<p>I’m planning on double majoring in English and Biomedical Engineering. What can you do with those two combinations that majoring in only one can’t? I like them both, but not really sure how to combine them.</p>
<p>I guess technical writing is one of them, but you don’t need an engineering degree for that. They have special training designed specifically for technical writing.</p>
<p>I am sure these overlap somewhere, but they might overlap in one position at one company in the entire world, a position that is incidentally already filled.</p>
<p>Pick one. Pursue the other as a passion, not as a profession.</p>
<p>With the technical knowledge and certifications and the humanistic/liberal background you’d get from studying English, if you picked your courses right, maybe you’d have a leg up in pursuing patent law? I don’t think you technically need the English credentials to get into that, but improved writing/research skills and a liberal arts background might make you more attractive (rightly so or otherwise) in law school admissions.</p>
<p>I can pursue both of them as passions during undergrad, and, if somehow there isn’t an opening for the combination, then I’ll go with one of them as a profession. </p>
<p>Speaking of passions: Mikhail Botvinnik was a world chess champion, an electrical engineer, and a computer scientist at the same time. I like chess as well (played competitively for years and have a Class A ranking from United States Chess Federation). But the point is that I don’t have time to pursue both if I want to get deep, and very good, at them; Engineering takes up enough time already. Either chess or English as a passion, and Engineering as profession (I’m not Leonardo da Vinci, nor do I want to end up like him, who did everything but left so many things incomplete). BUT—I have the opportunity to study English, and get a degree in something that I like, in college that I would otherwise miss for a life time! </p>
<p>Oh, and, yes, patent law seems like a good one. But then I have to accept that legal writing isn’t exactly exciting. It’s dry. Who reads or writes legal documents for fun?</p>
<p>But ideally it would be cool if there are jobs for such combination besides law (which doesn’t require an English degree).</p>
<p>You could write fictional novels involving biomedical engineering subjects (after all, English curricula are mostly about literature, so studying literature may help you do better at writing it), or non-fiction books for the general public about biomedical engineering subjects. Of course, becoming a top selling author is not exactly easy, so you may just go do “conventional” jobs in biomedical engineering (or apply to medical or law school or whatever).</p>
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I’d think that having a job that kept you abreast of the most recent advances in the biomedical technology industry would be interesting to someone with a passion for biomedical engineering. Reading and writing technical documents may not be fun, but do you really believe that writing documentation on biomedical engineering projects will be any more fun?</p>
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Depending on the English curriculum, it could help better prepare an engineering graduate to study law… subjects like rhetoric, technical writing, linguistics, etc. could add a lot of breadth and depth of knowledge to what a typical engineering graduate would have, as regards the study of law.</p>
<p>More generally, if you want to do both for personal satisfaction or enjoyment, that’s the best reason of all. Just do it. Why not? Drop one if you need to. Better to shoot high at the beginning.</p>
<p>Just as a general warning on double majors, it can send mixed messages to employers and thereby narrow rather than widen your prospects. A double major says that you were sufficiently interested in both fields to obtain a professional level of competence in them, and that suggests that you might be less than fully committed to either field. For this reason, employers might pass on you in favor of someone with comparable credentials but a clearer devotion to the field being pursued. The wider the seperation between the fields, the bigger an issue this can be - “So are you just wanting to be an engineer until your novel gets published?”</p>
<p>You can write TV dramas; House, Scrubs, Grey’s Anatomy. Everybody loves a good hospital drama! Of course you could probably just become a certified EMT to pick up the medical for that.</p>