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"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."

Our careers and our lives are constantly changing. With so many twists and turns it is almost guaranteed that our career plans will not be stagnant. There are many different types of individuals who are moving in/out of a traditional career. Recently the term "comeback parent" has been coined for the parent who has left a paid position outside the home to raise a family, and is now returning to paid external employment. Another example is the graduate student who alternates full time employment with full or part time education. Some leave to take care of an aging relative, start a private practice or a business, attend to personal health issues, or even work part-time from home. While juggling various roles in life, it is important to manage our careers even if it is not currently the highest priority. Networking is an important way to effectively and efficiently tend to your career at all times.

"Starting at a new workplace can be stressful for anyone, whether you have years of experience or are just beginning your career. The first few weeks are also the most crucial to leaving a good impression on your managers and peers."

"In late 2007, Taylor Senatore and Jennifer Frank withdrew most of their personal savings-a combined $250,000-to launch California Wine Merchants in New York. The duo, who teamed up after discovering by chance that they shared the same entrepreneurial goal, figured that amount would cover all of their start-up costs and even leave change to spare."

Summary * Sixty percent of students change majors before graduating. * There are many factors that contribute to choosing a major. * If you're in the wrong major, it may be time to change. Picture yourself in a room with nine other college students. Before you graduate, at least six of those students will have changed their major at least once. And one or two of the remaining four will likely leave school regretting the major they chose and wishing they too had switched to another major.

"We professors love to talk about quiet students: the men who slouch in the back row, hidden beneath their baseball caps; the women who smile congenially but never, ever raise their hands; the classes that leave us frustratedly channeling the hapless economics teacher in Ferris Bueller's Day Off as we plead in vain for student participation ("Anyone? Anyone?")."

"If "Jackass 3D" is anything like prior triumphs in the franchise, its band of raunchy, anarchic daredevils will make high art of low humor and leave no mishap private - especially if it involves someone's privates. But just try to get Johnny Knoxville and his gang to talk about how much each is paid. In America, money is the last conversational taboo."

"For a lot of small-business owners, "cloud computing" is the latest IT buzzword to leave them scratching their heads. To demystify things, here's a primer for companies looking to wade into cloud services for the first time. What are cloud services?"

Undergraduates across the country are choosing to leave science, technology, engineering and math programs before they graduate with those degrees. Many students in those STEM fields struggle to complete their degrees in four years, or drop out, according to a 2010 University of California, Los Angeles, study.

More and more career advisers are bemoaning the practice of revising one's resume to death. Leave it alone once you're happy with it, we advise. That can be a Catch 22 for those of you who are never happy with your resume. The point is some of you are putting too much effort in perfecting your resume and not enough at seeing the whole picture.

It was 4 p.m. on a recent Friday-a time of the week when I usually relax and leave the rest of my to-do list to finish over the weekend. But as this recent weekend approached, I kept pushing myself, heart pumping, to get to the bottom of my list of planned tasks for the week.

Q: I'm an intelligent, talented and creative person, but I'm lacking motivation to perform my job to the best of my abilities, and it is starting to show. I'm planning on leaving my firm for graduate school next year, but in the meantime, do you have any ideas on how I can regain my motivation at work? There are no upcoming projects which even hold the remotest level of interest for me, and based on my recent performance review, I would not likely be assigned them to begin with.

I am looking for a full-time job that uses my writing, people and information-gathering talents from 25 years as a Los Angeles Times staff writer. My concern, validated by the coach at the retraining corporation, is that I am over 40. That coach actually told me to leave the dates of college attendance, etc., off my resume. My brother, president of a publicly-traded company, said this advice was nonsense, although he did say age is an issue (and he's older than I am).Can you address this issue of inferiority complex for those of us competing with candidates 20 years our junior? How do we address it? How can we compensate for the potential perception that we are burn-outs or tired when we might -- in my case -- just be bored because we know the job so well?

The only thing that never leaves our side is our education, our knowledge. Knowledge and education are not necessarily bound to books and classrooms. It is out in the world and in every step we take. The education and knowledge that we get from childhood leads us to the capacity to handle our life on our own.