The Long-Winded Answer to "What can you do with an English degree?"

The short answer? Subjects like English teach *how* to think... whereas engineering/math teach exactly what you need to know to do your engineering/math job. English is all-encompassing, whereas engineering/math is specific.

As a lovely lady with an English degree, I can tell you full-heartedly that a well-rounded liberal arts degree facilitates creative problem-solving, abstract critical thinking, and the ability to "connect the dots" within most contexts without much effort. It encourages lifelong learning and makes it easier to wrap your mind around new subjects and theories. I'm good at math and science, but they could never excite me as much as language can. Unlike English questions, math and science questions always have a correct answer. I do miss that.

In college I had explain myself almost constantly to engineers and math majors. But those equipped with math-heavy degrees have a hard time bending their mind around this concept: There is more than one way to live and everyone processes stimuli differently. In my experience, the engineer and math majors don't debate to understand the liberal arts major's plight or to expand their horizons. They do it to imply their superiority. Typically, they are unwilling (or possibly unable) to put themselves in a different situation than their own.

Onto your question: What can you do with an English degree? The short answer is whatever you want. Law, Publishing, Media, Marketing, Advertising... basically anything except engineering jobs that require a specialized engineering degree. I want to be a Production Designer- the person who creates and tweaks everything from sets to lighting to camera and editing style in order to make the film come alive with a unifying tone and presence. I could have gone the route of getting a film degree, but decided against it. Kids with film degrees are stepping all over each other. Meanwhile, I have an English degree. It sets me apart. I can connect different factors of the film as if it were a Rubik's cube. I can disconnect them, analyze them, turn them over and out and reintroduce them to the film in a completely new way. There are tons of film majors who understand what they need to change, but would not be able to express it to a large group of people. Like I mentioned before, everyone thinks differently. I observe, analyze, understand, and articulate well.