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The unfortunate thing about attending college is that it has to end. As an entering freshman, senior year and graduation seem light years away. Before college, I never understood why my parents would always say, “the years fly by so fast.” I thought my life was going rather slowly and I was impatient about wanting to grow up. Now, everything seems to be moving too fast. After graduation, one needs to find a job. How are we supposed to do that in this economy? The answer is seeking out jobs that many people don’t even know exist.
A career that is not widely renowned, but desperately needed, is an accent reduction specialist. This type of work involves helping those who have heavy accents reduce them and be able to communicate more efficiently with the general public. Before anyone starts pointing fingers, this is not about “Westernizing” anyone or taking away anyone’s culture. This is simply to make business and customer service transactions run more smoothly. Accent reduction specialists primarily work with individuals who are from other countries or Americans with thick regional (Northern, Southern, etc.) accents that are difficult to understand. The qualifications for this type of work are either a master or doctorate in speech-language pathology, a license in speech-language pathology in your state or a specialty credential in accent reduction or ESL training.
If you consider yourself to be a lover of the arts you don’t always have to be the actor. Why not try being a casting director? A casting director’s work expands across the realms of television, theater and even instructional videos for exercise and how to prevent sexual assault at work. As a casting director you should have a good eye for original talent and be able to keep a mental database of all the actors you see. Casting directors work closely with acting agents as well as lead instructional seminars that help aspiring actors land roles. This job is time consuming, yet very enjoyable. To get started apply for internships at a casting agency or become active in your local theater.
An example of a service-oriented career would be as a child life specialist. Child life specialists mainly work with children who are dealing with chronic illness, major surgery or hospice. The main purpose of this job is to make the child’s life as normal as possible considering the health limitations. If you choose to do this you must be very people oriented. You are not only helping the children, but the families as well. A bachelor degree in child development would suffice for this career, as well as 10 related courses and 400 or more internships hours. This is a great way to give back to the community and gain personal fulfillment.
A career for a person that is concerned with improving the current health-care system could be a health informatics specialist. Hospitals, private practices and insurance companies are moving in the direction of electronic medical records. Doctors are now pressured to do more evidence-based medicine and they have no choice but to use computerized expert systems to guide their diagnoses and treatment findings and recommendations. This means health care providers are collecting more data to evaluate the quality of care they are giving. This job involves being technologically savvy as well as being a relatable person. As a health informatics specialist you will work closely with doctors to seek out the best program implementation.
Even in this economy, all is not lost. Not everyone can be a doctor or a lawyer. There are jobs out there that are less time consuming, but provide really good salaries. Choose a career that provides a stable salary as well as personal fulfillment. Digging a little deeper never hurt anyone; be willing to look beyond the generic careers that you see every day and find something unconventional and, possibly, exciting.