<p>What are some unconventional jobs?</p>
<p>Preferably fun & high-paying.</p>
<p>I’m thinking about dropping out of college to pursue an unconventional job, or to find one, and then get the education in college with motivation to get this job.</p>
<p>Anyone have, or have any friends, or know of any unconventional, wacky, cool jobs?</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>There are tons of funky, cool, unconventional, fun jobs for someone who is doing poorly after one semester in college! Oh and they have super large paychecks, too! You’ll find most wealthy people started out this way. They got a fantastic job right out of high school and when they’d made their millions, went back to college to get a degree in it.
If you look a little harder, you’ll find that most people prefer boring jobs that don’t pay well so you should have no problem finding aposition that meets your requrements. Let us know how that works for you!</p>
<p>I saw a street performer in Boston who could do weird contortion things and had a lot of tattoos and piercings. He said he went all over the country with his act. I don’t know how much it paid, but he was pretty entertaining.</p>
<p>Some of the highest paid people have made their “big bucks” by quitting college, forming their own company and pursuing their dream. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg are obvious answers, but there are plenty of others.</p>
<p>None of those folks who ended up making big bucks left college and made them the next day. They each had a passion and were chasing a dream. That dream eventually lead to fame and fortune. They are the minority. The street artist had a marketable talent. The OP doesn’t appear to have a marketable talent or dream other than a fun job with easy money. Who wouldn’t want one of those?
It would be very different if he said “Since I’ve been little I’ve been fascinated by widgets. I have an idea for a a new widget but no time to work on it. OR I’ve been practicing magic and juggling. Everyone says I’ve very good. Do you think I should take some time off to see if I could make that work for me?”</p>
<p>^I totally agree, but maybe, benefit of the doubt, OP has a passion but just didn’t want to mention it in the post…?</p>
<p>OP: focus on what you love to do – and see if there’s a career there for you. If you love music, maybe you can be a concert promoter or agent. Same with sports. They would have the “fun” quotient and I bet once you’re doing what you love, the money piece might not seem as important. Good luck.</p>
<p>I think the thing to remember is even with getting a college degree leading to a ‘normal’ job, that the starting pay is generally not particularly high (with some exceptions; someone who goes to Wharton or some other UG business top 10 school, and has the right rabbis, can start out with a pretty high paying job, but that is the rare exception).</p>
<p>I think the way you framed the question you are going to get a lot of snide answers, because from the way you posted it it sounds like you want it all, an unconventional job that is fun and is high paying sounds more like finding a genie and getting three wishes and being set for life…and is likely to happen (unless one is independently wealthy, of course;)</p>
<p>If you are asking, on the other hand, if you are bored with the track you are on and are thinking of dropping out or staying and exploring things to find something different, a new passion or whatever, and are wondering if people have suggestions on how to do this and not starve, that will be treated differently (when you say “and pays well”, lot of people assume you mean a job where you will be making enough to have a great place to live, afford a good car, live the ‘good life’ as many see it…on the other hand, pays enough to live on seems more modest:).</p>
<p>My answer would be the following:</p>
<p>1)If you have to ‘search’ for what is an ‘unconventional, fun job’, if you don’t have a passion already, then dropping out may not be a great idea. Trying to find your passion and trying to survive doing it is two big hurdles at the same time. In that case, I would stay in college, and try and find ways to find the passion you are seeking, whether it is by working part time, volunteering/interning in things you find interesting, college groups or clubs, etc. For example, if you think you might want to be a a part of the music business, or being some sort of performer, you might want to find ways to meet people involved, maybe doing some sort of volunteer work/internship at a music venue, or with a performing group (hey, free labor is usually a good selling point). </p>
<p>Others have pointed out famous examples of people who dropped out of college (or maybe never even went), who made it big, but as they point out it isn’t like these guys dropped out and found instant fame and success or without some sort of idea why they were dropping out (again, depends on the person…)</p>
<p>Steve Jobs and Wozniak (founders of apple) both had dropped out of college, but they already were enthralled with a passion for the early microcomputer revolution then brewing (Woz was working for HP as a junior engineer without a degree, so he was working a ‘normal’ job) and already had an idea of what they were working towards (and also were at the right place at the right time)</p>
<p>Gates and Paul Allen, the founders of Microsoft, already had seen their passion with the computer revolution then hatching while still at Harvard and wrote some of their early stuff for the MITS Altair “home computer” on Harvard’s systems using a simulator…both of them had also spent years developing this passion, from the time they were squirts in middle school, it didn’t come out of the blue or fall into their lap (As a side note, I recommend reading the book “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell, it talks a lot about success/finding your passion, another good one is “What should I do with my Life” by Po Bronson, about vocation versus avocation and how people find their passion). </p>
<p>Zuckerberg, whatever his real role was with the idea of facebook, was inspired by something they had at Harvard, and developed the first phase while there, so it wasn’t like he was out on the street and “aha, let’s do facebook”.</p>
<p>2)If you think you have a passion for something already, then ask yourself a question, and that is “how do I explore it?” Maybe finding jobs around the field, maybe volunteer work could suffice while in school (and then adjust you college career to help fit into it). If you think you need to leave college, then at least try to come up with a plan on how to explore it, whether by working job(s) to keep oneself fed, while pursuing a passion (for example, a lot of musicians and actors work all kinds of jobs while trying to pursue their dreams). </p>
<p>I will add there are people who go off the beaten path, who for example don’t go to college, who drift around and then find success, but it is a hard path and one that relatively few find (I worked for a company where the CEO had not gone to college, done a number of things including ranching, and then somehow talked his way into Yale Law School without an undergrad degree…don’t try that one at home). </p>
<p>My other thought is philosophical, that as tempting as they look, even ‘unconventional’ jobs involve a lot of hard work and monotony. Being the member of a rock band or being a musician sounds very tempting, but the reality is, even for those who ‘make it’, there is a lot of drudgework and boredom, traveling around on tour sounds great, but it becomes drudgery after a while (Bob Seger’s classic song “turn the page” talks about that). Investment banking can involve hefty salaries and a well off lifestyle, but it also takes a lot out of someone, the burn out rate despite the salary is quite high, thanks to the stress of the job, spending most of their life travelling, etc…I can also tell you that what are often seen as ‘fun’ jobs, like working at a startup like a facebook, where there isn’t the corporate BS bureaucracy and such, also despite the friendly trappings where people have nose rings and tatoos and work their own schedule and such, also involve a lot of hard work, some of which isn’t so fun or particularly thrilling, but need to be done… Not saying that to discourage you, just want to warn you that few things, even interesting ones,don’t have their elements of boredom and frustration. </p>
<p>I would be the first person to encourage you to find your passion, and I more then understand about what it feels like to be in college, and wonder if this is all life is about, that in some ways college can seem like a bore and a grind (and it can be), or wonder if this is just a conveyor belt into the world of boredom and conventionality that we parents seem to inhabit…it can be, but you also have to look at it from a wide perspective and realize that what you see isn’t necessarily what you get when you go ‘unconventional’, either, that it brings its own issues. As someone who is not exactly a company guy or someone who craves the conventional, an option I offer is to find your passion/muse/interest and chart a path through seemingly conventional waters and make them work for you and your passion. </p>
<p>I wish you well.</p>
<p>As above, most ‘cool jobs’ involve a passion and ability to stick with the subject to learn it well. Some that come to mind are farrier-the person that shoes horses. Piano tuner. Musical instrument repair. Dog trainer. Teaching English overseas. But obviously, these all involve prior knowledge of a subject, and knowing people who have a need for such services enough to be able to network and get your name known. And I’m sure that my cool is not your cool.</p>
<p>The problem of supply and demand. If there were high paying occupations with low barriers to entry (e.g. did not require education), everyone flocks to them…and so the pay sucks.</p>
<p>However, there are tons of occupations that for the majority of people, pay very poorly, BUT for a small segment of people, have paid extremely well. So think of starting your own business, inventing something, becoming a musician, becoming a writer, becoming an artist, or being the first to do something no one else has thought of before.
It</p>
<p>these are the unconventional jobs that come to mind:</p>
<p>mortician
president of the united states
exotic dancer
farmer</p>
<p>they may not meet your other requirements. suggest you google ‘unconventional jobs’ and see if anything turns up.</p>
<p>(no offense to anyone who is actively pursuing the above careers)</p>
<p>You could think about being a sailor. Tall ships pay ~60/day plus room and board. Long hours, grueling physical labor, and you’d better like your co-workers because you can’t exactly go hang out with anyone else in your free time.</p>
<p>Butler? Manny?</p>
<p>LSkaiWalk, The job will only be cool and fun if you like what you’re doing. In any case, it will not be high paying unless you are willing to add “dangerous” to your list but I think that’s part of being young; the freedom to do jobs that pay little and live close to the bone. </p>
<p>What are you passionate about? What jobs would you do for free? If you can make a little more than “free”, then perhaps that’s the job for you. Or find out how to train for it. For example, my cousin makes very good money doing underwater welding…that’s an unconventional job. Of course, it’s also dangerous and requires a lot of training. But it does not require a college degree. </p>
<p>Best of luck to you.</p>
<p>How about fun but doesn’t pay a lot? That’s probably the most you could ask for at this point. </p>
<p>– job on a cruise ship, see the world
–job at a Club Med or similar</p>
<p>You’ve mentioned your family having money. Pack a backpack, ask them for a plane ticket and $1000. Go somewhere that interests you. Find a way to make enough for hostels, food and a ticket to the next place. Take a hard look at the world and see what inspires you.</p>
<p>
Fun, fun, fun…;)</p>
<p>Here is one for you. He looks very happy:</p>
<p>[Martinique:</a> Chef Guy Ferdinand cooks it up on the Caribbean Island’s west coast](<a href=“Home | The National Post Home Page | National Post”>Home | The National Post Home Page | National Post)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>You might also want to read Tim Ferriss’ books, best known being the ‘4 hour work week’. He also has a blog, just google it. Try fourhourworkweek</p>
<p>I don’t agree with a lot of his assumptions, or his love of efficiency over quality and integrity, but I think he does a good job of pointing out how we too often mindlessly follow convention or doing things the way we have always done them, when each of us could probably find ways to do things more smartly, differently, and efficiently.</p>