Choosing a career is one of the most serious life decisions you can take – right up there with who you choose to marry, where you choose to live, and the lifestyle you choose to lead. With this in mind, it’s important to choose a career path that suits your personality. Intellectuals head down academic paths; loving people work in care, and artistic people work in the creative industries. But what is there out there for curious souls – those people who are driven by new knowledge and a plurality of experience? This article has some pointers, providing the top ten careers for the curious at heart.
Journalism
Up there with the first jobs you’ll have been recommended as a curious soul will be the life of a journalist. Throughout your career you’ll have the chance to travel across the world, interviewing a variety of stimulation characters. With your finger on the pulse of current affairs, you’ll be in the know more than most about the inner machinations of power, and the international order of things.
Journalism is a broad church, which means you can specialize in whichever topic you wish, be that migration, economics, technology or sport. It’s also something that you can work on independently to build experience; you can hunt out stories in your local area, talk to people, and then approach your local paper with your written story.
As you build contacts, confidence and a professional reputation, you’ll find yourself easily rising the ranks to cover more nationally-significant stories or issues with a global scope. Certainly one for curious minds, a career in journalism will position you at the beating heart of current affairs.
Medicine
The allure of medicine as a career – with you working as either a doctor, a nurse or a surgeon – is that you’re constantly experiencing humanity. You’re dealing with real people with problems that you’re able to help with, and you’re able to provide care and support in a way that few other jobs can claim to offer. Rewarding and challenging, careers in the medical sector are rarely boring. Your curiosity is principally going to be satisfied by gaining a deeper knowledge of the human condition – in all its varied colors and tribulations.
Unlike many other careers, with a medical degree you’re also able to travel anywhere, working in hospitals across the world, or volunteering in countries in which medicine is not fully-available for all citizens. The universality of medicine, and the constant demand for dedicated medical professionals, means that you’re going to be able to move between medical institutions throughout your career in order to experience different cities and cultures throughout your working life.
It does take some training though: doctors, for instance, are in training for the best part of a decade. It’s, therefore, a big investment of your time – a career to be fully excited about starting.
Zoology
What can be more mysterious and curious than the natural world? A job involving zoological knowledge will provide you the most intimate relationship with the animals that make up our wonderful natural world – even as we’re forced to conserve more and more species as they become endangered and at risk of extinction.
Primarily, zoologists will work in zoos and nature reserves in order to feed, nurture, protect and learn from the animals under their supervision. You’ll observe all kinds of behavioral traits in the animals you’re caring for – some that are weirdly and fascinatingly similar to human behavior. That’s as well as your being able to forge unprecedentedly close relationships with some of the animals you’re looking after – something not many people are able to do in life.
Careers in zoology are usually well-suited to those who excel in biology and have a passion for nature and the wonderful kingdom of animals. It’ll require of you a degree, which you’ll study for the usual amount of time, with plenty of field work to get you acquainted with animal care and the tricks of the trade of zoo-keeping and wildlife nurturing.
Archaeology
Curious about history and the ancient world? Then there is one particular career that rises above the rest in fulfilling those curious impulses that you’d like to keep feeding as you progress into the world of work. Archaeology is one of the most exciting careers for discovery – a treasure hunt that you’ll be forever undertaking without knowing exactly what you’ll unearth.
Of course, archaeologists aren’t always out in the field on digs – although you can choose to make this your specialism if you wish. They also do a variety of other interesting jobs, including:
- Museum curation and exhibition planning
- University lecturing and tutorials sharing field experience
- Restoration work based on blueprints and models from ancient times
- Cleaning and reconstruction of found materials
- Dating finds in order to update the historical record and build knowledge
All of these roles seem to feed nicely into the passions of those who’re both excited by the history of their distant ancestors, and curious about what new knowledge they can source to add to our full corpus of human knowledge about how civilizations rose and fell, and what sustained them at their impressive peaks. Get your gloves on an head out exploring ancient sites in order to find the next headline-grabbing discovery, whether in Mexico, Egypt or China.
Policing
You have to admit it – the intimacy with which the world’s police understand the populations that they serve and protect means that anyone with a curious heart and mind will be well-suited in a role in their local police force. Policing is also a career in which you’re party to the full range of human emotions, and the full range of human experience while working your job. There are also exciting opportunities for those working in the police force to progress to the level of detective, investigating more and more interesting cases in which your curiosity will help you unravel mysteries that serve justice.
You can take online criminology programs in Canada in order to boost your qualifications to become a detective in your police force. When qualified and promoted, you’ll be the on-call individual who looks into the more interesting crimes that are shrouded in the most mysterious circumstances. It’s a constantly challenging and complicated career.
A word of warning for those interested in this option: you’ll experience very challenging situations that might involve violent and distressing crime. An iron resolve and a strong will to serve justice are an absolute must in this line of work – something you should consider before fully taking the plunge.
Restaurant Work
As either a restaurant manager or a chef, restaurant work is famously varied, fast-paced and interesting. If you’re curious about how to serve the best food with the finest presentation and hospitality, restaurant work should be close to the top of your list of potential careers.
One of the benefits of this line of work is that you’re able to jump from restaurant to restaurant, moving through different institutions on your rise to the most cutting-edge and exciting places to eat. As you continue progressing through your career, you’ll be working under or alongside some of the most famous and talented individuals in the industry, learning incredible new skills on your path towards your ideal position.
Restaurants are arranged on a tall ladder from the most basic right up to the world-famous and Michelin-starred outfits in which you’ll be courting some of the world’s most distinguished guests, and food journalists for whom your work will be nothing short of art. Suited to individuals curious about breaking the limits of our taste palette, this is a career with endless possibilities and opportunities to experience more and more excitement and intrigue as you move through the world’s most exciting restaurants.
Cab Driver
You may feel that this option is one of the less ambitious on this list, but taxi drivers are a unique breed of individual. In few careers are you party to so many different people’s perspectives, ferrying them across your home city during the night and the day. If you’re a person who enjoys simply indulging in the gossip and stories of others – speaking with countless characters each week – you may not find a career better suited to you.
Taxi drivers are also party to the secrets of the city in which they live. Over time, you’ll get to know the exclusive establishments, the back-alley bars, the secret events and the affluent parties that constitute the mysterious underbelly of your place of work. You’ll learn about businesspeople, local celebrities, students and politicians from behind the wheel.
You’re also able to bounce your ideas and impressions off your clients, hearing their perspective on current affairs, and thus building a more fleshed-out idea of how people see the world in general. It’s a rewarding job that you can do on your own time, driving across your own city each day in search of the most hidden stories and locations.
Astrologist
Math and physics students with a vivid imagination and a curiosity about the big picture concerning existence and the invisible forces holding us together are well-suited to the world of astrology. Studying the stars and the planets and, if you get into theoretical physics, the outer reaches of the galaxy and the universe, this is truly a career in which your mind will soar and expand in a way few other careers can match.
You’ll need extensive training in this discipline to work at the exciting cutting edge of the intellectual world. Still, there are varied opportunities in this realm, including:
- Working at observatories in order to capture pictures of distant stars
- Dabbling in the lab to test equations that will help make sense of the universe
- Lecturing at universities, helping teach the next generation of Einsteins
- Monitoring astronautically-significant events, and communicating with the ISS
- Predicting planetary and extra-planetary events with your knowledge of the solar system
So it’s not all chalk-and-blackboard head-scratching, although that might be exactly what you’re most excited to do. There are plenty of practical and hands-on ways to use the skills you developed in university, helping the world understand itself better and contributing to the scientific community as a whole.
Teaching
Whether you’re helping primary-age pupils or university students, teaching is a career that gives back to you just as much as you put into it. Children and young adults have the unique ability to surprise and astound us, teaching us things we didn’t know, and highlighting questions about the topics you’re teaching that will be truly illuminating.
Pedagogical work is also about nurturing young minds, and dealing with the diverse characters of children under your supervision. You’ll have to work out ways to get through to your more difficult students, and other ways to inspire an insipid and bored class. In this sense, teaching is a wonderful improvisational journey into the hearts and minds of the next generation of adults who’ll one day look back at their schooling with gratitude and love.
PR Specialist
Finally, number ten on this list of jobs for curious souls is the PR specialist. Related to but not the same as journalism, public relations are all about managing the public’s relationship with whoever you’re representing. PR gurus tend to work for:
- Celebrity individuals with an image to build and maintain
- Companies and corporations attempting to gain adoration and admiration
- Politicians and political parties looking to gain electoral advantage
- Cities, states or countries hoping to boost their tourism income
With such a varied list of employers, it’s beyond doubt that a career in PR will see you discovering a great deal about the nexus between society and the institutions and individuals who govern it. You’ll also be party to plenty of insider knowledge, servicing your curiosity, in much the same way as journalism places you at the center of developing world events.
The difference with PR is that you’ll also gain an understanding of how to manipulate public opinion in favor of your employees – an incredibly fascinating and revealing thing to occupy oneself with.
There you have it, then – the top ten careers for people with an undying curiosity about the world around them. Whether you concentrate that curiosity on animals, crimes, stories or people, you should be able to find a job in the list presented above that tickles your curious tendencies, inspiring you to get qualified and applying for your dream, fulfilling career.
Join the discussion on this topic with Flurl by visiting our contact page.
Leave a Reply