You spent four years discussing novels, writing essays, and huddling in the library with your nose in your books in a quest to soak up knowledge, and you paid an arm and a leg to do it. However, you finally have your English degree in hand, and you're ready to start paying back those looming student loans. After all, pulling all-nighters and breaking the bank on books was the hard part. With a college degree, you're bound to find a job somewhere, right?

Unfortunately, this mentality has been disproved in recent years as the economy took a downturn and the number of jobless graduates and post-grads took an upturn. This year, the Associated Press reported that more than half of America's recent college graduates are either unemployed or working jobs that don't require a college education. A recent graduate myself, I found that my answer, "English", to the age old question "What did you major in?" was always met with immediate reactions of silence and an air of pity--one strong enough to strip me of any gusto I had for my liberal arts degree. My engineering and pre-med peers, on the other hand, were always met with considerably more enthusiasm upon announcing their degree.

In today's economy, it's easy to put the blame on college students for not choosing to study more practical subjects like engineering, medicine, or computer science. For many young students, however, these subjects are not where their passions lie; therefore, they must choose between what they want to study and what they feel they need to study in order to earn a decent living. The choice appears fairly black and white; the difference between success and failure.

When I stumbled onto Scripted's website, I was both skeptical and surprised. Scripted is a fusion of art and practicality; it's a place where freelance writers, liberal arts graduates and more practical professions co-exist in a mutually beneficial relationship. The founders have created a platform that allows writers to pursue their passions for pay.

At its most basic level, it has allowed people with writing skills in non-writing professions to make some extra cash participating in what is perhaps a favorite pastime, writing. At the very least, I can speak from personal experience that Scripted has allowed me to pursue my passion. Their commitment to producing high quality content has made this English major proud to be a reading and writing nerd, and renewed my faith in the usefulness of an English degree and the power of writing.