Rebecca J. Griffith: Social Media Customer Support Leader @ Safeway, Inc.

Name: Rebecca J. Griffith

Age: 30

College & Majors/Minors: Northern Arizona University, Bachelors of Arts, English 2012

Current location: Phoenix

Current form of employment: Social Media Customer Support Leader, Safeway, Inc.

A few months after graduating with my English degree, my husband and our two dogs and I moved from Northern Arizona down to Phoenix. We knew that there was a larger, if not more lucrative, job market here in the city compared to the relatively limited one in Flagstaff, where I finished my schooling. (Flagstaff is a small city, with a relatively high cost of living. It’s not ideal for the post-grad to find something that can stand up to student loan repayment.) Down to the hot, sprawling city we came, and my first step was to check online and at job fairs for anything that might get me in the door to something where I could use my degree.

After some searching, I started to realize that my qualifications landed somewhere in between the requirements of the job postings I was circling in my search. I found many entry level jobs, and many jobs requiring some kind of business admin, library science, or other specified degree criteria. I had already worked for several years in assorted customer service positions, some of which were more inclusive of writing and grammar skills, but none of which had fit the bill of something I wanted to stay with, long-term. I got frustrated, and wondered where I fit in this transitioning, digitally-driven job market that I emerged into after college.

While I was in college, I imagined that graduation day would be the end of one thing and the start of another. "Time to end the schooling phase and enter the working phase of my career," I thought. However, very few things in life are black and white like that. I didn't exit one door with my degree, and enter the next with a set career trajectory and contract in hand. For me, it didn't work that way. And that is okay. With my degree in hand, so to speak, I at least had the confidence to seek out something that sounded somewhat satisfying. 

““About a week in, I found out there was a writing team at the company that dealt with written correspondence, and I could try to get into it if I wanted to. Well, of course I wanted to!””

I decided to take what I could get and (hopefully) work my way into something where I could utilize my training and education. After all, I couldn’t expect to leave college, become an acclaimed nonfiction writer, and begin drawing the blueprints to my Tuscan villa just yet! That’s when I started my journey at Safeway, Inc. I was hired as a Customer Support Agent, and started by taking calls all day, every day, to assist with the myriad issues that arise in the grocery industry. About a week in, I found out there was a writing team at the company that dealt with written correspondence, and I could try to get into it if I wanted to. Well, of course I wanted to! After expressing interest and taking a simple writing exam, I was accepted onto the team. It certainly didn’t hurt that I came in with a swanky English degree! ;)

Fast forward three years to today: I am among the leadership in the Social Media Department for a Fortune 100 grocery chain that spans the United States. I write to customers and executives all day, every day, via email, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and blogs. I am a part of the corporate side of the company who deals with both customer support and marketing, and I get to work closely with customer support agents, marketing directors, digital marketing specialists, and other company support networks.

Goodbye, phone calls, and hello, digital! I have learned tremendously valuable computer skills, and even honed my personal writing skills as a result of the demands of this position. Part of my passion is writing for an intended audience, and the challenge of determining that audience’s voice via the written word keeps me fascinated. 

It isn’t where I though my first post-grad job would land me, and I have plenty more goals and room to grow in my career. But it is certainly one way to make ends meet while making that degree work for me.

““And herein lies the beauty: we are needed just about everywhere.””

Take it from me, it’s easy to get discouraged. But don’t fall prey to this, fellow English lovers! The English degree, unlike some others, does not automatically route you into a field that is conducive to the work we want to do or are passionate about doing. If you pursued an English degree, chances are you have an appreciation for things that a typical 9-5 job may not satisfy: arts, poetry, literature, prose, history… unless you dedicate yourself to teaching a similar subject, many industries just don’t require or feed such an appreciation. But reach out anyway—take a chance somewhere, and see where your amazing skill set can help the company! You never know who may end up needing your help to edit correspondence that goes to an executive, or hears that you are strong in the written word and turns to you for proofreading help (which can pay quite well, in fact.) The doors that open for us may not be the big, grand, obvious ones that say “Doctors and Nurses, enter here,” or “Automotive Mechanics, right this way.” They are more hidden, a little more mysterious, and take some digging to find. And herein lies the beauty: we are needed just about everywhere. 

The best advice I can provide is to use your time at school to take in everything you possibly can to begin networking with people. Go to poetry readings at the university or college, or perhaps local poetry slams. Stay abreast of writers who are publishing in your areas of interest, and read everything there is to get your hands on. Engage in what inspires you, and make writing a habit as well as a hobby. Spend time researching what is required to enter the field that interests you, and go for it! The momentum involved in your years of higher education is the catalyst you will need to come out strong and with opportunities behind those numerous (if slightly obscured) doors that are waiting to receive us. 

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Abigail Fleming: Production Editor

Name: Abigail Fleming

Age: 23

College: College of Charleston 

Major: English Language & Literature

Minor: Linguistics

Current Location: Charleston, South Carolina

Current Form of Employment: Full-time Production Editor

Where do you work and what is your current position?

The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th Edition

$38.73

University Of Chicago Press

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I work for Arcadia Publishing, under The History Press imprint, as a production editor. Arcadia Publishing is the largest publisher of local history books in the country, so I get to travel vicariously through the books I edit and proofread. My projects range from true crime, culinary trails, and ghost stories to transportation history (people really love trains), and it is my job to see manuscripts through the various stages of production, up until they are ready to go to print. I spend my days elbow-deep in the Chicago Manual of Style, discussing the finer points of our house style with authors, and spiraling down fact-checking wormholes. I love it. Reading has always been my hobby, and now I get paid to do it, albeit not always about topics of my choosing (trains, anyone?).

Tell us about how you found your first job, and how you found your current job (if different).

After I graduated, I was still unsure of what I really wanted to do. I knew teaching wasn’t for me, yet I found myself working as the administrative assistant for a department of the local school district. I was getting restless after about six months, only doing the occasional freelance copy job (paid and volunteered), so I started looking at all of the publishing-related companies and positions in the area, only to find out that there were (and are) actually quite a few of them. After about a month or so of furious resume writing and innumerable cover letters, I landed interviews with Arcadia and the in-house publication for a local teaching hospital. Honestly, I had applied for administrative positions in addition to the jobs I actually wanted, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that they wanted me for my degree. 

What was another writing-related job that was important in your career?

My godfather is a historian and has a website that focuses on esoteric American history. I have always copyedited his articles, so when he told me he was writing a book, I was excited. When he told me that he wasn’t going to hire a professional editor, I almost panicked. With my impending graduation, and a publication date, I had a hectic last few undergraduate months, but together we created a product that I know helped get me my current position, because I really wasn’t that experienced outside of the classroom, with the exception of an editorial internship that consisted of blogging, tweeting, and occasional copyediting.

What did you do in college to prepare for your post-grad life?

My school’s English department had an internship course that helped students find internships with various local businesses and receive credit hours for the work completed. I knew I needed experience in my field, not only because I needed to improve my professional people skills, but also because I wasn’t precisely sure what I wanted to do with my degree. I ended up working in the editorial department of a then-new food magazine, and it was a rewarding experience (free cake and recipes from fantastic chefs) in that I learned what I did and did not like (like: cake, dislike: deadlines) in that particular industry.

What is your advice for students and graduates with an English degree?

I would advise every English major to read and write for fun. Academic writing is like riding a bicycle; once you know how, you can always whip up an annotated bibliography, but creativity has to be cultivated constantly. And volunteer! Internships are imminently useful, but sometimes finding meaningful ones can be tough. Whatever your interests are, there’s likely a number of websites, publications, and organizations devoted toward them.  

You can connect with Abigail on LinkedIn here; also, check out her work on StrangeHistory.org and AmericanKillers.org! 

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Becca Wallace: Content Manager

Name: Becca Wallace

Age: 23

College & Majors/Minors: San Diego State University – Bachelor Degree in English

Current Location: San Diego, CA

Current Form of Employment: Full-time Content Manager

Where do you work and what is your current position?

I currently work as a Content Manager (or Content Queen as my coworkers like to call me) for an Internet Marketing Company. We have a few different names for our company depending on our client’s category of business; Dental Affiliate and San Diego Business Media are the two main ones. We create websites and manage marketing for dental offices, plastic surgeons, auto shops and a large variety of other businesses, but our primary focus is dental offices. 

My job is to manage all of the content that goes onto our clients' websites, including blogs and content on all of the pages. This includes lots of copywriting and copyediting and some SEO! I know way more than I ever wanted to know about dental procedures now that I am constantly reading and editing about them.  We usually send our content off to writers (I occasionally write it), and I am the one who edits and posts it on their websites. I also manage social media for our clients and our company. This will include posting links to their blogs and posting occasional fun things. One of my other duties includes writing for our corporate blog and whitepapers. This means I need to stay on top of what’s happening in the internet marketing world!

Tell us about how you found your first job, and how you found your current job (if different). 

The first job I got after college was as a Marketing Assistant for a manufacturing company. I found that one on Craigslist after applying like crazy one month before graduation. I went in for two interviews, and even though I had a degree in English, I had the skills and attitude they were looking for so they hired me. I stayed at this job for about six months and went in search of a job more relating to reading and writing.

I also found my current job on Craigslist (apparently it’s the place to go!). I sent in some writing samples and came in for an interview and was hired! 

What was another writing-related job that was important in your career?

The only writing experience I had outside of my current job and the endless amount of essays from my college career were these two groups I was involved with while I was in school. (See next question for more info).

What did you do in college to prepare for your post-grad life?

For my first three years of college, I really wasn’t doing anything to prepare for post-grad life other than working at my part-time job at the school’s dining hall. Although all I was doing was cooking and serving food, it really helped me break out of my shell and develop a more lively personality, which is something I think is important for people to have when they go to job interviews.

During college, I got involved with my school’s literary review (Aztec Literary Review). This is where students submitted poems and short stories for our semester PDF of student work. We had a team of about seven people who all worked together to spread the word to students asking for submissions, read the submissions, and create the PDF that contained the winners. I also helped manage our website and created the artwork for one of the semesters.

Another group I had in college was through my Publishing and Editing class. In this class, we formed groups based on our interests in books and made a website on WordPress where we would feature book reviews, interviews with authors and more. This was by far one of the most important parts of my college career because I learned how to use WordPress and Adobe InDesign which came in handy with both of my post college jobs.

On top of my work experience, I tried to read and write as much as possible, as well as learn anything that would help my resume stand out. I taught myself about HTML, CSS, and Photoshop. The more skills you have, the better your resume will look!

What is your advice for students and graduates with an English degree?

Don’t give up hope and don’t listen to people who tell you that you won’t find a job. My advice is to be open-minded about careers. Before I graduated, my heart was set on working in publishing, but that’s a whole lot harder to get into than you might think. Sit down and make a list of jobs you think you might enjoy, and apply to all of them. Your first job will most likely not be your dream job, so just think of it as a stepping stone and resume builder towards your career goals. If you can, get an internship or join the school newspaper while you’re in school! Any experience and extra skills you have will make your resume stand out more. There are two parts to getting a job: 1. Have a resume that stands out and 2. Impress your interviewers with your outfit, confidence, skills, and interpersonal skills. Finding a job can be extremely stressful, but if you are able to apply the skills you gained with your English degree, your career possibilities are endless.

You can check out Becca's blog here, connect with her on LinkedIn here, and take a look at the literary journal she participated in during college here. 

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Dan Jolley: Self-Employed Freelance Writer

Name: Dan Jolley

Age: 44

College & Majors/Minors:b University of Georgia, BA in English

Current Location: Ringgold, Georgia

Current Form of Employment: Self-Employed Freelance Writer

Where do you work and what is your current position?

I work from home—I'm self-employed—and my current position alternates between "on the treadmill" and "on the couch." I write in both locations, though; I have a walking desk set up, where I plod along at 2 miles per hour and type, and on a good day I do about 5000 words and about 15000 steps. That works best for prose, though. If I'm doing non-prose, such as a comic book script or a screenplay or dialogue for a video game, more often than not I wind up on the couch. Usually with one or more cats on me.

Tell us about how you found your first job, and how you found your current job (if different).

Gray Widow's Walk (Gray Widow Trilogy Book 1)

By Dan Jolley

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I got my first professional writing contract at age 19, after I met a girl in a video arcade and asked her out. On our first date I told her I wanted to be a writer, and that I'd written a number of short stories, and she asked if I'd ever considered writing comic books. I hadn't, but I'd grown up reading them, and I told her as much. She said, "Well, I know a couple of comic book artists. Want me to introduce you?" I told her yes, yes I would like that very much, and she introduced me to Tony Harris and Craig Hamilton. I ended up working with Tony for about the next ten years on various comics projects, one of which got nominated for an Eisner Award, the comics industry's equivalent of an Oscar.

From there I branched out into licensed-property novels, movie novelizations, original young adult novels, some manga-format novel tie-in comics, some children's books, and video games. 

I've been writing more games than anything else for the last several years, but that's about to change, because on May 13 of this year, my first original novel for adults is coming out from Seventh Star Press. It's called Gray Widow's Walk, the first book in the Gray Widow Trilogy. It's the story of Janey Sinclair, a teleporting vigilante in contemporary Atlanta, Georgia, who must face a grotesque, vicious, possibly extraterrestrial enemy.

Then, on October 18, the first book in my new Middle Grade novel series, Five Elements, debuts from HarperCollins. Set in modern-day San Francisco, it's the story of four twelve-year-old best friends who become bound to the magical elements of Fire, Earth, Air, and Water, and have to try to stop a century-old, hideously evil magic user from dominating the world.

Dying Light - PlayStation 4

Warner Home Video - Games

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So I guess I'm a little more novelist than game writer now. Well, this year, anyway.

What was another writing-related job that was important in your career?

In 2014 I was fortunate enough to land a job coming up with dialogue, scenarios, and characters for the first-person parkour-vs-zombies video game, Dying Light.

While working on the game, I got to live in Wrocław, Poland for three months, since that's where the developer, Techland, is located. It was a fantastic experience. I got lots of exposure to a culture I might never have otherwise known, made some fantastic friends, and ate way more pierogies than I probably should have. Dying Light went on to sell a bit north of five million copies, so now I can realistically say that my words have reached people all over the world. 

What did you do in college to prepare for your post-grad life?

College is about a lot more than taking classes. It's a chance to test the adulthood waters without committing a hundred percent, and at least in my view, is an excellent time to make mistakes. (One of the best bits of wisdom I ever heard was, "The older you get, the higher the stakes are when you screw up.") I made a lot of mistakes in college, from partying too much, to making terrible relationship decisions, to endangering a few true, solid friendships. The key there is to learn from those mistakes, because living life and gaining experience will help your writing every bit as much as mastering your command of language. Not much good comes of being a brilliant writer if you've got nothing to write about. (It helps, I've found, to have friends with terribly sordid pasts.)

What is your advice for students and graduates with an English degree?

Well, this advice is for those who want to be writers, because I got my start as a writer before I left college and haven't ever truly tried to do anything else. But here it goes: absorb as much knowledge as you can, both in class and out. Make as many friends as you can. Listen to as many stories as you can, from many different types of people. Take as many creative writing classes as possible, to be sure, and learn as much as possible from your professors. But be aware, keenly aware, often painfully aware of the world around you, because that's where your stories will come from. Sometimes you'll witness whole sequences of events that you faithfully transcribe; sometimes you'll hear other people's accounts, with which you can then take artistic license; sometimes you'll catch just a scrap of conversation or an image glimpsed from the corner of your eye that will spark an original idea. As Stephen King puts it, when you're a writer, "Everything is grist for the mill."

““Also—and saying this got me in hot water when I spoke to some creative writing students at NC State a few years ago, but it’s one hundred percent true—do not, under any circumstances, expect your degree to get you work by itself.””

Also—and saying this got me in hot water when I spoke to some creative writing students at NC State a few years ago, but it's one hundred percent true—do not, under any circumstances, expect your degree to get you work by itself. Use the knowledge you gain as you earn the degree, certainly, but the degree itself is... I wouldn't say worthless, because you learn so many invaluable things while you're getting it. It's just that the credential itself is inconsequential. I've been a professional writer for twenty-five years now, and no editor or publisher or producer has ever, not once, asked me about my education. They don't care. It doesn't come up. The all-important question is, "Can you write, or can you not write?" That's the only thing that matters.

Check out DanJolley.com, follow Dan on Twitter, and check out his Facebook page! 

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Katriel Paige: Usability Specialist

Name: Katriel Paige

Age: 30

College & Majors/Minors: Undergrad: University of Delaware (USA) with a double major in English and East Asian Studies. Minor in comparative religion. Postgrad: I went for an MA at the University of Surrey (UK), and did the Intercultural Communication with International Business course there when my initial course (an interdepartmental effort relating to human - computer interaction) was canceled. 

Current Location: Washington DC

Current Form of Employment: Full-time salaried Usability Specialist. I also do cultural lectures and still write (which is why I have a Patreon: www.patreon.com/kachi) 

Where do you work and what is your current position?

I work in usability; helping websites and web applications be easier to use for everyone. 

Tell us about how you found your first job, and how you found your current job (if different).

My first job was actually back in high school, and I would pick up gigs here and there, but my first job after college was working with a small educational supplement publisher. They specialized in developing supplements meant for teachers of English/language arts in grade school. Because I was familiar with database design principles and had a passion for literature, I got a job researching all the state educational standards and making a key to make sure the supplements met those standards. It was a summer job between undergrad and grad school, but I was really glad to be working there. It meant a lot there that I loved books. (I also wrote the documentation and development notes for the project!)

What was another writing-related job that was important in your career?

I ended up falling into writing about tech—computers, accessories, gaming. There are a lot of technology writers, admittedly, and it's brutal out there. But I wanted to write about what the tech meant, how people could relate to it, what tasks would be easier. An A9 chip doesn't mean much to most non-industry folk unless you can put it in context, in a narrative: how will this help me do work on the train? How will this help me to stay in contact with friends and family?

In usability (user experience design) we create stories. As humans we are wired for storytelling, so the need to be able to tell stories is everywhere. 

What did you do in college to prepare for your post-grad life?

The best advice I have for people currently in school is to build a portfolio. Want to go into writing? Then write. Keep writing. Pitch to places. Don't work for exposure unless you are very clear and upfront about what you want out of it. 

What is your advice for students and graduates with an English degree?

An English degree doesn't mean a life of teaching or dreaming of being a novelist. Storytelling is everywhere. Look into how you can apply narrative analysis or close reading to other fields. Cultivate hobbies and write about what you experience in them. Look into cross-training even within writing: even if you desperately want to write for a newspaper, try that poetry workshop or learn about scriptwriting. Like cross-training your body, your writing will be stronger because of it. 

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Jill Overmyer: Senior Marketing Communications Manager

Name: Jill Overmyer

Age: 35

College & Majors/Minors: BS in English, Professional Writing and Editing emphasis/Psychology minor

Current Location: Dallas, Texas

Current Form of Employment: Senior Marketing Communications Manager

Where do you work and what is your current position?

I am the Senior Marketing Communications Manager for an energy and home services company in Dallas. My main responsibilities are working with executives to develop company-wide communication strategies, establishing messaging and positioning for new products and services, hiring and managing writers and freelancers, developing and executing social media and content management strategies, and writing and reviewing copy. The things I write range from executive speeches to video scripts to brochures. 

Tell us about how you found your first job, and how you found your current job (if different).

My first job out of college was working as the Communications Specialist at the national headquarters of a fraternity. I found that job the old-fashioned way—I saw an ad on CareerBuilder, applied with my resume and some samples, interviewed, and accepted a job offer. 

This was vastly different from the way I found my current position. In fact, I didn't really find my current job. One day I got a phone call from a freelance client (now the Chief Marketing Officer at my company) about an "opportunity" he thought I would be good for. The next thing I knew, I was moving to Texas. 

“The vast majority of my career has been in marketing and copywriting, and I found out quickly that marketing and creative teams often go from company to company together. That’s one of the reasons it’s so important to develop good working relationships and never burn bridges. ”

The last few positions I've held followed a similar pattern. They were offered to me through former coworkers or bosses who had moved on to different companies and were in the process of building new teams. The vast majority of my career has been in marketing and copywriting, and I found out quickly that marketing and creative teams often go from company to company together. That's one of the reasons it's so important to develop good working relationships and never burn bridges. 

What was another writing-related job that was important in your career?

My first freelance job was a turning point for me. I was writing content articles for a few different websites, and I realized that I could make a lot of money as a freelance writer. It opened up new doors as I learned about the different opportunities that were available. For a time period, I worked full-time from home as a freelance writer. I still do some freelance now, but I'm more discerning about which jobs I take. 

What did you do in college to prepare for your post-grad life? 

The entire time I was in college, I worked at my school's on-campus Writing Center as a writing tutor. I learned so much about grammar and the entire writing process, and it also allowed me to enter the job market with editing experience. 

What is your advice for students and graduates with an English degree?

I would highly recommend taking advantage of as many opportunities to build up your resume and portfolio in school as possible. This could be tutoring, writing for the school paper, and looking for internships between semesters or tracks. When you graduate with experience, you already have an edge over many other new graduates. 

Also, try to learn about as many of the different opportunities in the field as possible so you have an idea about what you want to go into when you graduate. There are so many different fields and lines of work you can move into as an English major—it really is incredibly diverse. 

I also think it’s important, whether in school or in the job market, to seek out mentors you can learn from. I've been privileged to have some wonderful mentors who have taught me a great deal throughout my schooling and professional career. I'm still in contact with most of them to this day. There are so many people you will come in contact with that you can learn from and collaborate with, and recognizing those opportunities and seeing each job as a learning experience will open up more doors than you realize. 

You can connect with Jill on LinkedIn!

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Christine Reilly: Author & Teacher

Name: Christine Reilly

Age: 27

College & Majors/Minors: Bucknell - Psychology and English double-major with a Concentration in Creative Writing. I got my MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College.

Current Location: New York, New York

Current Form of Employment: Author and teacher

Where do you work and what is your current position?

I teach fiction and poetry workshops at Sarah Lawrence College and the Gotham Writers Workshop, and my debut literary novel, Sunday's on the Phone to Monday, will be published in April with Simon & Schuster.

Sunday's on the Phone to Monday: A Novel

$12.50

By Christine Reilly

Buy on Amazon

Tell us about how you found your first job, and how you found your current job (if different):

My first job was teaching middle and high school English at the Professional Children's School, a private school in New York City for ballet and modern dancers, Broadway actors, Julliard musicians, and professional athletes.

What was another writing-related job that was important in your career?

I had a wonderful internship at Tin House, the literary journal. I got to go through the slush pile and give feedback, which was a dream come true—reading all day!

What did you do in college to prepare for your post-grad life?

In college, I read and wrote all the time. I also kept a diary, which comes in handy now that I'm writing a novel about college students. I also got to experience writing workshop for the first time, which is my favorite place to be. Now as a teacher I facilitate workshop. I love seeing that side of the creative process. There's always such a wonderful energy in the room.

What is your advice for students and graduates with an English degree?

It sounds cliche, but I'd say follow your dreams but work tirelessly as you follow them. I'm doing exactly what I wanted to do in college, and I didn't let the naysayers discourage me! I did, however, learn to be unafraid of failure. I didn't have any publishing or teaching connections whatsoever, so I reached out to every literary agent and educator I knew to learn more about a possible career in those fields.

You can visit Christine Reilly's website here! 

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Angela Nixon: Speechwriter

Name: Angela Nixon    

Age: 39

College & Majors/Minors: Clemson University, Bachelor of Arts in English, with a minor in technical writing (1999); also earned a Master of Arts in Professional Communication from Clemson in 2001

Current Location: Live in Seneca, SC; work in Clemson, SC

Current Form of Employment: Speechwriter

Where do you work and what is your current position?

I work at Clemson University as the speechwriter for the university president. I also assist the president’s office with other communication needs, such as correspondence.

Tell us about how you found your first job, and how you found your current job (if different).

My first “real” job out of graduate school was at Clemson in the Media Relations office. I was finishing up graduate school and had been applying for jobs for months, mostly looking at technical writing jobs (because that’s what I thought I wanted to do at the time). I was not having any luck at all with it and was getting really discouraged. I saw that the university’s media relations office was hiring someone to do media relations/PR work for the Division of Student Affairs. It wasn’t what I envisioned myself doing forever, and I really never planned to stay at Clemson after graduation, but I decided to apply. I got the job, mostly based on my knowledge and familiarity with the university and the fact that as an undergraduate, I had held two internships at a newspaper as a reporter. They were looking for someone who could write press releases in the style of news stories, so it was really the newspaper internships that got my foot in the door.

““They were looking for someone who could write press releases in the style of news stories, so it was really the newspaper internships that got my foot in the door.””

My current job as the president’s speechwriter happened fairly recently, in January 2015. Our president came to Clemson in 2014. The speechwriter for the previous president was retiring, so there was an opening to fill, and a need to get it filled quickly, as the president has a LOT of speaking engagements. I expressed an interest in the position and before I knew it, I had been promoted into the job. It was really important to have someone in this position who knows Clemson University backwards and forwards, especially since our president was relatively new. After being a student here and then an employee for nearly 14 years, my institutional knowledge, combined with my abilities as a writer, were what helped me get the job.

What was another writing-related job that was important in your career?

I mentioned it in my previous answer, but my internships at my local newspaper were definitely important in my career. I think it is safe to say that I never would have been hired to work in Clemson’s Media Relations office without that experience. The summer of my junior year in college I got an internship with my hometown newspaper, The Index-Journal, in Greenwood, SC. It is a daily paper, but it is a small daily, so the interns are treated like normal staff reporters. I was assigned a beat to cover and I was out there every day finding stories, interviewing people, writing stories, just like the full-time staff. It definitely was not an internship that involved making copies or getting people coffee. I was filing multiple stories a day, as well as taking photos for my stories, as the paper did not have a staff photographer at that time. (I also learned how to develop film, as this was in the dark ages of 1998, before digital photography was common.)

““Sometimes internships are valuable because they help you figure out what you don’t want to do with your career.””

The summer after I graduated, I interned at the same newspaper, but this time I was in the sports department, an experience that allowed me to add skills such as “keeping box scores for baseball” to my resume. Those two internships taught me so much about working under constant deadlines, how to interview people, how to find stories and pitch them to an editor, dealing with confrontational people (because not every news story is positive, of course, and not everyone wants to be interviewed), and lots of other great skills, in addition to developing my writing skills. Just as importantly, those internship experiences taught me that I did NOT want a career in journalism. Sometimes internships are valuable because they help you figure out what you don’t want to do with your career.

What did you do in college to prepare for your post-grad life?

This one is a little difficult for me, simply because I don’t remember doing anything special to prepare for life after college. I did the internships that I mentioned above, I worked hard in my classes, and I also was involved in one student organization at Clemson — Central Spirit, which is like Clemson’s version of a “pep club” to support athletics. I became president of Central Spirit my senior year, which gave me a taste of leadership experience, and it allowed me to interact with university staff members and administrators more than most students probably do. It was a valuable experience for me. But my “post-grad life” consisted of immediately going to graduate school, which was always my plan, so I didn’t feel like I needed to do much to really prepare for it.

I will say this — graduate school was a completely different experience than being an undergraduate. My master’s program is also housed in the English Department at Clemson, so I figured it would be something of an extension of my undergraduate experience. I was so wrong. The level of rigor and sheer amount of work involved in graduate school was so much higher than it was for me as an undergraduate, and that was something I was not prepared for at all. I had a very difficult time adjusting to the workload and having a graduate assistantship at the same time. It was very overwhelming for me. I also did not have a clear idea of what I wanted to do with my master’s degree, so I felt a bit rudderless at times, which didn’t help. I was putting in all of this work, but I wasn’t sure what the end result would be. Looking back, I should have done more research on graduate degrees, both the requirements to earn a degree and which degree I really wanted. I don’t regret going to graduate school, I just wish I had been better prepared for it.

““Don’t get discouraged. The communication and critical thinking skills you are honing right now are so important, and critical thinking is a topic that is sorely lacking in a lot of disciplines right now. That’s what you’re learning, and it is something that employers do value.””

What is your advice for students and graduates with an English degree?

My number one piece of advice for English majors or recent graduates is this: don’t listen to anyone who tells you that you cannot find a job with an English degree. Don’t get discouraged. The communication and critical thinking skills you are honing right now are so important, and critical thinking is a topic that is sorely lacking in a lot of disciplines right now. That’s what you’re learning, and it is something that employers do value.

My other piece of advice is to keep an open mind about your career path and be willing to try things that may not be exactly in line with what you think you want to do. My original goal when I changed my major to English (I started out as a biology major, if you can believe that) was to become a technical writer. Looking back, I’m not sure why I chose that career path, but that’s what I wanted at the time. I minored in it, and I thought I had chosen a graduate program that would lend itself to a career in technical writing. But when I had an opportunity to intern at the newspaper, I decided to do it, just to try something new and to have some kind of relevant work experience for my resume. It wasn’t my dream job by a long shot, but it gave me the experience I needed to get a job after graduate school. I never envisioned myself in a public relations kind of job, and I certainly NEVER thought I would be writing speeches for the president of a major university, but I have loved my career so far, and now I can’t imagine being happy as a technical writer. Had I not tried those internships in journalism, though, none of it ever would have happened, and who knows where I would have ended up? So my advice is to not limit yourself to one specific career path and to be open to new experiences … because you never know where those other paths might lead. 

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