People who have nothing to talk about but their jobs only interest me if they have jobs with lots of learning involved. Few people actually enjoy boring small talk, and the cultures and histories of our world are seldom boring.

Also, the people that I study with are interesting, and have a lot to offer. They are open-minded, progressive thinkers with visions beyond who's cool and who isn't and the latest grouchy customer they served. Of course, some are more open-minded than others, and some still harbour strange prejudices, but they don't build their entire lives around them.

So, being offered the opportunity to do what I love with people I like, I think it's pretty obvious why I'm doing what I'm doing. Except to the job-minded, career-oriented, Klein-clones.

My education may not guarantee me a cushy job placement. I may have to work to find myself employment. Maybe. But since when did the word "education" come to mean "making money"? "Education" means learning, becoming intelligent, and understanding things. "Job training" just means, well. . . training for a job. My life is not nearly long enough for me to waste the gift of the education I'm receiving. This is and has been a fascinating world, and I want to find out as much as I can before I leave it.

The truth is that western civilization was built upon liberal arts education. In ancient Greece, the mastering of rhetoric was the single most valued skill a person could acquire. Our civilization comes from a culture in which the great poets like Homer and Virgil were the most valued members of society. These days, what do leaders do? They speak. They persuade. They convince through illustration and demonstration. Looks like some things never change.

I don't suppose that world leaders are trained in engineering. I doubt that most translators have business diplomas. Map-makers, historians, and judges are seldom qualified physicians. I would not ask Nelson Mandela to help change my tire. While an arts education is fascinating, it is hardly useless.

I have no official education in computers. Everything I know about them I have learned myself, from friends, or on the job. Yet I have earned most of my tuition by doing computer work which people who have taken computer classes could not do. I have also never been in debt.

Education trains people to think, and very little gets done without thought. Next time someone asks me what my degree has got me, I'm going to ask them the same thing about their health club membership.