Hey readers. This is What Do You Do With A BA In English?. I'm here to rep the arts graduate experience. In doing so I hope to reassure you that when YOU graduate with YOUR arts degree you will be vaguely employable.

So here's the skinny. I went to uni in 2005 and I graduated the summer just passed, 2008. I studied a three-year BA in English Literature at a nice Russell group uni, and I left with a 2.1. I chose not to do anything further study.

I left uni with no sense of direction, and no grand ambitions. Lots of my friends were flying to jobs in Europe, doing internships with brilliant independent magazines or winning fancy training contracts with high-profile law firms.

But before you squeeze my hand and make consolatory noises, let me reassure you that I didn't feel too bad about having nothing to do. I had everything I wanted, apart from a Grand Life Plan.

So when hit with the indefatigable question, "What Do You Do With A BA In English?", I had to get me a stock answer.

Two words:

Gap Year.

That phrase is a magical password to a land of shut-the-wellwishers-up, not to mention parental 'laissez-faire'. It gives me a year to try out everything and anything that I think I might be good at - education, journalism, working in the arts, events management. It gives friends and relatives a year off asking me that dull but essential question. The thing about an arts degree is that it leaves you a well-rounded, talented and interesting person. Instead of despairing over all the options, I learned how to exploit them.

So, readers, that's what I'm doing now: enjoying my Gap Year.

But what have you done with your BA in English, I hear you cry! Patience, reader. I'll fill you in bit by bit on how employable - or not - I've been over the last five months, and how I got to Paris. Paris, I know!! But that can wait.

As for my degree, I think I used it for scrap paper last time I did the G2 crossword.

Laters.