Careers

It's mid-June. School's out. Now what? For college students, the answer is almost anything. Bolstered by a resurgent economy, the number of summer jobs and internships available to area college students is approaching pre-recession highs, job analysts said. And many positions are still unfilled. Creative college students can finagle summer jobs, especially unpaid ones, in almost any field through perseverance and networking.

Justin Timberlake has taken to Twitter to scold some paparazzi after a run-in with photographers allegedly left his friend and business partner Trace Ayala's car door dented. According to Timberlake, a frustrated photographer kicked Ayala’s truck Tuesday afternoon after failing to snap photos of the singer and actor. In addition to reprimanding the paparazzi, Timberlake also offered some career advice, telling overzealous photographers to “get a real job.

For those interested in gaining firsthand knowledge of the legislative process, applications for the 1998-99 California Senate Associates Program are now available, officials said. Established in 1973, the program provides recent college graduates and individuals interested in changing careers the opportunity to work as full-time Senate staff members, officials said. "Although it's a paid internship for 11 months, we treat them like regular staff members," said state Sen. Adam B.

Well into his 70s, Terry Martin could be found most days in his Dana Point workshop sanding blocks of polyurethane foam into precision-shaped surfboards. With his big white beard and barrel chest, Martin looked like Santa riding out a blizzard of swirling white dust. Over a nearly six-decade career, Martin is said to have shaped more surfboards than anyone - some 80,000 - although the exact number is unknowable. Martin himself once said he stopped counting after 50,000. Martin's output and perfectionism made him an icon among the tight-knit fraternity of surfing's best shapers, one of a dwindling number of craftsmen who earn a living making surfboards by hand.

One man in the classroom earned more than $100,000 framing tract homes during the building heyday. Another installed pools and piloted a backhoe. Behind him sat a young father who made a good living swinging a hammer in southern Utah. But that was before construction jobs vanished like a fast-moving dust storm in this blustery high desert. Hard times have brought them to a classroom in rural Kern County to learn a different trade. Tonight's lesson: how to avoid death and dismemberment.

First Lady Barbara Bush offered a strong defense of private lives, including her own, saying Wednesday that she sympathizes with Wellesley College students who raised questions about her speaking at their graduation, but she thinks they don't understand "where I am coming from." "That's all right," Mrs. Bush said. "I chose to live the life I've lived, and I think it has been a fabulously exciting, interesting, involved life. I hope some of them will choose the same. . . .

If you're facing years of student loan payments but aren't making much money because you're working in public service, the federal government has some good news for you. A law that takes effect Tuesday could allow you to have some of your college debt forgiven.

Imagine a cocktail napkin. Fold it into an unusual geometric shape. Then take a paper punch and poke a single hole through the folds. Now, without opening the napkin, indicate on a chart where the holes will appear when the napkin is unfolded. It's torture. David Lyon may as well have asked for a quick sketch of a breeder reactor. The paper-folding task is typical of several tests given over the course of two days at the Johnson O'Connor Research Foundation's Human Engineering Laboratory.

Mark Tucker was determined to conquer Mt. Everest, and if it meant serving as a cook to do it, then so be it. "I'd take whatever position was available, just to get on the team," he said. So when the Chinese government whittled back the number of Mt. Everest permits it would issue Tucker's climbing team, he volunteered for kitchen duty--a minor inconvenience, he said, for a chance to scale the 29,028-foot mountain in windy, subfreezing weather.

Barbara Adler worked eight internships while she attended college at Bradley University in Peoria, Ill. But none prepared her for the office politics she confronted in her first job at a public relations firm. The 28-year-old Adler, now vice president of a Chicago public relations firm, had no one to turn to for advice on handling politically charged situations. She also often worried she wouldn't be taken seriously because of her age.

PHOENIX -- For the second time in a major league career that has lasted all of two weeks, Scott Van Slyke found his name in the Dodgers' starting lineup. The first time, he batted third. On Monday, he batted fourth. "Necessity is a good word," Manager Don Mattingly said. "I'd feel better if he were back there hitting sixth or seventh and not in the heart of the order. "I don't mean that in a bad way toward him. " The Dodgers had 10 home runs in their injury-depleted starting lineup Monday - eight from Andre Ethier , one from Justin Sellers and one from Van Slyke.

Clayton Christensen achieves the difficult feat of being at once imposing and humble. When I visited him last autumn at Harvard Business School, he laid out with quiet authority his latest thoughts on disruptive technology, the concept that justly made him famous in the mid-1990s. But he also took time to chat about his son's college basketball team, a poster of which hangs on one wall of an office full of family photos and memorabilia. Although he places great value on his family and faith — he is a devout Mormon — his research and teaching have dominated his public story.

Question: My wife and I recently returned from a nine-day trip to London, and we noticed that all the hotel staff was from non-British European countries and a few from countries in Africa. We also noticed that all the staff at the restaurants and some of the staff at the pubs where we ate and enjoyed their ales were from other European countries. Is this because these are jobs British workers do not want to do, or are there other reasons for this? Ben Juarez Los Angeles Answer: If you don't believe London is a world city, take a look at its restaurants.

SAN DIEGO - After six seasons in the minor leagues, Jim Eppard finally got the call to the Angels. In his first major league at-bat, on Sept. 8, 1987, he singled - off current Angels broadcaster Mark Gubicza. In his second at-bat, two days later, he singled again. Two hits, two at-bats, each as a pinch-hitter. This Eppard kid might have a pretty good future. Or, as it turned out, he might not. Eppard - who replaced Mickey Hatcher, the Angels' hitting instructor who was let go Tuesday - finished his brief major league career with 139 at-bats.

The Dodgers won another game, but lost another player. On the same day they defeated the defending World Series champion St. Louis Cardinals, 6-0, second baseman Mark Ellis underwent an emergency leg operation that is expected to sideline him for a minimum of six weeks. Ellis, who was injured when Tyler Greene of the Cardinals slid into him at second base the previous night, had blood and fluids drained from his left leg. He is scheduled to be hospitalized until Tuesday. He became the fourth Dodgers starter on the disabled list.

The Angels lost Thursday because they couldn't see into a blinding sun and because pitcher C.J. Wilson couldn't seem to find home plate. The Chicago White Sox took advantage, using sun-caused misplays and six walks in less than four innings by under-the-weather Angels starter Wilson to earn a 6-1 victory at Angel Stadium. Wilson, battling a stomach virus he said nearly caused him to pass out in the first inning, fell behind, 1-0, in the third on a two-out walk to Paul Konerko and a run-scoring single to right field by A.J. Pierzynski.

When celebrity photographer Barbra Porter picks up her camera, such stars as Billy Bob Thornton, Garth Brooks and Eric Clapton know she'll make them look good. But in her other career, Porter also makes the stars sound good -- by performing as a violinist for the Academy Awards telecast, on the soundtrack to "Pirates of the Caribbean" and in concert with Celine Dion. "I think many musicians have multiple talents," says Porter, who rejects the image of stuffy, single-minded classical artists.

All of St. Charles is racing to eat before the sun sets and the kids melt down. At 5:30 p.m. on a Saturday, a time when many Angelenos are just rolling out of bed, the locals of this Illinois city are pouring into the La Za Za Trattoria, a family-friendly kind of place. A sentry of highchairs lines one wall, and the occasional shriek of a cooped-up child provides dissonant harmony to the clanging of silverware against plates and the chorus of disjointed conversations.

Motion picture executive Brad Kembel and his partner Jimmy Ferrareze have bought the landmark James Eads How House in Silver Lake for $1.3 million. Designed by modern architect Rudolph Schindler in 1925, the restored and updated International Modern-style house had been priced at $4.995 million when movie producer and prolific renovator Michael LaFetra first listed it in 2008. The 2,426-square-foot home, a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument, is considered a triumph of Schindler's early career and was influenced by his apprenticeship under Frank Lloyd Wright.

Howard Terpning paints how the West was lived and lost more than 120 years ago. His subject is 19th century Native Americans, although he is not their descendant. Some of his canvases aim to capture the courage, dignity and desperation of the fight to keep their land. Many are carefully detailed depictions of the ways of life they fought to save. "Tribute to the Plains People," now at the Autry National Center of the American West in Griffith Park, is the biggest solo show of Terpning's career - a retrospective that covers 35 years and documents his standing as the acknowledged leader of a popular but not universally admired movement in which paintings become time machines into the Old West.