How the Liberal Arts Prepare Us for Life Re "The Humanist Vocation" (column, June 21): I am one of the literature majors David Brooks referred to in his column. No, I never got a well-paying job teaching literature, only a few temporary adjunct positions. But many is the time I felt grateful for my liberal arts education: when I attended art exhibitions, concerts or lectures; saw a movie, read a book or traveled abroad; was able to speak and understand French, German, Spanish and Russian; conversed with people from all over the world; and even did a crossword puzzle. My education has broadened my worldview and my appreciation of culture in its many forms. The study of humanities has enriched my life beyond measure. Although it has never fattened my pocketbook, it has deepened my appreciation of life, an invaluable outcome. David Brooks's column is a welcome start to a conversation on the state of the humanities that needs to be continued and expanded. While I applaud his points and those made in a June 19 news article about the disturbing state of the liberal arts, it is time that we academics also accept some responsibility for the situation. In recent decades the tendency has grown among academics to produce jargon-laden articles about obscure subjects that only their mothers and a few colleagues might appreciate. This tendency has helped alienate our core constituents - the intellectually curious public - who might like to read a stimulating academic work but who are too often befuddled and annoyed by baffling academic prose. We can't just blame the job market. A system that rewards opacity over clarity and enlightenment needs to be changed. The writer is a professor of Japanese studies at Tufts University. David Brooks's column is a reminder to those of us whose lives were changed by humanities courses (mine was a freshman course in "Ideas and Institutions in Western Civilization") that something vital is being lost in the eclipse of courses and majors in the humanities. The humanities deal not only with the spirit and the soul, as Mr. Brooks notes, but they also deal with them in a way that allows for a diverse view of what is legitimately spiritual, not just the one version learned in one's religion. The broad view of spirit and soul offered by the humanities should not be lost to a world increasingly dominated by rigid orthodoxy. More than 50 years ago, I entered Mount Holyoke College with neither a clear idea of a major field of study nor a career. After all, this was pre-Betty Friedan and the feminist revolution. I did have some vague idea that college would be pleasurable in its own right and might help me raise better children. Economics, my eventual major, was a social science at that time. It did not require any statistics or other hard courses that might be useful in the business world. I chose it because it interested me, the department was small, and I might get noticed by the professors there. English, however, the largest department on campus, was where my heart was. My fondest memories of college are of the afternoons I sat curled up in a wing chair on the top floor of Williston Library reading Victorian novels and marveling in the fact that I was getting college credit for such a deliciously enjoyable activity. Forwarding to my post-graduation experience, I could not get hired by any of the banks or insurance companies in Philadelphia, economics major or not. They were not interested in hiring women. I did get a job based on my English studies, though. A pharmaceutical company hired me to write letters in its public relations department. So my humanities courses got me hired. My economics courses did not. Am I a better, more thoughtful person for all the humanities courses I took? I do know that my joy in reading is one of the lasting personal benefits of the studies I undertook so many years ago.