The Willow Glen Resident

Point of View

Deborah Taylor Hollis

There are some odd jobs out there

I remember learning about potential jobs--my future--way back in the dark ages when I was in high school. Most students went to the school counselor to find out how much light there was at the end of their respective tunnels. Usually, it started during junior year with a "mandatory meeting." In terms of dread, this was something akin to taking the school nerd to the prom. Glumly, you plodded up to the office, gave your name to another student who worked there and waited for up to an hour as truants marched in and out of the vice principal's office for their weekly flogging before he released them to plunder and pillage again.

School counselors offered you two career paths. If your grades were good and record clean, they told you about college. An easy call, though fairly costly for your parents. The counselors' biggest expenditure of time was reading a few catalogs and picking three institutions to push that semester. They pushed 99 percent of their counselees to the local city college.

Once the counselor finally summoned you into her office, the meeting took 20 minutes and entailed just a few perfunctory tasks for the college-bound: a quick check of the GPA, a reminder of upcoming SATs and the handing down of a university brochure. Then, with a pat on the back, she'd march you out dazed and confused, but on time for gym class (another disaster I will enlighten you on some other time).

For those not on their way to college--the 97.9 percent who spent their days with the vice principal--the counselor would glance at their rap sheet and pull out a trade school brochure.

And the career path chosen did not always entail a careful consideration of the student's best attributes either. Actually, the counselor's process of selecting jobs was more like a spin of the wheel with Pat Sajack than an in-depth examination of the student. The counselors had one Big Book-O-Jobs, and they knew something about, oh, maybe 18 of them. You got a simple aptitude test, which weighed your likes (parties) and dislikes (classes, police, bathing). Then the woman with your future in her hands would send you to one of three trade schools.

Smokers, dopers and flunkies got the auto repair jobs. Cheerleaders got the food service jobs, and everyone else was sent to the local assembly-line plant. That was it. End of choices.

Now I've learned what these counselors missed--there should have been a host of choices the counselors could offer us.

If, for example, you love to play with model trains all day long, goof off and work poorly with others, you could create model train layouts at retail stores for a living--just like the ones glued in place at the toy store. This is a consulting job--high pay, high demand, 50K a year. This was not on the list at my high school.

Pet psychic healers make good money, too. You work your own hours, go to clients' homes and "read" their disruptive/moody animals. Find out why Fluffy's biting, Fido's peeing, Birdboy's molting. One lady makes over 100K a year for this stuff--and no pet has ever sued her for malpractice.

Phone-sex line operator/owner is a huge business, earning millions from those 900 numbers. Work out of your home nights and weekends. Lots of free time for gardening. Need nice phone voice, inventive thinking and to be able to hold in laughter.

Entertainment consultants line up big parties for corporations. Some (I swear, my friend does this) have brought in Siegfried and Roy to play with their cats, ending the party with the CEO riding out like the Electric Horseman; 65K a year for the party girl in your life.

There are so many great unheard of jobs out there, from Haunted House sleuths to cow inseminators, none of which requires any more training than your average gerbil can assimilate. They all pay very well and give you lots of free time, and best of all, you don't need a clean police record to qualify.

Now, when my child comes home toting an SAT manual or a list of the 10 garages that need mechanics, I'll stop and give him some truly unique alternatives to the pablum counselors push at school. I just have to bear in mind I'm not only opening up the world to him, but also saving myself tuition costs.

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