25 Cool Careers
Why is a career as an "actuary" cool?
An actuary is actually the last job I'd want to do. It is a job that involves figuring out life insurance statistics, how much people should pay for insurance, etc. Why could being an actuary be a cool career? It pays six figures. There is a shortage of actuaries. The working environment is pleasant. You don't need graduate degrees. You have got to do a lot of studying on your own for these ten exams, but being an actuary is actually quite a rewarding career. My best friend is an actuary. He has been an actuary for 30 years. He's hated it for 30 years. He just felt the pressure. He's a nervous guy by nature and he had a lot of pressure from his bosses. That goes to show you, even if a career is pretty cool, it's not the career that makes it cool. It's you more than the career itself.
Why is a career as an "architect" cool?
An architect is a person who designs buildings - everything from houses to skyscrapers to industrial parks. The problem with architecture is that you normally spend 5, 10, maybe even 20 years not designing buildings. You're designing the archway of a door. You're designing the bathroom. You're designing the heating and ventilating system. There is a down side to being an architect. Every time in a movie when they tend they want to create a sympathetic character, they use architects because it's creative, it's scientific. However, you see these nice buildings, but it's got that downside. You spend a lot of time doing figuring out what is the electrical code section 246, the "Springfield City Wolves." There is an upside and a downside to architecture.
Why is a career as an "audiologist" cool?
Marty Nemko, Ph.D.: An audiologist is a person who helps you figure out how well you hear and usually recommends hearing aids for you. It's the most common thing they do. It's cool because as boomers are aging, there are ever more people needing hearing aids and the hearing quality of hearing aids is improving greatly. So now there are these little tiny things that fit all the way in your ear. You don't even see them. They are much better. They are better at filtering out noise so you succeed with a high percentage of your patients. Salaries are good. Training, it used to only require a Master's. Now it requires a Doctorate. But it's a rewarding career and will become ever more so. Do you know who the most famous wearer of hearing aids is in America? Bill Clinton.
Why is a career in the "clergy" cool?
I think all of us want to feel meaningful in our lives, and joining the clergy allows you to do a lifetime of unmitigated do-gooding. Also, some people love to be public speakers. Some people think of it as a terrifying thing, but other people love to speak. A career in the clergy gives you a chance to preach your gospel every Sunday. Between the unmitigated do-gooding, the opportunity to speak and the variety of the work, it is a cool career. You're doing work out in the community as a clergy, in the field, with individual parishioners who are having problems. You can be an intellectual and have Bible study classes. A career in the clergy is a very fascinating job. You won't get rich, typically, but it is a very rewarding career.
Why is a career as an "orthodontist" cool?
Well, an orthodontist is a person who straightens your teeth -sometimes kids, sometimes adults. It is a very cool career. Let's start with the money: many orthodontists make $300,000 a year. But apart from the money, what makes it so rewarding is that you actually succeed with a vast percentage of your clients. Nearly everybody comes away with not only straight teeth, but a nicer smile, and are more confident. You also work with your patients for a fairly long period of time, so you develop relationships with them. It's a wonderful career, one of my very favorites.
Why is a career as an "editor" cool?
An editor is a term that actually applies to many different careers. At the bottom of the heiarchy is the copy editor. A Copy editor is somebody that takes text that's about to be published and he or she fixes it up - fixes punctuation, tightens the sentences, stuff like that. A book acquisitions editor is somebody who makes a decision as to which book should we publish. And then she'll oair up and shepard the author in structuring the book and making some corrections as the chapters get submitted. Then there's the magazine editor. The magazine editor is somebody who wears a lot of hats. They like to say, "Eh, I think this topic might be cool to cover in the magazine." And then they find an article and an author who would be the right person to write it. And after the author turns in a draft, the editor will go and tighten it - and that's kind of the magaine editor. And of course website editors are in a tremendous need. They are basically doing the same thing in a different medium - online.
Why is a career as an "engineer" cool?
Boy, is a career as an engineer a varied career. It's designing concrete objects; that's basically what engineering is. You can be designing anything from this camera to biomedical supplies, let's say. You can be designing Cardio stents that open people's arteries who have had heart attacks, to engineering software or hardware. So, an engineer is anybody who's designing concrete objects, usually using CAD programs. Sometimes it's boring. I can tell you the boring part. I know there was a company that had ten different engineers, each designing the handle for a shovel. They sat there for days designing this handle for a shovel, and then only one of the ten ended up having their design used. So, sometimes it can feel pretty repetitive. However, what's cool about it, is that instead of just theoretical ideas, you get to take an idea, bring it into practice and make it very cool. Unfortunately, sometimes I see that the products are over engineered. I mean, we've all had cell phones that do nine zillion different things, of which we understand how to do about seven. Well, thank an engineer.
Why is a career as a "fundraiser" cool?
Somebody who raises money for a non-profit. And what can make that rewarding is you feel like you're working for a good cause and you get paid well. Because you're bringing in the money, therefore they pay you pretty well, and it can be a very varied job. You can be what's called the pitcher, who usually develops a relationship with high net worth individuals in corporations to try to get them to write the big check. You could be more of a researcher, who's doing the background research on a potential donor to give to the pitcher to help them pitch more intelligently and create a more custom pitch. You can be an event planner/fundraiser; people who plan these big gala events that some people like to go to that end up being big fundraising events. So, it is lucrative, it can be varied and you feel like you're serving a good cause.
Why is a career as a "higher education administrator" cool?
A Higher Education Administrator is a person who administers programmes on a college campus, and boy is it cool. It's cool because in terms of your work life, your hours tend to be short an awful lot of the time in the summer. You're on one of the most pleasant places you can be working at a college campus. My very favourite niche, I call it a "neat niche" within Higher Education Administrator is a student affairs administrator. So rather than being involved with all that academic crap; professors arguing about all kinds of quote "unimportant things" you're helping to plan orientation, you're helping to plan programs in the housing office, you're planning extra curricular activities, you're an advisor to clubs. Being a student affairs administrator is one of the coolest jobs that a manager could possibly have.
Why is a career as a "landscape architect" cool?
Landscape architecture is a wonderful career. You get to design everything from the emerald necklace of parks that enter into Boston, or you could be designing an industrial park or somebody's fantasy house with their waterfalls and koi fish in the bottom. Even restoring the wetland. That's actually the hottest area of landscape architecture: designing and restoring wetlands. It's a very cool career not only because it's fun, but the training really isn't too bad. It's just basically a bachelor's degree and less than one year of training. Landscape architecture is a wonderful career, and there's a shortage of them.
Why is a career as an "optometrist" cool?
Optometrists cure what ails your eyes. They can even do a little surgery. Mostly the ophthalmologists, the medical doctors, do surgeries. Optometrists are not medical doctors, but they are the people who fit you for glasses and contact lenses, and what's wonderful about the career is you cure a very high percentage of your patients. And there's a tremendous need. As we boomers get older, our vision isn't as good and so there is ever greater need. Also, regular hours. There's usually no night and emergency calls to go to your optometrist, and the pay is really quite good. Six figure salaries are the norm.
Why is a career in "green product sales" cool?
Americas fastest growing religion is environmentalism. People believe deeply that we must stop global warming at all cost. Our state and federal governments and international agencies are gonna spare no expense to stop global warming. Hence, green product sales, everything from solar installation to pollution control devices to hybrid cars. There will be a tremendous and ever growing market in green product sales.
Why is a career as a "genomics biologist" cool?
Well, a genomics biologist is the modern-day most important biologist of all. In coding the human genome we find that there are only, much fewer than we expected, twenty-three thousand genes; that's all we're made up of. Due to the fact that there are only twenty-three thousand genes we've got to really understand. It's a very targetable number. We're going to be looking at what gene is resulting in expressing what behaviours, in other words, what gene causes what thing in the human body. The scientists who are working on that will result in curing cancer, heart disease, increasing longevity, maybe increasing our intelligence, or certainly curing things like depression, which are largely found to be physiological. So, a genomics biologist is the scientist who is working on those things. You don't think of a biologist anymore as playing with furry animals and all this large stuff. It's all about math and molecules and stuff like that. I think, probably if I had to bet on one career that was going to make a bigger difference in people's lives over the coming decade, it is genomic biology.
Why is a career as a "terrorism expert" cool?
A 'terrorism expert' is a catch all term for about a hundred different careers. Obviously, alas, we are facing ever greater threats of terrorism, so there needs to be experts on, for example, Islamic culture, because a lot of the threat of terrorism is coming from the Islamic radical world to cults in this country. There are American Christian cults that are guilty, or potentially guilty, of terrorism. There are people who are terrorism experts on bio-viruses. There is great fear that the next attack is going to be mutated bio-viruses. There is going to be a cyber-terrorism issue. There are port security experts. There are food poisoning experts and water supply tainting experts. Terrorism experts is a catch all term for a variety of professional careers that will be very important to our future.
Why is a career as a "ghostwriter" cool?
Ghostwriter is a cool career. You end up writing things for somebody else. You could be writing for a CEO, you could be writing for a politician, you could be writing for a celebrity. And what's fun is, normally, people don't get to write cool things. You get to write important things like speeches and books that would otherwise sell two copies and because it's being written for a celebrity, under a celebrity's name, could sell a hundred thousand copies. And usually you get credit, you get your name alongside. You know, 'written by Will Chamberlain and Sam Stein.' But Hillary Clinton, great example of when it doesn't occur. Hillary Clinton's book, the famous book It Takes a Village, she didn't write it. It was written by Barbara Feinman, that's her ghostwriter. Usually, as I said, you get to have your name. Barabara Feinman's name would appear on the book. But It Takes a Village, all it says is 'by Hillary Clinton.'
Why is a career as a "muralist" or "faux finisher" cool?
A muralist is somebody who paints those large murals on the freeway tunnels or underpasses or in restaurants. A faux finisher is anybody who picks a wall and puts either what looks like an old stone or leather finish on it. There are a million artists who would love to make a living through their art as muralists or faux finishers. That's one of the under the radar kind of ways in which somebody can make a living through their art.
Why is a career as a "harbor pilot" cool?
It's a really little-known career. A harbor pilot is somebody who essentially is an escort, but not an escort of people looking for a date, but an escort of boats and ships as they come into harbor. Every harbor is very different. There are different rocks here and different tides there. The regular sea captain pilot doesn't know how to negotiate those shoals. So they bring in, right when a boat or a major ship comes into shore, they give you this harbor pilot person who comes on board and escorts the ship into dock.
Why is a career as a "heart-lung perfusionist" cool?
A heart-lung perfusionist is the smallest medical profession of all, and yet maybe the most critical. When a person is having open heart surgery, a heart-lung perfusionist has to take the blood out of the heart while they're doing the surgery, otherwise the blood's going to squirt all over the place. There's something called a "heart-lung machine." Blood gets pumped out of the heart and into this machine, and then after they finish working with the heart they pump it back into the heart. The person who operates this heart-lung machine is the heart-lung perfusionist.
Why is a career as a "genetic counselor" cool?
A genetic counselor is a wonderful career for counselor-types who want to help with problems that have more of a definitive answer than, "How am I going to improve my relationship?" A genetic counselor helps people - usually perspective parents - decide if they should have a baby, given their genetic condition. They may have predisposition to a particular genetic condition such maybe severe depression. The genetic counselor tells them both the logical, statistical, practical, and emotional issues that may help them make a decision more wisely.
How do I become a genetic counselor?
You get into genetic counseling with a master's program. It's a two-year program; there's only a small number of schools that offer it, but it's a nice, defined, clear path into the field. So often people are frustrated about getting into a career because there is no one, defined, clear path to becoming a marketing manager. But, there is a clear, defined path for becoming a genetic counselor; it's a two-year master's program.
Why is a career as a "foundation program manager" cool?
Being a foundation program manager is a really cool career. A foundation is an organization whose job is to give away money! What could be more fun? The program manager is a person who gives the money away. He or she decides which programs, which social needs, are great, and just gives away the money. A foundation program manager monitors the program and makes sure that the money is being spent wisely. What could be cooler than being a 365-day-a-year Santa Claus?
Why is a career as a "professional speaker" cool?
A professional speaker obviously speaks at conferences, conventions, on cruise ships. There are a remarkable number of people who, even in this era where we all get so much content off the internet and on tv, still want to hear a live speaker. You know, we still see lecture series of famous people. So, that's what a professional speaker is.
Why is a career as a "venture capitalist" cool?
A venture capitalist is somebody who looks for cool, new businesses to invest in. Typically, they're biotech startups, they're software startups, but occasionally they can be retailers, like restaurants. They're looking for businesses to invest in and often, to take partial control over. For example, if it's a biotech company that's developing a new kind of an artificial leg, the people who are developing it are usually scientists, they're genius scientists, but they're not brilliant business people. And the venture capitalists will say "I will invest in your new brace company if you will let me bring a couple of my team members, who are great business people, in to help run your business, and I want a share, in exchange, for a percentage of the profits."
Why is a career as a "sports information director" cool?
The sports information director is somebody who, at a college, high school or professional team, is in charge of providing information primarily to the media to help them. Obviously, the sports teams wants as much publicity as they can get. A sports information director is a schmoozing job. You have to know a lot about the team. It is a very cool, very fun career.
Why is a career as a "physician assistant" cool?
Physician assistants are people very much like doctors. They perform basic heath exams. Physician assistants do diagnosis, basic treatment and basic health education under the supervision of a physician, but sometimes it is very distant supervision. In this era when we are trying to control healthcare costs, physician assistants are very often replacing doctors as the primary healthcare provider because they are much less expensive. However, they still make good money - about $80,000 a year, on average. Becoming a physician assistant only requires about two years after a bachelor's degree and some practical experience. It is a great career.
Why is a career as an "adoption attorney" cool?
Attorney is one of those fields that's overrated. 75 percent of all attorneys would not be attorneys again if they had a chance. But adoption attorney is a really neat niche within the field of adoption. Unlike traditional lawyering, where you're fighting dog-eat-dog against the other corporation's lawyer or representing a family who's fighting over an armour, here you're helping to match up a kid who needs a home with parents who want to adopt. So I think adoption law is probably the neatest niche that exists; not for everybody, but for someone who is certainly family-oriented, adoption law is great.
