College career counselors assist students with obvious choices like doctor, lawyer and accountant. But what if you don’t want a standard job or career? Maybe you don’t like Hawaiian shirt day, hate red staplers, and never had a case of the Mondays.
Thinking outside the box can lead to happiness and success. Now it’s time you wisely consider all your options.
Dot-com billionaire: Forget being a millionaire. Never mind being just a regular billionaire. Today, dot-com billionaires are where it’s at.
Take Mark Cuban as a classic example. He sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo! for over $5 billion and currently ranks No. 428 on Forbes magazine’s “The World’s Billionaires.” Now he flies around the country in his Gulfstream jet to watch his team, the Dallas Mavericks, play. No, not just his favorite team, but the team he owns.
Popular social networking Web site Facebook.com was founded in February 2004 by three opportunistic and entrepreneurial students at Harvard. While not billionaires yet, they could be heading down the same road as YouTube.com, which sold to Google for $1.65 billion.
Business tycoon, kingpin or mogul: Sure, being a CEO would be nice, but soon the allure would wear off. Now, think about being a tycoon. How about a kingpin? Or even a mogul! Now we’re talking power.
International dictator: Being President of the United States is a noble and powerful job. Nevertheless, who wants to deal with the two-thirds vote of Congress?
Religious pundit: Mother Teresa did great work. But what about the real power players like Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, James Dobson and Pat Robertson? One of the most famous comes to mind.
Benny Hinn does pretty well for himself, flying in his $40 million Gulfstream private jet called “Dove One” when he isn’t at his $10 million oceanfront home. Recently, he asked followers to donate $1,000 each for the new plane to tell lost souls about the wonderful Lord Jesus. Someone should really let him know about e-mail.
Talking head: You have seen these people on television yelling at each other during intense arguments on shows like “Hardball.” These celebrity commentators like Ann Coulter and Bill O’Reilly have strong opinions and they aren’t afraid to share them.
Just turn to MSNBC or Fox News and you can see them blowing hot air. As fast talkers, they spin issues quicker than a turbine on the new A380. Being paid for arguing seems like a decent gig to me, just be sure keep an eye on your blood pressure.
Internet celebrity: Some of these people actually contribute to the world. Others are simply “famous for being famous.” Take two examples on both ends of the spectrum.
Tila “Tequila” Nguyen, as her MySpace handle appears, is a model and singer. She was featured in Time, Maxim and Rolling Stone magazines and was the most popular person on Myspace during April 2006. She even bested Dane Cook and Tom himself in friend count.
Matt Drudge, on the other hand, is an Internet journalist who has been called “an idiot with a modem” by Keith Olbermann and “the country’s reigning mischief-maker” by The New York Times. His news Web site, The Drudge Report, first broke the Monica Lewinsky scandal. With no college degree, his salary is around $1.2 million, but his Web site logged a record 3.5 billion hits in 2006.
Maybe you have realized this job thing isn’t going to work out. Perhaps you want to remain one step above collecting cans, but still below a steady paycheck. Overall, you have to find something that gives you satisfaction and pride, because your profession defines who you are in today’s society.
If you’re not careful, you could end up in a 9 to 5 job like in the movie “Office Space.” And one day a consultant will confront you with the obvious question, “What exactly is it that you do here?”
I know, I’m not exactly a people person either, and I don’t have a red stapler.
Ryan Ortega is a fourth-year business finance student at California State University, Long Beach.