There are some very important things they don't tell you on career day. Chief among them is that there is a good chance that at some point during your working adult life you will have an abusive boss — the kind who uses his or her authority to torment subordinates. Bullying bosses scream, often with the goal of humiliating. They write up false evaluations to put good workers' jobs at risk. Some are serial bullies, targeting one ...

One of the hard realities of launching a concert career in the U.S. is the necessity of a recital, preferably in Manhattan's hallowed Carnegie Hall, the cost of which—anywhere from $2,000 to $3,000— must be footed by the artist. But when Budapest-born Janos Starker first came to America at the age of 24, he flatly refused "the social degradation of having to pay to be heard. I will only play where people are sufficiently interested to pay to hear me."Treasure Unearthed. He had to wait 16 ...

Can Dominique Strauss-Kahn salvage a future in French politics? Despite his legal problems in the U.S., observers say his most optimistic backers are keeping alive scenarios of their champion somehow extricating himself from the catastrophic turn in his once-brilliant career. "There's currently so much amazement, shock and perplexity over the speed and enormity of DSK's fall that — in the minds of many people — any outcome in such a surreal situation remains possible," says Denis Muzet, director of the Paris-based Mediascope opinion-research group. That ...

After months of political wrangling, the U.S. Department of Education finalized on Thursday its highly contentious "gainful employment" rule, a crucial element of the Obama Administration's crackdown on the rapidly growing for-profit career-college industry. The rule will strip federal financial aid dollars from vocational programs that load students with more debt than they can realistically repay. When it goes into effect in July 2012, it will join a batch of other previously announced regulations set to begin ...

Teaching seemed a natural, uncomplicated career choice for Stacey Moskowitz. "I like children," she says. "I enjoy watching them learn the things you need to do to succeed in life." In 1990, in her mid-20s, she began teaching third grade at Community Elementary School 90 in the Bronx, N.Y., where she learned how to succeed on the school's terms. She says the principal's underlings gave her a list of students along with the order "to make sure they passed" standardized ...

Is there life beyond the living dead? Can Robert Pattinson, the 24-year-old Englishman who achieved a teen-talisman celebrity playing the dreamboat vampire Edward, find longevity in a post-Twilight Saga acting career? For a few moments in Water for Elephants, the answer seems yes. As Jacob Jankowski, a part that requires him mainly to be shy and watchful, RPattz radiates a slow magnetism that locks the viewer's eyes on him. His easy smile — not the smirk he ...

To say that Julius Erving jumps is to describe Beethoven as a guy who wrote music. Dr. J. ascends. He springs into the air at the foul line, floats down the side of the lane, holding the basketball in his right hand. Still airborne, he swivels, turns his back to the basket, switches the ball to his other hand and cleanly flips a soft, lefthanded hook shot into the net. On the floor, play resumes at a dazed half-speed as ...

Look closely and you can make out a theme running through Russell Brand's major movie roles to date: lascivious rock star, drug-addicted rock star, drunk, rich drunk and an Easter Bunny who would rather be a rock star. But if Brand's acting career lacks range, he hasn't suffered for it. Forgetting Sarah Marshall, his first U.S. movie , hit screens in 2008. Three years and a slew of warm reviews later, the working-class Brit and former junkie produced and stars ...

Mia Wasikowska slips through the lobby of New York City's Waldorf-Astoria hotel, hat pulled low, scarf wrapped high, face scrubbed clean, a marvel of unadornment. If you hadn't spent the previous evening at a screening of her new film, Jane Eyre, absorbed in her performance as the original plain Jane, you'd hardly notice her. This is entirely in sync with the 21-year-old's career goals. She has no desire to be in Us Weekly, is content with not getting what ...

In the Lexicon of Clichés to describe characters accused of a despicable act, "He was once on a reality show" is the new "Neighbors say he was quiet and kept to himself." Today the idea of a mad loner silently avoiding attention seems like a quaint throwback. In August, a VH1 dating-show contestant was charged with the murder of his ex-wife, then committed suicide. And on Oct. 15, America spent an afternoon being literally distracted by a shiny ...