For those of you currently on the (hot) prowl for jobs, I’m sure you’ve heard of a little slice of on-campus heaven called the Career Development Center (CDC). If you haven’t, the CDC is a magical place where all your worries disappear and your post-Stanford future is no longer a scary black hole of worry and uncertainty. I had an appointment in this fairytale land last week, and I left a changed woman. As someone who has literally no idea what I want to do when I grow up, this past month had been an incredibly stressful time, and those crazy consulting people didn’t make things any easier. But I’ve now realized, thanks to the wonderful people at the CDC, that it’s okay to not have some great life plan right now. There will never be a better time in our lives to do things like travel and live abroad, and with the economy as it is, there might not be a worse time to enter the job market. What that means is that maybe we shouldn’t be searching tirelessly for future careers, but instead for short-term solutions. And as appealing as that one-year, unpaid internship may sound, we all agree a job that pays would be even better. And a job that pays and let’s you travel abroad? Well, that’s a dream come true, and it’s also this week’s topic: the accent-reduction specialist.

If you want a job that’s more obscure and unique than say, a mediator, you might enjoy this (also, you might be just a little bit hipster.) Basically, an accent-reduction specialist works with foreigners learning English as a second language to make their accents more like those of native speakers. This means that, as an accent-reduction specialist, most of your time is spent abroad — although to be fair, a handful of accent-reduction specialists work with southerners in America to make their accents more understandable (no offense, southerners — I think your drawls are great.)

Not only does this job let you travel around and live in foreign places, but it pays enough that you don’t have to go into debt to do it. The average annual salary for an accent-reduction specialist is $63,000, and while you won’t be eating off gold plates, that’s more than enough to allow you to experience living abroad without starving. So as appealing as that old cliche of traveling around Europe eating only bread and taking odd jobs to survive sounds, this might be a more comfortable option.

The most common path to take as an accent-reduction specialist is to work for an American company that has outsourced its customer service department overseas. In this role, you will work with newly hired customer service representatives on reducing their accents. This means you will probably stay in one place (and that place will more than likely be India), and you will get to work closely with a range of people from different cultures and walks of life. The other, perhaps more adventurous and definitely more unsteady option is to work as an independent contractor, finding employment with wealthy foreign families who want their not-at-all-spoiled children to speak perfect English. This often involves assuming a sort of au pair and/or tutor role as well, but allows much more flexibility in terms of where you want to live and work.

Obviously the life of an accent reduction specialist is too sweet of a deal for just anybody to be allowed to do this. All accent-reduction specialists are required to complete a training program, and experience in teaching English as a second language is a must. A background in linguistics, English, education or a similarly relevant field is also helpful. However, after you finish the course and assuming you have the right credentials to get hired, you can start work basically straight out of the program.

There are many great things about being an accent reduction specialist — you get to live internationally, meet new people and learn about different cultures — but what makes it particularly appealing for a college student preparing to graduate is the flexibility. A job in accent reduction has the potential to be either a career or a short-term way to live abroad and explore before you figure out what you want to do with your life. Because we all will have to find a career eventually, but in the meantime, we might as well have a little fun.

Do any of y’all have a southern drawl? Amanda would love to correct your accent over dinner. Send her an email at aach “at” stanford “dot” edu.