what do you do with a...

“What do you do with a BA in English?” So goes the opening line in a song from Avenue Q. It’s a great musical because it makes puppets swear (giggle), and is also peppered with harsh truths like that one (you just don’t get that in Cats). I always knew my BA in English wasn’t worth much, but you never expect to hear it from a Jim Hensen creation (or close enough approximation) and being laughed at by a large who probably all have that degree or similar.

There is one difference between my situation and the one outlined in the aforementioned song. Ok, two: the first is that Gary Coleman is not my landlord, and the second is that my life doesn’t suck. I get work and it keeps me afloat, but it’s doing little to wipe away my debts from a recent Euro trip. It’s also hard to look busy when you work from your bedroom –and thus to anyone not physically standing in your room and observing you, working and watching Twin Peaks are practically the same activity.

Although said work is writing-based, I’d have probably gotten this work regardless of whether I had that BA in English or not. That said, I loved my BA and would do it again if I had the chance. But that routine and relative lack of expectation from my undergraduate days has since been stripped away and violated. I’ve never been one to stress about money or occupation before, but debts need a-paying. Also, my partner in crime/self-pity is now a straight and semi-productive member of society whose achievements at her job somehow eclipse the time I spend on Hype Machine and Facebook. I know, right?

I didn’t adopt all of the below steps, but if I ever scale back my freelancing stuff and get desperate then I will likely be turning to suppress the impotent guilt that will likely arrive shortly thereafter.


1. Cultivate an intentionally unkempt appearance to try and romanticise your lack of employment. For men, one way to do this is to grow a beard and girls can stop shampooing as regularly – just keep in mind that the idea is to transparently communicate an embracing of all things bohemian, including a deliberate withdrawal from capitalist society. Don’t go burning incense and distributing pro-hemp sidewalk literature because that’s not only uncool but is actively anti-productive. Just get a beard and caftan and bliss out to Yeasayer or Davendra Banhart. This should outwardly suggest enough counter-cultural capital to temporarily absorb your current unemployment into a conscious lifestyle decision.

2. Instead of eating your Mi Goreng in front of ‘The View,’ try trawling through Wikipedia and becoming an expert on freak-folk/experimental music or post-modern viewpoints. A working knowledge of recent underground cultural trends creates the impression that you are still somehow vital and connected to society’s linear thrust even though you contribute little to that movement. Furthermore, a cursory knowledge of some broader philosophical ideologies reminds people that you are semi-intelligent and at least able to recall if not synthesise the more superficial elements of complex theories that you brushed over throughout your degree. If you are particularly confident in your abilities, use your recall to regurgitate news about the next Fennesz record or Zizek essay and imply that said knowledge makes you too good for the few low-paying media jobs available whilst simultaneously proving to your friends that you’re more synchronised with cultural and intellectual trends than them.

3. Where possible, leave bits of paper lying around that suggest you’re doing work (note to family and friends: this isn’t necessarily the reason my desk always looks like a bomb hit it). Always consult a diary when a friend or partner tries to arrange dinner with you and like you’re constantly waiting for an important call. If people enquire after what you’re doing, mention that you’ve got several independent projects in the works. As long as you appear to be working toward something edgy, others will hopefully become jealous that you operate outside of traditional work structures.

4. You could, of course, actually work on some “independent projects,” in whatever form they may take. At the very least it keeps you from getting bored in between re-runs of ‘America’s Next Top Model,’ and may even feed into the cultural capital that you’ll use to offset your lack of tangible monetary capital. Remind your friends that even beauty school dropouts have access to the latter form of capital, but yours is far more exclusive and therefore valuable. If your richer, employed friends suggest that you’ll never be able to afford a pet therapist without a proper job, respond by saying that you don’t agree with the practice of keeping animals as pets and thus deflecting the guilt and capitalist shame back on to them.

Hopefully neither of us gets to the point where these steps become useful, but no doubt you’ve met people who’ve adopted them to a certain degree. The point of the above steps is to dissolve the disparity between you and functioning members of society by creating the impression that your situation is somewhat deliberate. There’s only so long that they’ll work before the lack of returns or tangible progress become apparent, but these are good ways of temporarily appeasing parents and partners before you return to full-time study in an area more vocationally oriented.

Or, for other advice, don’t get yourself into thousands of dollars debt when you don’t have solid, salary-based employment prospects. Lesson learnt.

What do you do with a BA in English? Blog, clearly.

Avenue Q - What Do You Do With a BA in English/It Sucks to Be Me

(FYI, I saw Avenue Q on West End during the aforementioned Europe trip and it was great. If anyone from Sydney reads this then you should go and check out the season running down there fo sho).