I had vowed after a post-Christmas excursion to New York City last year that I would be cautious where I traveled in winter. I ended up in NYC the last week in December, surrounded by several inches of snow, stuck in the middle of a Nor’easter, the locals’ appellation for such a winter storm. I walked through more piles of frozen white piles and stepped into more puddles of water from curb to curb than I can count from memory.

So this year for spring break, I decided to digress from plans I had already unofficially made involving a road trek through the Northeast and back. The forecasted temperatures did not look promising for the week, despite the impending commencement of spring.

I have never seen the desert Southwest, so I settled on that route as my road trip of choice for spring break. Surely, New Mexico and Arizona would be sunny and warm near the end of March, I thought.

After one night in Amarillo, Tex., and a long car ride along a desolate interstate, we reached Flagstaff, Ariz. We arrived in town late but decided to do a bit of exploring downtown. Flagstaff is an artsy, quirky, charming little town and didn’t feel touristy at all.

The next morning, as we slept in the dark sanctuary of the hotel room, a surprise awaited us outside. Although a couple of inches had already fallen, based on the accumulation on cars, most of it melted when it hit the ground. I was bound and determined, despite a southwestern blizzard, to see one of the most famous natural wonders in the United States.

The journey commenced. We headed west on the interstate for about 40 miles, at which time we reached Williams, Ariz., our exit to head north. We stopped for gasoline, and I went to use the restroom. I noticed the snow was growing so deep on the pavement that it piled outside the door of the restroom on the side of the gas station building. The gas station attendant suggestion we not continue our route, advising that roads would like be closed soon, and even if we could make it to the Canyon, lack of visibility would likely prevent us from seeing much of the landscape anyway.

So since it was lunch time, we settled in at a local restaurant in the quaint town of Williams called the Pizza Factory. We enjoyed our sundried tomato pesto white pie and watched the snow blow sideways in the Arizona air. In my years of growing up in the South, I had never seen snow blow quite that way. We decided by the end of the meal that we should probably discontinue our trip and return south toward Sedona where we would be spending the next two nights.

The weather seemed to be mocking us. When I checked the weather status back in west Tennessee, the sun was brightly shining and temperatures soared to the 70s. Our thermometer in Arizona was stuck at a permanent 30 degrees, it seemed.

Finally, we reached Flagstaff again after heading back east and then turned south on Arizona State Route 89A toward Sedona. We could have gone south on the interstate, but we would have had to go past Sedona and then return north to reach the town.

The winding two-lane mountain road from Flagstaff to Sedona was covered in frozen precipitation. Fortunately, it was a bit slushy but still seemed treacherous as we slid and curved down the slopes like downhill skiers in our automobile. One particular stretch curved back and forth so much that it looked like a mass of intestines or bundle of snakes on the map.

Finally, we descended the mountain, and the snow seemed to be halting. Just ahead, though, a sheriff’s deputy blocked the road ahead with his patrol car. He informed us that we would have to pull over there at the Slide Rock State Park beside where he had stopped, or turn around, return up the mountain, go down the interstate past Sedona, and then turn back north to get into town.

We didn’t really want to lose four whole hours just sitting in the car in the cold, so we began our ascent back up the mountain. The road was more heavily covered on the second attempt. At least it felt a little safer ascending those steep slopes as opposed to descending them.

Nevertheless, I never got to see the Grand Canyon on the trip, but I still experienced some breathtaking vistas. Next time, however, if I have to vacation where snow is common, I think I will choose New York City again. At least there the streets are flat and the subway makes transportation much easier than sliding up and down a snowy mountain road.

One of the most important investments in life is a solid education. This axiom is so often touted that it has become cliché, but much truth still resides in the idea. Even in today’s highly technical, specialized society, the best route is still a broad-based liberal arts education, which can then be followed by specialized technical study, if one so desires.

Liberal arts, or “humanities,” hearken back to the questions Socrates posed to the ancient Athenians. His questions pertain to definitions of “humanness” and the age-old conflict between good and evil. A liberal arts education that is strong, for instance, in the study of such general areas as logic, grammar, rhetoric, literature, mathematics, the arts, social sciences, and philosophy offer a background not explicitly for making a living but in learning how to live well.

Making a living is important, no doubt. However, acquiring the technical skill or craft knowledge sans the ethical background is not a viable approach. Every technical skill, or techne, as the Greeks called it, may be used in the service of good or detriment to society. To churn out technically-skilled graduates, or technocrats, without the foundational liberal arts knowledge seems Machiavellian: looking, in other words, toward the end without due consideration of the means. A computer programmer, lawyer, doctor, or business manager needs to possess a broad-based knowledge of the humanities.

History bears out the argument. Consider Nazi Germany, where skilled, technically advanced citizens—including doctors, nurses, psychologists, engineers, and scientists—were devoted in using their skills to exterminate a race of people at the rate of approximately 12,000 a day at Auschwitz , among other death camps. Winston Churchill is quoted in a biography as having called this episode of genocide “probably the greatest and most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world, and it has been done by scientific machinery by nominally civilized men.”

While the Holocaust remains the most prominent example of scientific savagery, other instances abound in the name of political progress and scientific human experimentation, ranging from the Cambodian “killing fields” to a host of chemical warfare testing and disease infliction in the United States dating back to the early 19^th century. As one of many examples, in 1943, University of Cincinnati researchers placed 16 mentally disabled patients in refrigerated compartments at 30 degrees Fahrenheit for 120 hours, in order to “study the effect of frigid temperature on mental disorders.” 

Beyond virtue and ethics, post secondary education should also be a time devoted to discovery, a seeking of knowledge to help one discern what it is exactly that he or she wishes to do in life. In turn, the array of knowledge gained should be of service over the course of a lifetime.

Devoting too much, after all, to the acquisition of specific skills also seems a bit obsolete, considering the rapidly evolving pace of technological and social change. Those bent, for instance, on mastering one particular programming language today may tomorrow have to adapt and learn a new language as technological advancements occur daily.

While competition in the marketplace may be fierce and lead us to believe that a specialized, technical path is best, a liberal arts education does not mutually exclude a specialized career, and, according to research, employers are not necessarily looking at majors as a primary criterion. A recent National Association of Colleges and Employers bears out the rationale for broader education. In the survey, employers overwhelmingly stated that they look for “the right skills,” not necessarily “the right major.” In other words, the major is not actually as important as the candidate’s ability. Further, skills can be easily learned, even self-taught, while good thinking, on the other hand, cannot. A liberal arts education affords the ability for transformation, for self-expression, for that moral compass the Greeks so highly valued.

Albert Einstein, who may be deemed as having been highly technically specialized, once said, “The value of an education in a liberal arts college is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think something that cannot be learned from textbooks." Indeed, whether we read Shakespeare, decipher a poem, look into the mysteries of the human body, consider psychological theories throughout history, or gaze into a microscope at a sample of bacteria, we are doing much more than merely learning facts: we are expanding horizons and learning how to think independently. Those valuable facets of learning have changed the lives of individuals and the world.