Winter Term questions, validates liberal arts experience

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On my recent Winter Term trip to Hawaii, which focused on sustainability and permaculture, I met many people with a college education who were doing something completely unrelated to their degree.
These encounters included a marine biologist who runs a coffee farm, a former schoolteacher who now raises bees and a neuroscience major who ended up working at a center for holistic and spiritual wellness (those in the psychology field may see the irony in this).
Meeting individuals who led a life removed from higher education became a theme. While none of these people explicitly stated that they regretted their degree, or at least their particular major, they acknowledged that it was irrelevant to their current occupation.
These conversations were somewhat daunting to me - they brought up the suggestion that my college degree could potentially be meaningless. Although I believe in the inherent value of education, the high cost associated with attending college and the fact that it is at least a four-year time commitment (likely to be longer because I am seriously considering grad school), made this a discomforting realization.
Another aspect of Hawaiian life also led me to questioning. I noticed during my time on the island that there was an emphasis on how to survive "when the boats stop coming," referring to the fact that the Hawaiian economy is heavily reliant on imported goods.
Roughly 90% of their food is imported from other places, which means that most of the population would starve if the ships were unable to get to the island. For this reason, self-sustainability and crises planning are much more urgent in secluded land areas like Hawaii than they are in the continental United States.
If apocalyptic world events were to occur, due to economic collapse and/or environmental catastrophe, it would become imperative to be self-sustaining and to live off the land, with limited resources.
In this less than ideal situation - which seems farfetched and melodramatic but is actually becoming more prevalent - knowing how to analyze texts and write a 15-page research paper would not be nearly as important as knowing how to grow food and capture solar energy.
As I questioned the role that my college education would play in my survival under such circumstances of impending doom, I realized that it was solely due to my liberal arts education - specifically my Winter Term trip - that I was raising these important questions in the first place. This made me even more grateful for my college experience, in that not only am I working toward concrete career goals, but I am also a step ahead of most people in thinking critically about the challenges that our society will potentially face.
My practical suggestion would be that DePauw should offer a class along the lines of Survival in a Post-Apocalyptic Environment, which would implement an interdisciplinary approach to the subject, as well as a critique of current theories.
When this happens, I will feel completely prepared for the future, which is, after all, the aim of a liberal arts education.

- Stephens is junior from Saint Charles, Ill. majoring in psychology.