What does an English degree do for you anyway?

Hayley is reading a book called House Rules. It's a Jodi Picoult book about a kid with aspergers. She laughed at a couple paragraphs and read them to me, and I thought it was pretty spot on.

I graduated with honors from the University of Vermont with a degree in English. Here’s a little nugget of wisdom for you just in case you’re interested: you can’t practice English in the real world. What skills did I have, honestly? I could outread anyone in a quick draw? I could write a totally smoking analytical essay about the homoerotic overtones of Shakespeare’s sonnets?

Yeah, that and a dollar fifty will get you a cup of coffee.

Luckily, I added the "with emphasis in professional and technical writing" to my English degree. That has made quite a difference in my life. But don't get me started on how incompetent I think my professors were... that's a rant for a different day.