🌷🍃 What can you do with a degree in English Philology?

🌿🌹This interview is made possible thanks to the kindness and generosity of 𝗚𝗮𝗯𝗶𝗷𝗮 𝗠𝗮𝗹𝗱ū𝗻𝗮𝗶𝘁ė, who graciously agreed to share her story with our community.🌿🌹

🌿🌹𝗚𝗮𝗯𝗶𝗷𝗮 graduated from English Philology in 2018. As a lovely reminder of where every journey begins, 𝗚𝗮𝗯𝗶𝗷𝗮’s BA thesis was titled “From Wanders to Wonders: The Search for Identity in Michael Bracewell’s Novel “Perfect Tense”“.

🌿🌹Her story is a beautiful example of how the skills developed through English Philology - critical thinking, close attention to detail, communication, adaptability, and the ability to work with complex information - can travel far beyond the humanities and open the way to entirely unexpected professional paths.

🌿🌹 We hope 𝗚𝗮𝗯𝗶𝗷𝗮's story will inspire those who are about to graduate next year, those who are just beginning to think about their future, and those who are considering becoming part of our community.
🌿 Welcome - and enjoy the interview! 🌿

🌿🌹What did your path look like from graduation to your current job? How many different jobs have you held along the way?

I graduated from English Philology in 2018, and my career path since then has taken me considerably further from the world of language and literature than I could have expected. At the same time, I don't think I ever really left it behind completely. Straight after graduating, I had the opportunity to work as an administrator in our Department of English Philology. I am particularly grateful for that experience, as it gave me the chance to stay connected to the academic community that had been such an important part of my life as a student and contributed immensely to my growth as a person, while also providing me with one of my first experiences of working life. Looking back, it feels like a lovely bridge between university and everything that came afterwards, which holds fond memories.
Around that time, I also worked with English outside the university context: I had a high school student who needed help improving their English, and I had the opportunity to contribute to the translation of several short films from Lithuanian into English. Those experiences allowed me to use my degree in very direct and tangible ways.
My main career path, however, soon moved into the corporate world. I joined the financial sector as a Fraud Prevention Specialist, starting as an Associate and eventually progressing to a Senior position. Along the way, I also had the opportunity to try a Quality Assurance Specialist role, which gave me a different perspective on work-related processes and how they can be improved systematically.
For the past three years, I've been working at Vinted, one of Lithuania's “unicorn” companies, where I currently hold the role of Payments Technical Support Engineer.  On paper, this might look like quite a departure from my degree. In practice, though, I can still recognise the influence of my studies in almost every stage of my journey.

🌿🌹Which specific competencies gained during your studies are most useful in your current work?

One of the most useful things English Philology taught me was how to work with information that isn't always straightforward. Literary studies train us to read closely, look for nuances, understand context, and build an interpretation based on evidence. Those skills proved to be surprisingly useful when I was investigating potentially fraudulent cases, identifying patterns, and analysing and improving processes.
My current work requires more technical skills, so I also rely heavily on skills I developed after graduation. But the foundation is very familiar: taking a complex piece of information, breaking it down, identifying what matters, and communicating the conclusion clearly to my colleagues.
Philology has also taught me to be comfortable with ambiguity. As a literary text rarely has one correct interpretation, neither does a complicated problem at my work. Sometimes I have very little or no information at all and need to ask the right questions before I can understand what is actually happening.
And, of course, being able to communicate clearly in English remains extremely useful, since my previous and current workplaces have been international and around 90% of my communication at work is in English.

🌿🌹What skills are most valued in today’s job market? What should graduates have “in their backpack” when entering the workforce?

I would put curiosity, adaptability, critical thinking, and communication very high on the list. The job I got after university may not have been the job I imagined I'd do when I started my degree, and it may not even be the job I eventually want to continue doing. But what matters for me is having enough curiosity to keep learning and enough adaptability to move into unfamiliar territories.
I would also add the ability to learn independently. University cannot teach us to use every tool, system, or piece of industry knowledge we will ever need. But what they can (and what my studies did) teach us is how to learn, how to find reliable information, and how to make sense of it.
Even though I currently work in a highly technical role, it also requires excellent communication, as I often have to explain a problem or make a complicated topic understandable to someone who doesn't have my background.

🌿🌹Did you need to learn new things after graduation to adapt to the demands of the job market?

Certainly, probably much more than I anticipated when I graduated. Knowledge of banking processes, quality assurance, payment systems, technical troubleshooting, and many other skills I’ve had to learn along the way. Moving into the financial sector was a particularly big learning curve because I entered an environment with its own terminology and vocabulary, regulations, processes, systems, and ways of thinking. Later, moving into payments and technical support meant learning yet another set of concepts and becoming much more comfortable with the technical side of things. I’ve even taken Data Analytics courses, which is directly tied to my current role, but I also believe it is a useful skill to have nowadays, as we’re progressing technologically so quickly and inescapably.
But I don't see this as evidence that my degree was unrelated to my career. Quite the opposite. The subject-specific knowledge gave me a foundation, while my studies gave me the confidence and ability to acquire new knowledge efficiently.
In that sense, university didn't give me a ready-made career, but it gave me the tools that made changing careers possible.

🌿🌹What has been your biggest professional challenge so far, and how did you overcome it?

Probably the biggest challenge has been moving from a humanities background into increasingly technical and specialised environments. There certainly was a strange psychological barrier when I entered a field that seemed completely unrelated to what I studied. But I learned to approach that unfamiliarity in the same way I would approach a difficult text: understanding the context, asking questions, looking for patterns, and gradually building a solution that makes sense. But more importantly, I learned that being a humanities graduate doesn't mean I am limited to humanities-related careers, the skills I acquired in my studies allows me to adjust and adapt to various different work fields.

🌿🌹Do you have any advice for current students who are just starting to think about their career paths?

When I was studying English Philology, I certainly didn't imagine that I would eventually be working in a technical support role, so my main advice would be: don't feel that you have to turn your degree into one very specific job title. Instead, I would encourage you to pay attention to the things you are already naturally good at and enjoy doing. Those abilities can be applied and adapted to more than one professional setting. I would also encourage you to try things that don't seem like an obvious fit. My first steps into banking and later into a technical role were not part of some carefully designed career plan. Each experience gave me new skills and made the next opportunity possible.

🌿🌹In your opinion, what are some of the “invisible” benefits of studying English Philology that only become clear once you start working?

Perhaps the biggest invisible benefit is that Philology teaches you to pay attention. When I studied literature and language, I spent a lot of time noticing things that can easily be overlooked: a particular word choice, an implied meaning, or the relationship between text and context. At university, these things can feel very specific to literary analysis. Later, I realised that the habit of looking closely is useful almost everywhere. In fraud prevention, for example, details and inconsistencies matter the most. In quality assurance, I needed to notice when something doesn't quite work as intended. In technical support, a single digit on a payment page can completely change my understanding of the problem.

One more benefit that is perhaps especially important to me personally: studying English Philology gave me a lasting relationship with language and literature that exists independently of my job. Although my career now revolves around technical problem-solving rather than academic life, my free time is still very much connected to what I studied. I try to keep up with the literary world, attend cultural events, and continue reading and thinking about literature. So perhaps the most unexpected lesson is that a degree doesn't have to dictate what you do for a living to remain a meaningful part of who you are. English Philology gave me both a set of professional skills and a way of looking at the world, and I've carried both with me to this day.

💚🌿🌷🍃 Thank you, 𝗚𝗮𝗯𝗶𝗷𝗮, for sharing your story with us! 🌿💚🌷