Write what’s fun.

I read this article on Men with Pens about how many people don’t end up working in the field they studied in college. Here’s the section that pulled me in:

You might think your degree has absolutely nothing to do with your current job, or maybe you feel it’s not very helpful to your career or even the slightest bit useful. Even Taylor, a Men with Pens copywriter, doesn’t really think she gets much out of her college degree when she does her job.

And she has a degree in ENGLISH, for Pete’s sake.

You might have a degree in archaeology and now you write code for a living. You might have your degree in biology and now you knit fuzzy hats for babies. Or you got your degree in comparative religion and now you write a blog about snow sports.

I guarantee that if you think hard about it, you can find a way that your degree applies to your current career – and if you do think hard about it, I guarantee you’ll get a lot more out of your hard-won knowledge.

Students of professional or technical writing have a lot of different options to continue their educations when they graduate with an undergraduate degree. Go to law school? Teach high school? Get a Master’s Degree? Or find an editing job?

But life happens, and so what if you don't get into the grad schools you applied for when you graduate? What will you do for a year and a half of your life until you can apply again?

A great backup plan is to find a job doing some sort of writing-related job for a year. As I mentioned in a previous post, the best way to get a job is to intern. And the best place to intern is close to home. Since I’m from Los Angeles, that’s a good option. I’ve also got people I can live with in the Salt Lake area.

But after reading this article, I’m reminded of something a professor once told me. Dr. Phil Murdock, the professor I interviewed in the article about internships, said to write about what you love. Have a hobby in computers and technology? Try to get an internship with a computing magazine. Interested in the medical field? Find an internship writing copy for a hospital or medical clinic.

When you write what you love, you put more effort into your work and the quality shows. If you want to really “wow” an employer, find an internship you can love.