Posts Tagged ‘cool ways to earn a living’

I bought my shiny, shiny teeth with the money of fools.

Imagine putting “self help guru” when you have to enter your job title on a form. How embarrassing would that be?

Self help gurus are widely lampooned in the mass media, often depicted as deranged, criminal, sad, pathetic, or all of the above. Some of my personal favourites are:

• Greg Kinnear as Richard Hoover in Little Miss Sunshine, a desperate, clutching man whose pathetic quotes fail to inspire his small, yawning audience.
• Patrick Swayze as Jim Cunningham in Donnie Darko, a seedy and despicable man.
• Tom Cruise as Frank T.J. Mackey in Magnolia, see above.

It’s only if you’re Tony Robbins that the job actually rocks…

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A perfumer hard at work...

We write a lot about the stupid things people do for money, but we should also acknowledge that there are some wicked jobs out there – and perfumer is one of them. So, excuse the lack of venom for the moment, while I meander through this sensory world.

If I got to start my life over, after high school, I’d be seriously tempted to head in the direction of perfumer. Or maybe not. It takes a lot of work to get into the industry, which is very competitive, and it appears to be the kind of career path that once you’ve chosen, you don’t get off. You really have to want to be a perfumer above anything else in the world. You must be passionate, a perfectionist, patient, and most of all, persistent. Companies will require at least 3 years of training – often 7 years – before they hire a perfumer. To start with, you will need a degree in biology or chemistry (or both), before then attempting to get into a specialised perfumery school, and racking up a few years as a trainee.

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