In my first five years of working in”the real world”, I held down five different jobs. One of these was part-time and held in conjunction with my day job. However, when friends or co-workers would ask me about job history, it would sometimes seem that I was older than I really was — because of the fact that at the ripe old age of 25, I’d already amassed a whole resume page full of relevant job titles.

It was then that I realized I was what the adults called a “job hopper”. With it’s adverse sound and generally negative connotation, I immediately jumped on defense — backing the countless responsibilities I’d been so lucky to nail down. But the fact was — and still is — that I am indeed a job hopper. And I’ve come to realize that there’s nothing wrong with that.

It’s no joke that tales of unemployment and rising debt have pushed many of us to our limits. Between student loans, credit card debt, and monthly bills, things can get really overwhelming pretty fast. If faced with a serious money dilemma, would you go to extremes in order to make ends meets?

The current rough financial times gets one to start thinking about the availability of interesting and recession-proof jobs — something outside the standard middle management number crunching. I was curious to dig up some jobs that aren’t the most obvious of career paths, but that pay well and offer a foray into an interesting industry. Here are five jobs that are a little off the beaten path, but have room for significant growth over the next five years.