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- 2 DOUGLAS COLLEGE
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opportunity is clouded by the realities of hish unemployinent. As
one of my classmates put it "I know all about being a leader of
tommorrow, but how do I get a job?" The fact is, without the
education received here and at similiar institutions, the future
is indeed bleak. A graphic illustration of that fact presented
itself to me one year ago, when I attended my own ten-year hign
echool reunion. “Sraduating in the mid 1979's was easy and meant

“1 lite full of choices. Jolle vss, technical schools and vocational
schools were growing and expanding. Universities were flourishing,
and jobs were available to anyone with enough ambition to fill an
application for employment. But ten years had changed everything.
Hish interest rates and unemployment had eradicated the the dreams
of my contemporaries, but almost without exception, those who had
pursued a post-secondary education, whether vocational, technical
or academic, were as a group, happier, more secure, and more
optimistic about their future. They were working at careers which
they chore for themselves, in locations which made themhappy and
with people who shared their interests and lifestyles. ‘Those who
had left their futures to chance were either unemployed or under-
employed, locked into low-paying, boring jobs which they detested,
and were frustrated in the knowledge thet there was no easy way
out. This situation clearly illustrated to me that an education
could provide opportunity even in the toughest economic times.
Those opportunities mean options and choices, control of one's

own Life, without which no thinking person may be happy.

At this point I should be able to assure all of you, my fellow

praduates, of unqualified success in the future. Burt Lanna .

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