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After graduation in 2004, I spent a year as an English teacher in the �����������ϳԹ� Corps program in Lesotho. That was right around the time of the peak of HIV infection prevalence in southern Africa, and during my time there I became interested in the field of human development. Afterwards, I worked for a time as a maternal health program officer in Nigeria, then took a job for two years in Washington, DC in the field of war crimes prosecution. In 2008, I entered graduate school at Yale in African Studies, figuring that I would eventually get a Ph.D. in political science. But I was frustrated by the abstract nature of my graduate school work. I wanted direct experiences, and I realized that the work I’d loved the most was teaching, though I was still curious about questions of human development and human flourishing. So I went to medical school (there are a few strategies out there for taking pre-med coursework after college). I completed medical school at the University of Maryland, and I am now a psychiatry resident at New York University and Bellevue hospitals. Psychiatry is sort of the liberal arts of medicine — there are many open questions of diagnosis and pathophysiology that may never be resolved, and the daily work is very much about critical thinking and synthesis. I write more on a daily basis than I have in any other job, and I act as an advocate for my patients and their families. And it’s my job to be curious — about patients, about their lives outside of my office, about the contexts in which people live with mental illness. It’s a great fit for a �����������ϳԹ� graduate who is comfortable with ambiguity and has a strong sense of social justice. I used to worry that my English major would be a liability in a field like medicine, but, truly, it has always been an asset. All they say is true about the value of thinking deeply and critically, formulating an argument, finding evidence, and writing with confidence and clarity. And your encounters in English will follow you in unexpected ways in the world, maybe through chance conversations with strangers reading a familiar book of poems, or the ability to sink into a novel on the subway.

Michael Andersen ’03 spent four years at the S&B, including two years as news editor — building deadline writing skills that served him well in �����������ϳԹ�’s academic world whenever he needed to write an eight-page essay in a hurry, which was every time. However, as he looked for a job as a reporter for some small paper within driving distance of �����������ϳԹ� after graduation, his sheaf of college clips and an English degree didn’t mean squat. (This would have been different if he’d focused more than one of his summers on internships in his chosen career — not doing so was probably his biggest professional mistake.) What did mean squat was the respect of his former S&B and English Department colleague Sarah Aswell, who had by that point found a job at the �����������ϳԹ� Herald-Register thanks to a friend of hers who had happened to work in its art department. She nagged the editors there until they hired Michael, and over the next year they gradually scaled him up to full-time and he fell permanently in love with local journalism.

That led to a master’s in reporting and writing from Northwestern in 2005, which led to a fascination with the business of online media, which led to a couple web-heavy jobs at daily newspapers, which led to him settling on a professional meta-objective about five years out of college: his goal is to do public-facing reporting on municipal policies that address and repair cyclical poverty. This led to him starting a crazy little web-news startup serving public transit users in Portland, which later joined up with a less crazy web-based startup serving bike users in Portland. As of 2016, 13 years after graduation, he’s found a niche reporting on municipal policy issues — street design, bike and transit infrastructure, parking policy, zoning laws — for organizations with some sort of axe to grind. Somehow he’s been able to keep finding organizations that want to grind the same axes he does. He earns about $65,000 annually through a combination of freelance and salaried work.

He became an English major because Michael Cavanagh’s Lyric, taken in his third semester, was the first class he enjoyed so much that his heart beat faster. He rarely uses the technical skills of an English major (though last month he did compose a six-stanza clue, in dactylic trimeter, for an urban scavenger hunt produced by his employer) but he’s been lucky to be able to build his career around the same value: it’s work that excites him. Every day he gets to learn new things, argue about their social-justice implications with acquaintances and craft sentences about his conclusions. That’s the work he learned to love in �����������ϳԹ� English classes.

I became an English major my junior year, against the wishes of my parents, who are microbiologists, and who thought an English degree would be a useless waste of money. I have always known that I wanted to write for a living in some capacity, and that my great dream is to be a humor writer.

After I graduated, I stayed behind in �����������ϳԹ� to finish my degree (I had failed Latin II – I do not recommend doing that) and be with my underclassman boyfriend (we broke up – I do not recommend staying in �����������ϳԹ� to be with your underclassman boyfriend). During that year, I worked for the �����������ϳԹ� Herald-Register, which is owned and run by �����������ϳԹ� alumni. I highly, highly recommend working with them if you have no idea what you want to do but you do know you want to write. It was a very tough year with a steep learning curve, but I learned so much about writing that I still fall back on, including but not limited to every single thing you ever need to know about journalism, plus how to type really, really fast. Plus how to use the phone, how to find the best sources (and how to get them to talk), how to respond to criticism correctly, and how to hit deadlines no matter what.

During that year, I applied to graduate creative writing programs. I got into exactly one, the fiction program at the University of Montana, the second-oldest program in the country, and one of the most respected. I got rejected from everywhere else. I had never been to Montana, but I had also never been to Iowa when I was accepted into �����������ϳԹ�, so I went. I had a really wonderful experience there, and although I learned there that I am not the super best fiction writer ever, I learned I am pretty good at non-fiction. I met many lifelong friends and mentors. It changed my life.

After getting my MFA, I thought I wanted to enter the publishing industry and be an editor, so my boyfriend and I (we are now married with two kids) packed up and moved to New York City. I quickly discovered that working in book publishing as a writer is kind of like working in a fire truck factory when you really want to be a firefighter. I became deeply depressed, but also started freelance writing out of my cubicle. This was not morally ideal, but within two years, I was able to quit and begin a freelance writing business. That was 2008. It took a lot of cold calls and a lot of risks. Once I had enough clients, I moved back to Montana, where my business is flourishing eight years later. I work from home where I raise my two toddler girls.

I write mostly marketing copy–my biggest client is Nike, though I write for tons of small and medium-sized companies and a handful of local businesses. The work is not glamorous, but it is lucrative enough that I have plenty of time to take care of my kids and a few hours a day to dedicate to my true love: writing humor pieces and writing stand-up comedy, which I perform locally. Everything about this set up makes me happy. Besides the corporate writing I do (about four hours a day), I have been published in McSweeny’s, Reductress, The Advocate, The Gettysburg Review, and a few others places. And I do stand-up comedy four or fives times a month. It is absolutely possible to have a writing career that involves both making great money and following your dreams. Contact me any time at all at sarah.aswell@gmail.com. I love talking to �����������ϳԹ� people.

I graduated with the expectation that I would go on to graduate school. That did not happen and it has been such a blessing. Instead, I have a very rewarding career as a nanny/household manager. I have been with the same family for nearly ten years. Though child care is an unexpected choice for an English major, I use my degree every day. Having a strong command of English has allowed me to adapt as my charges have gotten older. I help with homework, of course, but I also arrange regular maintenance for the house and keep everything stocked. Every day is different and I don’t have to sit in an office. I’m grateful for my �����������ϳԹ� education for teaching me the kind of elastic thinking and problem solving skills that are invaluable when working with children.

In some ways, my career trajectory since leaving �����������ϳԹ� feels fated — my time in the English department has influenced every aspect of my life and work, directly and indirectly. On the other hand, my path to where I am now has certainly not been linear — it’s included plenty of false starts, confusion, and existential panic. The common thread in both my angst and certainty has been a love of books and reading, a drive to share those passions with others, and the ability to make that goal a reality thanks to the critical thinking and writing skills that were fostered in the �����������ϳԹ� English department.

My senior year at �����������ϳԹ� I applied to traditional MFA programs — but, after being accepted, I found that I wasn’t ready to commit. After a couple of post-�����������ϳԹ� years of retail underemployment and feverish novel-writing, I found my way instead to the Master of Information Studies program at the University of Texas at Austin, where my drive for public service and my tendency towards obsessive organization found a happy union in the field of librarianship. After receiving my MSIS, I returned to my hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma, where I now work as a reference and instruction librarian at a community college. I teach students how to approach research challenges, I collaborate with colleagues to ensure that library services reach the students that need them most, and — perhaps most thrillingly — I get to spend several thousand dollars each year on books. The strong research skills I cultivated during my time in the �����������ϳԹ� English department have served me well in my library career, as have the writing skills that allow me to organize projects and communicate effectively with students and faculty.

Most recently, another element of my time at �����������ϳԹ� — my love for creative writing in all its forms — led me to pursue an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults through the Vermont College of Fine Arts. It’s a low-residency program, which means I spend two euphoric ten-day periods on campus each year, and dedicate the rest of my time to the cultivation of a daily writing practice in partnership with a faculty advisor. When I was at �����������ϳԹ�, I signed up for every creative writing workshop available, exploring poetry, creative nonfiction, and short stories — and learned the valuable skills of giving (and receiving) constructive criticism. At VCFA, I’m pursuing my writing fully, as part of a nurturing and supportive creative community — and I absolutely wouldn’t be doing that without the strong foundation in creative work that I built at �����������ϳԹ�.

Today, I am working at Swarthmore College’s Title IX Office, thinking about how to do innovative sexual violence prevention on a small campus and provide opportunities for students to be engaged in this crucial work. But 10 years ago this summer (*pause to realize it’s been 10 years… ...annnnd we’re back!*), I was sitting at NSO, 99% sure that I wanted to major in English. I majored in English because English classes were my favorite classes in high school, because I loved to read and write, because I had Steve Andrews and Ralph Savarese in my first two years of college and thought to myself, “I want to spend more time learning with those guys.” But what I got out of my English major was very different from what I expected going in. Sure, I built writing and critical thinking skills that I carry with me to this day. And the whole knowing-how-to-behave-in-a-small-group-discussion thing has proven very useful in the conversations that I have at Swarthmore with students and colleagues daily. But even more than that, I gained a sense of empathy. As my fellow English major and partner, Erica Hauswald (’12), constantly reminds me, literature really is an empathy tool. Following different characters from place to place, seeing the world from their perspective, inhabiting different people’s psyches and lives – this was perhaps the most useful part of being an English major for me.

At Swarthmore, I am constantly pushed to see both our campus and the world from other vantage points. From an incoming student who did not have comprehensive sex education before coming to Swarthmore, to a survivor who wants to make Swarthmore safer before they graduate, to a faculty or staff member who feels anxious about reporting requirements and what this means for their role on campus. It is the process of trying to inhabit someone else’s world – someone else’s story – make sense of it, and build a relationship, that constitutes the very core of my work here.

I should also say that there were many chapters before this one, connecting my experience as an English major (and, unsurprisingly, a Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies concentrator) to my current story. There was the AmeriCorps chapter, just after graduation, where I lived in a city on my own for the first time and had very little clue what I was going to do next. There were the chapters where I met my first post-�����������ϳԹ� mentor who took me under her wing, invited me to work for her nonprofit, and taught me how poems and short stories could be directly linked to social justice and civic work. There were the grad school chapters for when I had a clearer vision of the kind of work I wanted to do in the future and the kind of degree I needed to get there (I have an M.Ed. in Student Affairs for those who are curious). And of course there were the people along the way who have tied together my narrative, many of whom have been English majors themselves.

For the sake of space, I’ve had to create a tight narrative here, but if there are other questions or thoughts that come up for you, feel free to email me directly at rbernst1@swarthmore.edu.

After graduating from �����������ϳԹ� in 2007 with a degree in English, I worked for the college for a year as an admission counselor. During that year, I took the LSAT and applied to law school. I spent my first year of law school at the University of Michigan and then transferred to Yale and graduated in 2011. I then returned to the Midwest and spent a year in Madison, WI as a law clerk for Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, followed by a year in Minneapolis, MN as a law clerk for Judge John Tunheim on the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota. Next, I moved to Washington, DC and worked for two and a half years as an associate at Covington & Burling LLP, where I focused on employment law. In July 2016, I will again return to the Midwest to join Fredrikson & Byron, PA in Minneapolis, MN. I plan to continue focusing on employment law.

Studying literature at �����������ϳԹ� prepared me well for everything that I have done over the past nine years. The English major gave me exposure to a range of historical and cultural ideas in addition to teaching me about literary technique and style. More generally, but most importantly, the program gave me the ability to think critically, analyze text, write clearly, and communicate effectively. In each role that I have held since college, from admission counselor, to law student, to law clerk, to law firm associate, I have relied heavily on those skills.

I’d say my English major has served me well, though it took me being proactive about job planning and no doubt a little luck. After graduating, I taught English in Lesotho for a year and then on the Rosebud Reservation with Teach for America (TFA) for three years. I parlayed that into a couple years’ work as Assistant Director of an education nonprofit called Breakthrough in California. And now I’m in Minnesota, in the process of establishing my own nonprofit (we just finished up our first classes taught by college students — see recent publications!) that is largely based on the MAP I did, and got its foundational funding from �����������ϳԹ�’s Wall Award.

When I graduated, I knew that both teaching and nonprofit administration were of interest to me, so generally aimed my path as: English major → English educator → education nonprofit → nonprofit administrator.

Have to credit TFA — criticisms notwithstanding — with being really, really strong at training and supporting me with transferable professional and leadership development. The engagement of big moral questions (race, gender, disability, pedagogy) and practice analyzing and articulating them, and just generally learning about the world and developing a worldview, however, are components of my English major that have been directly transferable to the work world (having read postcolonial African lit and theory before moving to Lesotho (or the rez for that matter), being able to write well (grants!), training diverse teachers to lead culturally responsive pedagogy, etc.).

But I also know that if a few key decisions had broken a different way for me, I could be telling a very different story, whereas if I was say, a STEM major who happened to enjoy taking lots of literature classes on the side, I could probably be doing all the things I’ve done and have an easy $60k fallback job if necessary.

Not that I ever really wanted to do that. Just something I’m mindful of when advising my own students and their college decisions.

In terms of work, my first few years after graduating from �����������ϳԹ� were similar to the Plinko board on The Price is Right: I dropped down, hitting pegs and bouncing left, right, somehow up, usually down. I had graduated without a real plan, and took on a series of jobs: I tutored, I taught, I pulled espresso shots, and I worked for a local newspaper. In each of those jobs, my experience in the classroom among lit-minded peers and under the guidance of professors were bedrocks — even in the coffee shop, where I got to fulfill the English major cliché . While knowledge of Beowulf was a plus, it was my ability to work with abstract terms and to write that landed me each job, each of which I was under-qualified for on paper. The personal attention I received from professors translated into writing skills that, when push came to shove, helped me churn out a strong, specific cover letter or quickly draft anything and everything for coworkers. And the classroom discussions — both on-track and off-track — segued right into that same quality, as I buffed and shined that holy grail of liberal arts education, my critical thinking. But this critical thinking, the one that the brochures and professors push as applicable in the real world, is actually more than a buzzword. It allows for agility in the workplace, an efficiency and richness to thought that translates from the newsroom to the classroom to the boardroom to the coffee shop. It is invaluable and an hourly boost to whatever it is you’re doing with your days.

I teach early and nineteenth-century American Literature at Texas A&M University-San Antonio. My interest in this material was in large part sparked by classes with Stephen Andrews at �����������ϳԹ�. Before teaching at the college level, I taught English at a public high school in Vermont. The English major at �����������ϳԹ� prepared me to teach literature in a variety of circumstances, as classes provided helpful background and contextual material on a variety of literary eras and movements, illuminative explorations of theoretical and critical topics, and ample opportunities for finding my voice in responding to texts and my peers. In addition to giving me the foundational knowledge necessary to teach literature broadly and American literature specifically, the opportunities afforded by the English major and in particular contact with the faculty and other majors helped me to develop an interest in and commitment to teaching literature and writing.

I work as a software engineer for a Bay Area startup called 6sense, where I build tools to help large-scale sales organizations identify their potential buyers among the millions of companies they market to. Though the content of my current work is a departure from anything I studied at �����������ϳԹ�, the methodology — beginning with focused scrutiny as the foundation of analysis and then expanding that focus with the help of technology — is a direct result of my English coursework at �����������ϳԹ�.

I arrived at software engineering by way of my coursework in John Milton and James Joyce, where I was introduced to the Digital Humanities as a way of studying literature. Upon completion of these courses’ initial writing assignments — which relied heavily on a close-reading of a single stanza or passage to carry its argument — my professors then introduced me to digital tools that allowed me to expand my focus from a single passage to an entire book, or even an entire corpus, in a matter of minutes. I was interested not only by the technology itself, but also by how its distant perspective inflected my previous conclusions about the original text. And I soon found myself grappling with the opposing forces of the insight gained from this previously unattainable vantage point versus the nuance lost as the original content slowly shifts out of focus. With this trade-off in mind, I eventually worked on Mentor Advanced Projects to build my own tools that sought to strike a balance between the two, which is what ultimately led me to the work I do now. Rather than start with an argument derived from a passage of text, I now start with what constitutes a buying signal in a set of data and then leverage technology to extend that insight across millions of other companies. However, I’ve found that data, in its fine distinctions, doesn’t incite in me the same joy as the nuances of writing, so I’ve found myself, bit-by-bit, gravitating back toward English.

After I left �����������ϳԹ� with majors in English and Sociology, I went on to complete a Master’s degree in Urban and Regional Planning at University of Iowa and a Ph.D. in Urban Planning and Policy at University of Illinois at Chicago. I am now an Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. While it would seem that I have departed substantially from my roots as a student of English literature, I draw from those principles constantly. As a field, urban planning is often incorrectly viewed by outsiders as being primarily a technical exercise rooted in zoning ordinances, building codes, and land use law. My planning practice, research, and teaching views planning as a form of persuasive storytelling that involves navigating often conflicting narratives regarding the past, present, and future visions for a place. A big portion of my job involves finding ways to curate and translate these narratives into advice for actions that balances the voices of powerful stakeholders with those who may have less power but an equal (and oftentimes greater) stake in how a place will change. My research focuses specifically on the experience of moving for low-income households and other households who face residential displacement due to urban renewal processes and foreclosures. Collecting, curating, and retelling these narratives is for me something that I could not do without a broader appreciation for the power of narrative which comes directly from my English degree. Teaching others to use data-driven narratives for good (never evil!) is another incredibly gratifying part of my job - and one that is rooted in my English and Sociology majors at �����������ϳԹ�.

A little secret that I share with many of my students is this - the capability to read critically and write clearly has consistently done more for me and my career than any other qualifications or technical expertise that I have gained. Employers (even in technically oriented fields) crave good communicators - they are few and far between! Technical skills can be learned and honed on a job, but critical thinking and communication skills are what will get you the job! My English degree gave me a framework for approaching the world with an appreciation for good communication and for the art of narrative - and I use that knowledge daily in both my research and teaching.

I think my job is probably more directly related to my experiences in the �����������ϳԹ� English Department than many alums — but I also never left the college, so I’m not sure how applicable or comforting my experiences would be to other folks.

But I can certainly say that my experiences completing the English major while organizing the prison program have helped me in my career. Of course, it set me up to be able to argue that the prison program should become a bigger part of the college and therefore get a job for myself. I was hired as the college’s first staff person for the Liberal Arts in Prison Program a couple months after I graduated, and I have held the position for eight years now. I have created and sustained a college program in a prison, which I’m very proud of.

In general, the practice I had with careful, precise writing has served me extremely well in communicating with the very different people I interact with regularly at my job (prison administrators, prison inmates, college administrators, college students). I also think that studying creative writing and literary analysis helped me carefully, thoroughly, and honestly engage ethical issues. I have to do that every day, and I’m very glad I got practice with that as a student when the stakes were a bit lower.

I graduated from �����������ϳԹ� in 2006 with my BA in English and with all but one course under my belt from the Biological Chemistry major. Since graduation, I’ve studied and worked in the field of public health, which nicely melds my interests in creative and scientific thinking. In addition to earning my Masters in Public Health in Epidemiology from the University of Michigan and my PhD in Epidemiology from the University of Washington, I’ve had the pleasure of working as a Research Assistant at a state-level healthcare policy institute, as a master’s level health services researcher in academia, and as a doctorate-level researcher in the field of Cardiovascular Epidemiology. The skills that I practiced as an English major serve me daily in my work as a scientist. In academic scientific research, much of our work includes the writing of grants and manuscripts, and this work depends on critical thinking, clear communication, and the argument of our ideas. I enjoy thinking in an interdisciplinary manner, and am happy that my career has allowed me to continue this combination of creative and scientific thinking that I practiced while an English major and student of Biological Chemistry at �����������ϳԹ�.

I write this to express how impactful the English major at �����������ϳԹ� was on my �����������ϳԹ� experience, my career, and my life. Entering college, I loved writing and literary analysis and knew that I wanted to major in English. I didn’t know how this particular major would benefit my career plans, but I was optimistic that it would open doors in one way or another. My experience as an English major was top-notch. I had outstanding professors who challenged and encouraged me, and still do to this day. After graduating, I joined Teach for America in Chicago and taught in early childhood. I discovered that one major focus in early childhood education is emergent literacy. I became very passionate about teaching reading to young learners and found that I was able to incorporate my love for children’s books and poetry through teaching. After three years of teaching, I wrote my first children’s book (Know It All Nori). Today, I am currently in my fifth year of teaching, am completing a Master’s in Education with a Reading Specialist Endorsement, and am working with a publishing company on my second children’s book (Know It All Nori: A Bedtime Story). I never would have thought that I could publish a book, and I credit the craft of fiction and craft of poetry courses at �����������ϳԹ� for inspiring me to write professionally. My future as both a teacher and writer is constantly evolving as I realize how many doors are actually available for me to open as a result of the skills that I acquired at �����������ϳԹ�. From personal experience, I can confidently assure you that the pursuit of an English major can lead to a rewarding college experience, followed by an abundance of opportunities in the years to come.

After graduating from �����������ϳԹ� in 2009 as a double English and History major, I worked as a paralegal for a year in New York while applying to English PhD programs. My decision to apply was influenced highly by courses in the English department, particularly courses on postcolonial lit and theory with Shuchi Kapila, the British Novel with Heather Lobban-Viravong, and American Lit with Ralph Savarese (as well as history courses with Victoria Brown and film course with Theresa Geller) and an informal Ulysses reading group organized by English faculty and students my senior year. In my first year at the University of Iowa’s English PhD program I realized that my interests were veering more towards interdisciplinary work and with the further mentoring of Professor Geller I applied to several programs in critical theory and cultural studies. I am currently in my 4th year in Duke’s program in Literature, working on a dissertation on domesticity and the women’s prison in the US. As a graduate student in a program that centers critical theory, my coursework in English, particularly those courses that utilized theoretical frameworks, have been crucial to preparing me for my graduate work. I would add that my participation in the Liberal Arts in Prison Program, which was organized by a fellow English major (Emily Guenther), was crucial both in developing my teaching skills and my interest in prison as a site of political and academic concern.

My decision to be an English major was based entirely on my love of books and on dreams of being a famous author. At times, especially immediately after graduating from �����������ϳԹ�, I questioned my choice to immerse myself in joyful literary analysis instead of training to be a petroleum engineer or an actuary. People don’t become English majors because they care only about lucrative careers.

That said, I am employed full-time as a Grant and Project Coordinator at Yamhill Community Care Organization in Mcminnville, Oregon. I love my job, and I use the tools I gained from my English major, from my English professors and classmates, every day. The