I graduated from Arizona State University with a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature. As I walked across the commencement stage on a sunny December morning, I was overwhelmed with the greatest feeling; it was a mixture of relief, accomplishment, and pride.

That feeling lasted about 30 seconds.

I accepted my diploma, moved my graduation tassel to the left of my mortarboard, posed for the obligatory “parents flanking the graduate shot” and then was struck by a thought.

What now?

And just moments after that, a second thought came barreling toward me.

I should have majored in Education like everyone else.

That’s the thing about a major in English literature: everyone assumes you are going to become a teacher. That assumption is so prevalent and so powerful that it was almost enough to make me believe it myself. There were times I strongly considered an Education degree because it seemed to be the safer option, the only option. I persevered, however, and attempted to drown out the nagging voices that constantly asked “What are you going to do with an English degree?”

It’s a question I’ve received hundreds of times and yet I never perfected a response. The thing is, people only want to hear one of two answers: become a teacher or go to graduate school. Sometimes I would tell people what they wanted to hear. Usually I would shrug. Rarely would I tell the truth.

I want to write.

It’s a small and simple sentence but it’s one that always catches people off guard. I learned quickly that people don’t know how to react to impossible dreams.

And so, I kept that dream mostly to myself and spent the months after graduation working a soul-sucking office job. As I prepared for the birth of my son, however, I realized that my dream would never come true if I did not even have the courage to say it aloud.

And so I did. I said it as many times as I could. During this time I quit my 9-5 job, had a baby, and stumbled into the opportunity to become an SEO writer for BKA. I now spend my mornings, my afternoons, and any moment in which my baby is asleep, writing. Writing for work, writing for pleasure, and yes, writing for pay.

Getting paid to write? That was always the dream.

I’ll be honest; SEO writing is not the dream job I imagined for myself in college. (That included a host of published novels and a cross-country book tour.) I like to consider this little SEO venture of mine dream-job-adjacent, however, because I am getting paid to do what I love.

I hope that is something I can say for the rest of my life.

-by Kara Mcdowell