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"Excerpts from an interview by Wall Street Journal Capital columnist David Wessel with Gail Mellow, who has been president of LaGuardia Community College in Long Island City, N.Y. for 10 years. The college, part of the City University of New York, has 13,500 credit and 30,000 non-credit students. (Read the related column.)"

Think a bachelor's or master's degree is the only way to advance your career? Think again. There are many associate's degree careers that pay high salaries. In fact, going after the highest paying jobs with a 2-year degree is a great way to handle debt after college graduation and reduce job-search anxieties after college. Whether you're looking for a fresh start in a new, more lucrative field or enrolling in college for the first time, a 2-year associate's degree from a community college is one of the quickest routes to bringing home more bacon each week. This is especially good news for those high school graduates who are wondering what to do after high school and before college. "

Twitter's recently-launched Lists feature is an outstanding new tool that not only improves the overall Twitter experience by allowing you to organize and group the people you follow on Twitter, but that can also help you optimize your job search and personal branding efforts.

Top Ten Networking Tips for Alumni written by Leslie Camacho.

"In my experience, few factors have a bigger impact on the juggle than the emotional climate where you work. At a previous employer years ago, the prevailing employee attitude was ceaseless, simmering resentment and cynicism over ever-rising workloads and a lack of recognition to us for shouldering the burden. I tried to keep an optimistic attitude there, but a fierce desire to get out drove me to work weekends and holidays to land a better job at a better place to work. When I did, my energy for family and personal life soared."

"Binkley writes how this year, brightly-colored or patterned stockings - think purple, lace, punk-shredded or leopard patterned - are all the rage among fashionistas. But is this haute hosiery appropriate for the office?"

"Starting salaries of new physicians reveal a growing gender gap. Newly-trained women doctors are being paid significantly lower salaries -about $17,000 less - than their male counterparts, found a new study published in the February issue of Health Affairs."

"Years ago I had a very demanding, harsh boss. Sometimes, I would get so demoralized or overwhelmed that I would duck into the bathroom and cry, though I made sure to never burst into tears in front of my boss or colleagues."

"Giving kids' allowances raises lots of questions for parents: How much to pay? Should the money be tied to chores - and if so, which ones? Can the kids spend the money freely, or must they save part of it?"

"Interruptions at work, from email and phone calls to co-workers dropping by your office to talk, can complicate the juggle, extending your workday and draining personal time. But how far would you go to eliminate them? Would you book a conference room? Turn off your e-mail? Put up police tape outside your cubicle, to keep your co-workers away?"

"Taking time off work when your kid gets the flu or chicken pox is usually a routine matter. But how do you explain your time-off needs if your teen - or spouse or partner -becomes too depressed to get out of bed, or your child becomes too anxious to go to school? Helping out a troubled loved one in such cases poses a dilemma, because the stigma placed on mental illness forces most people to keep it a secret. Yet a new survey shows people are taking off a surprisingly large amount of work time for this purpose. Some 41% of working adults took from four to nine days off work in the past year to deal with a mental-health issue of their own, or of a friend, family member or co-worker, says a recent survey of 669 working adults by Workplace Options."

"We've written before about bosses who have gotten fed up with the demands of the juggle and have made changes to their workplaces to relieve some of the pressures. But is it possible to have a boss who takes work-life balance to such an extreme that "life" outweighs "work"?"

"Do you feel like your job choice out of college is the most important decision you will ever make, and that blowing it will tank your career? Relax and get used to it. It is just the first of many job choices you will be making throughout your career."

"Recently, I said goodbye to a beloved coworker and former boss who left to pursue new career interests. She was here for less than three years-I've been here for 10-but during her short tenure, she made a very big impression on me. Her management and editing style was stronger and more inspiring than that of anyone I had reported to previously, and under her guidance, I saw my career ascend to a much greater level."

"The biggest changes in family life sometimes happen gradually. New employment data suggest one such seismic change is upon us: Job-holding patterns between the generations have turned upside down."

Those working in metro areas scattered along the East and West coasts - San Jose, New York, Seattle - tended to get paid better last year than their middle-America counterparts, according to the Labor Department's report comparing occupational pay in 77 metro areas, released Wednesday. Employees in the heartland and in certain southern metro areas, such as Lincoln, Neb., and Tallahassee, Fla., earned the least.

Can working hard at the office invigorate a marriage? A new study suggests that for working mothers at least, that may be the case. Working moms tend to be happier with their marriages when they are shouldering heavy workloads on the job, says a four-year study of 169 couples published recently in the Journal of Family Psychology. One reason may be that when working moms' workloads increase, their husbands tend to help out more at home, researchers suggest.

Do you think rude people appear more authoritative at work and tend to get ahead faster than polite colleagues? According to research from the University of Amsterdam published in the latest "Social Psychological and Personality Science," they do.

Recession-scarred families are still not ready to go out and splurge on vacation. In fact, many are still cutting back on their big summer holidays.

Everyone is afraid of something. Spiders, heights, angry bees. But while spiders and bees can make a picnic challenging, they usually don't get in the way of doing a job. Unfortunately, my fear is public speaking.