It's the time of year when students return to school, and when university graduates must face the fact, like it or not, that the employment they've found is not just some way to mark time until they can get back to the classroom.  And all over Toronto we hear the lamentations of those who graduated with a B.A. in English and History and have not been hired as network anchors or made Hollywood stars, but instead are selling donuts at Tim Horton's ... and to one another and themselves they are crying, "I worked four years and spent $30,000 for this?"

I graduated from university 36 years ago, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, with a B.A. in West Saxon Literature and Victorian History, and my mother asked the same question of me.  But I knew then and I know now the secret I'll pass along to you:  a degree in Liberal Arts was never meant to fit you to make a living.  It was meant to make you fit to make a life.

Daddy told us when we graduated from high school that everyone ought to have an education and a trade, so as to be sure she could earn a living; but the most important component of that is the education, was what we'd learn in college (that's University in the States) because it would fit us to understand the world we lived in and to communicate with people in other cultures, other countries, and other areas of expertise from a common base of knowledge.  In a rapidly changing world there are some things that don't change, and a liberal arts education will give you that foundation on which to stand.  When you stand in the Poet's Corner at Westminster Abbey, you'll be overwhelmed by the thought that those people you studied actually lived and you'll be able to recite to yourself or others their words in this place where they are.  When you stand in York Minster and hear the great striding fugues of Bach in the mileau for which they were written, you'll get a thrill that your friends who went to DeVry Institute will never understand.  And when some of your less-educated classmates are marching in the street chanting pre-programmed slogans and waving pre-printed signs, you'll be able to look at the world around you and compare what you see with what has happened before, and your patience and understanding will keep you from suffering the hysterical stress (or the smugness of ignorant certainty) that you see parading itself to public view.

When you get into your profession, whatever it might be (mine veered in many directions and ended up legal assistant and motorsport journalist), you'll find yourself turning to "Chief Modern Poets of England and America" and to your battered Shakespeare for the apt quotation and the perspective more often than you might think.  I happened to be at a motor race where a young Canadian driver was killed in a particularly horrible accident.  As we huddled round the TV in the lounge waiting word from the officials, someone recited a World War II poem called "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" that spoke eloquently to the occasion.  And instead of spending your leisure time with your iPod jammed in your ears with obscenity, blasphemy and pornography echoing through your head, perhaps you'll trek off to a "Sing it yourself Messiah" (as I have done for the past 40 years) or join a performance choir ... or when you are out in the middle of the ocean on a freighter trip to Tunisia and there's no television or movies around, you may spend some delightful time singing madrigals or shaped note or gospel music with other people who are educated too.

Finally, it wouldn't hurt you to overhaul your trade skills, for everyone who majors in English has skill in research and typing if nothing else.  My typing skills led me eventually to a position as officer manager to a high-powered attorney in International Tax and Finance, dealing with clients from forty different countries and producing documents in three languages, turning expense accounts submitted in seventeen currencies (this was pre-Euro) into American dollars, and learning how to deal with the Russians which will by the way help you with the Canadians too.

So don't think your liberal arts education has been a waste of money because you happen to be employed selling donuts right now.  Raise your head and look around you, see the wilderness of wonderful possibilities that await your shaping and formation, not only careers and professions but citizenship in a world that is not only more fascinating and complex than you imagine but more so than you can imagine.

Its all out there for the taking.  Put down the donut and reach out and grab on!