Start a New Career at Any Age

Check out these hot options for career switchers of all ages.

Looking to change careers and think your age may limit you? You may want to revisit that line of thinking...

"Age really has no bearing," says Michael Brandt, chief operating officer of BrightMove, a Florida-based company that designs recruiting and staffing software. "The only thing that really matters is the skills that you have," says Brandt, who estimates that 95 percent of his clients do not use age as a search criterion.

People of all ages believe they will change careers at some point in the future, according to a November 2010 survey by Kelly Services, a Michigan-based workforce solutions company.

The study, which polled 134,000 workers worldwide, found that:

• 69 percent of Generation X (people born in the '60s and '70s) expect to change careers
• 67 percent of Generation Y (people born in the '80s and '90s) expect to change careers
• 63 percent of Baby Boomers (people born in the late '40s and '50s) expect to change careers

So how can you successfully pull off a career change? Going back to school is one way you could gain the right skill-set to help transition to a new career.......

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Louisville, Kentucky

Here's a pocket of our culture where where dirt-cheap field-level tickets are available at the walk-up counter, where kids can run the bases after the game without getting tased. Enjoy the slightly absurd undercurrent. Free gas-card giveaways! Win-or-lose fireworks! Appearances by semifamous local animals! We're fans of the Louisville Bats, a Triple A club that draws more than 8,000 fans per home game. That's just enough to summon a genuine crowd roar, but never enough to jam up the line for the bathroom trough.

Courtesy of neate_photos/flickr

Athens, Georgia

I'll be fine if I never see another rock show in New York City. The scrum for tickets starts two months ahead of time; the well drinks cost $8. To paraphrase Johnny Paycheck, you can take all that and shove it. Instead, I'll take the scene in Athens. The city's best venues, the 40 Watt Club and the Caledonia Lounge, both host bands that play big venues in big cities and hit all the right notes: cheap cover, good sound.

Courtesy of ulterior epicure/Flickr

Boulder, Colorado - Frasca

A frasca is an old-school farmers' hangout in Friuli, Italy, but Frasca the restaurant, in a posh piece of Boulder, is a happy cult of new-world Friulian obsessives. Led by chef Lachlan Mackinnon-Patterson, they're riffing on the culinary heritage of the Italian region using Colorado's finest produce. If you put Frasca in downtown Manhattan, it would compete with the best Italian restaurants in the city. If you put it in the middle of Friuli, the locals would likely recognize a reflection of their better culinary selves and travel to pay homage, just as we do.

Courtesy of Poole's Downtown Diner

Raleigh, North Carolina - Poole's Downtown Diner

Poole's serves late on Saturday night, and even though you're stuffed with macaroni au gratin and buttermilk fried chicken, you ask the hostess what time they start serving Sunday brunch. It's the triumph of logic over satiation: You will have to eat tomorrow, and this is clearly the best food in town. The polished retro space—once an honest-to-God diner—looks just as good in daylight. The crispy catfish entrée is re-imagined as a BLT; the wine list loses none of its appeal. You'd have to wait till Monday to catch another dinner, which seems like not a bad idea.

Courtesy of Julian's

Providence, Rhode Island

For years, Providence has been heralded as the arts-and-culture center of New England—in large part by developers who dreamed of replacing the resident artists with Boston yuppies. Thankfully, that dream is dead. Because what Providence lacks in fratty Irish bars, it makes up for with a vibrant art scene and the renegade character of a bastard son.

Nights out begin at AS220, a downtown restaurant, gallery, and art studio—before moving across the highway to West Side bars like the pleasantly divey E&O Tap or Julian's, the epicenter of Providence's scene, where paintings by local artists deck the walls and everyone knows—and likely plays in a band with—everyone else.

The next day, you'll find the same crowd recovering down the street over brunch at Nick's. While you're waiting for a table, browse the shelves at Armageddon Shop, purveyor of Providence-made music and the city's iconic Technicolor silk-screened posters. The clerks may give you a funny look if you tell them you're "on vacation" in Providence; better to say you're just avoiding Boston.

Courtesy of Dave Cleaveland/Maine Imaging

Portand, Maine

You can walk anywhere in this town — even in December. Here are your marching orders.

Fore Street is one of America's best restaurants, but skip the dining room for a dozen oysters at the bar—where the barmen greet you as if it were your private club—and wash them down with an iced Maine vodka or a microbrew. You're a three-minute walk from the happy-hour crowd at J's Oyster, which offers a harbor view, oysters for $7 per half dozen, and Christmas lights that never come down.

It's a forty-minute ferry ride to Diamond Cove—the kind of island where George H. W. Bush pulls up on his cigarette boat. The lobster roll from the Diamond Cove General Store involves an entire lobster, steamed to order. Crisscross the island on footpaths (no cars are allowed) and, at low tide, trek across a sandbar to Little Diamond Island to catch the ferry back

Charleston, South Carolina

Mind-blowing shrimp 'n' grits just minutes from an awesome southern surf scene. To wake up under the ornate fourteen-foot ceilings of the Wentworth Mansion is to wonder if some southern heiress took you home with her the night before. The stately digs were once the city's finest home, and they make you feel not like you live in Charleston but like you own it.

Plus, you're within walking distance of the Hominy Grill and its unparalleled shrimp 'n' grits—a dish that earns its place on breakfast, brunch, and lunch/dinner menus, and makes you want to stretch out on your daybed at the Mansion.

Instead, follow signs to Folly Beach and keep heading east along the water until you're past the cars parked under the palmetto trees. You can sleep off breakfast in the sun, but between the temperate climate and generally mellow swell, it's a good place to pick up surfing—or to shred if you can. Southern hospitality extends to the water: You won't find friendlier locals on the East Coast.

America's Most Beautiful Landmarks

From soaring man-made monuments to jaw-dropping natural landforms, the U.S. has a wealth of beautiful landmarks.  

While the Eiffel Tower, the Taj Mahal, and Mount Fuji may be the first images that come to mind when we picture beautiful landmarks, the truth is that there are numerous dazzling sights—both natural and man-made—right here in the United States.

The past century-and-a-half has seen the creation of two organizations that work together to protect America’s national treasures. After the first national park, Yellowstone, was established in 1872 to protect the natural beauty of its world-famous geyser basins and wildlife, the U.S. National Park Service was founded in 1916—and now oversees the preservation of 58 parks around the country. Later, the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 created the National Register of Historic Places, to protect landmarks that specifically illustrate the heritage of the United States.

Not all of the landmarks on our list have been officially designated as state parks or National Historic Places. And, on their surface, many of them may seem dissimilar: one is an extraordinary (and still active) volcano, while another is a lighthouse; one is a mighty waterfall, while another is a centuries-old desert adobe settlement. But what’s amazing is that these landmarks, disparate though they are, share a home right here on U.S. soil. And all of them have played a part, however small, in our national history.

Niagara Falls, New York

More than 750,000 gallons of water per second thunder down this iconic 167-foot waterfall—the most powerful on the North American continent. The falls straddle the border between the U.S. and Canada, and though some argue that Horseshoe Falls—set on the Ontario side—is more spectacular than the smaller American Falls, the landmark has held a particular place in American......