Liking is for Cowards. Go for what hurts free essay sample

Having heard the terrible news, we realized these things could have happened to anybody. Forklaring: Fejl i verbalbojning. S? tningen er i pluskvamperfektum/perfektum(? ) og indeholder modalverbet ’could’. Modalverber skal altid folges af infinitiv uden ’to’, i denne s? tning infinitiv af verbet ’to have’, og nar man danner pluskvamperfektum skal man bruge en form af ’have’ + perfektum participium – her ’happened’. Derfor skal det v? re ’have happened’. 2. Rettelse: She has for the last couple of years tried to bring in new colours into their living room. Forklaring: Fejl I stavning. ‘Living room’ skrives i 2 ord. 3. Rettelse: There are many things to be done in the house before they can move in. Forklaring: Kongruensfejl. Der er ikke verbalkongruens, og det skal rettes saledes at verbet har samme tal som subjektet. ‘There’ har ental i verbet, hvis det efterfolgende egentlige subjekt er i ental, og flertal hvis det efterfolgende egentlige subjekt er i flertal. We will write a custom essay sample on Liking is for Cowards. Go for what hurts or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Da det egentlige subjekt i denne s? tning er ‘many things’, som er flertal, skal verbet ogsa v? re i flertal og rettes derfor til ‘are’. 4. Rettelse: Peter’s mother gave her son (some) good advice, but he did not take it. Jonathan Franzen directs his focus of the essay on the creation of narcissists by technological devices and what to do about this problem. He has many points as to why a lot of teenagers and adults have developed narcissistic tendencies because of this. The first point, which is crucial to the creation of this problem, is that with the technological advances in today’s society, many people have an excessive amount of devices that are created with the one purpose of satisfying our social needs and demands within seconds. When our devices can no longer fulfill this purpose, we simply replace them with some new ones. Second of all he explains how the way of communicating and making friends on social medias are much simpler and with less risks of rejection involved. We simply send a friend request and within a very short amount of time, we have added a new ‘friend’ to our big ‘collection’ of friends on Facebook. Another problematic feature on Facebook, according to Franzen, is the fact that we can ‘like’ each other’s photos and statuses. He says it is problematic because as he says: â€Å"Liking, in general, is commercial culture’s substitute of loving. † We substitute the more important and risky parts of life with ‘liking’. All these parts of the problematic behavior of many people, boils down to one problematic concept; narcissism. The narcissistic behavior is all about self-presentation and our technological devices are what is making it possible for people to present themselves in exactly the way they want to. This is also the reason as to why Franzen calls our technological devices for â€Å"enablers of narcissism†. This excessive use of social media and technological devices causes a feeling of self-sufficiency when receiving the wanted attention, on Facebook it could be in the form of ‘likes’ on ones profile picture. As Facebook, and other social media platforms, create a feeling of self-sufficiency for the narcissist and is the perfect platform for creating an appealing version of oneself without the risks of real life rejections, many people stick to the Facebook version of themselves instead of having to face rejections in real life, especially when it comes to love. As it says in the text: â€Å"The prospect of pain generally, the pain of loss, of breakup, of death, is what makes it so tempting to avoid love and stay safely in the world of liking. † He states that the ‘liking’ and other prospects of social media create a false perception of safety. He sees this as extremely problematic and therefore he has an important message to the readers: â€Å"Pain hurts but it doesn’t kill. When you consider the alternative – an anesthetized dream of self-sufficiency, abetted by technology – pain emerges as the natural product and natural indicator of being alive in a resistant world. † To take these risks and feeling the pain and troubles that are a natural part of life, is to live. To express his ideas and messages to the readers, he has made use of informal language. The language in the text can be considered colloquial language, as there is a frequent use of contractions. By being this informal he may be able to reach a broader variety of readers, maybe especially teenagers, whom he want to reach with his message. With his use of words he also directs his speech towards younger people, as he uses words like ‘Facebook’, ‘Liking’ and so on. He wants to reach young people and make them think about their use of social media. If he had just criticized the young people, he probably would not have reached any of the young people’s minds. Instead he identifies with the younger generations, which enables the readers to put themselves in his place and maybe give their use of social media some thought. He is actually even more specific in his message to the readers than just wanting to make them think. He has a clear opinion about this, which already is visible in the title: â€Å"Liking is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts. † Besides making the young people think about their use of Facebook, he wants to change their mindsets and make them take some chances and risks in life. Franzen is very concrete in his wishes for the excessive users of Facebook and other social media platforms and in his definition of the ‘narcissistic’ users. He is very subjective and one-sided in his speech. Therefore you might want to take a look at some of the positive sides of this case before making up your mind. Susan Krauss Whitbourne, Ph. D.  in Fullfillment at Any Age has a different opinion than Franzen. She is aware of the fact that narcissism can be a big issue, but in her contribution to this discussion in â€Å"Psychology Today†, she proposes the thought about narcissism, in small doses, having a positive influence on people’s lives. One of the many potential positive sides of narcissism she mentions is: â€Å"They seem better able to cope with anxiety, particularly in social situations. † Besides this point she mentions a lot of positive things about narcissism in small doses, like more confidence. And even though Susan Krauss may not be right about the positive sides of narcissism, you have to be careful with only viewing the negative sides of our progress in technology. We have endless ways of communicating and keeping in touch with family and friends even though we are on the other side of the globe, which is essential for a lot of people. Though social media may affect some people to the extreme, where they may develop narcissism, there can still be endless of positive sides of social media, and it should not be discarded.

Overrides in VB.NET - Using VB.NET Series

Overrides in VB.NET - Using VB.NET Series This is one of a mini-series that covers the differences in Overloads, Shadows, and Overrides in VB.NET. This article covers Overrides. The articles that cover the others are here: - Overloads- Shadows These techniques can be hugely confusing; there are a lot of combinations of these keywords and the underlying inheritance options. Microsofts own documentation doesnt begin to do the topic justice and there is a lot of bad, or out of date information on the web. The best advice to be sure that your program is coded correctly is, Test, test, and test again. In this series, well look at them one at a time with emphasis on the differences. Overrides The thing that Shadows, Overloads, and Overrides all have in common is that they reuse the name of elements while changing what happens. Shadows and Overloads can operate both within the same class or when a class inherits another class. Overrides, however, can only be used in a derived class (sometimes called a child class) that inherits from a base class (sometimes called a parent class). And Overrides is the hammer; it lets you entirely replace a method (or a property) from a base class. In the article about classes and the Shadows keyword (See: Shadows in VB.NET), a function was added to show that an inherited procedure could be referenced. Public Class ProfessionalContact ... code not shown ... Public Function HashTheName( ByVal nm As String) As String Return nm.GetHashCode End Function End Class The code that instantiates a class derived from this one (CodedProfessionalContact in the example) can call this method because its inherited. In the example, I used the VB.NET GetHashCode method to keep the code simple and this returned a fairly useless result, the value -520086483. Suppose I wanted a different result returned instead but, - I cant change the base class. (Maybe all I have is compiled code from a vendor.) ... and ... - I cant change the calling code (Maybe there are a thousand copies and I cant update them.) If I can update the derived class, then I can change the result returned. (For example, the code could be part of an updatable DLL.) There is one problem. Because its so comprehensive and powerful, you have to have permission from the base class to use Overrides. But well-designed code libraries provide it. (Your code libraries are all well designed, right?) For example, the Microsoft provided function we just used is overridable. Heres an example of the syntax. Public Overridable Function GetHashCode As Integer So that keyword has to be present in our example base class as well. Public Overridable Function HashTheName( ByVal nm As String) As String Overriding the method is now as simple as providing a new one with the Overrides keyword. Visual Studio again gives you a running start by filling in the code for you with AutoComplete. When you enter ... Public Overrides Function HashTheName( Visual Studio adds the rest of the code automatically as soon as you type the opening parenthesis, including the return statement which only calls the original function from the base class. (If youre just adding something, this is usually a good thing to do after your new code executes anyway.) Public Overrides Function HashTheName( nm As String) As String Return MyBase.HashTheName(nm) End Function In this case, however, Im going to replace the method with something else equally useless just to illustrate how its done: The VB.NET function that will reverse the string. Public Overrides Function HashTheName( nm As String) As String Return Microsoft.VisualBasic.StrReverse(nm) End Function Now the calling code gets an entirely different result. (Compare with the result in the article about Shadows.) ContactID: 246 BusinessName: Villain Defeaters, GmbH Hash of the BusinessName: HbmG ,sretaefeD nialliV You can override properties too. Suppose you decided that ContactID values greater than 123 would not be allowed and should default to 111. You can just override the property and change it when the property is saved: Private _ContactID As Integer Public Overrides Property ContactID As Integer Get Return _ContactID End Get Set(ByVal value As Integer) If value 123 Then _ContactID 111 Else _ContactID value End If End Set End Property Then you get this result when a larger value is passed: ContactID: 111 BusinessName: Damsel Rescuers, LTD By the way, in the example code so far, integer values are doubled in the New subroutine (See the article on Shadows), so an integer of 123 is changed to 246 and then changed again to 111. VB.NET gives you, even more, control by allowing a base class to specifically require or deny a derived class to override using the MustOverride and NotOverridable keywords in the base class. But both of these are used in fairly specific cases. First, NotOverridable. Since the default for a public class is NotOverridable, why should you ever need to specify it? If you try it on the HashTheName function in the base class, you get a syntax error, but the text of the error message gives you a clue: NotOverridable cannot be specified for methods that do not override another method. The default for an overridden method is just the opposite: Overrideable. So if you want overriding to definitely stop there, you have to specify NotOverridable on that method. In our example code: Public NotOverridable Overrides Function HashTheName( ... Then if the class CodedProfessionalContact is, in turn, inherited ... Public Class NotOverridableEx Inherits CodedProfessionalContact ... the function HashTheName cannot be overriden in that class. An element that cannot be overridden is sometimes called a sealed element. A fundamental part of the .NET Foundation is to require that the purpose of every class is explicitly defined to remove all uncertainty. A problem in previous OOP languages has been called â€Å"the fragile base class.† This happens when a base class adds a new method with the same name as a method name in a subclass that inherits from a base class. The programmer writing the subclass didnt plan on overriding the base class, but this is exactly what happens anyway. This has been known to result in the cry of the wounded programmer, I didnt change anything, but my program crashed anyway. If there is a possibility that a class will be updated in the future and create this problem, declare it as NotOverridable. MustOverride is most often used in what is called an Abstract Class. (In C#, the same thing uses the keyword Abstract!) This is a class that just provides a template and youre expected to fill it with your own code. Microsoft provides this example of one: Public MustInherit Class WashingMachine Sub New() Code to instantiate the class goes here. End sub Public MustOverride Sub Wash Public MustOverride Sub Rinse (loadSize as Integer) Public MustOverride Function Spin (speed as Integer) as Long End Class To continue Microsofts example, washing machines will do these things (Wash, Rinse and Spin) quite differently, so theres no advantage of defining the function in the base class. But there is an advantage in making sure that any class that inherits this one does define them. The solution: an abstract class. If you need even more explanation about the differences between Overloads and Overrides, a completely different example is developed in a Quick Tip: Overloads Versus Overrides VB.NET gives you even more control by allowing a base class to specifically require or deny a derived class to override using the MustOverride and NotOverridable keywords in the base class. But both of these are used in fairly specific cases. First, NotOverridable. Since the default for a public class is NotOverridable, why should you ever need to specify it? If you try it on the HashTheName function in the base class, you get a syntax error, but the text of the error message gives you a clue: NotOverridable cannot be specified for methods that do not override another method. The default for an overridden method is just the opposite: Overrideable. So if you want overriding to definitely stop there, you have to specify NotOverridable on that method. In our example code: Public NotOverridable Overrides Function HashTheName( ... Then if the class CodedProfessionalContact is, in turn, inherited ... Public Class NotOverridableEx Inherits CodedProfessionalContact ... the function HashTheName cannot be overriden in that class. An element that cannot be overridden is sometimes called a sealed element. A fundamental part of the .NET Foundation is to require that the purpose of every class is explicitly defined to remove all uncertainty. A problem in previous OOP languages has been called â€Å"the fragile base class.† This happens when a base class adds a new method with the same name as a method name in a subclass that inherits from a base class. The programmer writing the subclass didnt plan on overriding the base class, but this is exactly what happens anyway. This has been known to result in the cry of the wounded programmer, I didnt change anything, but my program crashed anyway. If there is a possibility that a class will be updated in the future and create this problem, declare it as NotOverridable. MustOverride is most often used in what is called an Abstract Class. (In C#, the same thing uses the keyword Abstract!) This is a class that just provides a template and youre expected to fill it with your own code. Microsoft provides this example of one: Public MustInherit Class WashingMachine Sub New() Code to instantiate the class goes here. End sub Public MustOverride Sub Wash Public MustOverride Sub Rinse (loadSize as Integer) Public MustOverride Function Spin (speed as Integer) as Long End Class To continue Microsofts example, washing machines will do these things (Wash, Rinse and Spin) quite differently, so theres no advantage of defining the function in the base class. But there is an advantage in making sure that any class that inherits this one does define them. The solution: an abstract class. If you need even more explanation about the differences between Overloads and Overrides, a completely different example is developed in a Quick Tip: Overloads Versus Overrides

Case Study - Just US Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

- Just US - Case Study Example Kicking Horse has planned to open 100% fair trade cafes in Nova Scotia to create further challenge for Just US. The company is dependent on grocery stores to sell their product despite being a strategic business unit. Retailers decide how they want to present product line offered by the company to customers hence the company has limited control over retail channel sales volume. Juliet suggested that the company should invest 7% of annual sales revenue in marketing activities rather than pre decided $20,000 for 2009. The company is following age old advertising channel complemented with news paper, magazine, boards, seasonal point of purchase advertising, CEDIF meeting and website in comparison to integrated marketing communication (for example digital marketing synchronized with other four elements of IMC) followed by competitors (Kitchen 114). The company needs to revamp existing marketing communication program in order to sustain in the competition. The company is operating with fo ur outlets whereas annual sales volume is growing at a rate of at not so attractive rate. The company needs to increase existing product line (all total eight types of offering) in order to attract more customers. Analysis of the Current Situation Competitors Main competitor for the company is Kicking Horse. Starbucks is also planning to enter fair trade coffee market while Loblaws (super market chain) is also challenging Just Us in fair trade coffee market. In accordance to the case study Kicking Horse is one of the major forces in Canadian coffee market. Kicking Horse is promoting coffee products with local name and they are also taking help of e-commerce to increase brand equity among customers. E-Commerce gave the opportunity to the company to expand business outside Canada while Just US is still operating in local market. PEST Political Government of the country influences the business in large extent in terms of providing certificate recognition for fair trade and other interv ening in import process. Economic It is evident from the case that country is under threat of recession hence premium pricing policy might not work for Just US to sell products to low income group people. Social Majority of the coffee lovers in the country gives importance on overall experience rather than enjoying only taste of coffee. Technology Competitors for the company are already using digital marketing to promote their product and introduction of web 2.0 is the next big thing to promote coffee brand. Porter’s Five Forces Threat of New Entrant Market entry barrier to enter fair trade coffee business is low and the business is also very attractive to earn revenue for new

Case study Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words - 8

Case study - Essay Example mission of the company is to provide airline services to the customers, while generating high amount of customer satisfaction through the intangible factors of warmth, friendliness as well as high quality customer service (Southwest Airlines, 2013.). It has to be said that the external analysis needs to take into account the various factors of the outside world that can seriously impact the business prospects of the low cost airlines. The external analysis can be best judged by evaluating the competitive business environment of the airline sector. The global aviation sector is highly integrated with a lot of macro level factors, which has to be taken into consideration while judging the business prospects associated with this sector. The high and tremendously complex level of integration of the multiple numbers of macro factors of various regions and countries has significantly pushed up the risk quotient that is associated with doing business in this particular sector. While studying the trends that have existed in the aviation sector all around the world, it has been found that the competitive scenario in the last decade shared an inverse relationship for the growth of the airline business all over the world. The analysis of the performance of the airline sector in the period of 2000 and 2009 revealed that the sector of global aviation was subjected to a net loss of more than 52 billion USD. The expert analysts of the aviation sector cited that the issues related to fragmented nature of the airlines sector all over the globe as well as mismatch in terms of demand and capacity are the main reasons for the loss based upshots. The experts have predicted that with the continued existence of these factors, there will be a significant impact in the global airline sector. It has to be said that these factors will trigger a loss of more than 52 billion USD in the next couple of years (Brueckner and Lee, 2010). Talking about the potential threat of the domestic

Two variables Speech or Presentation Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Two variables - Speech or Presentation Example Thus, we expect that our inequality will have the symbol ≠¤ or ≠¥ If our boundary line would be a dashed line instead, then we would have used the symbols After obtaining the equation of the boundary line, we will choose a test pint that will be true when substituted in the equation. This test point must exist within the required region for the values to be true. We chose the origin (0, 0) In order to find the maximum number of TVs that will also be carried, we substitute 60 in the inequality to find the maximum number possible that will satisfy the inequality. hence,substituting 60 for x, In order to find the maximum number of refrigerators that will also be carried, we substitute 200 in the inequality to find the maximum number possible that will satisfy the inequality. Hence, substituting 200 for y, Since 130 is not divisible by 3, we have to get a number closest to 130 that is divisible by 3. The number is 126. In order to obtain 126 on the left hand side of the inequality, we must adjust the number of TVs. We thus introduce a linear

Civil Engineering: Reflective Journal

Civil Engineering: Reflective Journal Civil Engineering Technical:  Learning Journal Stage 1: Understanding Me My first degree was in Civil Engineering. I choose the field of civil engineering because I wanted to explore and study the inner details of the structure, also my academic strengths was mathematics and I enjoyed doing civil engineering as the most of the subjects was dealt with calculation and structural concepts. I like studying at the university because of the professors were very cooperative. They give me understanding that how the difficult technical data can be easily understood which really helped me a lot when I start doing my job after the degree. I gain confidence in my university time as I always feel it difficult before my degree to be confident in myself. However, after building structural concepts in Civil engineering I wanted also to learn management skills in depth, as designing the building and running the project effectively at the site are two different fields so to cope with it I decided to take up an MSc. Construction course at Birmingham City University. While C ivil Engineering has been very effective at equipping me with the technical skills of the trade, I find it both useful and practical to be able to acquire the soft skills of management to become a good manager. I feel that in taking up this course, my career horizon would be broadened since I will not be limited only to the Engineering profession. The management component of the course would help me apply it cross functionally. It shall then open new career avenues for me as a professional. Moreover, learning questionnaire results suggests that I am pragmatist type of person according to it I can solve problem in a realistic way which suits the present conditions rather then obeying fixed theories, ideas or rules. Also my MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) results suggest that I am an INTJ (Introverted Intuition with Extraverted thinking). Stage 2: Learning from Practice Technical Knowledge The first situation which I want to share on the importance of technical knowledge was when I was assigned a new member of staff who was then tasked to handle a fairly important project even if he was new. The organisation I was working was one of the leading construction company of middle east and my role in the office was an assistant project manager. To train the new staff was quite difficult because I had to ensure that his learning curve was quite fast. If not, his project time line would be adversely affected. To be able to ably lead him, I realised that project management skills are a requisite. This necessarily meant being very familiar with the specifications of the project and be able to translate these requirements into a concrete work plan. Moreover, it is also important to be able to have the basic technical knowledge required with working within one’s industry. When the leader does not have such requisite technical knowledge, it becomes a basis for a sense of ine quity among those that he leads. For example, the staff say, ‘How come he was designated to be leader of the group, when I feel that I am even better than him? In this particular case, I felt that I exercised good project management skills since we were able to accomplish what we had set out to reach during the beginning of my assignment as interim superior. However, I was of course limited by my experience. For instance, in this particular case the project that my member of staff has been assigned with was something I was already familiar with, and so I did not have a hard time handling a similar project. In the highly technical aspects of a project, I am honest enough to approach someone who is knowledgeable in that aspect, and ask questions. I am most willing to enter into a buddy up or mentoring relationship with a senior or guru in technical areas, and for this particular situation I also seek help from one of my colleague who was working with me. I took advice from him o n particular matters and issues where I felt that I cannot dealt with it properly (Knowledge boundaries) and convey the information I gained from my colleague to the new staff who was under my supervision to enhance his skills. Organisational Knowledge In the middle of last year, my superior had to take an emergency leave for a substantially long period of time. This necessitated someone taking on the role in the interim. As a direct consequence of this appointment, I had to manage 3 staff who were formerly my equals. This introduced complexity in the way my colleagues and I related to each other. One factor which aggravated the situation was the fact that my superior did not have the time to endorse the role properly because of the flurry with which he had to leave. Although according to company procedures and rules the person who is leaving his post has to give proper understanding about the procedures of the company and the responsibilities he was dealing with to the new coming employee. At first, I felt overwhelmed with my new role, because this meant more responsibility. Moreover, I was very conscious of how my colleagues would react to my appointment. Two of the three staff who then became my staff for two months were happy w ith the arrangement; however one member of staff had very serious motivational issues that were directly brought about by my being appointed to the new post. This man had longer tenure and thus more experience in the company compared to me; a culture of entitlement which has pervaded in the company for a long time has created a strong expectation in him of being the next in line, in terms of leadership of the team. Quite obviously, I had a tough time influencing him to follow my lead to be able to accomplish the tasks in the workplan set for the month. The feelings of anxiety, ambiguity, and pressure all built up within the team. These were clearly attested to by the behaviour of the problematic staff. He had frequent absences, did not respond appropriately when called upon, and did not follow instructions as expected. It was a nightmare! What complicated the matter more was the fact that we belonged to different cultures. This colleague was from a collectivist culture (India), and this introduced peculiarities in the way he reacted to the whole situation. I had to be able comprehend why he reacted the way he did and be able to address issues from its roots. I felt that there was shortcoming in terms of clarifying the organisation that my superior has envisioned while he was absent. Given the circumstances that we were in at that time, there was little time for him to endorse the role formally and to orient my staff about my new role and what the expectations were from their end. Role ambiguity then resulted from the newly established organisation, causing conflict between me as an informal superior and the problematic employee who had aspirations of being promoted. Much had to be done from my end to be able to establish a sense of equity among the members of the team mainly through a thorough discussion of roles, tasks and expectations. First, I had to orient them about the situation, saying that this set-up was in fact only for the interim, until such time that my boss came back to lead our team again. Rapport building also had to be done so that even as the organisational structure was not formal in itself, I would have enough influen ce on them to enable me to deliver the set goals. Next, I had to call frequent meetings to be able to set clear goals. In carrying out the planning process, I ensured that each one’s objectives were specific, measurable, attainable and realistic. I also took the chance to be able to clarify the processes and procedures that we ought to follow during the 3 months that we were tasked to work together. The conflicts that I have encountered are mainly caused by personality clashes –differences in opinions and ideas that have complicated the set-up at the outset. Relationships The third situation which focuses on relationships is one in which I had to deal with the older staff who had aspirations of being promoted (same illustration as that of Organisational Knowledge). At that time, I was assigned as a team lead for 3 months, which caused conflict between the two us. Apart from the fact that he was older in terms of both age and tenure, I have also noticed that we were very different in terms of personality and this all the more aggravated the way we dealt with each other. The primary reasons for conflict were differences in the perceptions among the parties involved in the situation. For instance, I have an INTJ (Introverted Intuition with Extraverted thinking) profile, which precludes me from being expressive of my feelings and emotions. My staff turned out to be very vocal and confrontational about how they felt about the situation, and I felt it took a lot of effort on my end to be able to reach an equilibrium within the team. One of my weaknesses is not being too open to feedback and constructive criticism, which also did not help in establishing rapport with my staff. There was much that needed to be delivered during that period, by the team, and it did not help that my staff did not have the motivation to deliver these because of psychological and emotional hurdles. I tried my best to motivate them by matching tasks with people very prudently, considering both their strengths and weaknesses. I accorded them autonomy in doing things, and was only there on a consultative role, rather than dictating what they should do on a day-to-day basis. When I was asked by my boss to act as a team lead for 3 months with this difficult staff in tow, I had to make sure that I gave him and the rest of my team members effective feedback without sounding too bossy or authoritative. This was important since improving work performance and providing feedback about it should be a routine part of the performance management process. Feedback should be based on observed and/or verifiable work-related behaviours, actions, statements, and results. This type of feedback is called behavioural feedback. Effective feedback helps the employee sustain good performance, to develop new skills and to improve performance when necessary. I also ensured that each member of my team knew what I expected from him or her in terms of goals. Goals or objectives are statements of intent to achieve specific business results. I ensured that they were measurable, controllable and were directly related to such results. I realised that in setting goals or objectives, they should be specific and significant, measurable, achievable, results-oriented, time-bound, engaging, and reviewed. Apart from this, I ensured that my team should be given constant feedback to know how well they are doing their tasks. Feedback giving also increases the effectiveness of goal setting, feedback should be provided to the employee on his progress in reaching his goal. My feedback can include verbally telling my staff how he is doing, placing a chart on a wall, or displaying a certain color of light in work pace will result in goal attainment and a different color of light when the pace is too slow to reach the goal. I also learned that feedback increases performance best when it is positive and informational rather than negative and controlling. Situation outside of organizational perspective In my role as a family member, there was a time when conflict arose because of lack of role clarification. In our households, we have various roles to play which may be equally important: parent, son, father, and so on. We also have tasks to deliver to be able to sufficiently perform these roles. In one instance, my sibling and I had conflict because it was not clear who would prepare a particular family activity. Both of us were busy with our respective professions/careers and nobody seemed to have the time to prepare this social activity. They expected that I will handle all the arrangements of the activity myself as I am elder in my brother and sisters. Although I was not good in arranging and managing the big party functions at home. The matter come to critical point when at the time of the party function no formal or informal arrangements have been made for the coming guests and this create embarrassment in the family and i was made responsible for this situation. In the end, we were able to resolve the conflict by thoroughly communicating about the activity, specifying who would do what and by when. I realised through this experience the criticality of effective communication, not only within the sphere of the enterprise, but even within the realm of personal relationships. Assigning job responsibilities among participants before the time of any event is important and necessary. Wider learning and New Narrative Technical development. I have realised that one source of power and authority is the level of technical knowledge that one has. To be able to develop a stronger business sense, achievement orientation, and technical competence as well, I would like to have a mentoring relationship with a guru, or at least someone who is more senior than me who works in a field I am interested in pursuing. I want to learn both technical and soft competencies through this mentoring relationship. It would also be useful to attend seminars or workshops that focus on business acumen and strategy since these are among my weaknesses. I am also interested in pursuing classes that may sharpen my interpersonal relationship skills so that I may leverage more on my social networks and see things from a long term view. Areas which I need to develop. In the end, the situation which I have discussed above in technical, organizational knowledge and relationships has been very helpful in making me realise what I need to improve in myself. I realised that first and foremost, I must be able to understand myself to be able to better relate with others. In fact, because of the experience I got during my job, I have volunteered to take the MBTI just to provide better insight on how my personality affects the way I relate to others. Based on my personal assessment and feedback from others, my strengths as a leader (at least during the time I took on the post of my boss) include leading by example and being a strategic thinker. However, I have several areas for improvement which I may further develop, including being more imaginative and creative; being mature and developing a clear and convincing vision for the future; creating a performing organisation and team and being a team player myself; extracting val ue from social networks; pursuing goals long term; positive framing of events and people; recognizing opportunities for absorbing uncertainty; learning from all over the world; and seeing and preserving the whole venture in a long-term prospective. I am also very good at probing attested to my high score in being an investigator. However, a weakness may be not being too open to feedback and constructive criticism. Moreover, my MBTI results suggest that I am an INTJ. This suggests that I am insightful, conceptual and creative; rational, detached and objectively critical; am likely to have a clear vision of future possibilities; apt to enjoy complex challenges; am likely to value knowledge and competence; apply high standards to themselves and others; independent; trust their own judgments and perceptions more than those of others; and usually seen by others as private, reserved and hard to know. While I may be able to work more effectively with those who have the same profile, I must be able to adapt to those who have a different preference. To make this possible, I should be able to exercise situational leadership – that is, being able to assess both the needs of my staff and the circumstances to be able to manage or lead him more effectively. Many of the areas that I need to develop are not necessarily technical but have much to do with people Finally, after experiencing this situation, I have a more staunch desire to develop my leadership potential in the upcoming years. Everything that I will do or say as a leader will be greater than before in importance beyond all reason. Having the aim to develop and achieve objectives has geared me for success. I have enough motivation to exert all my best efforts to realise my capabilities and be able to use them in harnessing my skills. Aiming to be a leader entails a lot of effort; I should be responsible with my actions and be sympathetic with others. I should be prepared with radical changes in behaviours and become a critical thinker towards management affairs and issues. All people have their own abilities to lead, but not all are given the opportunity to lead, so, given the chance to lead I will definitely grab the chance of proving my capabilities in leading people and making a difference in future. After this experience, my belief that effective leaders are not born with the talent of knowing how to lead has been reinforced. To a certain extent, they absorb knowledge, they gain experience, they listen to and see the world around and beyond their organisation. They are also competent of providing the qualities of leadership required for particular conditions. There are various types of effective leaders and they are the transformational leader, the pragmatic leader and the charismatic leader; however these unique qualities can be mixed altogether in one person in different times and ways . I have learned that leaders can truly become transformational when they boost awareness of what is good, right, beautiful and important; when they facilitate to raise the needs of the followers in terms of self-actualisation and achievement; when they cultivate high moral maturity in followers; and when they push followers to go further than their self-interests for the benefit of their organisation, society or group. Embracing the theory of transformational leadership and having the objective of developing my leadership skills, I would like to see myself as a transformational leader, who can so meday rebuild and organisation without having to enforce personality but instead appeal to people, influence them and be able to gain their respect and trust ,As a leader, I would like to develop my ability to portray a clear vision, to see a realisable goal for the team’s action and efforts of accomplishing unified goals. I would like to be someone who will trust people, who will provide their needed resources and someone who will encourage them to go forward. I know I can lead, since everyone can learn how to lead by realizing the capability of each person to respond to the call of leadership and be able to make a difference. Having the will to learn, anyone can take the challenge of leadership to another level, because leadership can be practised in all aspects of life; it is a an aptitude that I can learn to broaden my perception, set goals and have a holistic understanding of human behaviour and act in full force to be able to get to where I want to be. Because of the serious time constraints which I have experienced, I realised that I should strive to live the time management principles that are taught by Stephen Covey to seriously develop my leadership potential. According to the third habit, a manager must be able to â€Å"put first things first† . In my line of work, I have to learn how to prioritize tasks based on sense of urgency and importance. Many times during that period, there were so many things, people and situations that easily distracted me from the task that I have at hand. I have observed this among the staff that I supervised. The phone ringing, emails, unnecessary breaks, among others. I am striving to make efficient use of my time by reducing if not totally avoiding activities that do are both not urgent and not important. These are activities that fall under Stephen Covey’s 4th quadrant. I also wish to emphasise those tasks which are important and yet are not urgent. In being able to constantly pri oritise these tasks, I will not have to cram or be up in a flurry all the time. Sometimes, these activities start out as not urgent, and yet because of procrastination, they eventually turn out to be urgent. This discipline of constant work (and not cramming) is important in effective time management. I should also be able to allot sufficient time for other facets of my life, including social, spiritual, and emotional facets, which are as equally important as my work or professional life Organizational structural development I have realized that organizational structure change and development needs to be effectively and constantly managed to ensure the team shall be able to deliver the results expected. I feel that it is very important for a successful leader to know how to motivate his employees. Why was the transition to my leadership difficult? The difficulty actually lies in intangible factors, particularly spelling out our team’s culture. I now learn that there is both a visible and an invisible organisation. The former focuses on the easily observable components of the organisation, including its tools, processes, roles, and other components within the formal parameters of the group. Underneath these tangibles are the more influential facets which make up our culture, namely, our customers, values, beliefs, taboos, stereotypes, traditions, language, and behaviours. In effect, when transitioning into this new set-up of leadership, I had to understand all these intangibles. If this is not done , then the leadership change would have ostensibly failed because only the formal structures have been moved for the change, but not those which are practically more important. I have seen how my staff have set goals and teams can influence work behaviour by influencing these goals. I encouraged participation in goal setting among my staff to increase commitment and acceptance of the new set-up. I also realised that individual goal setting was more effective than group goals because it is the impact of goals on intentions that is important. However, I also do realise that although participation in goal setting may increase satisfaction, it does not always lead to higher performance. As much as possible, I would strive to involve my staff in decisions that affect them and ensure that their targets are challenging enough to keep them motivated. Due to fact that the problematic employee had a different culture, I also learned that the way in which the social environment is interpreted is strongly influenced by the cultural background of the perceiver. This implies that the attributes that are seen as characteristic or prototypical for leaders may also strongly vary in different cultures. I had to exert influence and exercise leadership with prudent consideration of the culture of the staff. Finally, knowledge on the peculiarities of motivating employees from across cultures is critical if I am to espouse a multi-cultural work setting, And I will motivate people in future by keeping a deep look at their needs, for example some people get motivated if their salary is increased and some people like that their job responsibilities increase. I want to develop further my ability to create a strong sense of equity among my employees or staff in future. Through this experience, I realised that people choose the behaviour they believe will maximize their payoff. It states that people look at various actions and choose the one they believe is most likely to lead to the rewards they want the most. I learned that anticipation of rewards is important as well as the perceived contingency between the behaviours desired by the organisation and the desired rewards I also learned that since different people desire different rewards, I must, as superior, try to match rewards with what my staff want. On my end as an interim superior, it is important that I have a knowledge of the rewards that appeal to them so that I may match these with their attainment of objectives, and in future I will try to be more socialise among my employees so that I better know about their need and demands. References Bass, B. (1990). Bass Stogdills handbook of leadership: theory, research and managerial applications. New York: The Free Press. Covey, S. (2000). The 7 habits of highly effective people. Running Press Publishers. Hartog, D. N., House, R.. J., Hanges, P. J., et al. (1999). Culture specific and cross-culturally generalisable implicit leadership theories: Are attributes of charismatic/ transformational leadership universally endorsed? Leadership Quarterly, 10(2), 219-256. Hofstede, G. (1983). Dimension of national cultures in fifty countries and three regions. In Deregowski, J.B., Dziurawiec, S, Annis, R.C. (eds.). Explications in Cross-Cultural Psychology. Lisse, The Netherlands: Swets and Zeitlinger. House, R. J. (1995). Leadership in the 21st century: A speculative inquiry. In Howard, A. (ed.) The changing nature of work. San Francisco Jossey-Bass. Tichy, N. M., Devanna, M. A. (1990). The transformational leader (2nd ed.). New York: Wiley. Yukl, G., Van Fleet, D. D. (1992). Theory and research on leadership in organizations. In Dunette, M. Hough, L. M. (Eds.), Handbook of industrial and organizational psychology (pp. 147-197). (2nd ed., Vol. 3). Palo Alto, CA: Consulting.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: Neurobiology of a Disorder or

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: Neurobiology of a Disorder or a Difference? Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a phrase that has moved out of the realm of pure science or psychology and into common parlance. Like depression, the public has a general and vague sense of the "type" of person who may have ADHD, and has heard the name Ritalin, the main drug used in treatment, bandied about. As the name of the disorder implies, its symptoms present generally as "inattention and a combination of hyperactive and impulsive behaviors" (2). ADHD has only recently been able to be tangibly identified in the nervous system, and its' diagnostic criteria has continued to be revised. The discovery of specific physiological differences in the brain has enabled scientists to correlate the behavioral symptoms associated with ADHD with specific differences, mutations, or malfunctions in the brain. Though the scientific burden of proof cannot be ignored, the way in which we choose to define these differences as a "disorder" is debatable. Given both the scientific understanding of the sheer size of the nervous system and the more poetic notion of individuality, the neurobiological differences associated with ADHD are difficult to adequately define within the unlimited permutations of human personalities. The current official American criteria for diagnosing the condition of ADHD, according to the DSM-IV, is based on a child presenting at least six symptoms of inattention, hyperactivity-impulsivity, or both, that have persisted for at least six months (3). Additionally, some symptoms must have been present before seven years of age, and some type of social, academic or occupational impairment must result from these symp... ...//www.sciam.com/missing.cfm 3) DSM-IV diagnostic criteria http://www.mentalhealth.com/dis1/p21-ch01.html 4) fabulous paper by Bonnie Craymond linking ADHD and the creative personality http://borntoexplore.org/adhd.htm 5) article from "The Medical Post" by Harvey McConnell http://www.mentalhealth.com/mag1/p5m-add2.html 6) great graphic http://www.sciam.com/missing.cfm 7) pharmacology information on Ritalin http://www.mentalhealth.com/drug/p30-r03.html 8) list of myths and corrections about ADHD http://www.add.org/content/abc/myths.htm 9) article from "Time" by Claudia Wallis http://www.mentalhealth.com/mag1/p51-adhd.html 10)"Scientific American" article by Kristin Leutwyler http://www.mentalhealth.com/mag1/p51-adhd.html 11) part of Barkley article diagramming a psychological model of ADHD http://www.sciam.com/missing.cfm

HR data collection Essay

HR data collection makes company able to measure against it supporting workforce planning, monitoring progress and development, developing initiatives for generic cases. It identifies and analyses information to aid the organization in making ultimate decisions both beneficial to the organization and its employees. Two reasons considered closely. Through HR data collection an organisation can: 1) comply with legislative and regulatory requirements regarding equal opportunities, equal pay audits, recruitment, assessing skills balance, absence recording. 2) monitor training and performance for employees, assessing each individual employee for productivity and identifying training needs. That means assessing the productivity within the business. Being well informed about the workforce is the key to aim the ultimate goal of the organization. Data collection enables management team to make informed decisions about future activity. Two types of data collected and their support: 1) Attendances is useful to monitor and gauge daily working hours and monitor absences. That enables HR to manage regular absentees successful and deal with any issues the employee might have. 2) Organisational records which includes: staff turnover, absenteeism, recruitment documentation, learning and development. HR department can monitor staff level making decision about a further recruitment process. It is also essential collecting and updating employee records such as home addresses and people to contact in time of emergency. These information are helpful where the employee not to come to work without notice. Records can be stored: 1) Electronically through computerised system. In this way organization can keep information up to date easily and any information can be sent and received rapidly. It also reduce company costs and the amount of data can be stored with no taking up much office space and they can be sorted, found, moved and protected easily. 2) Manually in paper format. In this case the risk of corrupted data is less and information are accessible in any time considering occurrences of power cuts or electronic system crashes. Moreover problems with duplicates of the same record are usually avoided. Two items of UK legislation relating to recording and storing HR data: 1) Data Protection Act, 1998. It concerns all personal records whether held in paper or electronic format. The act contains eight protection principles specifying personal data must be: – Processed fairly and lawfully. – Obtained for specified and lawful purposes. – Adequate, relevant and not excessive. – Accurate and up to date. – Not kept any longer than necessary. – Processed in accordance with the â€Å"data subject’s† (the individual’s) rights. – Securely kept. – Not transferred to any other country outside the EU without adequate protection in situ. 2) Freedom of Information Act, 2000. It allows people to ask any public body for information on both any subject an organization has and themselves too. So that the act encourages organization to be transparent and, unless a valid reason, the organization must provide requested information within 20 working days. Through this act people can access to informations needed and ensure they are not exploited or used inappropriately.

Jimmy Hendrix essays

Jimmy Hendrix essays On his first album in 1967, Jimi Hendrix showed the world what an electric guitar can really do. Taking new and radical elements of the guitar such as feedback and distortion to newer and more radical heights, Hendrix was breaking some serious ground. He discovered that the electric guitar can take on as many textures and colors as the guitarist is willing and able to play. The amazing aspect of the his music was that no one but Hendrix was able to produce these sounds at this time. Some argue that no one since his death in 1970 has been able to play the guitar at Hendrix's level. The title track "Are You Experienced?" is groundbreaking as it starts with Hendrix turning the knob of a fader in a fashion that strongly resembles record-scratching. This sound is widely popular in a modern genre of music today called rap. Who know where the rap world may have been without this song? Throughout the song, Hendrix half-sings, half-raps over an irregular guitar rhythm about finding lov e at the bottom of the sea. Halfway through the piece, the drums fade out as Hendrix shows his guitar skills with a guitar solo lead. The notes have no steady rhythm, and the high pitched distorted notes distinguish it from a bass or acoustic guitar. Hendrix slides right into a confident groove punctuated by a guitar chord at the end of each rhythm. The timbre is very raw in quality, maintaining that low budget Rock n Roll feeling to it. His recording device consisted of only using tape, and furthermore playing it back through to create some of his sounds. The music in Are You Experienced? is pretty basic, consisting of just drums, bass guitar and electric guitar. The instruments drive the structure of the piece and the lyrics/singing conforms to this. Good song writing usually requires the artist to set music to form. Natural coinciding of rhythm of music and speech to shape a melod ...

Sem1 Equality Essay

Sem1 Equality Essay Sem1 Equality Essay Keely Hiraoka 7:30 Seminar 1: The Declaration of Independence Equality was one of the main reasons the colonists were unhappy with Britain. This is why equality was important enough to include in the Declaration of Independence. Although, the views on equality has changed over the years, by comparing the people of 1776's point of view to the people in present day America, the shifts in view can be seen more easily as well as the similarities.  In 1776, the people who held power and made decisions were wealthy, white, landowners. While the decision makers were open-minded, their views tended to focus more on themselves. In the letters between Abigail and John Adams, John cannot but laugh at the outrageous proposal by Abigail regarding rights for women. John also stated that many others groups also wanted more rights and were showing their discontent. However, if they refused to give women more rights, whom John deemed "more numerous and powerful", why would they give the children, apprentices, Indian s, and Negroes who were also causing a ruckus more rights? In the US Congress Naturalization Act of 1790, it is stated that only free white people who have resided in the United States for two years are allowed to be citizens after going through the legal process. In the Declaration of Independence, there is no mention of women, only men. In present day America, the views on the rights for women and ethnic minorities are not the same as they were in the past. Although there are still women fighting for rights in equal pay, the basics such as voting, education, own legal identities, and diverse career opportunities, have been resolved throughout the years. The United States is also trying to improve the equality of different races as well. Some colleges in America specifically look at race when admitting new students. By looking at the race of the applicants, colleges try to get a more racially diverse environment on campus.

Wind power for water desalination including a comparison with solar Dissertation

Wind power for water desalination including a comparison with solar power desalination - Dissertation Example Sew water desalination through the renewable energy resources can solve the problem. Wind energy has the most potential in the coastal regions of the world due to high availability of wind. Wind desalination utilized the RO, MVC and ED techniques to desalinate the sea water. RO method of desalination is considered the most efficient method of desalination. Wind desalination has many advantages over solar desalination, particularly at coastal regions. The advanced wind turbines have more efficiencies than that of the previous designs. On the other hand the desalination methods involving coupling of solar and wind energy are much efficient. TVC desalination method can couple solar and wind energy. Greece is facing the water scarcity and desalination is the most effective and efficient method to provide fresh water for the economic and social growth of the country. Some Greece islands are facing droughts and desalination is the economic solution. Greece islands have major coastal region s, which can be considered suitable to harness the wind energy for the desalination. However, solar and wind energy both can be coupled to enhance the gain and efficiency of the desalination plants. RO desalination technique is considered best to be coupled with the wind energy. Some disadvantages of the wind desalination are the noise, disposal of concentrated brine and disposal of chemicals. However, the advantages are more than disadvantages and thus wind desalination has a promising future. Wind power for water desalination including a comparison with solar power desalination Chapter 1- Literature Review Among the many problems, the human race is facing, the two major problems are the worst of all. The two problems are the environmental pollution and climate change and the second is the water scarcity. As the population is increasing the problems of fresh water scarcity and climate change is increasing are becoming more severe. In fact, the fresh water resources in the world rem ained lesser than what is demanded by the population, thus billions of people will have to suffer and have to drink contaminated or low quality water (Sen, 2008). There is a need to establish such systems that equally encounter the climate change as well as water scarcity. The system, thus, have to utilize the alternate resources of energy like the solar energy, wind energy, geothermal energy, hydropower, etc (Kalogirou, 2005). Earth has plenty of saline water; in fact, the major portion of the earth is covered with saline water in form of oceans and seas. In order to encounter the water scarcity, there is a need to treat the saline water to make it in the purely drinkable. On the major process is the water distillation that converts the dirty or saline water into steam by utilizing the heat from different sources and the then converting it back into the liquid state. All the impurities remain at the bottom of the container in which the water is heated. The other methods are the uti lizing the different layers of filters to file the impurities and adding chemical additives. The major process that has the potential of providing the necessary amount of water without worrying about heating the water is the RO process, in which dirty water or saline water is forcefully passed through different layers of filters. The layers provides a passage for the only water molecules, as the width of the pores in the filter is about in the range of nanometres allowing only the water molecules to pass through the filter. In nature such type of layers can in found in eggs and layer of ash. However, the process of RO consumes much energy having a purification plant of a grand scale, thus a large amount of energy is required

Water for Profit Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Water for Profit - Essay Example Sometimes a sense of urgency of solving this problem is lacking until it is too late to do anything and then suffer its adverse consequences causing untold misery and numerous unnecessary deaths. It used to be that water from any source is clean and safe to drink, whether from the spring, river, lake or artesian well. Prior to the advent of the Industrial Revolution, this was a case usually in most rural areas. But the rise of factories and urban centers occasioned by the Industrial Revolution forced many people to live in congested and confined areas with little or no regard to sanitation. Before Western medicine and scientific research took hold, epidemics were fairly common, most of them caused by dirty water that had water-borne diseases in it. A new paradigm must be pursued regarding water resources, that although it is renewable, it is a not inexhaustible resource. There are many instances and situations where there is plenty of water but none of it is drinkable due to pollution. This paper examines a modern phenomenon of water being sold for profit, an unthinkable situation even just a few decades ago. People no longer trust their tap water and resort to drinking supp osedly purified water in plastic bottles. Nobody can dispense with drinking water. The rise of big cities and urban centers is a sign of progress and development. These areas require modern methods of sewerage and the sewage system, together with piping potable water into homes and offices. In his book, author Peter H. Glieck lamented the war on tap water in favor of profits and big business to the utter detriment of ordinary people. Good public governance requires those in power to provide all the basic necessities in life, through utilities such as municipal water and electricity to power homes and businesses. Suddenly, public water fountains disappeared from most public areas and bottled water is