Whoooo! (Source)

Click, click, click....

The anticipation grabs you like a heart attack, as the car climbs up the tracks.

At the top, there's an amazing view of the park, if you can bear to open your eyes. The car gets in place at the tipping point.

For a split second you hold your breath, as your stomach lurches and then—you go over.

Elaborate machinery gives you a thrill while keeping you alive, as the centripetal forces acting on your body feel as powerful as a NASA space ship.

There's nothing to rival the thrill of a good coaster ride. Sure you've got your death drops, your Towers of Terror, or Wheels of Doom—spinning contraptions where the floor drops out leaving gravity to stick you to the wall, like a fly caught on duct tape.

But a roller coaster is a thing of beauty. It provides entertainment for the ages, and coaster enthusiasts travel the globe to find the biggest and baddest ride around. Someday soon, they could be paying homage to you, the mastermind behind it all.

Glory aside, the moolah isn't bad either. Roller coaster designers earn a median income of more than $74,000 a year (source).

To do this job, you'll need smarts and creativity. Roller coaster designers have to be better than most at math and science, but especially savvy with the laws of physics and gravity. We hope you don't mind heights either, because you'll probably want to test it out once it's done.

You'll want to go to college at a place like Cal Tech, MIT, or Berkeley, and double major in mechanical engineering and physics. You'll need to learn to manipulate those G-forces for good, not evil.

True, you could use your mechanical and engineering talents to design smart, practical things like a new mass transit system, an artificial heart, or a hover board.

Alright, so maybe that last one isn't super practical...but you won't find a cooler way to elicit screams of terror and bring more joy to the masses than by designing the world's fastest, tallest, biggest, and best new roller coaster.

Who wouldn't love being strapped to a hunk of metal and thrashed around? (Source)

If you're in this career, you're someone who loves roller coasters. While some kids have dreams of taking a gap year to tour Europe, you imagine spending that time traveling from park to park, seeking out the the fastest roller coasters on the planet.

From Abu Dhabi's speediest Ferrari coaster to Japan's longest roller coaster, back to the good ol' USA, where Six Flag's Great Adventure's Kingda Ka gives you a taste of the thrills of New Jersey, with the world's tallest coaster with the biggest drop.

You're probably someone who spent most of their childhood playing Roller Coaster Tycoon, designing awesome coasters in Minecraft or using good old fashioned K'nex.

You'll have to understand landscape and architecture as well, as most coasters are designed to make the most of the area that an amusement park has available. It'd be nice to just build limitlessly with no boundaries, but the government might get upset when you start corkscrewing your coaster around city hall. It's a collaborative job and you'll have to work with a team of other engineers and architects to build the perfect beast that fits within the limited land you've got.

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