History is peppered with influential geniuses who changed the world. Individuals like Socrates, Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein all had groundbreaking ideas that have lived on long after their deaths. Following this fine tradition, we take a look at 30 of the smartest people alive today – including brilliantly accomplished academics, former child prodigies, IQ whizzes, and super sharp young intellectuals with their whole lives ahead of them.

30. Paul Allen

Billionaire Paul Allen reportedly has an IQ of between 160 and 170. Allen was born in 1953 in Seattle and made friends with Bill Gates while still at school. He attended Washington State University but quit his studies in 1974 and then talked Gates into leaving Harvard. The following year, the pair founded Microsoft in New Mexico. After he was told that he had Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 1982, Allen stepped back from Microsoft and eventually resigned in 2000, although he remained in an advisory capacity. He is a renowned philanthropist, and his donations to science, education, conservation, the arts and technology exceed $1.5 billion. As well as being a stakeholder in technology, media and other companies, Allen owns the Seattle Seahawks and the Portland Trailblazers and part-owns MLS team the Seattle Sounders. He launched the Allen Institute for Brain Science in 2003 and founded space transport company Stratolaunch Systems in 2011.

29. Christopher Langan

Born in San Francisco in 1952, self-educated Christopher Langan is a special kind of genius. By the time he turned four, he’d already taught himself how to read. At high school, according to Langan, he tutored himself in “advanced math, physics, philosophy, Latin and Greek, all that.” What’s more, he allegedly got 100 percent on his SAT test, even though he slept through some of it. Langan attended Montana State University but dropped out. Rather like the titular character in 1997 movie Good Will Hunting, Langan didn’t choose an academic career; instead, he worked as a doorman and developed his Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe during his downtime. In 1999, on TV newsmagazine 20/20, neuropsychologist Robert Novelly stated that Langan’s IQ – said to be between 195 and 210 – was the highest he’d ever measured. Langan has been dubbed “the smartest man in America.”

28. Judit Polgár

Born in Budapest, Hungary in 1976, Judit Polgár is acknowledged as without doubt the best female chess player in history. Polgár was a chess-playing child prodigy and overcame her first grandmaster when she was just 11. At present, she is the only woman in the World Chess Federation’s Top 100 Players. She has also beaten nine world champions, including Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov. In 1991, aged 15 and five months, Polgár won the Hungarian National Championship and became the then youngest grandmaster – eclipsing Bobby Fischer’s longstanding record by one month. Apparently, the way in which Polgár’s father raised her and her sisters was part of an experiment to prove that “geniuses are made, not born.” And considering Polgár’s reported IQ of 170 and significant accomplishments, perhaps he was on to something.

27. Marilyn vos Savant

Marilyn vos Savant was born in 1946 in Missouri. In 1986 the columnist and author made history when she was named in The Guinness Book of World Records as the person possessing the highest IQ, with a reported score of 228. She is said to have achieved the score on the Stanford-Binet test at the age of ten. In the mid 1980s, Savant also took the controversial Mega Test, scoring an IQ of 186. In the wake of her newfound fame, Parade magazine launched the popular “Ask Marilyn” column, which still runs today. Savant has been a member of elite “one-in-a-million” IQ society the Mega Society. And in 1989 New York magazine called her and husband Robert Jarvik – who designed the first successful artificial heart – “the smartest couple in New York.”

26. John H. Sununu

With a reported IQ of 180, John H. Sununu is another individual who has proved equal to the eligibility criteria for acceptance into the Mega Society high IQ club. Born in 1939 in Havana, Cuba, Sununu studied mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, achieving his bachelor’s degree in 1961, his master’s in 1963 and his Ph.D. in 1966. After he graduated, Sununu worked as a professor at Massachusetts-based Tufts University until 1968, when he was appointed the school’s associate dean of engineering, a position he held until 1973. Between 1983 and 1989 Sununu served as the governor of New Hampshire; then in 1989 he became the White House Chief of Staff. However, in 1991 Sununu stepped down following allegations that he had abused his government travel privileges.

25. Neil deGrasse Tyson

Neil deGrasse Tyson is a high-profile American astrophysicist and research associate at the American Museum of Natural History, and he is also Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City. Tyson was born in New York in 1958 and loved astronomy from a young age. In 1980 he graduated from Harvard with a bachelor’s degree in physics, and he went on to earn his master’s in astronomy from the University of Texas in 1983. He then went to Columbia, where he obtained his M.Phil. in astrophysics in 1989 and his Ph.D. two years later. Tyson achieved pop culture fame presenting educational PBS show NOVA ScienceNow from 2006 to 2011, and he has made numerous TV guest appearances. The awards he has received include a NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal, and in 2001 Asteroid 1994KA was renamed 13123 Tyson in his honor.

24. Kim Ung-Yong

Before The Guinness Book of World Records withdrew its Highest IQ category in 1990, South Korean former child prodigy Kim Ung-Yong made the list with a score of 210. Kim was born in Seoul in 1963, and by the time he turned three, he could already read Korean, Japanese, English and German. When he was just eight years old, Kim moved to America to work at NASA. “At that time, I led my life like a machine. I woke up, solved the daily assigned equation, ate, slept, and so forth,” he has explained. “I was lonely and had no friends.” While he was in the States, Kim allegedly obtained a doctorate degree in physics, although this is unconfirmed. In any case, in 1978 he moved back to South Korea and went on to earn a Ph.D. in civil engineering.

23. Mislav Predavec

Mislav Predavec is a Croatian mathematics professor with a reported IQ of 190. “I always felt I was a step ahead of others. As material in school increased, I just solved the problems faster and better,” he has explained. Predavec was born in Zagreb in 1967, and his unique abilities were obvious from a young age. As for his adult achievements, since 2009 Predavec has taught at Zagreb’s Schola Medica Zagrabiensis. In addition, he runs trading company Preminis, having done so since 1989. And in 2002 Predavec founded exclusive IQ society GenerIQ, which forms part of his wider IQ society network. “Very difficult intelligence tests are my favorite hobby,” he has said. In 2012 the World Genius Directory ranked Predavec as the third smartest person in the world.

22. Manahel Thabet

In 2008, aged 25, Yemeni economist and scientist Manahel Thabet became the youngest person to receive a financial engineering Ph.D. magna cum laude. Thabet earned the degree at the University of Illinois and has since worked towards a second Ph.D. in quantum mathematics. In 2012 she came up with a revolutionary 350-page formula to calculate distance in space without the use of light. She also has an IQ higher than 168 and garnered a Genius of the Year Award and a spot on the 2013 World Genius Directory’s list. Thabet set up the company Smart Tips Consultants in 2008. Her accolades include a humanitarian award for her efforts with the United Nations and a Woman of the Year Award from the Women’s Federation for World Peace.

21. Richard Rosner

U.S. television writer and pseudo-celebrity Richard Rosner is an unusual case. Born in 1960, he has led a somewhat checkered professional life: as well writing for Jimmy Kimmel Live! and other TV shows, Rosner has, he says, been employed as a stripper, doorman, male model and waiter. In 2000 he infamously appeared on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, answering a question about the altitude of capital cities incorrectly and reacting by suing the show, albeit unsuccessfully. Rosner placed second in the World Genius Directory’s 2013 Genius of the Year Awards; the site lists his IQ at 192, which places him just behind Greek psychiatrist Evangelos Katsioulis. Rosner reportedly hit the books for 20 hours a day to try and outdo Katsioulis, but to no avail.

20. Chris Hirata

Astrophysicist Chris Hirata was born in Michigan in 1982, and at the age of 13 he became the youngest U.S. citizen to receive an International Physics Olympiad gold medal. When he turned 14, Hirata apparently began studying at the California Institute of Technology, and he would go on to earn a bachelor’s degree in physics from the school in 2001. At 16 – with a reported IQ of 225 – he started doing work for NASA, investigating whether it would be feasible for humans to settle on Mars. Then in 2005 he went on to obtain a Ph.D. in physics from Princeton. Hirata is currently a physics and astronomy professor at The Ohio State University. His specialist fields include dark energy, gravitational lensing, the cosmic microwave background, galaxy clustering, and general relativity. “If I were to say Chris Hirata is one in a million, that would understate his intellectual ability,” said a member of staff at his high school in 1997.

19. Steven Pinker

Canadian visual cognition and psycholinguistics expert Steven Pinker was born in Montreal in 1954. His work covers popular science, experimental psychology, linguistics and cognitive science, and he is currently a professor of psychology at Harvard. Prior to taking up this position, between 1982 and 2003 he was a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor within the school’s brain and cognitive science department. During his MIT tenure, Pinker took over as the director of the university’s cognitive neuroscience center. In 2004 TIME magazine featured him on its list of the 100 most influential thinkers and scientists. His awards include a Troland Research Award from the National Academy of Sciences and a Royal Institution Henry Dale Prize. Perhaps Pinker’s best-known work is his 2002 book The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature.

18. Ivan Ivec

Born in 1976, Ivan Ivec is a Croatian mathematician and IQ test specialist with – according to the World Genius Directory – an IQ of 174. He holds a Ph.D. in mathematics and works at Gimnazija A.G.Matoša High School in Samobor, Zagreb. Ivec’s website is dedicated to IQ testing and results, and his own tests cover IQ ranges of between 120 and 190. He has also worked with fellow Croatian mathematician Mislav Predavec to design such tests. Interestingly, Ivec says that the time restrictions on intelligence tests devised by psychologists are not ideal for everybody. “Specifically, there are intelligent people, capable of performing complex actions and resolving complex tasks, although their speed of solving is low,” he has explained.

17. Garry Kasparov

Born in 1963 in Baku, in what is now Azerbaijan, Garry Kasparov is arguably the most famous chess player of all time. When he was seven, Kasparov enrolled at Baku’s Young Pioneer Palace; then at ten he started to train at the school of legendary Soviet chess player Mikhail Botvinnik. In 1980 Kasparov qualified as a grandmaster, and five years later he became the then youngest-ever outright world champion. He retained the championship title until 1993, and has held the position of world number one-ranked player for three times longer than anyone else. In 1996 he famously took on IBM computer Deep Blue, winning with a score of 4–2 – although he lost to a much upgraded version of the machine the following year. In 2005 Kasparov retired from chess to focus on politics and writing. He has a reported IQ of 190.

16. Terence Tao

Born in Adelaide in 1975, Australian former child prodigy Terence Tao didn’t waste any time flexing his educational muscles. When he was two years old, he was able to perform simple arithmetic. By the time he was nine, he was studying college-level math courses. And in 1988, aged just 13, he became the youngest gold medal recipient in International Mathematical Olympiad history – a record that still stands today. In 1992 Tao achieved a master’s degree in mathematics from Flinders University in Adelaide, the institution from which he’d attained his B.Sc. the year before. Then in 1996, aged 20, he earned a Ph.D. from Princeton, turning in a thesis entitled “Three Regularity Results in Harmonic Analysis.” Tao’s long list of awards includes a 2006 Fields Medal, and he is currently a mathematics professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

15. Scott Aaronson

Scott Aaronson is an associate professor in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s electrical engineering and computer science faculty. According to his website, his research focuses on “the capabilities and limits of quantum computers, and computational complexity theory more generally.” Aaronson was born in Philadelphia in 1981. In 2000 he earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Cornell, and four years later he achieved a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Then in 2012 he was given the Alan T. Waterman Award for “illuminating the fundamental limits on what can be computed in the physical world” and breaking “important new ground in computational theory.” He is known for his key contributions to algebrization and the abstract quantum Turing machine.

14. Nikola Poljak

According to the World Genius Directory, Croatian researcher and physicist Nikola Poljak has an IQ of 183. Born in 1982, Poljak is at present an assistant research fellow and instructor in the University of Zagreb’s physics department. In addition, he is an assistant research fellow at CERN, working on the collaborative A Large Ion Collider Experiment in Geneva, Switzerland. And he is also an assistant research fellow with the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, involved in the STAR detector experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. In 2010 Poljak received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Zagreb. He has carried out scientific assignments for the Croatian Ministry of Science and the Agency for Mobility and EU Programmes, and his current projects include the “exploration of hadronic systems with relativistic probes.”

13. Alan Guth

Born in New Brunswick, New Jersey in 1947, American physicist and cosmologist Alan Guth was smart enough to leave school a year early and go straight to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he earned his bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees in physics. Guth initially began evolving his notion of cosmic inflation when he was a junior scientist at Cornell in 1979. Then in 1981 he officially put forward the theory, which is now widely accepted by many scientists. The theory suggests a time prior to the Big Bang during which the universe was able to evenly disperse itself thanks to its smaller size. This model also looks to explain more clearly the conditions that brought about the incredibly fast, exponential growth of the universe. Guth has been described as “the man who put the ‘big’ in ‘Big Bang.’” He has held positions at Princeton, Columbia, Cornell and Stanford, and he’s currently a physics professor at MIT.

12. Donald Knuth

Born in Milwaukee in 1938, Donald Knuth is a groundbreaking computer scientist and mathematician perhaps most renowned for his multi-volume tome The Art of Computer Programming. In recognition of his pioneering work, he has been referred to as the “father” of algorithmic analysis. Knuth is also well known for his popular 1978 open software typesetting system TeX, which is one of the world’s most intricate typographical frameworks. In 1971 Knuth won the inaugural Grace Murray Hopper Award, and his other honors include the A.M. Turing Award and a National Medal of Science. Knuth obtained his Ph.D. in mathematics in 1963 from CalTech, and he is currently a professor emeritus at Stanford.

11. Noam Chomsky

Philosopher, cognitive scientist and political observer Noam Chomsky has been called the “father of modern linguistics,” and his revolutionary work has had an impact on everything from artificial intelligence to music theory. Born in Philadelphia in 1928, Chomsky enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania in 1945, at the age of 16. There, he achieved his B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in linguistics, leaving in 1955 to take up a post teaching philosophy and linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – where he presently holds the position of professor emeritus. A revered cultural icon, Chomsky is still politically active, especially when it comes to issues of American foreign policy, state capitalism and mass media news. He has written in excess of 100 books and was named the “world’s top public intellectual” in a poll conducted in 2005.

10. Evangelos Katsioulis

Greek doctor Evangelos Katsioulis made headlines in his home country when he won the World Genius Directory’s 2013 Genius of the Year Awards. According to the site, Katsioulis’ IQ is a remarkable 198. He apparently scored 205 on the Stanford-Binet scale with a standard deviation of 16, which is on par with 258 on the Cattell scale with a standard deviation of 24 and 198 on the Wechsler scale with a standard deviation of 15. Born in Ioannina in 1976, Katsioulis studied at Greece’s Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, earning an M.Sc. in medical research and technology, a master’s degree in philosophy, and a Ph.D. in psychopharmacology. In 2001 he formed the World Intelligence Network IQ society. He is currently a member of 28 IQ societies, including the exclusive Giga Society. Only 1 in 30 billion people will match his intelligence levels.

9. Magnus Carlsen

Born in Tønsberg, Norway in 1990, Magnus Carlsen is the current World Chess Champion. He qualified as a grandmaster in 2004 when he was just 13. In 2009 chess icon Garry Kasparov began personally training him, but the following year it was reported that they were no longer working together. In 2010, scarcely a month after his 19th birthday, Carlsen became the world’s youngest ever number one-ranked player. And at the 2013 World Chess Championship, he defeated Indian grandmaster Viswanathan Anand and took the title of world champion. After the victory, The Times of India called Carlsen “a genius who’ll only get better.” So far, he has won four Chess Oscars – seven less than Kasparov. Carlsen has also done modelling work for G-Star Raw, and the media has dubbed him “the Justin Bieber of chess.”

8. Shahriar Afshar

Born in 1971, Iranian American physicist and entrepreneur Shahriar Afshar has won a number of awards for his groundbreaking inventions. Afshar is known for his 2004 Afshar experiment, which he conducted at Harvard University. The optical experiment investigates – and, according to Afshar, contradicts – the quantum mechanical principle of complementarity. Afshar served as an associate at Harvard between 2003 and 2004 and was a visiting scientist at Canada’s Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in 2006. He is a visiting research professor of physics at New Jersey’s Rowan University as well as the president, CTO and CEO of consumer electronics startup Immerz. One of his notable inventions is the award-winning “4D” Soundkix mini speaker. In 1989 Afshar won a prestigious Iranian Khwarizmi International Award.

7. Akshay Venkatesh

Born in India in 1981, Akshay Venkatesh is a mathematician and former child prodigy. He was brought up in Australia and showed promise from a young age, earning a bronze medal at the International Physics Olympiad in 1993, when he was just 11. A year later he achieved another bronze medal at the International Mathematical Olympiad. In 1997 Venkatesh gained a first class honors degree in pure mathematics from the University of Western Australia, having been the youngest person to ever study at the university. He then went on to obtain his Ph.D. from Princeton in 2002, at the age of 20. The math whiz has held positions at the Clay Mathematics Institute in Rhode Island and at New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. He currently works as a professor in Stanford University’s mathematics faculty.

6. Saul Kripke

Born in Long Island, New York in 1940, Saul Kripke is an award-winning logician and philosopher noted for the jointly developed Kripke-Platek set theory, his causal theory of reference and his “Kripkenstein” theory. He was a child prodigy, too, having apparently learned Ancient Hebrew on his own by the time he was six before quickly grasping complex mathematics and philosophical questions. In 1980 Kripke published his hugely significant book Naming and Necessity, which discusses proper nouns within the context of the philosophy of language. Kripke has also had a significant bearing on areas surrounding mathematical logic, the philosophy of mathematics, metaphysics and epistemology. In 2001 he was awarded the esteemed Rolf Schock Prize. Furthermore, according to a 2009 poll, in which votes were cast by philosophers, Kripke ranked as the seventh most important philosopher of the past two centuries. He has taught at Harvard, New York’s Rockefeller University, and Princeton – where he is currently a professor emeritus. In addition, he is a distinguished professor of philosophy at the City University of New York.

5. Ruth Lawrence

Born in 1971, British mathematician and former child prodigy Ruth Lawrence made many headlines in 1985 when, aged just 13, she obtained a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Oxford University, gaining a starred first. Another degree, this time in physics, followed in 1986, and in 1989 she received her D.Phil. in mathematics, again from Oxford. In 1990 she was made a junior fellow at Harvard. And after a stint at the University of Michigan, she took on an associate professorship there in 1997. Lawrence is currently an associate professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Einstein Institute of Mathematics and investigates algebraic topology and knot theory. In 1997 Charles Arthur wrote in The Independent, “The branch of mathematics she is now researching… is so advanced, so abstruse, so mind-bogglingly complicated for the non-mathematician that it will be years before technology and science advance enough to make any practical use of it.”

4. Grigori Perelman

Born in 1966, Grigori Perelman is a highly influential, if somewhat eccentric, Russian mathematician. In 2002 he famously cracked the Poincaré conjecture, one of topology’s most weighty and complicated problems. However, the following year he reportedly quit mathematics to live with his mother in very modest circumstances in Saint Petersburg. In 2006 Perelman was honored with the esteemed Fields Medal for his work in furthering the understanding of geometry and particularly the Ricci flow, but he did not accept the award. “I’m not interested in money or fame; I don’t want to be on display like an animal in a zoo,” he explained. In 2010 he was offered the Clay Millennium Prize and one million dollars for his solving of the Poincaré conjecture, but again he declined. “I know how to control the universe. Why would I run to get a million, tell me?” he said.

3. Andrew Wiles

Andrew Wiles was born in Cambridge in 1953. He is an award-winning English mathematician perhaps best known for officially proving Fermat’s Last Theorem in 1995. Before he cracked it, The Guinness Book of World Records listed the 358-year-old theorem as one of the world’s “most difficult mathematical problems.” Wiles attained a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Oxford in 1974, followed by a Ph.D. from Cambridge in 1980. He has worked as a professor at Princeton and Harvard, and in 1985 he received a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship, which allowed him to spend time at Paris’ École Normale Supérieure and the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifique. The mathematician currently holds a Royal Society research professorship at Oxford, and his extensive list of awards includes an International Mathematic Union silver plaque, The Shaw Prize, and a National Academy of Sciences Award in Mathematics.

2. Edward Witten

Edward Witten is a scientist recognized for his research contributions to string theory, M-theory, quantum gravity and supersymmetry. Born in Baltimore in 1951, Witten was originally a history major at Massachusetts’ Brandeis University, attaining his bachelor’s degree in 1971. Five years later he obtained a Ph.D. in physics from Princeton after first earning a master’s degree from the same school. Witten has been described as “the most brilliant physicist of his generation” and “the world’s greatest living theoretical physicist.” In 2004 TIME magazine included him on its annual rundown of the 100 most influential people in the world. Although he is a physicist, Witten has had a major effect on mathematics, and he has a slew of awards to his name, including the Fields Medal, the Dirac Prize, the Albert Einstein Medal and the Nemmers Prize in Mathematics. He is currently a professor at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study.

1. Stephen Hawking

Guest appearances on TV shows such as The Simpsons, Futurama and Star Trek: The Next Generation have helped cement English astrophysicist Stephen Hawking’s place in the pop cultural domain. Hawking was born in 1942; and in 1959, when he was 17 years old, he received a scholarship to read physics and chemistry at Oxford University. He earned a bachelor’s degree in 1962 and then moved on to Cambridge to study cosmology. Diagnosed with motor neurone disease at the age of 21, Hawking became depressed and almost gave up on his studies. However, inspired by his relationship with his fiancé – and soon to be first wife – Jane Wilde, he returned to his academic pursuits and obtained his Ph.D. in 1965. Hawking is perhaps best known for his pioneering theories on black holes and his bestselling 1988 book A Brief History of Time.

10. University of California Geisel Library – San Diego, USA

In 2011, the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) celebrated the 40th anniversary of its famous library. The distinctive Geisel Library was rechristened in 1995 as a mark of respect for UCSD donors Ted and Audrey Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss and his widow. The tower’s unique architecture has even spawned an “Urban Legends” section on the library’s official website, which includes speculation that it has appeared in the Star Trek series.

The original building was conceived by architect William Pereira in the late 1960s and opened in 1970, and it really is a striking example of brutalist design – and contemporary looking beyond its years. It even features on the UCSD logo.

While the building’s idiosyncratic design has seen it described as “a beacon” and compared to a spaceship, the interior was intended to bring students as near as possible to the books. Still, some must have been sad to hear the university confirm that the library has not, in fact, featured in any Star Trek installment.

9. Macquarie University Library – Sydney, Australia

Filled with more than 1.8 million electronic and print items, the stylish Macquarie University Library is the biggest center of its kind in northern Sydney. Opened in August 2011, the awesome structure was the result of a design concept brief that told companies to “forget everything you think you know about academic libraries.”

Award-winning Australian architectural firm Francis-Jones Morehen Thorp were commissioned with a concept inspired by the campus’ stunning landscape – particularly its forest of eucalypts – and which also took into consideration sustainability and light.

Another important aspect of the concept is the way it was able to favor open floor space over book storage, thanks to the library’s automated retrieval system – a first in Australia. Given that the library receives 5,500 visits a day and has a projected minimum lifespan of four decades, the design also had to be robust and durable.

8. University of Aberdeen Library – Aberdeen, Scotland

A 2012 article in The Guardian described the new Aberdeen University Library as “rising like a perfectly geometric glass monolith from a clutter of university structures.” Opened in 2011, it was the first major building project in Aberdeen for some 25 years, and it soars above the surrounding skyline.

The €40 million ($51 million) library was designed by Danish architectural firm Schmidt Hammer Lassen, who planned the building as a cube that recalls the light and ice of the area. Its striking and futuristic design encloses an asymmetrical atrium with sweeping curves that rise diagonally up through all seven floors.

“The University of Aberdeen’s new library will be a meeting place and a cultural center for the students of the University and the Aberdeen community,” remarked founding Schmidt Hammer Lassen partner Morten Schmidt. He went on to add, “The facade of the building will shimmer during the day and glow softly at night, creating a luminous landmark – a beacon – for the whole city of Aberdeen.”

7. Delft University of Technology Library – Delft, The Netherlands

Completed in 1997, the Delft University of Technology Library was designed by local architectural firm Mecanoo, and the following year, the building’s distinctive design won in the “Buildings of Steel and Hybrid Constructions” category of the Dutch National Steel Prize.

Natural insulation is provided by the grass-covered roof, which is sloped so that people can walk to the top of the building – and which, from above, gives the impression that the structure has risen out of the ground, pushing the turf upwards.

A steel cone also emerges from the roof, and its skylight serves as the core source of natural illumination for the building, ensuring the library is bright enough to accommodate its one thousand study spaces. The structure’s large windows and columns provide further lighting, adding to the impressive design.

6. Free University of Berlin Philological Library – Berlin, Germany

Opened in 2005, the Free University of Berlin’s Philological Library was designed by celebrated British architect Norman Foster. It brings together six of the university’s original courtyards and spans four floors within a naturally-ventilated, egg-like enclosure that was built using aluminum, glazed panels and a steel frame.

Inside, a clear “inner membrane” distils daylight and helps to promote a study-friendly environment. With book stacks centrally situated on each level and reading spaces spread out around the edges, the building’s snaking layout produces a sequence of well-lit areas in which students can work.

This unique library houses 700,000 volumes, and its somewhat cranial likeness has seen it become nicknamed “The Berlin Brain.”

5. Brandenburg University of Technology ICMC – Brandenburg, Germany

Brandenburg University of Technology’s Informations, Kommunikations und Medienzentrum (IKMZ) – or Information, Communication and Media Center (ICMC) – opened in 2004. The building was designed by world-famous Swiss architectural firm Herzog & de Meuron, well known for their work on contemporary international structures like London’s Tate Modern and the Allianz Arena in Munich.

Swathed in repeated white images and text, the IKMZ’s glazed glass exterior gives the building a striking appearance, but those expecting the monochromatic pattern to be maintained inside may be surprised to find an eye-catching 20-foot-wide, pink-and-green staircase.

The shape of the building has been compared to an amoeba, and despite its seemingly random façade, the design is the result of a well planned and tested arrangement based around movement.

4. University of Warsaw Library – Warsaw, Poland

Roman philosopher Cicero once said, “If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.” And when Poland’s Warsaw University redeveloped its library in the 1990s, architects Marek Budzyński and Zbigniew Badowski seemed to agree.

Opened in December 1999, the new design – which was even blessed by Pope John Paul II – marries nature and culture. Its green exterior features huge tablets that pay homage to the cultural domain with mathematical formulas, musical notation, and classical texts written in different scripts – including Old Polish, Hebrew and Classical Greek.

To top it off, there’s a one-hectare, two-level botanical garden on the roof of the building that was conceived by landscape architect Irena Bajerska. Also featuring a stream and water cascade, it’s one of Europe’s biggest roof gardens and is open to the public.

3. University of Chicago Joe & Rika Mansueto Library – Chicago, USA

Opened in 2011, the Joe & Rika Mansueto Library was named after Chicago investment research firm Morningstar, Inc.’s founder Joe Mansueto and his wife Rika, who donated $25 million to the project.

Designed by noted German-American architect Helmut Jahn, the library seats up to 180 students under a gleaming glass dome that was built with a gently angled axis as a nod to the Henry Moore monument, which is close by. The glass blocks 73 percent of incoming solar heat but lets in 50 percent of the visible light, enabling students to work in natural sunlight without getting too hot.

With an aim towards “the library of the future,” the intention here was to create an agreeable environment that encouraged serious learning. And below the 8,000-square-foot Grand Reading Room, an advanced book retrieval system allows a phenomenal amount of texts to be stored in a seventh of the space that would be occupied by regular library shelving.

2. Galway-Mayo Institute Of Technology Library – Galway, Ireland

The brief for the new Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology library in Galway, western Ireland was exacting, with the building needing to accommodate 600 students, plus book storage and study areas, as well as incorporating cutting-edge IT facilities.

Notwithstanding, Irish firm de Blacam & Meagher rose to the challenge to create a stunning and award-winning structure with a total volume of 1.06 million cubic feet (30,000 cubic meters). In the development, they used dynamic thermal modeling – at the time a young and developing technology in Ireland – to produce the building’s sophisticated facade.

The striking exterior provides shade from the southerly sun but also allows natural light entering the glazed east side of the building to bathe the library’s reading spaces. The design also uses natural ventilation, which is more cost-effective than mechanical cooling, offering both minimal energy consumption and increased comfort for students and staff.

1. Tama Art University Library – Tokyo, Japan

Completed in 2007, the Tama Art University Library in Tokyo was designed by Japanese architect Toyo Ito. A key aspect of the concept was creating an open space for the entire university faculty – and the result is a stunning construction, both inside and out.

The ground level gallery passage allows those walking across the campus to enter, even if they are not heading to the library itself. Meanwhile, large arches constructed from concrete-covered steel plates have been configured to follow a series of curved lines. Intersecting at various points, they give the impression that the sloped floor and picturesque front garden carry on right into the building interior.

The arches also gently separate the library spaces and help to facilitate the building’s spatial continuity, as well as letting in natural light. In 2013, Ito was awarded the esteemed Pritzker Architecture Prize.

This is not a straightforward ranking of the cheapest online bachelor’s degree programs. The fact is, the cheapest online degrees may save students money in the short term, but they may also end up being more expensive than a higher priced program in the long run if they are from non-accredited schools that lack recognition and respect in the job market.Our ranking of the most inexpensive online bachelor’s degrees takes a long term approach to affordability by taking into account tuition costs (50%), accreditation (25%), and market reputation (25%). The idea is to help students find an affordable online bachelor’s program that will also improve their chances of landing a good job or promotion upon completion.

#1. Fort Hays State University

Fort Hays State University is a public university in Hays, Kansas. One of six Kansas Board of Regents universities, FHSU is the fourth-largest but fastest-growing and offers the most affordable accredited online bachelor’s degrees on our list.

Online Bachelor’s Degrees
FHSU offers nearly 30 accredited online bachelor’s degrees, with such desirable programs as Information Networking and Telecommunications, Marketing, and Nursing RN to BSN. At only $178.30 per credit hour, it’s the most affordable accredited online bachelor’s degree out there.

Accreditation
Fort hays State University Virtual College is regionally accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools.

#2. Baker College

Baker College is a respected private career college originally founded in the automotive boom of the early 20th century. Today Baker offers exceptionally affordable, accredited online bachelor’s degrees in a variety of subjects.

Online Bachelor’s Degrees
Baker College offers 20 accredited online bachelor’s degrees in Business, Information Systems, Computer Science, and several other in-demand fields. Tuition is only $210 per credit hour, making Baker College a great value.

Accreditation
Baker College is regionally accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools.

#3. Western Governors University

Western Governors University is a private, nonprofit, all-online college founded by the governors of 19 western states. An unconventional institution that measures student progress by competency rather than credit hours, WGU has been recognized for its quality and innovation by a number of publications.

Online Bachelor’s Degrees
WGU offers more than 20 accredited online bachelor’s degrees in Teaching, Business, Information Technologies, and Health Professions. At $240 per competency unit (rather than credit hour), a bachelor’s degree from WGU is an exceptionally affordable option.

Accreditation
WGU is regionally accredited by the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities.

#4. Columbia College

Columbia College is a private liberal arts college in Columbia, Missouri. In addition to its main campuses, Columbia College provides education on military bases and through its growing online campus.

Online Bachelor’s Degrees
Columbia College offers 11 accredited, online bachelor’s degrees, including Criminal Justice, Human Services, and Business Administration programs. Columbia’s $240 per credit hour tuition makes for an economical education opportunity.

Accreditation
Columbia College is regionally accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools.

#5. Oregon State University Ecampus

Oregon State University is a major public research university in Corvallis, Oregon. OSU Ecampus students benefit from the same quality faculty and receive the same diploma as their on-campus counterparts.

Online Bachelor’s Degrees
Oregon State University Ecampus offers 15 accredited, online bachelor’s degrees, including new offerings in Environmental Economics and Policy, German, and Sociology. At only $260 per credit hour, OSU provides a very inexpensive online degree option.

Accreditation
Oregon State University Ecampus is regionally accredited by the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities.

#6. Walden University

Founded as a progressive educational experiment, Walden University began providing working adults with an education while also working for positive social change. Today Walden’s online degrees are both respected and exceptionally affordable.

Online Bachelor’s Degrees
Walden University offers nearly 20 accredited online bachelor degrees in a variety of fields. At only $280 per credit hour, Walden offers some of the cheapest online programs around.

Accreditation
Walden University is regionally accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools.

#7. Capella University

Capella University is a private institution reaching underserved adult populations with affordable online degrees. Based in Minneapolis, Capella is noted for offering challenging academic programs and a supportive campus environment.

Online Bachelor’s Degrees
Capella University offers 22 accredited, online bachelor of science degrees, with many offerings in information technology. Tuition for online bachelor programs ranges between $290 and $350 per credit hour.

Accreditation
Capella University is regionally accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools.

#8. Herzing University

Herzing University is a private career college originally founded as a computer training school in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and retaining a reputation for science and technology programs. Despite a dozen brick and mortar campuses, most of Herzing’s students earn their degree online.

Online Bachelor’s Degrees
Herzing University offers 21 accredited, online bachelor’s degrees in Healthcare, Business, Technology, Design, and Public Safety at only $300 per credit hour.

Accreditation
Herzing University is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission, 230 South LaSalle Street, Suite 7-500, Chicago, Illinois, 60614-1413, www.hlcommission.org, (800) 621-7400.

#9. American InterContinental University

American InterContinental University is a private, career-oriented college with multiple campuses throughout the United States. Most AIU students earn their degree through the school’s online campus, AIU Online.

Online Bachelor’s Degrees
AIU offers more than 20 accredited, online bachelor’s degrees in Business, Information Technology, and Criminal Justice, with many specializations available for each. Tuition for online bachelor degrees is $302 per credit hour.

Accreditation
American InterContinental University is accredited by The Higher Learning Commission and a member of the North Central Association.

#10. Colorado Technical University

Colorado Technical University is a private career university specializing in business, management, and technology. CTU operates campuses in Colorado and other midwestern states, as well as a large online degree division.

Online Bachelor’s Degrees
CTU offers more than 35 accredited online bachelor’s degrees in fields such as Business Administration, Information Systems and Technology, and Security Studies at $305 per credit hour.

Accreditation
Colorado Technical University is accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools.

That doesn’t mean a business-person can’t learn a lot from the movies, though – just that you can learn more about what not to do than what to do. After all, learning what to do is what business school is for. Learning what not to do is entertainment. With that in mind, here are our picks for the best business movies of all time.

1. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010)

Film critics would argue that the first Wall Street – the one that launched a million careers in investment banking and brought “Greed is good” into our language – should be first on the list. No doubt, it’s a classic: Michael Douglas’ effortless cool and way of wearing a tailored suit shaped the look of the real Wall Street for over twenty years. In Wall Street (1987), Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) is so slick and compelling a con man that nearly everyone who saw the film forgot he was the villain; he robs and pillages without an ounce of conscience or compassion. But that’s exactly why the sequel is on this list.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, on the other hand, shows the human, social, and cultural cost of Gekko-style profiteering, as Gekko is released from prison with eight years of his life lost, tries in vain to warn Wall Street of impending disaster, and finds himself back in the game after the 2008 economic collapse, mopping up all the spilled money. The lure of fast, ill-gotten fortune briefly overcomes Gekko again, and nearly ends his relationship with his estranged daughter forever, but in the end what sticks with the audience is writer/director Oliver Stone’s vision of a world not just corrupted by greed, but devastated by it. But this time, Gordon Gekko is the voice of reason.

2. The Godfather (1972)

The Godfather is a lot of things: family drama, gangster thriller, period piece, and the best advertisement for cannoli the cinema ever produced. It also invented the term “badda-bing,” for which Mafia wanna-bes will forever be grateful. But The Godfather is also an exemplary guide to business. We all know the pull-quotes: “I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse;” “It’s business, not personal;” “Never tell anyone outside the family what you’re thinking;” “Don’t ever take sides with anyone against the family;” “He’s thinking of going to the mattresses.”

So, it’s probably not a good idea to send messages via horse-head in a legitimate business. But many of the other lessons of The Godfather are entirely applicable: knowing the difference between ambition and over-reaching, for instance; knowing who to trust; learning when to be loyal and when to jump a sinking ship; knowing your clientele and your product; getting your hands dirty without selling your soul; and, above all, leading wisely, boldly, and steadily. If Sonny had known these principles like Michael, the movie would have a very different ending. Maybe not as dramatic, but certainly less bloody.

3. Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)

Sales is hard. There are plenty of movies, novels, and plays about just how hard, most famously Death of a Salesman, but nothing quite captures the rugged, outsized confidence of a successful salesman, or the pitiful desperation of a failed one, like David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross. In Glengarry Glen Ross, a “motivator” from the head office visits a regional real estate office to deliver a message from management: the two lowest sales for the week will be fired.

Like Wall Street, Glengarry Glen Ross is mostly revered for the wrong reasons, particularly Alec Baldwin’s brief, profane, show-stopping monologue in the first act. True, it’s got some pretty good advice: “ABC – Always Be Closing,” he tells the salesmen. But it’s all predicated on a very bad business plan – pit everyone in the office against each other in a brutal, winner-take-all competition. Or, as Baldwin’s character puts it, “Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is, you’re fired.” This vicious mandate from management drives an already underhanded business with shaky ethics to outright corruption, as some of the salesmen bribe, threaten, and intimidate each other, and others plot a break-in and theft of the most valuable leads. It’s an important lesson for anyone who intends to own or manage a business – no-holds-barred competition may get results, but within a business, it’s toxic. An office that can’t cooperate will crumble.

4. Boiler Room (2000)

Boiler Room is like the love child of Wall Street and Glengarry Glen Ross, a seductive look at the seediest side of Wall Street. At J.T. Marlin, a “pump and dump” firm that artificially inflates the stock prices of failing businesses, unscrupulous young brokers make a fortune hard-selling overpriced stocks to investors, knowing the businesses are already dead. And as with Wall Street and Glengarry Glen Ross, Boiler Room has become something of a cult classic, and unlikely business guide. With its cast of good-looking, ridiculously charismatic stars (the cream of 2000’s crop of young actors, including Ben Affleck, Giovanni Ribisi, and Vin Diesel in a role that nearly made him a serious star), Boiler Room makes this unethical world as romantic to the viewer as it is to Ribisi’s neophyte protagonist.

But like many business movies, Boiler Room is above all a cautionary tale of greed and corruption. Ribisi’ character, Seth Davis, has a crisis of conscience when his advice causes financial and personal ruin for an ordinary family man who is trying to buy a new house. But his Jiminy Cricket isn’t quite enough to change his mind about the firm until he’s caught by the FBI and offered an immunity deal. Boiler Room doesn’t show us what happens to the other brokers, but the paddy wagons and police cars don’t bode well. Another rule of business learned from the movie: fast money is probably dirty money.

5. The Social Network (2010)

David Fincher’s The Social Network – written by hyperverbalist Aaron Sorkin – has been criticized for its historical inaccuracies and unflattering depiction of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. To which film lovers say, “So?” It’s the only film ever to make endless talk about programming, ownership percentages, and intellectual property look and sound like a thriller. Mark Zuckerberg may not be the socially-inept, heartless misogynist Jesse Eisenberg portrays, but, as the tagline reads, you don’t get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies. Unfortunately, the enemies Zuckerberg makes,according to the film, are the friends who helped get him there.

The Social Network is not a guide to becoming a billionaire – the success of Facebook is presented as a combination of genius, luck, and ruthless opportunism. So maybe it is a guide to becoming a billionaire. But that success comes at a cost for Zuckerberg, as he is successfully sued by his former partner/best friend, and by the trust-fund frat boys who gave him the idea in the first place. Zuckerberg is left, in an instantly classic scene, alone at his computer, refreshing the page, hoping for a friend confirmation. For you business majors, lesson to be gained: don’t forget the ones who help you succeed, and don’t cheat those who are loyal to you.

6. Citizen Kane (1941)

The greatest American film in history is also one of the best business films in history. A heavily fictionalized – more loosely inspired – biopic of William Randolph Hearst, writer, director, and star Orson Welles plays Charles Foster Kane, who rises from poverty (via the discovery of a gold mine on his family’s property) to enormous wealth and power. As a young newspaper tycoon, Kane has enough influence to scare up a war with Spain and almost elect himself governor. But from that height, of course, comes a fall. Not in wealth – he dies richer than ever – but in his humanity.

Welle’s portrayal of Kane is monumental – a man of raging ambitions, uncontrollable appetites, and insidious charm. Like Gordon Gekko, he’s one of the slimiest, yet most irresistibly charismatic, protagonists in American film. And Welles uses every element of the medium, from the high-contrast, deep-focus cinematography to the music (“It can’t be love, because there is no true love”), to make Kane’s emotional and psychological devastation as relatable, pitiable, and plausible as possible. At a human level, Citizen Kane reminds business people to remember the people at home. All the wealth in the world can’t buy love.

7. The Apartment (1960)

One of writer-director Billy Wilder’s incredible string of hits in the 50s and 60s, The Apartment was controversial in its day for its frank depiction of infidelity. Jack Lemmon (who makes this list twice as a star of Glengarry Glen Ross) plays C.C. Baxter, a lonely office worker for a New York insurance company. Weak-willed and unambitious, Baxter allows company executives to use his apartment for meetings with their mistresses, in return for good personnel reports. When the personnel director catches on to the scheme, he blackmails Baxter for exclusive apartment privileges – with his mistress, Miss Kubelik, the object of Baxter’s affection.

Being a romantic comedy, love eventually wins out in The Apartment, but what sticks with viewers is the absurd humor and man-in-the-grey-flannel-suit-era office politics. Characters speak unironically in 50s corporate cliches, including attaching “-wise” to the end of any word to make it an adjective, and clearly it will be a long time before any of the characters learn the term “sexual harassment.” But as a story of bosses who ask too much, and employees who give too much, The Apartment will stay relevant for a long, long time.

8. Office Space (1999)

Office Space has a simple lesson for businesspeople: embezzlement is fun. Wait, that can’t be right. A flop when it was first released (writer-director Mike Judge complained that it was poorly marketed), video and DVD made it a cult classic among IT workers and other frustrated rank-and-file office drones. This dark comedy tapped into a deep well of resentment at the heart of the 90s tech-powered economic boom – all of those young professionals who did everything “right” (going to college, choosing a practical, stable job, working hard) and found themselves trapped in cubicles with managers who had no idea how to motivate them or even what they did.

Think of it as Dilbert with guts. Three computer programmers, inspired by the silly plot of Superman III, hatch a scheme to embezzle fractions of a cent from each transaction the company makes, building a fortune slowly enough that the company will never notice. A misplaced decimal point gets them hundreds of thousands in a few hours. But it’s not the story that captured the movie’s fans so much as the many scenes of wish-fulfillment – speaking your mind to the boss, goofing off with impunity, and (most vividly and memorably) taking a baseball bat to a chronically malfunctioning printer. Let Office Space stand as a warning to managers: taking the time to get to know your employees, learn their jobs and skills, and communicate with them about their needs, will make a happier, more productive, and less-likely-to-be-burned-down workplace.

Now, most poets have writing or literary-related jobs; they are teachers, professors, scholars, editors, publishers, or journalists. Some, if they are well-known and engaging performers, can eventually make a living giving public readings and lectures, or even appearing on television and in documentaries.

But not all poets are cut out for the glamour of the college lecture circuit and PBS. Some prefer the security of a stable, conventional job, writing poetry in their free time. And some of these ordinary people were also great, influential, and timeless poets.

Charles Bukowski: Letter Filing Clerk

It’s probably inevitable that a figure like Bukowski – whose poems romanticized the lives of down-and-out drunks, creeps, and lowlifes – would have a hard time keeping a job. Between his incendiary verse, his uncontrolled alcoholism, and his pugnacious personality, Bukowski could very well be called unemployable. Most of his adult life he spent bumming around the country, working odd jobs, and drinking, until middle age, a bleeding ulcer, and a divorce sent him into writing poetry, and he got a steady job to support himself.

That job: letter filing clerk in a Los Angeles post office. For all the possible jokes about “going postal,” much of Bukowski’s work transmutes simmering rage and self-loathing into bursts of disturbing, vulgar, life-affirming beauty. The tedium of filing letters must have given him plenty of time to stew and ruminate; in fact, only a month after publisher John Martin convinced Bukowski to quit the post office (his longest-term job, over ten years), he published his first novel, not coincidentally titled Post Office. He spent the rest of his life detailing his drunks, his romantic entanglements, and his fury into poetry and novels, but none of it would have been possible without the US Postal Service.

For more information:

Charles Bukowski on Wikipedia
Charles Bukowski homepage

Robert Burns: Tax Collector

Like his father, Robert Burns was born a tenant farmer. Unlike his father, however, Burns had a smattering of education, a talent for writing faux-traditional ballads, and a lot of ambition. So, when his Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect was published in 1786, Burns set off for the big city of Edinburgh. (There was also the matter of three illegitimate children born within a year to two different mothers, but that’s neither here nor there.)

For a year or so, Burns was the toast of the Edinburgh literary scene; but while local literary celebrity may have been enough to get him invitations to exclusive clubs, free drinks, and plenty of female company (all of Burns’ favorite things), sales of his book were not enough to make a living. So, with children to support and a respectable reputation as Scotland’s greatest living bard, Burns took a more stable position: tax collector. Even while he was being hailed as the national poet of Scotland, Burns spent his days in one of the most detested jobs in history – a situation that some argued led to his premature death at 37.

For more information:

Robert Burns on Wikipedia
Robert Burns homepage

Frank O’Hara: Museum Curator

Frank O’Hara’s job wasn’t exactly boring; as an assistant curator of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, he had a key role in setting the canon for modern art. By convincing the museum to buy works by his friends – Larry Rivers, Bunny Lang, and Jackson Pollock, among others – O’Hara’s taste and influence helped ensure that abstract expressionism and conceptual art were treated as historically significant and enshrined in the art establishment.

But if it wasn’t boring, it was still ordinary. O’Hara walked to work every day, answered phone calls, begged donors for money, and snuck out on over-long lunch breaks (where he often wrote his poetry). For the most part, O’Hara was not known as a poet at all in his lifetime; among the hip his small, surprising books, like Oranges: Twelve Pastorals and Lunch Poems, were recognized as sharp, offhand amusements, but not groundbreaking. He himself treated his poems as amusements, writing at the spur of the moment and throwing collections together for friends’ books or his own. Some of his finest work was in letters to friends, never intended for publication. But since his death, O’Hara’s spontaneous poetry has been recognized as some of the most exciting, most influential of the century.

For more information:

Frank O’Hara on Wikipedia
Frank O’Hara homepage

Wallace Stevens: Insurance Lawyer

Wallace Stevens’ poetry is some of the most intellectually challenging, boldly imaginative poetry of his generation. Older than most of his fellow Modernists, Stevens didn’t even begin publishing poetry until his late 30s, and most of his great works occurred late in middle and old age. That poetry deals with the role of the imagination in shaping reality, what Stevens called the Supreme Fiction, and with his witty, erudite voice Stevens made a dense, curious body of work.

He probably took so long to get started in poetry because of his job – insurance law. It’s probably no coincidence that his first poem was published in 1914 – the same year he became a vice-president in the Equitable Surety Company (oh, the romance!). Getting a law degree and working into a high position in a company certainly takes time. And it certainly takes a powerful imagination for an insurance lawyer to avoid losing his mind.

For more information:

Wallace Stevens on Wikipedia
Wallace Stevens at Poets.org

Walt Whitman: Government Clerk

Walt Whitman, the most epic, fearless, and innovative poet America has ever seen, had a lot of jobs: journalist, pressman, and teacher, among others. He was a bit of a jack-of-all-trades, as evidenced by his fascination with occupations in many Leaves of Grass poems. But his most successful and longest-term job was probably the most boring job possible: low-level federal bureaucrat.

Whitman had a hard time keeping work because of his scandalous Leaves of Grass poems, with their frank, pan-sexual eroticism. But a letter of recommendation from Ralph Waldo Emerson (whose praise Whitman included on the first edition of Leaves) helped Whitman get a job as a clerk, first with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, then the Attorney General’s office. These less-than-ideal jobs helped stabilize Whitman so he could pursue what he considered more important: volunteering as a nurse for wounded Union soldiers.

For more information:

Walt Whitman on Wikipedia
The Walt Whitman Archive

William Carlos Williams: Doctor

One of the early Imagist poets, along with his college friends Ezra Pound and Hilda Doolittle (H.D.), William Carlos Williams is best known for his stark, plain-spoken poems like “The Red Wheel Barrow” and “To Elsie.” Williams belief that the American dialect is an inherently poetic language goes hand in hand with his poetic subjects, which are drawn from everyday life in its minutia. Such is the subject of Paterson, his epic-length observational poem on life in Paterson, New Jersey.

He had plenty of time to observe everyday life as a pediatrician and family doctor in Rutherford, NJ. Making house calls to the country and seeing every kind of individual Rutherford had to offer, Williams steeped his poetry in the drama of real life. “The Red Wheel Barrow,” his best-known poem, was famously inspired by an actual wheelbarrow, glimpsed out the window of a dying patient’s bedroom. Arguing that poetry should be “real, not realism, but reality itself,” Williams may not have been the poet he was without his “ordinary” job.

For more information:

William Carlos Williams on Wikipedia
William Carlos Williams on Poets.org

This is not a list of your boring, safe Poet Laureates and sophomore English anthology-approved poets (though some are, or should be, both of those things). They are poets who write about life, sex, sadness, joy, and even food, with wry, real voices and personality that comes through every word. They are poets with something for everyone, and knowing them and their work will not just help you become a well-rounded Super Scholar – it will help you see the world through new eyes.

Sherman Alexie (b. 1966)

Sherman Alexie is a literary one-man-band – a novelist, short-story writer, essayist, young adult author, screenwriter, and director. He’s also one of the funniest, most enlightening lecturers you’ll ever hear. But he made his name as a poet, and no matter what the project, that poet peeks through, turning phrases in sharp, unexpectedly resonant ways.

Alexie is not a Romantic or a Modernist – he’s a storyteller, and the stories he tells run the gamut of human experience: love, loss, dignity, humiliation, heartbreak and exhilaration. Some of his narrators are recognizably himself, especially as he has aged and writes more of his personal family life; some are characters, richly, deeply realized characters with their own hearts and souls. His knowledge of human complexity is deep, as in “Dangerous Astronomy,” in which he ruminates on his newborn son’s preference for his wife:

A selfish father, I wanted to pull apart
My comfortable wife and son. Forgive me, Rough
God, because I walked outside and praised the stars,
And thought I was more important than the stars.

Alexie’s voice can be prickly, sarcastic, self-lacerating, and even brutal as he writes about the oppression of his people (the Spokan/Coeur d’Alene Indians) and the slow horrors of poverty and addiction on the reservation. But even these stories are often delivered with a sardonic wit, as in the poem “Good Hair”:

Hey, Indian boy, why (why!) did you slice off your braids?
Was it worth it? Did you profit? What’s the price of braids?

Did you cut your hair after your sister’s funeral?
Was it self-flagellation? Did you chastise your braids?

Has your tribe and clan cut-hair-mourned since their creation?
Did you, ceremony-dumb, improvise with your braids?

But no matter how righteously indignant, Alexie is never cynical. No matter how devastating the story, Alexie’s faith in the power of joy and love illuminates it

Significant Works:
The Business of Fancy-Dancing (1992)
Face (2009)

More Information:
Sherman Alexie on Wikipedia
Sherman Alexie’s homepage

Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979)

A notorious perfectionist, Elizabeth Bishop’s Complete Poems: 1927-1979 runs 276 pages. Those aren’t magnifying-glass, two-column type either – they’re generously laid out, each poem to itself. That’s not much for a 52-year career. But their small volume makes every word precious to Bishop’s devoted fans.

Bishop was fortunate to inherit money from her father and spend her life traveling, and her poems are filled with precise, vivid images of the places and experiences of her life. Bishop writes what she sees and thinks with a crystal-clear, unaffected voice, as in the opening lines of “At the Fishhouses”:

Although it is a cold evening,
down by one of the fishhouses
an old man sits netting,
his net, in the gloaming almost invisible,
a dark purple-brown,
and his shuttle worn and polished.

There is never a wasted word in a Bishop poem; every word is carefully inspected, turned from every angle, and placed precisely where it is needed. Bishop’s poetry is of the utmost craftsmanship. Edgar Allan Poe & the Juke-Box, a collection of Bishop’s manuscripts and unfinished poems, includes sixteen distinct drafts of her best-known poem, “One Art,” and some of her poems spent decades in revision until she was satisfied to publish them. And still, through all that refinement, her poems retain a sense of powerful emotion and worldly wit that never seems forced or overworked, always fresh. Her lines describing a fish she catches, in a poem simply called “The Fish,” reflect this perfect detail:

Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.

The intensity of Bishop’s gaze and the character of her voice inspire great devotion. When her unfinished poems were published, an outcry among her followers raised a literary controversy usually reserved for the desecration of religious figures or Founding Fathers. Bishop, they argued, would never have wanted her unfinished poems published; it would be like going out undressed. But, for others, having a little more of Bishop’s jewels, even unpolished, was worth any embarrassment.

Significant Works:
The Complete Poems: 1927-1979 (1983)
Edgar Allan Poe & The Juke-Box: Uncollected Poems, Drafts, and Fragments (2006)

More Information:
Elizabeth Bishop on Wikipedia

Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997)

There are, in a way, two Allen Ginsbergs. There’s the pop-culture figure, the bearded, proto-hippie whirling and chanting, hanging with Bob Dylan and the Beatles, and trying to levitate the Pentagon with the power of love. That Allen Ginsberg is ripe for parody, and hard to take seriously. Even Ginsberg’s fans have to admit – trying to levitate the Pentagon is just ridiculous.

But behind that Allen Ginsberg, there’s the other one, the one who made pop-culture Ginsberg possible, and the one who gets lost in his embarrassing twin’s shadow – the magnificent, funny, heartbreaking poet of Howl, Kaddish, and smaller poems like “America” and “A Supermarket in California.” Inspired by William Blake and Walt Whitman, Ginsberg made himself a prophet for his age, the turbulent post-WWII America, and wrote in long, confident lines that were at once plain-spoken and Biblically-weighted. His expansive vision could combine Jewish tradition, British Romanticism, and American pop music in just a few lines of Kaddish, the stirring eulogy for his mother:

I’ve been up all night, talking, talking, reading the Kaddish aloud, listening to Ray Charles blues shout blind on the phonograph
the rhythm the rhythm—and your memory in my head three years after—And read Adonais’ last triumphant stanzas aloud—wept, realizing how we suffer—

He was also capable of the sly satiric humor of “America”:

America when will you send your eggs to India?
I’m sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?

Allen Ginsberg, the pop figure, is hardly obscure, but Ginsberg the poet needs continual rediscovery. A poet who wrote for all America, in a voice that could only be his, deserves to be read and heard as a living voice rather than a cultural artifact.

Significant Works:
Howl and Other Poems (1956)
Kaddish and Other Poems (1961)
Collected Poems 1947-1997 (2005)

More Information:
Allen Ginsberg on Wikipedia
Allen Ginsberg Project

Robert Hayden (1913-1980)

Robert Hayden’s troubled childhood is often cited as a foundation for his poetry – taken in by a foster family whose abusive marriage turned into abuse toward him, still living next door to his emotionally-disturbed birth mother – but Hayden’s impeccable voice and insight into the depths of the human heart are his own ingenious creation.

A formalist poet of the greatest technical skill, Robert Hayden wrote poems that combine poetic refinement with fierce emotional power. As a student of W.H. Auden at the University of Michigan, Hayden developed a uniquely controlled voice and an eye for precise details that could speak volumes. In his best known poem, “Those Winter Sundays,” for instance, he writes of his father, who on Sundays

with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

Hayden’s facility with such simple, evocative images, as well as an ear for sound (say “cracked hands that ached” without feeling the pain yourself), allowed Hayden to craft poems that a reader inhabits more than reads.

While Hayden considered himself an American poet, rather than confining himself to the label “Black poet,” Hayden’s poems, such as “Frederick Douglas” and “Middle Passage,” delve deeply into black history, and Hayden wrote unapologetically political poems such as “El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Malcolm X),” his elegy for the assassinated radical, and a series of poems on the Vietnam War. Whether inciting political ire, or depicting his own troubled childhood and neighborhood in poems like “The Whipping” and “Those Winter Sundays,” Hayden brings to each topic, no matter how different, an honesty and wisdom only the greatest poets master.

Significant Works:
Collected Poems (1985)

More Information:
Robert Hayden on Wikipedia

Frank O’Hara (1926-1966)

Like his friend John Ashbery (a notoriously difficult poet, who wrote poems designed to confound and frustrate critics), Frank O’Hara wrote some challenging, demanding poems in his time. But those are not the poems he is remembered and loved for. O’Hara’s best, most memorable poems are the poems of walking and talking in New York City, poems of everyday experience best encapsulated in the Lunch Poems – poem literally written about, and during, O’Hara’s lunch breaks. Like this one, simply called “Personal Poem”:

I walk through the luminous humidity
passing the House of Seagram with its wet
and its loungers and the construction to
the left that closed the sidewalk if
I ever get to be a construction worker
I’d like to have a silver hat please

O’Hara’s poems are exuberant, enthusiastic lists of experiences, feelings, objects and people, with subjects as simple as picking up a new watchband or reading a movie magazine. Often addressed to friends, O’Hara’s poems speak to the reader as an intimate, dropping names and places the way you do with someone you’ve known forever. These poems, dashed off during free moments on scrap paper, typed on store display typewriters, or improvised in personal letters, usually ended up stuffed away in a drawer or even lost in sofa cushions. O’Hara’s books were often composed of whatever he could scrape together digging through his apartment. But their deliriously excited voice captures a poet in love with life, with things, and most of all with people, and their warmth and personality have ensured that, even if he dismissed or forgot his poems, no one who reads them ever will.

Significant Works:
Lunch Poems (1964)
Collected Poems (1995)

More Information:
Frank O’Hara on Wikipedia
Frank O’Hara Homepage

Sharon Olds (b. 1942)

A feminist poet known and revered for her unflinching honesty, Sharon Olds draws on her abusive upbringing and family dramas to create raw, daring, vulgar works of searing intensity. But Olds is no wailing, self-absorbed misery-wallower; her incisive humor and eye for surprising images sparkle in the darkest subjects. Imagining her parents just before their terrible marriage, she considers warning them, then decides to bring them together herself:

[I] take them up like the male and female
paper dolls and bang them together
at the hips, like chips of flint, as if to
strike sparks from them, I say
Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.

In “The One Girl at the Boys’ Party,” Olds takes what could be a maudlin subject and tweaks it:

They tower and
bristle, she stands there smooth and sleek,
her math scores unfolding in the air around them.

While Olds’ unfiltered language and euphemism-free descriptions of bodies – hers, her lovers’, her children’s – may sometimes be shocking, they reveal a startling tenderness and surprising emotional innocence, as if Olds has learned to take life as it is and love it anyway. On seeing her children sleeping, Olds writes of her son’s “dry dirty boyish palm / resting like a cookie,” and of her daughter’s “face like the face of a snake who has swallowed a deer, / content, content,” and such unexpected freshness and rightness in those phrases reminds a reader of what poetry is supposed to do – show us life anew.

Significant Works:
The Dead and the Living (1983)
The Father (1992)
Strike Sparks: Selected Poems 1980-2002 (2004)

More Information:
Sharon Olds in Wikipedia
Sharon Olds Homepage

Wislawa Szymborska  (1923-2012)

Born in Poland in 1923, Wislawa Szymborska was relatively unknown in America until her 1996 Nobel Prize for Literature. Living in Poland during the Nazi occupation, Szymborska witnessed the darkest depths of the human heart; a lifetime spent under that nation’s Communist regime further impressed upon her the degradation of oppression and totalitarianism. But Szymborska’s poetry, against all odds, is clever, insightful, and fearless, written in such a precise and recognizable voice that, no matter the translator, Symborska always sounds like Symborska.

Her understatement and delicious irony allow her to confront the great horrors of the 20^th century, and human depravity in general, with a wit that needles as it consoles. To read Szymborska is to cuddle with a porcupine for protection against the winter. Only Szymborska could state, so matter-of-factly (in “The End and the Beginning”):

After every war
someone has to clean up.
Things won’t
straighten themselves up, after all.

Szymborska is the master of the ironic twist that turns a poem on its head at the very last moment. In “True Love,” for instance, she voices the cynic’s case against true love – “Is it normal, / is it serious, is it practical?” – with line after line of condemnation, only to turn in the last lines with a devastating refutation:

Let the people who never find true love
keep saying that there’s no such thing.
Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.

But for all the horrors of her poetry – war, atrocity, loneliness, fear – Szymborska remains a humanist. Her poetry has given light and boldness to generations of Polish and world readers, and her voice is likely to last for ages more.

Significant Works:
Monologue of a Dog (2005)
Poems, New and Collected, 1957-1997  (1998)
View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems (1995)

More Information:
Wislawa Szymborska on Wikipedia
Wislawa Szymborska on NobelPrize.org

Natasha Tretheway (b. 1966)

One of the most promising, acclaimed poets of her generation, Natasha Tretheway uses her poetry to examine southern and American life, often using her own life as a microcosm. Biracial, born to a black mother and a white father in Mississippi (where interracial marriage was still illegal), Tretheway’s life experience provides a cross-section of contemporary life. Coming from two races, experiencing both acceptance and bigotry, Tretheway’s poetry explores people on the margins of mainstream white culture: a New Orleans prostitute in Bellocq’s Ophelia, poor working-class people in Domestic Work, and the black soldiers of the Civil War in Native Guard.

But perhaps Tretheway’s most affecting work is the poems describing her own experience as a child pulled and torn between identities. Writing with a fresh, straightforward voice that disguises its tight craftsmanship in a companionable, conversational style, Tretheway finds sly metaphors in the everyday play of light and shadow, white and black, as in “The Flounder”:

A flounder, she said, and you can tell
’cause one of its sides is black.

The other side is white, she said.

Or, as in the quietly devastating “White Lies,” when she passes for white:

But I paid for it every time
Mama found out.
She laid her hands on me,
then washed out my mouth
with Ivory soap.

Through such idiosyncratic metaphors, so plainly yet painstakingly delivered, Tretheway almost magically transforms her individual experience into everyone’s story. The accidents of birth made her a perfect symbol of America; her own brilliance recognizes her symbolic potential, and turns it into art.

Significant Works:
Domestic Work (2000)
Bellocq’s Ophelia (2002)
Native Guard (2006)

More Information:
Natasha Tretheway on Wikipedia
Natasha Tretheway Homepage

Kevin Young (b. 1970)

Inspired by blues, hip-hop, graffiti and film, Kevin Young makes poetry that crosses genre and style, that incorporates the common voice and innovative experiments, and that sings, sings, sings. Young is a prolific poet – seven books since 1999 – and each collection further cements his status.

While his debut collection Long Way Home showed promise, Young announced himself as a major contemporary voice with To Repel Ghosts, a book-long series of poems about Jean-Michel Basquiat. Weaving together phrases from Basquiat’s paintings with playfully experimental forms (telegrams, newspaper headlines, trailer voice-overs) and startlingly imaginative phrasing, Young creates a funny, intellectual, and harrowing story that finds the common ground in poetry and graffiti. This imagined telegram, for example, captures Basquiat’s reputation:

FOUND A SAMO TAG COPYRIGHT HIGH

ABOVE A STAIR STOP NOT SURE HOW YOU REACHED STOP
YOU ALWAYS WERE A CLIMBER STOP COME DOWN SOME
DAY AND SEE US AGAIN END

With further genre experiments like Jelly Roll: A Blues (incorporating the language and rhythms of jazz and blues) and Black Maria (a “film noir” full of atmospheric language effects and a sharp, witty voice), Young proved to be a master of genre and tone.

Since this trilogy of genre exercises, Young has taken on history, both those of his people and himself, in For the Confederate Dead, Dear Darkness, and Ardency: A Chronicle of the Amistad Rebels. These works too share Young’s bright voice and simple, economical language. In “For the Confederate Dead,” the title poem to his collection, Young imagines his own Civil War:

In my movie there are no
horses, no heroes,
only draftees fleeing

into the pines

With his career still new, and seemingly endless energy, Kevin Young looks prepared to take his place with his idols, every bit the force of nature Langston Hughes or Basquiat inspire him to be.

Significant Works:
To Repel Ghosts (2002)
Jelly Roll: A Blues (2003)
Ardency: A Chronicle of the Amistad Rebels (2011)

More Information:
Kevin Young on Wikipedia
Kevin Young Homepage

The current serious shortage of nurses is expected to continue, partly due to medical advances. Put simply: people who would have died now live, but need nurses to continue to recover. Registered nurses (RNs) constitute the largest healthcare occupation in the United States, at 2.6 million jobs—only 60 percent of which are in hospitals.

According to a recent report by the American Association of Community Colleges,

There will be 581,500 new jobs for registered nurses by 2018, representing a 22% increase in employment. The number of available jobs will soar even higher when factoring in retirements, resulting in 1,039,000 available jobs that will need to be filled by 2018, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Employment and Training Administration.1

A million jobs ….

There are several schools of thought on the subject of credentials in booming fields like nursing: One is, get the best nursing degree you can right now, for a chance at the top job offers and career growth potential. The other is, if you get in at the start of the boom with any available credentials, you will be carried upward by your experience and can upgrade later (through an online RN to BSN or RN to MSN program) — while getting paid, maybe even with financial assistance from your employer. You must decide which is the best strategy for you.

Another consideration: It is much easier to get in at the start of a boom; if we wait until demand levels off, we may find entry barriers such as formidable, expensive credentials, whereas before the system would accept and train a hardworking, sensible person of good character. Currently, many stepping stones to advancement are in fact certificate programs that can be taken as adult education or online. That’s important because early career nursing usually involves shift work, so you need flexibility for your education (and online schools offer more flexibility for working professionals).

Most nurses graduating in 2005 or later (nearly 57%) have associates degrees from nursing schools. Certain specialties, of course, such nurse anesthetist, nurse midwife, and nurse practitioner, need a master’s degree from an accredited nursing school. If you are interested in a a specialty that includes serious risk as a normal part of the job, you should want these qualifications for your own protection, of course.

Due to nurse shortages, you may be able to get attractive financial assistance to complete any nursing degree at an accredited nursing school, and can often apply your certificate credits toward more advanced degrees. You certainly needn’t worry much that you won’t find a job that will enable you to pay back loans. You may not even need to borrow much money. As one source puts it,

In order to encourage more students to enter into the nursing profession to help fill the shortage, numerous organizations, private sources and the government are now supplying scholarships, grants and other gifts of money to help pay for students educations. The HRSA or Health Resources and Service Administration, which is a division of the Department of Health and Human Services, offer numerous valuable grants either tangentially or specifically applicable to nursing in the United States.2

Check out these scholarships; your name could be on one of them.

Compensation for nurses is quite promising; the main factors that determine salary are, of course, level of qualification and need. The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the average annual salary for a registered nurse as $62,450, with the top 10% making over $92,000 a year. Also, because most nurses work for institutions (hospitals, government health care programs, schools, agencies, et cetera), the benefits are usually attractive.

You may hear references to “diploma” programs in nursing; these usually older programs have typically been offered by teaching hospitals; the trend today is toward degree or certificate programs based in educational institutions.

The most remarkable thing about nursing is how varied it is. Below we’ve listed different types of nursing jobs and nursing degrees you can get in no particular order. Instead, we’ve taking a look at some nursing specialties in relation to the strengths of the particular online schools:

(Note: Degree Wizard , below, means that you can find a convenient online degree program toward this career in the Wizard box at left by selecting “Certificate Programs”, then “Health and Medicine/Nursing”, then “Nursing”. For best follow-up results in any research, note your university choice.)
I can’t decide between …

“ … nursing and teaching.” Be a Nurse Educator (certificate) (Kaplan University, Degree Wizard) With your Bachelors or Masters degree in nursing, you can complete an online certificate program in nursing instruction, and can also use the credits toward a Masters in Nursing. Here, as with all teaching, some experience as a nurse is expected. This career offers regular hours in a field where many other careers require shift work.

“ … nursing and teaching, but I want advancement as well” Consider a Graduate Certificate in Nursing Education (Degree Wizard: U Mass Online, Lewis University). After getting a Masters in Nursing, you are well placed to help set up programs as well as teach.

“… nursing and teaching, but must I get a Masters first?” Consider a Certificate – Contemporary Nursing (Degree Wizard: Drexel University) You need a Bachelors of Nursing for this program. Courses are chosen from the MSN in Contemporary Nursing Faculty curriculum. Upon completion of this online certificate program, the student will have 12 graduate credits from an NLN/CCNE approved Masters in Nursing Program, which can be used towards a Masters at Drexel or any other university, so it should be easy to get a Masters later.

“ … nursing and police work.” Nurses can get a Certificate in Forensic Nursing (Degree Wizard: Kaplan University). Get your RN first, then study to become a crime solver and victim counselor. Your focus would be collecting evidence (of criminal or auto accident injuries, for example), giving testimony, and supporting survivors of violent crimes and accidents. You would work primarily with medical examiners, crime scene police units, or hospitals, which usually means you get standard government benefits. In addition to acquiring some experience as a nurse, you can earn recommendations through volunteer work at shelters, a good place to learn about the variety of patients you will be working with.

“ … nursing and law, but there wasn’t money for law school.” Consider the Legal Nurse Consulting Certificate (Degree Wizard: Post University Online, Kaplan) After you’ve got your RN and some experience, you can work with lawyers to help determine whether a patient received adequate care. You need some knowledge of law and health care regulations as well, so consider online paralegal courses (Degree Wizard, 5 offers) on your own schedule. You are in line for a well-paying, highly regarded career where you probably know more than the lawyers about the “balance of probabilities” (the key civil law concept) as to what happened in a health care situation.

“… nursing and human resources” Because of the sheer number of nurses in the work force and constant innovation in health care, human resources for nurses is a growing field. You’d need an MA in nursing, but not necessarily in Human Resources. That’s because you can get a post-Masters certificate in Nursing Leadership and Management (Degree Wizard: Walden University), for example. It would be a challenging job, as you are responsible for work force development, resource management, integration of technology, and the maintenance and improvement of quality care.

“… nursing and administration.” So do both. Consider the Certificate – Nurse Administrator (Kaplan University, Degree Wizard) This online certificate helps prepare nurses for advanced positions in hospitals, community health, long-term care facilities such as nursing homes , and other health care systems. Contrary to what some may suppose, one can rise to high administrative rank starting as a nurse, and it is a great advantage to know what conditions nurses face. Also, a quiet move into administration may be convenient when starting a family.

… nursing and Masters in Administration (for career advancement) Consider a Graduate Certificate – Nursing Administration (Lewis University, Degree Wizard) This certificate requires a Masters in Nursing and is aimed at those who are either currently practicing in nursing management or interested in a career change to this specialty.

“But Ireallywanted to be a doctor …” Are you sure? If what you want is to do what some believe only a doctor can do, look at these nursing careers before you decide:

Nurse obstetrician (sometimes called “nurse midwife”) While having a nurse midwife is considered trendy in some circles, the profession was established as a discipline of scientific medicine in the 1920s. The nurse midwife cares for the mother and child during the pregnancy, and during and after childbirth. Most nurse midwives deliver babies in hospitals, but, with appropriate backup, some deliver at home. You need to be an RN, then a course (degree or certificate) acceptable to the American College of Nurse Midwives (ACNM), and must write a certification exam. Some worry that the outlook for midwifery is poor due to declining birth rates, but keep in mind these facts: The United States’ birth rate (two children per woman) is much lower than it was fifty years ago but has changed little in the last decade — and the population is much larger now than it was back then. In census year 2005, 4,138,349 babies were born. In addition, many older mothers are now choosing motherhood, and statistically, they often need more help than the average. So obstetrics staff are hardly going out of business.

Obstetrics nurse Here, you do everything except the actual delivery – which means getting everyone and everything ready, keeping everyone calm no matter what, and helping out with baby’s first peek at the world. You could be a Licensed Practical Nurse or an RN, with special obstetrics courses as part of your education, and must pass a licensing exam. You may not need to work at a hospital; obstetrics nurses also work in clinics and doctors’ offices. (Note: The comments regarding the birth rate, under “Nurse obstetrician,” apply here as well.)

Neonatal nurse This is a newer specialty for a stark reason; neonatal intensive care became available only in recent decades, and is associated with a decline in infant mortality. As a neonatal nurse, you look after babies in the critical first twenty-eight days (the point at which trouble, I any, will usually show up). You may need to do anything from encouraging breastfeeding to rescuing infants who have stopped breathing. You’ll need your nursing degree, followed by some certifications in neonatal care. (Note: The comments regarding the birth rate, under “Nurse obstetrician,” apply here as well.)

Pediatric nurse Here, you not only look after young children in medical need, but you play a key role in helping their parents understand and adapt to their needs. You are their advocate as well as their nurse, because they often do not understand clearly what is happening and cannot explain things for themselves. Many are frightened, angry, and confused to a degree beyond what most adults would experience. After your RN, your best bet is to qualify as a Certified Pediatric Nurse. (Note: The comments regarding the birth rate, under “Nurse obstetrician,” apply here as well.)

Intensive care unit (ICU) nurse You’ve seen life and death medical drama on TV. Are you up for it in real life? Consider being an ICU nurse, trauma nurse, or triage nurse (decides which ER cases are most urgent). These are rewarding careers in all senses, but not easy ones. Your observations and actions may spell life or death for a medically unstable patient, or you may need to help a family come to terms with very difficult decisions following an accident or medical emergency. After your nursing degree,you may wish to consider some course work in counseling, to give you a head start in dealing with such issues. You’ll be well paid, but it can be high stress work.

Cardiac nurse This field is booming partly because older people have more heart problems and partly because today’s medical science can do much more about them. The American Heart Association notes, for example, that, among the more than 1.2 million Americans who have heart attacks each year, 460, 000 die – of those, 300,000 could not get medical treatment in time.3 In short, most people who get treatment live, and most people who do not get treatment don’t. As a cardiac nurse, you will work with the cardiologist (heart doctor) to care for patients with congestive heart failure, angina, and similar problems. Part of the job is routine pre- and post-operative care, but another part is working with defibrillators, cardio revert, and life support (your patient is made “clinically dead” for treatment purposes but can be brought back). And another part is encouraging the patient to team lead the recovery after discharge. After your RN, try to get jobs in cardiac units, especially those that help you keep up with the latest treatments and technologies. You’ll need that because, for certification, you must log 2,000 hours working as a cardiac nurse as well as attend continuing education.

Surgical nurse Not only do you assist the surgeon before, during, and after the operation, but you’re often the one who must explain matters to patients and families and sometimes advocate for the confused or inarticulate patient. For best career chances, after your nursing degree, get certified as a Certified Medical-Surgical Registered Nurse (CMSRN) offered through the Medical-Surgical Nursing Certification Board. Note: If you are uncertain about the level of stress this may involve, cosmetic surgery is also a growing field; it offers regular hours in a low stress environment.

Oncology nurse In this career, you specialize in helping the oncologist (doctor) care for cancer patients treated, usually, by surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. You prepare patients, help administer treatments, and help them recuperate. Our society is making progress against cancer: The Centers for Disease Control says that in 2007, 11.7 million Americans had a history of cancer; but in 1971 it had been a mere three million4 (principally because a much greater proportion back then had simply died). Your challenge is to care no matter what the outcome, but not take it personally, so you are ready for the next battle for a patient’s life. After your RN, you should seek certification as an oncology nurse.

Hospice nurse (sometimes called palliative care nurse) If aggressive medical treatments are simply not reversing a patient’s decline, and death appears inevitable, the medical goal is too make their last days as comfortable and meaningful as possible, using many available methods. Hospice nursing is a newer field; although there are specialized hospices, many hospitals provide palliative care services, sometimes discreetly choosing to describe them another way. Some patients prefer to spend their last days at home. The hospice nurse needs to know how and when to administer treatments, supervised by a palliative care physician. The nurse must also act as the patient’s advocate when faced with a variety of the patient’s friends, relatives, and other caregivers in a stressful emotional situation, and here your distance learning psychology courses may help. You have a great advantage if, after your nursing degree, you have oncology credentials, as many hospice patients are suffering from cancer. You should also work for certification from the Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association, for best career results.

“This is a bit off the wall, but …”

“I love the caring aspect of nursing, yet I love computers too! A computer can alert the cardiac nurse six rooms away if a patient goes into arrest.” You may wish to consider the Nurse Informatics Certificate (Degree Wizard: Kaplan University) after your RN (Bachelors). You could go on to the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Informatics Nursing certification exam. The integration of computers into health care has been increasing steadily for several decades, and nursing shortages will drive future growth.

“To combine nursing and computer science, I would hang in there for a Master’s” Consider a Post-Masters Certificate – Nursing Informatics (Degree Wizard: Walden University) Nurses can learn to integrate data and information to support decision-making processes for patients and practitioners.

“I’m reallyinterested in helping people with medical challenges live in the community. How does this fit with nursing?” Consider a Certificate – Life Care Planning (Degree Wizard: Kaplan University). If you are a registered nurse who wants to help people with significant disabilities or chronic health problems live as independently as they wish, the Life Care Planning Certificate can help you to the CLCP credential. You don’t in fact need to be a nurse; a variety of professionals gain entry. However, if you choose to specialize in issues around chronic illness, nursing might be the best entry career.

“I have a great idea for much-needed health care changes in my community, but everyone says, just be a nurse …” Consider the Certificate – Innovation Entrepreneurship (Degree Wizard: Drexel University) after your nursing degree (Bachelors is best here.) Essentially, you learn how to make changes effectively within or beyond an organization. It could be a good start to running your own health care business.

I’d be happy as a nurse except I don’t like hospitals, operations, etc. Is that a contradiction in terms? Forty percent of nurses do not work in hospitals or, if they do, are mainly providing counseling, etc. Here are some non-hospital nursing careers:

Public health nurse Here you work mainly with education and sometimes with intervention, to prevent or remedy disease, disability, or injury in your community. After you receive your nursing degree you can probably just seek work as a public health nurse, especially if your ambition is to work in an existing program in a community challenged by chronic health problems such as alcohol, obesity, or illicit drug use. However, if you acquire enough experience to dream of designing your own program, look at graduate certificates to build your resume and make the contacts who can get funding for your ideas. The trend toward prevention in health care, rather than treating existing disease, should mean more positions in public health.

Private duty nurse Working through a service provider such as a hospital, hospice, or social agency, you provide in-home care for patients who prefer that option. Sometimes, you are the patient’s private nurse at a hospital (for example, if the patient is a prominent person, publicity might otherwise disrupt the regular work of other staff). If the patient is not especially demanding medically, you could be a Licensed Practical Nurse or Licensed Vocational Nurse (starting with a high school diploma). But for seriously ill patients, you may need your RN, especially if certain treatments may only be legally provided by RNs in your state (injections of scheduled narcotic painkillers, for example). This is a well-paying field because those patients who choose this option are paying only for your time and supplies, not for a hospital’s maintenance. However, you must be prepared to deal with your patient’s friends and family (or fans) tactfully, with limited institutional backup.

Mental health nurse Caring for people in a fragile mental state, you could, of course, be working in a hospital, but increasingly, such care is provided in the community on an outpatient or day patient basis, or in the home. Although care can be provided at all levels from high school diploma on (as in Licensed Practical Nurse, high school diploma), your RN is key to advancement. At higher levels of responsibility, you may need to administer mood-altering medical drugs, sign legal paperwork, or testify in court as a skilled professional. A promising newer area is geriatric psychiatry: At one time, older patients were considered only marginally treatable, but today, many treatment approaches are offered to seniors.

I want adventure! Show me some! Your RN can be a ticket to adventure too.
Frontier nurse Have you considered nursing in an adventurous, but still American, locale? Try Alaska, where there is a persistent shortage of nurses, due possibly to the fact that nursing has traditionally primarily attracted women and as of the 2000 census, there were 109 Alaskan men for every 100 women. Alaskan RNs are well paid and, and can easily find help getting a job and getting settled in a unique American environment.

Flight nurse If a seriously ill person must be transported by air, the flight nurse steps in. Starting with an RN, you had best work up to nurse practitioner because, in flight, you are the medical team. Because more people who have health problems travel by air these days, there is a growing need for flight nurses and they are well compensated. It’s also a great way to travel, if you don’t mind being surprised by your next destination – perhaps so exotic that your travel agent has never heard of it.

Military nurse Are you up to this much adventure? You may not be a battlefield nurse, of course, you could be working with wounded veterans or helping deliver babies at a US Forces base hospital. The Armed Forces will pay for you to get your RN/BSN through ROTC (Reserve Officers’ Training Corps) and for any further courses you need while serving. Demand is high, and benefits are great. However, be aware that as a military nurse you have a rank in a vast hierarchy and must play the game by the rules.

[Check out our new ranking of the best accredited nursing schools online!]

Here’s a true example: Once, a woman really, really wanted to be a successful novelist, but she didn’t know any publishers, agents, or famous authors who would put in a word for her in a highly competitive job market. So, because she lived near the airport, she volunteered for a lowly job: to pick up and drop off writers who were guest speakers at conferences. Many were starved for conversation, and she asked them discreetly what they thought it really takes to make it in that industry. She learned a lot that she would never find out in writing classes (because the instructors were not bestselling authors and didn’t know those things themselves). She adjusted her strategy. She made contacts. And she got contracts.
So, bearing that in mind, let’s look again at why you don’t want a dead end job forever, but maybe should take one, for now:

1. The pay is lousy! But what if you are getting paid to get needed experience, while you study for a certificate or entrance exam on your own time? Let’s see: You want all that and a major league ball salary too? We rarely say this here, but for once we will: Lower your expectations. Forget the ball salary just now. For now, get paid while you learn, instead of always paying someone else.

2. Advancement is nil! Yes, but wait a minute: If your reason for taking the job is to get experience while qualifying for a more promising place on the career ladder, you don’t want to be pressured into competing for advancement in that workplace anyway. Getting promoted to “assistant supervisor in charge of dispute resolution” may be the last thing you need. Of course, you could learn a few useful things there, but don’t stay long.

3. I won’t learn anything useful! Well, that is your fault, not anyone else’s. Only take a “dead end” job that pays you to learn something useful for a subsequent career.

Here are some examples of how this works:

1. Security guard ($24,000 – $35,000; English, literacy): Mostly, a boring job punctuated by short episodes of uproar when, for example, an intruder or gang of shoplifters is spotted. But if you are at all interested in criminal law, law enforcement, forensics, or any similar field, you can gain valuable experience while you study.

2. Waitstaff ($12,000 – $25,000; English, literacy): Waiting tables is a chore, and maybe the tips are not worth it. But if you have an idea for a themed restaurant, you can earn money while taking a certificate or degree in hospitality management. See how your ideas test out in the real world. Maybe work your way up to restaurant manager and continue to learn the things you can’t learn in school and make contacts and getting paid to do a good job.

3. Medical aide (high school certificate, $31,000 – $44,000): If you think you’d like to be a nurse, doctor, or other medical worker, you could get paid to work, providing active care in a hospital. You’ll do the grungy or risky jobs, like lifting patients, or restraining difficult ones. Speaking a foreign language can be a major asset in urban areas. Keep your ears open, and you will learn how hospitals really work.

4. School bus driver ($16,000 – $25,000, bus driver’s licence): If you think you’d like to be a teacher, this career (guaranteed regular daytime hours) will help you see whether you can work with children or teens, and you can probably study on the side.

5. Lab technician ($28,000 – $53,000, high school certificate): If you would like a career in science or medicine, this is a great way to earn while you learn basic lab procedures. While other students struggle, you will know exactly what to do.
Sometimes, you don’t really know an industry until you do a dead end job in it, and then you have a huge advantage over people who have always been “in management.” But never tell them that. Just benefit quietly from your experience.

You’re a new mom. You want a job that doesn’t leave you feeling exhausted and guilty all the time, even though you are doing your best on all fronts. You want to keep your key relationships safe and enjoy raising your children without creating chaos both at home and at work. Everyone’s situation is unique, but if you’re looking for a suitable career down the road, here are a few non-negotiables to consider:

– regular, normal hours. If Grandma is looking after the kids, this may not be an issue, but otherwise, it sure can be The Biggie: Day care centers may resort to calling Children’s Aid if you don’t pick up your child when the staff must leave.

– flexibility. It sounds like a contradiction to say we want both regular hours and flexibility. We need regular hours for when we must be somewhere other than at work (or face dreadful consequences), but we need flexibility when the care arrangement for children collapses, due to illness for example. The good news is that today one can often work by computer from home (teleworking). So, logically, you’re here and you’re there at the same time, and you still get the work done.

– stability. The smartest thing to do as a young mom is stay put and build a reputation for reliability in carrying out a set task, despite difficulties. That stability creates a basis for later career advancement. But to do that, we need jobs where stability is valued. Suppose no one knows whether the concern is going out of business, moving across the country, or falling victim to a hostile takeover? What if there are spectacular job hirings and firings every day, bad press and criminal charges—honestly, we and our families are far better off to watch that stuff on a TV series than live through it.

– benefits that matter. Does our employer’s health plan cover our children’s problems, period, so that we are not left wondering who will pay if we can’t? We can certainly do without insurer-paid specialty back rubs, but we can’t do without neurosurgery in the rare event that our child needs it.

– can use existing skills now. Some women can manage work, school, and raising a family all at the same time, but most of us are better off to work now and research further education for the day when there is time to do it right. That time will of course come, and a good work history is a key to acceptance.

Here’s an idea. Score each of the five needs mentioned above (and any additional personal ones) from one to ten (least to most), and evaluate job opportunities like the following, and any others you encounter, against your own “importance” ratings.

Another idea: Investigate employer co-pay for courses qualifying you for more responsibilities, in exchange for loyalty now.

Here are some careers we’ve chosen for new moms to consider:

Top 10 Jobs for Recent Moms

Medicine: Illness never goes out of style and medical care is needed everywhere.
Here’s a career where you can work your way up:

Medical Assistant ($31,000 – $44,000, highschool diploma): You assist the doctor, booking appointments, making patients feel at home, bringing them gowns, etc., and generally helping out. You can learn and observe a good deal of basic medical procedure while getting paid, which will give you a boost if you later study a health care discipline.

Note: Don’t have a high school diploma? … Find out whether your state offers programs for recognizing adult experience for some credits. Let’s face it, if you are 25 and on your own with two kids, what do you need a course in sociology for? If you need upgrades, focus on essentials like language skills and basic math, where you can study online at home, if you can spare a bit of time.

Here is a job where you can easily work at home, with flexible hours:
Medical Transcriptionist ($23,000 – $38,000, high school diploma, good typing skills). You type out transcripts of everything from doctors’ notes and corresponence to the recording made of actions performed during an operation. You need some judgement to ensure that what people say, sometimes under high stress, gets transcribed in a usable way. You are getting paid to learn medical terminology through your work, which can be useful if you pursue a health care career when you have more time.

Here is a “holding pattern” career where your life experience is actually your biggest asset:
Recreation Worker ( $18,000 – $33,000, high school diploma) Chances are, you have a skill in arts or sports that you could coach, or an ability to work well with, say, seniors or moms n’ tots. The pay for this job isn’t great, but you can probably get flexible hours in a relatively low stress environment. Promotion opportunities are limited but if you need a holding pattern with pay, before moving on, perhaps to Social Services, Art and Music, oFitness & Sports, or Education, this is the job.

Here are two jobs that will pay you to prepare yourself for the vast education market, where you typically have regular hours, sick leave, and wage increases:
Preschool Teacher ($20,000 – $30,000, high school diploma) Most, if not all, states have compulsory education for children aged, typically, six to 16. However, many also feature preschool programs, starting at four years of age, where children learn basic skills in language (literacy) and math (numeracy). You need to know how to work with children, but then you need to know that at home anyway, right? With any luck, one of your kids will be in the program, which eliminates some child care expenses.

Teacher’s Assistant ($16,000 – $25,000, high school diploma). Essentially, in this job you are getting paid to learn how to be a teacher by helping one, and you can pursue further qualifications later. If this isn’t smart, what is?

Here are ways to earn while you learn, with regular hours in the financial industry, and great future prospects:

Bookkeeping clerk ($20,000 – $35,000, high school diploma) For this position, you need strong math skills and high school accounting. Without experience, you may need to convince them to try you out on a temporary (paid) basis. Caution: Tax time (February through April) can be really stressed. Negotiate working from home on your laptop. Upgrade your skills, income, and responsibilities later.

Financial Clerk X ($30,000 – $38,000, high school diploma) In this job, you can learn basic aspects of a company’s finance operations and aim for future advancement by acquiring recognized finance credentials.

Interested in a career in the justice system?

Court Reporter ($36,000 and $60,000, high school diploma) Here, you tape and transcribe court hearings. You get paid to tape them, and much more if you type a transcript that is ordered. You need, of course, a good knowledge of English, accurate typing and spelling, and an ability to follow the correct legal format for transcription. A huge advantage for a new mom is that courts sit and rise at regular hours, and transcription can be done at home. In fact, you need not even attend the court if you get your transcripts through an agency, from another reporter’s work. There are courses in court reporting that will definitely help you, but the need for transcripts is so great that you are best to look for work now and bone up on your qualifications later.

You enjoy marketing? Market your community — as a great destination! You love it, so why shouldn’t other people enjoy it for a while?

Hospitality Salesperson ($45,000 – $88,000, high school diploma an asset) Working, usually, for a hotel/conference center, in this job you market vacation, tour, conference, or other packages to interested buyers. If you get a conference, it could mean 500 people. You can usually work from home on your own time, if you are on an up-to-date network. Bone up on other Hospitality Careers as time allows.

Would you like to earn while you learn a career in social services or therapy?

Social Service Assistant (2009 median $49,000, high school diploma an asset) You work with a social worker to introduce clients to solutions, benefits, etc., that they did not know about. This job provides regular hours, and a great way to earn for now with regular hours, and learn later, maybe through agency funding.

Say no to craziness. Earn. And learn.

When choosing a career, one of the starting points that many people use is to look at which type of jobs pay the most. Figuring out which jobs are the highest paying isn’t as straightforward as seems. So we decided to clear up a lot of the confusion by putting together this guide to the 25 best paying jobs in America. But before we look at the jobs themselves, let’s consider why some careers pay better than others.

[Browse our rankings of the top accredited online colleges and universities.]

First, not all jobs pay what we might suppose from media reports. For example, an athlete might earn a mean annual income of $80,950, according to government statistics from 2009. It’s not bad, but it’s hardly the all-star’s millions. And most athletes can’t even work till typical retirement age, so they must put away much of their income to finance a second career, perhaps in coaching. So if you’re not a star but like the work, it’s a good all-round job.

Also, some other jobs that get a lot of attention might not pay at all what we suppose. Legislators, for example, only earn $37,530 a year (mean annual). But then, many are part time and some are unpaid. They are often powerful without being rich. And if they get very rich, they may attract suspicion. So if you want safe high earnings, this is not the field for you. Similarly, community and social service occupations tend to pay low ($42,750) because the workers are not paid by the needy client, but by the taxpayer, who is usually not a client. Workers in this field are typically not even motivated by money, so efforts to raise their pay tend to peter out.

In general, teaching jobs are fairly safe, but they do not pay as well as “doing” jobs. For example, an economist might earn $96,320 (mean annual) in the private sector, but a college or university (post-secondary) economics teacher, only earns about $89,320 in salary. One difference is that the economist risks being laid off more readily than the economics teacher, so you need to balance risk against reward.

Also, even in the same general discipline, some sub-disciplines pay far better than others. Consider science, for example. An astronomer can make $102,250 but a biological scientist has an average salary of $69,430. The difference could be due in part to supply and demand. A critical question is, how many people are likely to compete with me for a job?

Similarly, you tend to get paid more if you work where a lot of money changes hands. Securities sales agents get $91,390, but demonstrators/product promoters in supermarkets get $26,640. That’s partly due to skill, but also partly because your salary seems much less significant to your boss when the deal is $2.9 million compared with, say, 60 boxes sold at $2.99 apiece.

Other important questions to consider are: how can I afford the education for this job? What is the career path? How long will it likely take me to become a top earner? If I lose the job, will I land on my feet? Is demand likely to grow or shrink? Can I afford to live where I must work? Do I want to live there? Is the job consistent with a fulfilling personal life?

Keeping these issues in mind, let’s look at some of the highest paying jobs, only one of which pays a bit less than $100,000 a year. We’ll group them roughly as: aviation, business, computer, energy, finance, law, marketing, medicine, science, and social science, according to the types of qualifications you will likely need. For a different approach, updated in 2012, we can also recommend the excellent resource: 50 High Paying Careers & The Degrees You Need for them.

Note: The figures for pay given beside the main entry below are the government’s mean annual salaries, that is, adding up the average salary each year for a given number of years, and dividing by the number of years. Other ways of determining income can be average income per year (total earnings divided by number of workers) or median (of the total number of workers what was the worker in the middle earning?). Also, several mean annuals were computed using groups of occupations that can be examined separately.

Aviation Jobs

Transportation via airplane is critical to the modern business world as well as to the modern economy. It offers the fastest way to get people and goods from one place to another. Because of this, and because of the critical need for safety, there are plenty of opportunities for well paying jobs.

Air traffic controller – Salary: $106,990
What you do in this job: Air traffic controllers coordinate the system for managing air traffic around airports and along flight routes, to enable safe air travel. They communicate in English, which is the international language of aviation.
How to become an air traffic controller: Air traffic controllers must finish first an education program approved by the FAA. They must also complete a test that tests their ability to learn air traffic control duties. Applicants must also have 4 years of college, 3 years of full-time work experience, or both and have successfully completed an FAA-approved program. School recommendation is a definite advantage.

Airline pilot/co-pilot, or flight engineer – Salary: $117,060
What you do in this job: An airline pilot is licensed to operate an aircraft in flight. There are many types of license, depending on the craft. The co-pilot, also licensed, is the relief pilot for larger aircraft and must be able to assume full control in flight. The flight engineer’s task is the mechanical performance of the aircraft while in flight, and for large aircraft may the legally required third member of the crew.
How to become an airline pilot: To be an airplane pilot, one must have an FAA issued commercial pilot’s license and instrument rating. For helicopter pilots, a commercial pilot’s certificate and helicopter rating are required. To qualify for such licenses, applicants must be at least 18 years old and have at least 250 hours of flight experience. Aspiring pilots must also pass a meticulous physical examination to ensure he or she is in general good health, good hearing, and has 20/20 aided or unaided vision. They must also complete a written exam that tests one’s knowledge on FAA regulations, principles of safe flight, navigation techniques, and other important aspects of flying. Note:: Business commercial flight remains relatively stable, despite security issues, and that, rather than leisure, is the profitable end of the business.

The flight engineer oversees the plane’s many systems before, during, and after flight. Note: This career may be challenged by increasing robotic controls, and is often best pursued in the military, supervising the development of cutting-edge machines.

Business Jobs

Because we live in a service economy, business jobs are perhaps the most abundant. The vast majority of business jobs are mid-level jobs, but almost all such jobs provide opportunities for career growth up to the level of CEO or even the most sought after job of all: business owner. The highest paying jobs in business are management positions that get rewarded for overall performance.

Manager – Salary: $99,100
What you do in this job: The manager directs the activities of a business, organization, or government department, large or small. The title “manager” differs from that of “supervisor” because the manager is usually considered, as the name implies, to have a management (= executive) position. The supervisor is a non-management employee who directs the work of other employees, reporting to the manager.
How to become a manager: This is a broad field. One could manage any organization from an agricultural operation ($54,900 ) to a gym or sports salon ($75,000 – $100,000). This site alone lists 66 management occupations. For some, such as restaurant manager ($30,000 – $46,000, high school diploma), you can learn on the job, but these managerial positions tend to be lower paying. For others, property manager, for example ($64,000 – $95,000), you would need a Bachelor’s or Master’s in, for example, business, real estate, finances, or management. Most managers are older than the people they supervise, so one usually work for some years as an employee at a lower salary. Essentially, your employer is paying you to learn, and taking higher education on your own time signals your desire to advance.

General or operations manager – Salary: $110,550
What you do in this job: A General or Operations Manager is ultimately responsible for all aspects of the day-to-day workings of a company. This involves directing the work of other managers and helping with strategic planning (= where the company wants to be in ten years and how to get there).
How to become an operations manager: To supervise the managers of a company’s day to day business operations, you need a business or finance degree, Master’s is best but Bachelor’s may work. You also need to be a strong leader and capable decision-maker with good people skills. How much you earn depends on the size of company you work for and the number of people you supervise. However, the skill set is usually portable, so you can advance by accepting a position with a larger company and higher salary after you have proven yourself.

Chief Executive Officer (CEO) – Salary: $167, 280
What you do in this job: As the highest-ranking employee in a company or organization, the CEO is expected to carry out the policies of the company’s board of directors, in sync with the strategic plan. Reporting to the CEO are the other highest-ranking officers listed, who are the top managers of their areas.
How to become a CEO: The Chief Executive Officer of a company is its highest ranking officer, and unless you own the company, it will take a while to get there. You should have a Bachelor’s degree in finances or economics, but for career success, consider other key credentials. For example, if your company markets home nursing services, as you rise in management, your name can inspire more confidence with R.N. (Registered Nurse) after it. Consider also, Chief Operations Officer (COO) and Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Chief Information Officer (CIO), and Chief Technology Officer. Remember, however, that life is even riskier at the top than at the bottom because many capable people want your job, and you must constantly demonstrate that you are still the best, until you yourself are ready to move on.

Computer Jobs

Every body uses computers. Movies get made on computers. Cars get designed on computers. People invest and get their news using computers Computers are critical to everything we take for granted in modern society. Because of their centrality, there is a huge demand for jobs for people who unique or rare technical expertise. Even a programmer of a rare but critical programming language can get paid very well.

Computer hardware engineer – Salary: $101,410
What you do in this job: Computer hardware engineers develop, test, and install the physical parts of your computer, such as computer chips, circuit boards, systems, modems, keyboards, and printers. This contrasts with software engineers, who work with the programs for which the hardware is the platform.
How to become a computer engineer: You should start with an engineering degree, but courses in social sciences are a considerable asset. You are responsible for creating the physical hardware on which computers run, and that is where an understanding of people is an asset. Your company’s customers are all people.

Computer or information scientist – Salary: $105,370
What you do in this job: Computer and information scientists work with the big picture: hardware, software, how it is used, and its implications for a business or for society in general. A key job is testing predictions about what will work, before large sums of money and years of time are invested.
How to become a computer scientist: If you solve hardware and software problems as a computer and information science theorist, designer, inventors or researcher, look at this career. Note, however, that 80% of current professionals have a Master’s degree, 18 % have a Doctorate or other professional degree, and only 2% have a Master’s degree. Bill Gates may have started in his garage, but the common knowledge base of the industry has grown so much that, if you are not a genius, you will need to start with higher education. You could end up as Chief Information Officer (CIO) or Chief Technology Officer.

Energy Jobs

The world runs on energy. Modern economies are dependent on energy. In fact, Donald Trump has been quoted as saying that oil is the lifeblood of modern societies. And he’s right. Readily available energy is the most valuable commodity in the world so much so that nations go to war in order to control energy resources. Because this industry is so critical, getting a job and becoming an integral part of the industry could pay huge dividends.

Nuclear engineer – Salary: $100,350
What you do in this job: Nuclear engineers design build, and operate or safely decommission nuclear power facilities (places where radiation is used). They also work with nuclear propulsion of spacecraft, ships, or submarines, and the many medical uses of radiation.
How to become a nuclear engineer: A nuclear engineer works with atomic particles, perhaps to safely dispose of nuclear waste, help physicists study the basic structure of the universe, build weapons, or develop new ways of diagnosing diseases. Nobody should just fool around with nukes, so you usually need at least a Master’s degree, but a Doctorate admits you to the best career opportunities with the highest salaries. If that’s out of the question, consider the U.S. Navy Power Plant program, which may accept suitable applicants with a high school diploma. Because nuclear is often controversial, some career opportunities may depend on the political climate, so courses in social sciences are worth considering. They may help you understand conundrums such as this: Many people who fear nuclear energy sources for their home will accept radiation for their bodies if they need cancer treatment.

Petroleum (oil, natural gas) engineer – Salary: $119,960
What you do in this job: Locating and developing oil or natural gas reserves comprises a number of specialties, from geological through construction engineering A key job is helping determine what the market value of a find is, before investments are made in drilling.
How to become a petroleum engineer: Petroleum engineers explore for oil and gas, and it’s no surprise that they are highly paid because, if they are successful, many other people can be successful too. You start with a bachelor’s degree in engineering, specializing in petroleum engineering, but for advancement, keep learning. The field and the technology are always changing. Courses in social sciences and business can be useful, or even required, if you aspire to management, especially high management, because petroleum is politically highly controversial, and running a big business requires more than just finding oil.

Finance Jobs

Whenever money changes hands there is money to be made. So naturally a job in finance can be a high paying one since finance jobs naturally involve financial transactions. In times of economic recessions, low level finance jobs tend to get drastically cut out of the economy, so it pays to have a higher level finance job that pays well and offers job security too.

Sales manager – Salary: $111,570
What you do in this job: Sales managers train, supervise, and evaluate sales staff. Working with the marketing manager, they also study the market and establish sales territories.
How to become a sales manager: You should work in sales first, so you know who and what you are managing. By all means, add to your natural skill at motivating people to make sales by getting a Bachelor’s degree in economics, business, management or a related field. You know you have the talent, but that’s one way the company — and other companies who may offer you a better package — knows you are serious about staying in the field.

Financial manager – Salary: $113,730
What you do in this job: Financial managers organize, control and disperse an organization’s money. They must balance such issues as how much profit should be distributed among shareholders vs. how much invested in growth.
How to become a financial manager: A Bachelor’s or Master’s in finances or economics, and an accounting designation qualify you to manage a company’s finances, along with years of experience. Keep in mind that this is a job where you probably need to climb the career ladder in a single company. If you are given access to critical company financial data, the company will often match or beat a competitor’s job offer just to keep you on board.

Law Jobs

When asked what the highest paying jobs are, most school aged kids will say “doctor” and “lawyer” and to a large extent that is true. Lawyers command an awful lot of power in our society and often serve to protect the interests of most profitable corporations and institutions in the world. And many of the most important social decisions get determined by judges. So if you enjoy the high pressure of political and social power, a legal job might be right up your alley.

Judge, magistrate judge, and magistrate – Salary: $103,990
What you do in this job: Judges hear and decide on cases in a civil or criminal law court, often assisted by a jury of citizens. A magistrate or justice of the peace usually hears minor cases, perhaps traffic or sobriety offenses, and may also administers oaths and perform marriages.
How to become a judge: A judge should start by being a lawyer. In some states, many judges are elected and in others, they are appointed. If you must get elected, you need to know something about politics. If appointed, you can usually sit on the bench for life, but that entails a lot of competition for the position. A magistrate hears minor cases, for example in the traffic court. You almost always need a law degree, but even if you live in a community that doesn’t require one, you won’t likely rise in the system without it. Anyone who did have one would be preferred to you for advancement. The career of judge confers great prestige and social power, but it comes at a price: Minor offenses can cost a judge’s career.

Lawyer – Salary: $129,020
What you do in this job: Sometimes called an attorney, a lawyer is authorized to represent clients in the civil or criminal courts, draft legal documents such as wills and property sales, and give legal advice.
How to become a lawyer: It may seem surprising that the median annual income for lawyers is higher than that for judges, but that’s because judges are paid according to a schedule but many lawyers are paid according to the market. Others work for the government or private concerns, where there are scheduled rates. But in any event, you cannot be a lawyer without a law degree (three to four years). Don’t be surprised if you are expected to get a Bachelor’s degree in another field first, but if so, it is an advantage if you specialize in law related to the field. Law is an excellent background career choice if you aspire to a high office in business or political life. Why in political life? Because if you are a partner in a law office, you can take time off to campaign or serve as a legislator, and success will bring your partners good publicity as well.

Marketing Jobs

In this day and age marketing is everything. A great product without good marketing is a failed product. Marketing becomes a lot easier when you have a worthwhile product or service to promote and becomes painstakingly difficult when you’re tasked with promoting something that’s no good. The best paying jobs in marketing are those that involve management. In a marketing management position, you will be the captain that makes the final choices and steers the overall marketing ship.

Public relations manager – Salary: $101,850
What you do in this job: Public relations managers are skilled publicists who are given a budget to protect and enhance a company’s reputation. In today’s increasingly global market, the job is more competitive, more challenging, and more important.
How to become a public relations manager: Most companies want a Master’s degree from those who would represent their corporate face to the public (Master’s of Business Administration or MBA is good). Successful PR managers also need an ability to show grace, working with a variety of personality types under pressure. Sometimes the pressure is just the work of building the company’s image, other times, dealing constructively with a scandal. In the latter case, if you demonstrate your skill as a PR “ambulance”, you can easily command a top salary.

Marketing manager – Salary: $120,070
What you do in this job: A marketing manager develops a strategy to make a company’s products or services recognized and highly regarded in the marketplace. In larger companies, a marketing manager may be responsible for only one product or service.
How to become a marketing manager: What’s the difference between marketing and sales? Marketing means creating desire for a product or service, so people will consider using it or staying loyal to it. Sales is the ka-chink at the cash desk. So marketing is the broader strategy of creating an image; sales (see sales manager) is the targeted strategy of making a sale. People have succeeded in this job with no qualifications – the all-American success story – but to qualify for the highest paying jobs at a big company with a huge marketing budget aimed at protecting key brands, get a Bachelors or Masters degree in marketing, management, finances or economics.

Medicine & Health Jobs

The best advice regarding getting into medicine, a very high paying profession, is: 1) Do not drop your science courses. 2) If you did, or got bad marks, see if you can take the subject again and substitute the better score. 3) Make sure any school you study at is fully accredited for your chosen profession. 4) Remember, because you will need to, Canadian physician William Osler’s description: “Cure sometimes, relieve often, comfort always .”

Orthodontist – Salary: $206,190
What you do in this job: An orthodontist treats the misalignment of teeth and facial development with braces, retainers, headgear and other methods.
How to become an orthodontist: To be the one who turns a challenging set of teeth into a winning smile, using the latest technology, you need two to three years training after dental school. While many people associate orthodontics with children, there has been a trend to adults selecting a course of treatment, to improve both the function and appearance of their teeth.

Oral and maxillofacial surgeon – Salary: $210,710
What you do in this job: An oral/maxillofacial surgeon diagnoses and treats defects, diseases, and injuries of the mouth, jaw, neck, and other soft tissues in the head.
How to become an oral surgeon: To qualify to repair mouths and jaws as well as teeth, you need a degree in dental surgery, then four to eight years in postgraduate training in oral and maxillofacial surgery. There was a time when people pretty much had to live with facial or dental misfortunes, whether by birth or by injury. But not any more. Many will find the funds for a second chance.

Anesthesiologist – Salary: $211,750
What you do in this job: An anesthesiologist (often, anesthetist) prevents or control pain during surgery, injury or chronic/terminal illness. It has been described as walking patients to the brink of death, to repair something, and then bringing them back alive.
How to become an anesthesiologist : An anesthesiologist is a medical doctor who usually starts with a four-year undergraduate degree and then goes on to a four-year medical degree, training as a resident. Not all anaesthesia is used during medical procedures; it is often done during dental procedures, such as removal of impacted wisdom teeth. Also, anesthesiologists may focus on pain management generally, in the growing field of helping patients keep pain and discomfort under control while living a normal live.

Surgeon – Salary: $219,770
What you do in this job: A surgeon is a physician who treats deformity, disease, or injury by physical methods, such as a scalpel. In recent years, the profession has adopted “least invasive” methods, using such techniques as laparoscopy.
How to become a surgeon: A surgeon starts with a Bachelor’s degree, specializes in medicine and finally, surgery and then spends up to seven years as an intern/resident. If you want to cut people open, they want to be really sure you know what you are doing. There are 14 different surgical specialties listed on SuperScholars under Health Care careers. The field is bound to grow, due to longevity. This is one of the highest demand, highest paying jobs around because it takes so much skill and precision.

Science Jobs

The highest paying science jobs are the ones that require the most technical expertise. It is almost always the case that a high paying job in science will demand graduate level education either at the Master’s or Doctoral level. It is not unusual for a person pursuing a career in science to spend 5-8 years beyond an undergraduate education.

Astronomer – Salary: $102,740
What you do in this job: Astronomers study matter in outer space, including galaxies other than our own. The field has advanced considerably in recent years, due to much more technically advanced telescopes.
How to become an astronomer: Galileo built his own telescope and discovered the principal moons of Jupiter, but that was then. Today, get all the formal qualifications you can in astronomy or physics. In a sense, astronomy is a branch of physics, because physics is critical to interpreting astronomical findings. today. Teaching and presenting skills, enhanced by education in these areas, are a considerable asset because of public demand for information about our universe. While certainly one of the highest paying jobs available, astronomers are not in very high demand.

Engineering manager – Salary: $122,810
What you do in this job: Engineering managers, sometimes called project managers, typically lead a team of engineers engaged in a specific project.
How to become an engineering manager: Engineering is applied science, and the “applied” part is where the wheels fall off. So first, you must be an engineer, and must have project experience, to ensure that other engineers can trust your basic understanding. But you definitely need people skills as well, to manage effectively, so consider continuing education in psychology or human resources to maximize your chances of getting this high paying job.

Physicist – Salary: $111,250
What you do in this job: Physicists study how objects behave, and offer predictions about the outcomes. The objects can be live animals or humans, provided that the criteria for prediction are physical.
How to become a physicist: Physicists identify the laws of nature and study the structures and behavior of matter. They may work in geophysics, astrophysics, atomic physics, molecular physics, biophysics, chemical physics, material science physics, cosmology, nuclear physics, and optics. While one can work as a physicist with a Masters degree, today a Doctorate is the key to advancement. With new discoveries every day, physics is a growing field but one needs to choose a cutting edge specialty for best advancement.

Natural sciences manager – Salary: $127,000
What you do in this job: Natural science managers oversee the work of scientists in government, business, and organizations. This includes planning and coordinating research for best results.
How to become a natural sciences manager: To supervise scientists working in fields such as biology or chemistry, you may not need a science degree in theory, but you had best have one in practice, along with a management degree. That is because you need to understand what they are saying and what top management is saying, and then translate between them.

Social Science Jobs

Many jobs in the social sciences, such as social worker, don’t have much room for substantial salary growth over the course of a career. However, there are some social science jobs that provide you with the opportunity to become a high paid worker and we’ve listed them below.

Political scientist – Salary: $101,050
What you do in this job: Political scientists are a branch of social science who study the ideas and behavior of people in relation to government worldwide. While most political scientists teach at universities and colleges, many are consultants for politicians, labor unions, media, management consultant firms, and government agencies at home and abroad.
How to become a political scientist: In today’s turbulent world, a political scientist, who can analyze governments, political movements, and social conflicts has many opportunities for career advancement, including teaching and writing books. Start with a Bachelors, but more people will listen to you when you can put PhD after your name.

Industrial or organizational psychologist – Salary: $102,570
What you do in this job: Industrial or organizational psychologists bring psychological insights to bear on why organizations work or don’t, and what changes are needed.
How to become an industrial psychologist: An industrial psychologist examines the reasons people are motivated to perform well (or not) in a work setting, and recommends changes that might improve performance. As with many fields, you can probably get hired with a Bachelors, but for career success, high pay, and flexibility, work on a Doctorate. Look for universities that specialize in Industrial Psychology.