Dream Jobs You Won't Believe Actually Exist

1/10 LEGO PROFESSOR. Yes, you can apply to be a Lego professor at the University of Cambridge. The university may soon be on the hunt for a professor to lead a new centre at the university funded by the Lego Foundation, according to CNN.

2/10 WATERSLIDE TESTER. Back in 2013, United Kingdom-based resort marketing company First Choice had a very unique job position open up: They needed a waterslide tester to try out their chain of SplashWorld water parks. Yes, that’s right — putting on a swimsuit and twisting and turning through waterslides can be a paying job. The posting called for applicants with strong written and verbal skills, experience in social media, willingness to travel and ability to remain flexible at all times, according to CNN. The lucky chosen employee would then get to travel the company’s parks in Europe, Egypt, Tunisia and Thailand and test out the water parks for six months, all for a pay cheque of 20,000 pounds (about $40,000.)

3/10 PRIVATE ISLAND CARETAKER. Private island caretaker James Ralston makes his living by maintaining a private island in the Bahamas, all while getting to enjoy the tropical weather, fishing and water sports that goes along with being an island resident, according to Private Islands Magazine. It may sound like a relaxing career path, but the truth is, the job can be quite demanding. Responsibilities include making repairs to the owners’ home and boats, cleaning up after storms, and making sure everything is in order before the owners arrive for their stays. Wondering if it’s the right job for you? Ralston had some advice. “Never kid yourself. Be genuinely handy, in good physical shape, and capable of a fairly solitary existence. And if you’re the right type of person, you’ll never go back to life on the mainland.”

4/10 ICE CREAM FLAVOUR GURU. If you’re an ice cream fanatic who knows a thing or two about food and cooking, the “flavour guru” position at iconic ice cream chain Ben & Jerry’s might be the right career for you. According to the Ben & Jerry’s website, flavour gurus “spend their days and nights testing the best food in the world, then they mix, blend, chop, whip and taste, taste, taste until they’ve come up with an unmatched batch of pure ice cream euphoria.” And apparently, the ingredient options are endless — the website also states that “no ingredient goes unconsidered” and everything from potato chips to passion fruit could make it into the next flavour guru ice cream creation. You can find out more about each individual flavour guru — most of whom are food scientists or chefs — on the website, too, including the flavours they’ve created, and what they like about their jobs. Chris Rivard, flavour guru and principal food scientist, noted in his profile that the staff will go on what they call “trend treks,” where they travel to different cities around the world to try new foods and get inspiration.

5/10 CHOCOLATE TASTER. Orietta Gianjorio is one of the lucky ones, making her living as a professional chocolate taster. Of course, working as a chocolate taster doesn’t mean all you do is chow down on chocolate. It requires a lot of skill, according to Reader’s Digest. Gianjorio’s tasting process includes several steps: first, she explained, she smells the chocolate and notes the aroma. Then, she breaks apart the chocolate and listens to make sure it sounds crisp. From there, she places a 1-inch cube in her mouth, presses it against her palate and lets it melt, noting taste and texture. Finally, she said she blows out short puffs of air through her nose to activate scent receptors in the back of the head that can bring out other subtle aromas. And sometimes being a professional chocolate taster isn’t so sweet. Gianjorio told Reader’s Digest that part of her job requires her to taste defective chocolate that may be too bitter or burned, and that she doesn’t actually eat the chocolate she tastes — she tastes them and then spits them back out. To keep her palate fresh, she said she waits 30 seconds, chews half an unsalted cracker and sips plain warm water in between chocolate samples. Not to worry, though. Gianjorio said she still loves chocolate and even eats it in her free time, just not as often.

6/10 PROFESSIONAL SLEEPER. In 2009, for example, 22-year-old student Roisin Madigan had the very important job of trying out luxury beds from England-based bed company Simon Horn Ltd, according to The Telegraph. Madigan’s responsibilities included testing beds in the showroom under various conditions such as lighting changes, temperature changes and being under the influence of caffeine or alcohol, and blogging about her experiences. And the pay? For one month of testing out beds every day from 10am to 6pm., Madigan earned 1,000 pounds (about $2,000.) Quite the pay cheque for a month of comfort and relaxation! Perhaps unsurprisingly, when Simon Horn first listed the job posting, the company told The Telegraph that they’d received 400 applicants just in the first day.

7/10 STANLEY CUP GUARDIAN. Ice Hockey fans are obviously familiar with the Stanley Cup, the highest honour awarded in the sport, but did you know that people actually guard the trophy for a living? Phil Pritchard, curator of the Hockey Hall of Fame, is one of four men who can list “Stanley Cup bodyguard” as one of his job responsibilities, and he’s been doing it for more than two decades now. So what exactly does the job entail? As per tradition, each year every member of the Stanley Cup championship team gets to spend a day with the trophy — Pritchard and the other men tasked with guarding the cup spend their days travelling along with them. Other responsibilities include cleaning the cup daily and taking it for professional cleanings twice a year. Pritchard told BusinessNewsDaily that he’s been on many adventures with the trophy, including trips to strip clubs, mountaintops and more. “If the cup could talk, it would be a bestseller, because the stories it could tell on where it has been and what’s gone on [are] pretty amazing,” he said.

8/10 VIDEO GAME TESTER. Ever wish you could just skip work to stay home all day and play video games? Good news: You might be able to get paid to do that, if you can get a job as a video game quality assurance (QA) tester. The job isn’t all fun and games, though — it’s a serious responsibility and requires you to do more than just play a game from start to finish. You have to play through every possibility and find all the bugs and software defects, Time reported. And the reality is, not all games are enjoyable — you may absolutely hate a game and have to play it over and over again to do your job right. Wondering if video game QA testing is the right career path for you? Brent Gocke, senior release manager for Sony Computer Entertainment America, told Time what it takes. “If you enjoy tinkering and trying to break things, video game testing could still be potentially a route for you,” Gocke said. “It’s for someone who is meticulous, someone who enjoys games and is passionate about playing these things and the different possibilities.”

9/10 BEER TASTER. When you’re a professional beer taster like Steve Bruntlett, going to work every day is more like going on a pub crawl and getting paid to drink. Well, sort of. Bruntlett works for Marston’s Brewery as a beer quality technician, which requires him to oversee around 250 pubs in the Midlands of England. According to The Telegraph, a typical work pub visit includes responsibilities like “fixing a problem in the cellar before putting an ale or two to the ‘CAT’ test, to check for clarity, aroma and taste.” Bruntlett checks to ensure that pubs are pulling and serving the brewery’s beers correctly, which means making sure they have the ideal amount of froth and are served at the right temperature, along with other important qualities. He also gets the responsibility of trying beers at home to ensure that they taste the same in the pubs. Of course, the job isn’t always as glamorous as it seems — Bruntlett told the Telegraph that people who hear about his job tend to focus on the beer tasting aspect, but he also has to remain on call 24 hours a day in case he has to fix things like broken-down coolers and gas leaks.

10/10 FORTUNE COOKIE WRITER. You may not realise it, but real people actually get paid to write the fortunes inside those cookies you crack open with your take away. Donald Lau, vice president of Wonton Food in Long Island City, New York, was one such person, but according to The New Yorker, it wasn’t exactly his chosen career path — it was more of a responsibility he fell into. When the company expanded and realised they needed to update their fortunes, he was put to the task because his English language skills were stronger than other employees. Lau told The New Yorker that he found inspiration everywhere, like subway signs and newspapers, and that he kept a small notebook with him to write down ideas as they came. He also noted that he wrote thousands of fortunes in his career, but that eventually he ran out of ideas. And then there are entrepreneurs like Ray Richmond, a former freelance journalist who decided to put his own spin on fortune cookies. He founded a business called Super Accurate Fortune Cookies to write fortunes that are more humorous and entertaining. Richmond even makes fortune cookies that are themed for specific holidays, like Christmas, along with custom orders.