Low Stress Jobs to Have While You're Paying Off the Loans for Your Liberal Arts Education

Video store clerk
Most video stores don't open until around 10 AM, so not only will you be able to sleep in, you'll miss the morning traffic. Once you get to work, you get to spend the day watching movies and talking about movies. You are surrounded by other employees who moonlight in rock bands, as filmmakers, or who go to college, so there will be no end of engaging discussion about everything from music to film to philosophy. And to the customers, your opinion actually counts. They are relying on you to watch all the movies (which you can do for free) and help them make the choice for that evening's entertainment. If you work in a cool independent store, especially in a smaller town, people will actually come in just to hang around and shoot the breeze with you. Not that you're getting paid all that much at first, but you are in fact getting paid to watch movies and talk to people. At the end of the night, which won't be that late as most stores close at 11 or midnight, you just shelve the movies, vacuum, and lock up. Everyone rents movies so you will encounter a cross section of the population, which is great if you want inspiration for writing. Remember, both Quentin Tarantino and Kevin Smith were once video store clerks, so you too can find great story fodder while leaning on a counter. All of the above also applies to music stores and comic shops. To get in the right mindset for this job, watch Clerks. Again.