Probable reasons of why racists mitigate their views whenever possible Essay

Probable reasons of why racists mitigate their views whenever possible - Essay Example It is very peculiar to consider racism is an ideology where humans are separated into various groups in the belief that some people are superior because they belong to a particular ethnic or national group. It could be summarized that racism is the result of having negative judgments, beliefs, and feelings towards certain identifiable groups. But there are multiple folds to the idea of racism and though an act of violence against a black youth by few white neo-Nazi and the killing of a Christian priest by some religious fundamentalists look very different from each other but to its core they are all the same and inseparable. It is not surprising that there is a prevalence of racism; however, it is not so common that a person admits to being a racist. (Black, 127) The reason is that most people with racist views don't want others to label them as racist, so they mitigate their views whenever possible. In a general sense, racism is fuelled by different aspects like low education, unfavorable economic condition, social structure that inclined towards a specific religion or cult and most important of all- ill fated political motivation. This are few reasons why the well educated, financially well off people tend to be secular in nature though there are exceptions and sometimes with rapid political campaigns (like the Nazi movement in Germany during 1930's and 1940's by Adolph Hitler) these people start believing in a ideology that is basically racist in nature. Most people with racist views don't want others to label them as racist, so they mitigate their views whenever possible as this racism (like Nazism) comes in a package of camouflaged theoretic philosophy. Most people under the banner of democracy tend to believe that all human beings are equal and they should be treated equally. So they disregard themselves as raciest and seek asylum under some make believe theories. If one o f such example comes in the shape of Nazism the other side of the same story tells us the existence of such interesting phrases like 'white man's burden". (Atherton, 15) This phrase developed during the colonial era at the 19th and 20th century and this phrase is just a make believe theory so as to soften the harsh reality of racist manners those indicated the rise and sustainability of the 19th and 20th century imperialism. This phrase, 'white man's burden', is a very interesting clue to the statement that 'why racists mitigate their views whenever possible'. If we look closely enough, we would find that during the 19th and the early part of 20th century it was the times of building, developing and sustaining a huge empire, later known as colonies, by the major players of the European politics. It should also be noted that this period, the 19th and the early part of 20th century, was also the fallout period of the essence of industrial revolution. Industrial revolution freed the entrepreneurs from the usual bondage of traditional economy and for the general it was the time for a new social bondage free from the earlier pseudo- feudal economic system. But all these developments also brought in new learning and new ideologies where ideas of human rights occupied a major role. In this context and social structure it would have been very hard to digest the ideals of imperial expansions through the method of brutal strength. This hard pill of 'colonialism with brutality' needed some spooning with

Global City-Regions Essay Example for Free

Global City-Regions Essay Regional geography usually concerns the evident similarities and differences of the various regions of the world (Martin and Thompson 2006). One of the concerns of such field of geography is the ever-changing geographical urbanization throughout the globe. Urbanization can come in different forms, thus, in the article by Scott, urbanization in the form of expanding globalization that beset different regions is discussed together with the many effects and challenges that comes with it (2001). In the article, the author tries to indicate that rather than obliterate the concept of geographical divisions, globalization enhances the regional entities currently existing in society to the point that certain global city-regions are created and are faced with the challenges of coping with the mentioned globalization trend (Scott 2001). Article Summary One of the many fruits of globalization is the creation of wider political-economic regional units called â€Å"global city-regions† (Scott 2001, p. 813). In the so-called city-regions, new political and economic structures arise. Due to the many transformations and modifications that have happened during the centuries, a new system has emerged via globalization. Such condition of society creates four aspects that should be addressed by the new civilization. These four aspects namely are: (1) the increasing large quantities of economic activity can now occur in the form of long-distance as well as inter-border relationships between regional units, (2) the number of established multinational organizations is ever-increasing to answer such economic pressures, (3) previous regulatory functions of the national administrations are now being performed by regional units, and (4) the revival of past economic and political regions have sprouted creating new geographical boundaries (Scott 2001). The fourth aspect discussed by Scott was then further elaborated to give emphasis to its importance and significant consequences. It is in this elaboration of the fourth aspect that the concept of city-regions is introduced. The institution of globalization is therefore the initiator of the necessity of implicitly founding city-regions. Upon verifying the fact that global city-regions exist, the author now tries to analyze the political and economic structures that could possibly be established to answer the needs of the new city-regions. Two budding political principles thus appear; the first is a neo-liberal political view. In this view, government interference is at a minimum while economic activity is maximized through market organization (Scott 2001). This view is remarked as a risky one and thus should not be the structure that could be applied to developing city-regions. The second political principle which the author recommends is that of renascent social democracy which is also called the social market approach (Scott 2001). Such approach is appropriate for economic efficiency and at the same time can selectively commence intervention whenever necessary (Scott 2001). Furthermore, democracy will be an effective means of addressing the social and political tensions of a diverse population which is apparent in city-regions where most people try to earn a living, mainly due to its reputation as a site for capitalism and globalization (Scott 2001). As a conclusion of the article, the author tries to propose a new definition for citizen and citizenship. Since the new geographical partitions throughout the globe will be like those of the city-regions, new concepts on citizenship thus surface. Citizens will no longer be bound by birthright to a particular geographical location but rather becoming a citizen will be based on the functional contributions an individual possesses. Furthermore, citizenship will take on a whole new level. Individuals in the ever-increasing mobile world can freely obtain the title of citizenship as many as possible depending on the movements of each person as one travels through different city-regions situated in the vast world (Scott 2001). In the end, the author shares his afterthoughts regarding the subject matter. Similar to the varying consequences of globalization, the emergence of city-regions in society also has diverse outcomes. Summarily, though the emergence of such global city-regions revives the geographical entities and the need for distinctiveness, its materialization also poses new and fresh political and economic problems and challenges (Scott 2001). Throughout the article, the author tries to back-up his arguments and deductions as well as his predictions by citing different outside references. His use of examples such as naming international organizations and cities considered city-regions in the world strengthens the thesis of his article. Information cited from other authors also imparts the well-researched foundation of the author’s arguments. Organizational Analysis The organization and structure of the article is quite impressive. The author uses deductive as well as inductive reasoning in presenting and defending his thesis statement and arguments. The style of writing is also well-organized. This is evident on the flow of the whole article. At the opening of the article, the author communicates what he believes is going on in the society. He incorporates new ideas to explain what has come to pass, thus the use of the term â€Å"global city-regions†. Following his conceptual presentation, he proves the certainty of his inferences. To give significance to his article, he then recommends solutions and steps that can be taken to resolve the issues at hand. Furthermore, he offers the readers explanations to the current situation. In the end, he lays down his conclusions and deductions only after weighing the advantages and disadvantages of the solutions to the issues. His effort to refer back to the effects of globalization in geography is a very competent way of leaving a lasting thought to the readers. Thus, by doing so, he creates an appealing atmosphere whose effect is persuading and convincing. Furthermore, the urgency in his article is apparent by his use of situational events. It makes the reader feel the need to address the matter at hand. Personal Analysis Although the article is exceedingly academic and formal, the ideas presented by the author are quite revolutionary, thus making them interesting. It is enjoyable in a sense that it offers innovative concepts and principles not just in regional geography and globalization, but also on economics and politics. The principle of city-regions is a noteworthy contribution to the field of geography. Furthermore, his defense of the existence and importance of the study of geography brought new light to the study. This is the most striking effort the author has produced. By addressing the argument that geography is becoming obsolete, he established geography’s status in the academe and the sciences. Moreover, by his struggle to affirm the relevance of geography, he constructed a new concept in geography. In summary, he renewed the necessity to study geography, particularly in relation to that of the current worldwide condition of society. Relevance and Conclusion In connection to urban political geography, the article is actually all about it. The focus of the article is that of globalization which is a form of urbanization. The author thus tries to give a glimpse of the concerns of urban political geography. This is achieved by the by discussion of political principles that are appropriate for the newly-discovered global city-regions. By generating an image of regional geography, the author imparts an understanding of the subject. The article however has not yet been tackled in classroom discussions since it will be talked about in later topics in the course of the class. Scott reveals new conceptual geography that not only deals with regional and physical geography but also with political geography in the midst of globalization. Through conversing about the matter, the author revitalized the significance of studying geography and the varying concerns it deals with. References Martin, G. J. Thompson, J. H. (2006). Geography. Microsoft Encarta 2007 [CD]. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation. Scott, A. J. (2001). Globalization and the Rise of City-Regions. European Planning Studies 9 (7): 813-826.

William Wells Brown and the Jefferson and Hemings Scandal Essay example

William Wells Brown and the Jefferson and Hemings Scandal William Wells Brown wrote Clotel or The President's Daughter, a (fiction) novel based on the rumors surrounding Thomas Jefferson's affair with Sally Hemings, his slave. Brown learned of the scandal while working in several antislavery activities following his escape from slavery in 1834. Brown wanted not only to improve the social status of blacks and to support abolition through his writing, but also to encourage his readers to "develop a skeptical relationship to glorified stories of the national past" (Levine 15). He chose to write a novel that not only questioned slavery, but also questioned the validity of the principles that this nation was founded on. Rumors about the affair between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings were circulating on a small scale after Hemings gave birth to several children who were noticeably light-skinned. Visitors as early as 1796 to Monticello, Jefferson's home in Virginia, often noted, "Mr. Jefferson's [slaves] had neither in their color nor features a single trace of their origin" (Rothman 87). It was clear to many that the slave children at Monticello were the result of interracial sexual relationships. Not until James Callender made a public accusation in 1802, however, did the scandal make its way into the press. James Callender was a supporter of Jeffersonian Republican politics, and he began writing political columns for the Philadelphia Gazette in the 1790s. His views were more extreme than those of the political party that he supported, however, and his writing was untactful. He attacked politicians who belonged to other parties, and exposed scandals where scandals could be found (or created?). He was eventually fire... ...lgram, Jeff. "In Jefferson-Hemings DNA test, media found failing: Research director sees 'biggest science story' as widely misinterpreted." Packet Online. 29 Apr. 2000 <http://www.google. com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.pacpubserver.com/new/new s/images/philosophicock. jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.pacpubserver. com/new/news /4-29 00/jefferson.html&h=325&w=326&sz=26&tbnid=hIml z3nbCtYJ:&tbnh=113&tb nw=113 &start=11 &prev=/images%3Fq%3DThomas%2BJefferson,%2B Sally%2 BHemings%26svnum%3D 10%26h1%3Den%261r%3D%26sa%3DG>. Rothman, Joshua D. "James Callender and Social Knowledge of Interracial Sex in Antebellum Virginia." Jan Ellen Lewis, and Peter S. Onuf. Sally Hemings & Thomas Jefferson: History, Memory, and Civic Culture. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1999. "A Philosophic Cock," a caricature of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, 1802 (Milgram 1).

The Kite Tunner

In The Kite Runner, even though Hassan remains loyal, forgiving, and good natured, he is still the character who suffers the most. Hassan is a character who is discriminated against from the start of the book, till the very end. He is a part of a poor ethnic group called Hazaras whom are considered victims in the Afghan society. Amir and Hassan are half brothers, but because Hassan was a Hazara, he grew up in a hut as a servant working for his own father. Hassan understands his inferiority and accepts it, which causes other people to take advantage of him by betraying him. For example, even though Hassan always stood up for Amir, Amir left Hassan to get raped. Hassan was too scared to stand up for his best friend and believed that Hassan is sacrificing himself for Amir. Not only was the rape an attack physically, but it is also an attack on the victim’s emotions and dignity. In the Kite Runner, Hassan suffers the most pain both physically and mentally by living his life being betrayed, discriminated and losing his family. To start off, Hassan is a poor ethnic Hazara, he is considered inferior to the Afghan society, and therefore is discriminated throughout the whole novel. For example, Hassan and Amir both have the same rich father, but because Hassan was illegitimate and was a Hazara, he grew up as a servant in his father’s hut. With this in mind, Hassan is discriminated by everyone even his own family even the ones who Hassam didn’t even know was his family. Discrimination is so significant in his life that he has accepted the fact that he was born to be hated for his appearance. Hassan’s biological father Baba lies to Hassan and doesn’t even tell him that he is his real father. Despite the fact that Hassan gets discriminated upon, he still remains loyal and forgiving. Another example would be when the Taliban wanted Baba’s house and when they found out that Hassan and his wife were kuvubg u but alone, they wouldn’t listen to him when he tried to explain that Rahim Khan was the owner and they were waiting his return. The Taliban of course shot Hassan and his wife leaving Sohrab alone. The Taliban who show Hassan and his Wife were dismissed from their trial because they said it was self defence. They were dismissed because they have no proof that the Hazaras attacked the Taliban because no one would stand up for Hazaras. With this in mind, Hassan has died In addition, despite the fact that everyone knows that Hassan is good natured, he still is betrayed many times in the story mostly by his best friend Amir. In detail, Amir treats Hassan unfairly even thought he knows that Hassan will be good about it. For example, Amir left Hassan to get raped by Assef in the alley Hassan taught him incorrect meaning of words. Even after Amir betrays Amir, Hassan continues to serve him. and abandoning him even though Hassan saved him countless amounts of time. Amir only does this because When Assef asked Amir why he’s friends with a Hazara, Amir said that he’s his servant and nothing more. Amir didn’t know that Hassan was his half brother, which leads Amir to take advantage of Hassan. Rape is one of the events in the story that happens to Hassan that makes him suffer the most. In this story, rape is not just physically violent, but it is also an attack on the victim’s emotions and dignity. The fact that Hassan didn’t resist just proves his role in society and how he accepts punishment that is given upon him. The rape proves that he doesn’t care about his own suffering Lastly, Hassan suffers by losing the people who were once family to him. Hassan suffers because his half brother Amir is the reason why Hassan and Ali left the house. In fact, Hassan has it tougher than Amir from the beginning. Not only did he lose his mother, his mother rejected him at birth. Sanaubar had taken one glance at the baby in Ali's arms, seen the cleft lip, and barked a bitter laughter. [†¦ ]. She had refused to even hold Hassan, and just five days later she was gone. (29). This event has left Hassan motherless ever since birth. He is separated from his beloved Amir and Baba whom he spent his whole life with. Another example would be when his mother left and rejected him at birth

Woody Allen’s Sleeper Woody Allen’s Sleeper

â€Å"Sleeper† is a film, which at first glance, appears to be about nothing but making people laugh, but when examined more closely might appear to be a commentary on politics, consumerism and even love. This film is supposed to be Woody Allen’s take on a modern silent film, and there are definitely similarities to the silent film classics of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, most notably the physical humor that defined the slapstick sub-genre of comedy.Scenes like those with the giant produce or the awakening of Woody Allen’s character, Miles Monroe are absolute gems and caused me to laugh hysterically the first time I saw them. They also appear to only exist for the sole purpose of making the viewer laugh. If the main character in a film only believes in â€Å"sex and death† does that imply that the main point of the film is also sex and death? At first glance, the slapstick nature of the film appears to support part of this claim as the futuristic soc iety in which Miles has woken up appears to be obsessed with ways of increasing pleasure- both emotionally and sexually.We see a glimpse of this culture during the dinner party hosted by Luna in which the Orgasmatron and the Orb are introduced for the first time. The scene in which Miles is acting like a robot and trying to pass around the orb, but only drugging himself is hilarious and the introduction of the Orgasmatron is absolutely ridiculous since Luna says, â€Å"I think we should have had sex, but there weren’t enough people. † Suddenly, sex is something that appears overly complicated and has been replaced by machines.One of the two things that Miles believes in has been replaced by machines and technology. In fact, I argue that the other thing he believes in – death- has also been replaced by machines and technology. Miles has been cryogenically frozen for 200 years- obviously he should have been dead by now. Instead, technology has taken away the other thing he believes in. So what then, does Miles and consequently the film believe in? Obviously the future, in which Miles has found himself in, is run by a Totalitarian government led by a dictator whom he spends a large majority of he film trying to overthrow. Is the film a political commentary then? Certainly, Woody Allen spends a lot of time highlighting the police force and the rebel faction which has formed against the government. He even manages to throw in a few quips regarding the politics of 1973 America. We see the absolute uselessness of said police force and we hear Miles comment on how the rebels will simply replace the existing government in a cyclic fashion. But there still isn’t enough. Even the romance between Miles and Luna seems to be empty and almost like an afterthought.I just don’t think that there is enough substance to qualify this as a political film, a commentary on consumerism or even a romance story. In the end, I argue that maybe this movi e isn’t really about anything at all. Maybe it is simply a funny film that highlights screwball comedy and has some of the elements of a science fiction movie. Whether or not it is a movie with a deeper message, â€Å"Sleeper† is still a movie that I thoroughly enjoyed and a great introduction to Woody Allen.

How To Write a Perfect Persuasive Essay

How To Write a Perfect Persuasive Essay Perfect Persuasive Essay How to start writing a persuasive essay How to write an outline How to write a thesis for a persuasive essay How to write an introduction How to write body paragraphs Tips on body writing How to finish a persuasive essay Tips on conclusion writing Tips on essay revision Persuasive Essay Sample Essay writing is a challenging but mandatory task, and college students are expected to be well equipped to handle different types of essays. Essays are written for different purposes. A persuasive paper is written to help persuade, convince, influence or motivate the reader about a particular idea. The purpose of a persuasive essay is to inspire your readers to agree with your perspectives or viewpoints. How to start writing a persuasive essay When writing a persuasive paper, it is essential to keep in mind that the claims you present ought to persuade and convince your readers. Below are some tips which can help you learn how to start your perfect essay. Select a topic. Before you start a persuasive essay you need to select a topic. Pick a topic which you are familiar with so as to enable you to have points which are for and against the topic. Choose a position. When you have a firm stance, you will not only sound authoritative but also present your claims easily. Have a clear outline. A clear outline enables your essay to have a smooth and easy flow. Moreover, it enables you to easily jot down your ideas. Choose a stout, defendable stance for your thesis statement. Your thesis statement needs to take a strong active stance on the subject matter. This shows that you have a firm position and that you fully support your arguments. Conduct ample research. Sufficient research enables you to have enough material to substantiate your arguments. How to write an outline To learn how to write the perfect persuasive essay, you should have a clear and precise outline detailing your main points or arguments. Developing an outline is fundamental because it simplifies the writing process. Below is an example how you can develop a clear outline. TOPIC: Should college education be free for everyone? INTRODUCTION Generally explain the state of college education in the country. Free college education does more harm than good. BODY Free college education will lead to the quality of education being degraded. The essence or value of education will depreciate. Schools will also lack enough funds to develop. CONCLUSION Restate the thesis statement. Summarize your main arguments. Emphasize on your position in the topic. Free college education is indeed bad for everyone. How to write a thesis for a persuasive essay A thesis statement is vital in writing a persuasive. It presents your topic to your audience, affirms your stance on the topic and enables you to have significant reasons to support your arguments. To learn how to write the thesis for a persuasive essay, you ought to understand your topic and have a clear stance or opinion on the topic. Additionally, a strong thesis statement should be brief and specific. This enables your audience to understand what your argument is. How to write an introduction The introduction of a persuasive essay should capture the attention of the readers in the first sentence. The reader(s) should be motivated and convinced that your argument is indeed weightier than the counter-argument. While the introduction of a persuasive essay motivates and influences the reader(s), the thesis statement shows your position and perspective on the topic. To learn how to write the introduction and thesis for a persuasive essay, ponder on the following tips: Start with a hook. A hook captures the attention of your reader(s) and makes them interested in reading more. Have a clear and specific introduction. Readers need to know that you have a firm position and therefore, have something straightforward. Have a clear and precise thesis statement. This indicates your position in the essay. Include some of your supporting arguments in the introduction. This will help convince your reader your position. How to write body paragraphs The body of an essay is what builds up the thesis statement. It enables you to present your arguments which support your assertion in the introduction. Additionally, it is in the body where you convince your audience that your position on the topic is the most viable. Tips on body writing The body of an essay outlines a detailed explanation of your claims. When writing the body of a persuasive essay, it is essential to consider the following tips: Use clear and concrete direct topic sentences to begin each paragraph. This enables a consistent flow of your arguments. When you use a direct topic sentence, ideas keep on flowing which makes it easy for you to write your essay. Have brief, well explained and clear paragraphs. Having long paragraphs can lead you to over explain a point which makes your audience easily lose interest in your article. Use specific examples. Providing examples shows your audience that you understand your arguments. Use transition sentences. These empower your article with a simple and systematic flow. Have clear and precise sentence structures which will enable your essay not to have prolonged sentences leading to lengthy paragraphs. Lengthy paragraphs often lead to loss of focus. How to finish a persuasive essay When writing the conclusion of a persuasive essay, it is essential to note that your arguments are strongly supported and backed up by solid reasons. For your audience to be fully convinced and moved, you ought to have all your arguments well supported. Tips on conclusion writing In order to learn how to write a conclusion for a perfect persuasive essay, it is essential to put the following tips into consideration. Restate your main argument. Provide a summary of your main arguments and focus on the strongest one(s). Conclude with a statement which calls your audience to action. Tips on essay revision Perfect essay writing requires the provision of quality work. Revising your paper enables you to correct the errors you come across so as to modify your article and make it exceptional. Below are some tips to consider when revising your persuasive essay. Ensure that your position is well presented and that your arguments are supported by appropriate specifics. Certify that your introduction is appealing to your audience and that it keeps them reading. Have clear and brief body paragraphs which offer strong and convincing evidence to support your arguments. The transitions between sentences ought to show your reader(s) that you fully comprehend your position. Ensure that your conclusion expresses the significance of your position and that it urges your audience to meditate and act. Persuasive Essay Sample Should college education be free for everyone? The state and quality of college education in the country is indeed in good condition. People often argue that free college education will benefit the less fortunate students and enable them to go study. However, the truth is that free college education is more disadvantageous than it is advantageous. It will do more harm than good. It is my belief that the introduction of the free college education will degrade the quality of education. Schools develop and support themselves from the fees that students pay. Money from state and federal governments is honestly not enough to ensure that schools are able to cater for themselves. Introducing free college education will strip schools off the funds which they are currently using to support themselves. The essence of education will also reduce or be destroyed. The free college education provides an opportunity for everyone to go to school. However, the real value of education will be lost in the way as everyone will afford to go to school even if they do not work as hard for it. In conclusion, the essence of a perfect persuasive essay is to demonstrate that certain claims are more valid than others. Perfect persuasive essay writing necessitates that your arguments motivate and convince your audience that you have a firm stance and urges them to think and act. We hope you will find this article helpful.

Pat Miranda Accounting Essays

Pat Miranda Accounting Essays Pat Miranda Accounting Essay Pat Miranda Accounting Essay After returning from a seminar on the choice of activity level in the predetermined overhead rate, Pat Miranda arranged a meeting with the production manager and his assistant to discuss possible new ways on how to compute the predetermined rate. Using the new way they were able to lower the manufacture overhead (for $25 to $20) and add an entry called â€Å"cost of unused capacity† to the budget income statement. The use of the new method raised some questions about how appropriate it would be and also if it is ethical to manipulate the numbers in the statements. 3. The new method based system will affect net operating income in a negative way. For the same amount of units sold we have $50. 000 less income with the new method. 4. The new method based system will make it harder to perform the â€Å"hat trick,† because by using the Cost of Unused Capacity, the unused capacity is much more visible to management. If they pull the â€Å"hat trick† they have to produce a few extra thousands of products to get the desirable $500. 000 in net income. 5. The concept of the â€Å"hat trick† is not a very ethical practice, because it allows the numbers to be manipulated very easily to produce the numbers that are desired in sales. This leads the owners of the company to believe that the company’s profits are higher than they really are due to the building of a higher inventory. The â€Å"hat trick† and other programs like it lead to a set of numbers in the business that do not really tell the true facts, but rather they condition the numbers to say that things are better or worse than they really are. These manipulated numbers can lead to problems and can cause owners and management to make decisions that they believe are sound, but based on the true numbers are not good decisions.

How to Overcome Makeshift Marketing CoSchedule Buyers Guide

How to Overcome Makeshift Marketing Buyers Guide Marketing  departments are busy places. Everyone has too much to do, and not enough time. Plus, there are always competing deadlines to meet, metrics to monitor, and channels to manage. None of this makes keeping teams organized any easier. In fact, sometimes, it feels downright impossible. Naturally, most marketers rely on a variety of tools to keep things under control. From planning to execution to measurement, there’s a tool or ten for everything. They’re supposed to make life easier. They’re supposed to make marketing management feel, well, manageable. Except they don’t. Not as well as you’d like, at least. Everything feels scattered, and your disjointed workflows don’t seem to work at all. So, what gives? In an ironic twist, your tools could actually be killing your marketing team’s productivity. Fortunately, this problem has a name, and you can fix it. How to Overcome Makeshift Marketing: The Buyers GuideWhat Is Makeshift Marketing (And How Does It Hold You Back)? Marketers often do marketing with non-marketing tools. Like spreadsheets. Too many spreadsheets. For everything. Or, they choose single-solution tools that do one thing †¦ but don’t integrate with other software. This is what we call makeshift marketing, and it’s no way to work. What makes this approach so painful? It makes developing efficient workflows impossible. Switching between multiple tools that don’t sync with each other leads to a lot of tab-switching. It necessitates a lot of inefficient hacks and workarounds. Tedious copy-and-paste processes aren’t fun, and they leave too much room for error. It makes collaboration feel like a trip to the dentist. Clunky tools lead to clunky processes that lead to dreading going into the office. Fortunately, there’s a better solution out there: . Free Pitch Deck: Are you sold on but need help educating your team? Grab your free slide deck to pitch to your boss. What Is ? is the  industry-leading marketing suite  that brings all your content, social, asset management, email, and marketing project management tools together on one unified platform. It’s mission control for your marketing team, making it easy to plan and execute your entire marketing strategy. In short, it’s the all-in-one answer to makeshift marketing. Could makeshift marketing be blocking your marketing teams productivity?Who Is For? Anyone in marketing who needs to get organized. That includes †¦ Professional Marketing Teams Keeping in-house teams focused and collaborating effectively isn’t easy. With , managing everything from small projects to full-fledged multi-channel campaigns isn’t only possible, but it might actually be fun. Learn More: For Professional Marketers: One Calendar to Rule Them All Marketing Agencies Instead of managing multiple clients with multiple tools, get all your clients into . You can finally stop trying to manage tons of different platforms and get everyone on the same page. Learn More: For Agencies: Every Client. Every Project. One Platform. Small Businesses SMBs have enough things to worry about, without worrying about keeping marketing organized. Our marketing calendar keeps things together so business owners and small business marketers can spend their limited resources doing work that matters. Learn More: For Small Business: The #1 Marketing Calendar For Your Growing Business and Keeping Your Sanity Solopreneuers When you’re a solo marketer, you’re responsible for everything that needs to get done. Fortunately, there’s one tool built to keep your life in order, so you can focus on building your business. Learn More: For Solopreneuers: The #1 Editorial Calendar For the Solopreneuer Who Does Everything Universities When managing marketing campaigns and communications across multiple departments, there’s a lot that can do wrong. That’s why top schools like American University and the University of Georgia depend on to keep everything organized in one place. Learn More: For Higher Education: Mission Control For Higher Education Teams Why Use ? Most marketing teams use a wide array of tools to get work done: Editorial calendars  to plan pieces and content themes in advance. Google Calendar  to manage meetings and events. Social media management platforms  to wrangle multiple networks. Email platforms  to schedule and deliver newsletters. Spreadsheets  to build reports. More spreadsheets  to track project progress. Yet another spreadsheet  to store future marketing ideas. †¦ too †¦ many †¦ spreadsheets. You have nightmares about endless color-coded columns. Analytics platforms  to prove your work is driving results. Communication apps  to keep inner-office chatter out of your inbox. Numerous publishing and execution tools  for different types of content. Note-taking apps  for storing memos and documentation. Project management tools  to keep creative teams organized. If that sounds like a lot of software, this list is only scratching the surface. Here’s a visualization of the martech landscape from back in 2011: Of course, the marketing industry has matured since then. The number of tools we have to choose from has grown accordingly. Here’s a similar visualization from 2017: That is an overwhelming number of tools and services to choose from. If looking at this makes you feel like popping an aspirin, you’re not alone. But, the market has grown because marketer’s needs have grown. We have more options for more specialized solutions than ever. In theory, this should make life easier, right? The answer is a resounding â€Å"kind of.† Marketers are still left using tools that weren’t made with marketers in mind. To make matters worse, purpose-built marketing solutions often don’t integrate with one another, either. This means: Marketing tool stacks are disconnected. When tools can’t talk to each other, keeping things organized gets difficult. Inefficient tools lead to inefficient work. For marketers, time is money, and time wasted due to tools that don’t scale is unacceptable. Managing projects and campaigns across multiple tools increases odds for errors. Copying and pasting content out of a static calendar into a CMS? Tracking progress between a spreadsheet and two team management apps? The more manual effort required to move data, the more opportunities exist for things to go wrong. Referring back to the marketing tool map above, it all leads to one question: Do you really need (at least) one tool from each of those product categories? With so much work to do and software to manage, marketing teams need one version of truth to guide them. Something that can consolidate the tools they use most day-to-day. A platform that’s actually built for marketers. One that can replace copy-and-paste processes and end the tyranny of countless spreadsheets. That platform is . Im replacing my copy-and-paste marketing processes with @How Can Help Beat Makeshift Marketing? is built to empower teams to push past makeshift marketing for good. Let’s take a deep dive into some key areas where streamlining marketing workflows with makes more sense than doing things the old-school way. One Place to Start Every Project With a makeshift marketing approach, projects live in several different tools. That makes it tough to know where to look, for what, and when. With as your team’s go-to marketing hub, you have one place to start planning every project and campaign. Visualize your entire marketing strategy. With Custom Content Types, mapping out every piece of content you’re working on it simple. See every project and campaign on one calendar. becomes your marketing team’s single version of truth  to see what’s ahead. Stop switching tabs between multiple apps. Eliminate confusion over which projects live in which app. Bring them all home into one cohesive marketing hub. With @as your team’s go-to marketing hub, you have one place to start planning everyOne Place to Manage Every Workflow From planning to execution, managing marketing workflows  isn’t easy. There are plenty of ways things can go wrong. Odds are, you’ve experienced a lot of them yourself. Part of the problem stems from tools that aren’t built to support smart marketing workflows at all. That’s why is designed to organize every phase of your marketing processes. Communicate. With Discussion Threads, you can keep all communication attached to every project and piece of content. No more missing messages or email threads. Collaborate. Pass comments, exchange files, and manage version control. Create. With key integrations, you can execute everything in one place. @is designed to organize every phase of your marketing processes.Content: One Unified Editorial Calendar. enables teams to manage every project on one calendar. This gives everyone full visibility into all your marketing efforts. No more missed deadlines or last-minute surprises. It’s also easy to drag and drop entries from one day to another. Plus, with our WordPress integration, you can schedule blog posts to publish automatically. Write content in Word, Google Docs, or the built-in text editor, and you can even convert your docs directly into WordPress posts, or convert and download them as HTML (to be imported into another CMS). @enables teams to manage every project on one calendar. Heres how:Social Media Marketing: Schedule. Publish. Measure. Bringing your content and social media calendars together yields several benefits: Manage all your content in one place. Create content and schedule social promotion, together. Curate content from anywhere on the web with our Chrome extension. Stop switching between multiple platforms. You need to know what’s publishing, and when, regardless of the medium or channel. Instead of managing content in one place and scheduling social posts in another, bringing both under one roof makes it easier to get the full picture on your publishing schedule. Save time automating scheduling and reporting. Use ReQueue  to reshare top performing posts. Use Best Time Scheduling  to post at optimal times without manual effort. Use deep social analytics  to measure performance and produce visually appealing reports. Stay on top of all your social media conversations with Social Conversations Inbox. Reply, message and engage directly from your account. Instead of using multiple tools, manually building posting schedules and reports, you can save tons of time automating everything with a purpose-built platform. Plus, with our mobile app, you can easily manage social scheduling no matter where you are. @helps marketing teams save time creating, scheduling, and measuring social media postsMarketing Project Management: Stop Herding Cats. Get More Done. Creative professionals are hired because they’re good at what they do. Sometimes, they’re not the best at getting organized, though. In fact, it’s not unusual to see a writer or designer with a desk that looks like this: What looks like chaos, is actually a sign of a genius at work (or, at least, that’s what they’ll say). 😉 Now, this isn’t to say marketers are inherently disorganized. Far from it. But, even the most coordinated amongst us need tools to keep our work days, weeks, and months straight. Marketing project managers know this. And, if you’ve ever tried managing multiple teams or clients in numerous toolsets (a common headache for agencies and enterprises, in particular), you know the pain is real. Instead, is made to make corralling creatives and marketers easier. Here’s how we do it: Organize complex campaigns with Marketing Campaigns. Keep every piece of every campaign organized on one visual timeline. Use Task Templates  to build project checklists. Maintain consistent workflows  with these reusable checklists. Plus, approve (or reject) work with Task Approvals. Measure productivity with Team Performance Reports. See who’s crushing it, who’s falling behind, and adjust workloads accordingly. Plus, with our Zapier integration, you can easily sync popular project management tools including Asana, Trello, Basecamp, and Wrike with your calendar. Email Marketing: Schedule Newsletters With Your Favorite Email Service Provider. Email marketing drives 4,000% ROI. With Email Marketing from , you can: Seamlessly integrate with your *favorite* email marketing platform.  You already have a kick-a$$ email platform you know and love, so why give it up? With Email Marketing, you can easily connect your preferred email platform to with just a couple clicks. Write click-worthy email subject lines†¦every time.  With Email Marketing, you can use ’s *exclusive* Email Subject Line Tester to optimize and perfect every subject line to drive  more  opens,  more  clicks, and  more  conversions. Get full visibility into your ENTIRE  marketing strategy.  Say â€Å"buh-bye† to disjointed marketing content (and constantly jumping from screen to screen). With Email Marketing, it’s easy to see how your email campaigns relate to the rest of your marketing strategy and quickly make adjustments if necessary. And when it’s this easy to manage + optimize your already-powerful email marketing strategy†¦ †¦imagine how much  more  ROI you can drive with everything in one place.  Ã°Å¸Ëœâ€° currently integrates with MailChimp, Constant Contact, Active Campaign, and Campaign Monitor. How to Overcome Makeshift Marketing Buyers Guide Marketing  departments are busy places. Everyone has too much to do, and not enough time. Plus, there are always competing deadlines to meet, metrics to monitor, and channels to manage. None of this makes keeping teams organized any easier. In fact, sometimes, it feels downright impossible. Naturally, most marketers rely on a variety of tools to keep things under control. From planning to execution to measurement, there’s a tool or ten for everything. They’re supposed to make life easier. They’re supposed to make marketing management feel, well, manageable. Except they don’t. Not as well as you’d like, at least. Everything feels scattered, and your disjointed workflows don’t seem to work at all. So, what gives? In an ironic twist, your tools could actually be killing your marketing team’s productivity. Fortunately, this problem has a name, and you can fix it. How to Overcome Makeshift Marketing: The Buyers GuideWhat Is Makeshift Marketing (And How Does It Hold You Back)? Marketers often do marketing with non-marketing tools. Like spreadsheets. Too many spreadsheets. For everything. Or, they choose single-solution tools that do one thing †¦ but don’t integrate with other software. This is what we call makeshift marketing, and it’s no way to work. What makes this approach so painful? It makes developing efficient workflows impossible. Switching between multiple tools that don’t sync with each other leads to a lot of tab-switching. It necessitates a lot of inefficient hacks and workarounds. Tedious copy-and-paste processes aren’t fun, and they leave too much room for error. It makes collaboration feel like a trip to the dentist. Clunky tools lead to clunky processes that lead to dreading going into the office. Fortunately, there’s a better solution out there: . Free Pitch Deck: Are you sold on but need help educating your team? Grab your free slide deck to pitch to your boss. What Is ? is the  industry-leading marketing suite  that brings all your content, social, asset management, email, and marketing project management tools together on one unified platform. It’s mission control for your marketing team, making it easy to plan and execute your entire marketing strategy. In short, it’s the all-in-one answer to makeshift marketing. Could makeshift marketing be blocking your marketing teams productivity?Who Is For? Anyone in marketing who needs to get organized. That includes †¦ Professional Marketing Teams Keeping in-house teams focused and collaborating effectively isn’t easy. With , managing everything from small projects to full-fledged multi-channel campaigns isn’t only possible, but it might actually be fun. Learn More: For Professional Marketers: One Calendar to Rule Them All Marketing Agencies Instead of managing multiple clients with multiple tools, get all your clients into . You can finally stop trying to manage tons of different platforms and get everyone on the same page. Learn More: For Agencies: Every Client. Every Project. One Platform. Small Businesses SMBs have enough things to worry about, without worrying about keeping marketing organized. Our marketing calendar keeps things together so business owners and small business marketers can spend their limited resources doing work that matters. Learn More: For Small Business: The #1 Marketing Calendar For Your Growing Business and Keeping Your Sanity Solopreneuers When you’re a solo marketer, you’re responsible for everything that needs to get done. Fortunately, there’s one tool built to keep your life in order, so you can focus on building your business. Learn More: For Solopreneuers: The #1 Editorial Calendar For the Solopreneuer Who Does Everything Universities When managing marketing campaigns and communications across multiple departments, there’s a lot that can do wrong. That’s why top schools like American University and the University of Georgia depend on to keep everything organized in one place. Learn More: For Higher Education: Mission Control For Higher Education Teams Why Use ? Most marketing teams use a wide array of tools to get work done: Editorial calendars  to plan pieces and content themes in advance. Google Calendar  to manage meetings and events. Social media management platforms  to wrangle multiple networks. Email platforms  to schedule and deliver newsletters. Spreadsheets  to build reports. More spreadsheets  to track project progress. Yet another spreadsheet  to store future marketing ideas. †¦ too †¦ many †¦ spreadsheets. You have nightmares about endless color-coded columns. Analytics platforms  to prove your work is driving results. Communication apps  to keep inner-office chatter out of your inbox. Numerous publishing and execution tools  for different types of content. Note-taking apps  for storing memos and documentation. Project management tools  to keep creative teams organized. If that sounds like a lot of software, this list is only scratching the surface. Here’s a visualization of the martech landscape from back in 2011: Of course, the marketing industry has matured since then. The number of tools we have to choose from has grown accordingly. Here’s a similar visualization from 2017: That is an overwhelming number of tools and services to choose from. If looking at this makes you feel like popping an aspirin, you’re not alone. But, the market has grown because marketer’s needs have grown. We have more options for more specialized solutions than ever. In theory, this should make life easier, right? The answer is a resounding â€Å"kind of.† Marketers are still left using tools that weren’t made with marketers in mind. To make matters worse, purpose-built marketing solutions often don’t integrate with one another, either. This means: Marketing tool stacks are disconnected. When tools can’t talk to each other, keeping things organized gets difficult. Inefficient tools lead to inefficient work. For marketers, time is money, and time wasted due to tools that don’t scale is unacceptable. Managing projects and campaigns across multiple tools increases odds for errors. Copying and pasting content out of a static calendar into a CMS? Tracking progress between a spreadsheet and two team management apps? The more manual effort required to move data, the more opportunities exist for things to go wrong. Referring back to the marketing tool map above, it all leads to one question: Do you really need (at least) one tool from each of those product categories? With so much work to do and software to manage, marketing teams need one version of truth to guide them. Something that can consolidate the tools they use most day-to-day. A platform that’s actually built for marketers. One that can replace copy-and-paste processes and end the tyranny of countless spreadsheets. That platform is . Im replacing my copy-and-paste marketing processes with @How Can Help Beat Makeshift Marketing? is built to empower teams to push past makeshift marketing for good. Let’s take a deep dive into some key areas where streamlining marketing workflows with makes more sense than doing things the old-school way. One Place to Start Every Project With a makeshift marketing approach, projects live in several different tools. That makes it tough to know where to look, for what, and when. With as your team’s go-to marketing hub, you have one place to start planning every project and campaign. Visualize your entire marketing strategy. With Custom Content Types, mapping out every piece of content you’re working on it simple. See every project and campaign on one calendar. becomes your marketing team’s single version of truth  to see what’s ahead. Stop switching tabs between multiple apps. Eliminate confusion over which projects live in which app. Bring them all home into one cohesive marketing hub. With @as your team’s go-to marketing hub, you have one place to start planning everyOne Place to Manage Every Workflow From planning to execution, managing marketing workflows  isn’t easy. There are plenty of ways things can go wrong. Odds are, you’ve experienced a lot of them yourself. Part of the problem stems from tools that aren’t built to support smart marketing workflows at all. That’s why is designed to organize every phase of your marketing processes. Communicate. With Discussion Threads, you can keep all communication attached to every project and piece of content. No more missing messages or email threads. Collaborate. Pass comments, exchange files, and manage version control. Create. With key integrations, you can execute everything in one place. @is designed to organize every phase of your marketing processes.Content: One Unified Editorial Calendar. enables teams to manage every project on one calendar. This gives everyone full visibility into all your marketing efforts. No more missed deadlines or last-minute surprises. It’s also easy to drag and drop entries from one day to another. Plus, with our WordPress integration, you can schedule blog posts to publish automatically. Write content in Word, Google Docs, or the built-in text editor, and you can even convert your docs directly into WordPress posts, or convert and download them as HTML (to be imported into another CMS). @enables teams to manage every project on one calendar. Heres how:Social Media Marketing: Schedule. Publish. Measure. Bringing your content and social media calendars together yields several benefits: Manage all your content in one place. Create content and schedule social promotion, together. Curate content from anywhere on the web with our Chrome extension. Stop switching between multiple platforms. You need to know what’s publishing, and when, regardless of the medium or channel. Instead of managing content in one place and scheduling social posts in another, bringing both under one roof makes it easier to get the full picture on your publishing schedule. Save time automating scheduling and reporting. Use ReQueue  to reshare top performing posts. Use Best Time Scheduling  to post at optimal times without manual effort. Use deep social analytics  to measure performance and produce visually appealing reports. Stay on top of all your social media conversations with Social Conversations Inbox. Reply, message and engage directly from your account. Instead of using multiple tools, manually building posting schedules and reports, you can save tons of time automating everything with a purpose-built platform. Plus, with our mobile app, you can easily manage social scheduling no matter where you are. @helps marketing teams save time creating, scheduling, and measuring social media postsMarketing Project Management: Stop Herding Cats. Get More Done. Creative professionals are hired because they’re good at what they do. Sometimes, they’re not the best at getting organized, though. In fact, it’s not unusual to see a writer or designer with a desk that looks like this: What looks like chaos, is actually a sign of a genius at work (or, at least, that’s what they’ll say). 😉 Now, this isn’t to say marketers are inherently disorganized. Far from it. But, even the most coordinated amongst us need tools to keep our work days, weeks, and months straight. Marketing project managers know this. And, if you’ve ever tried managing multiple teams or clients in numerous toolsets (a common headache for agencies and enterprises, in particular), you know the pain is real. Instead, is made to make corralling creatives and marketers easier. Here’s how we do it: Organize complex campaigns with Marketing Campaigns. Keep every piece of every campaign organized on one visual timeline. Use Task Templates  to build project checklists. Maintain consistent workflows  with these reusable checklists. Plus, approve (or reject) work with Task Approvals. Measure productivity with Team Performance Reports. See who’s crushing it, who’s falling behind, and adjust workloads accordingly. Plus, with our Zapier integration, you can easily sync popular project management tools including Asana, Trello, Basecamp, and Wrike with your calendar. Email Marketing: Schedule Newsletters With Your Favorite Email Service Provider. Email marketing drives 4,000% ROI. With Email Marketing from , you can: Seamlessly integrate with your *favorite* email marketing platform.  You already have a kick-a$$ email platform you know and love, so why give it up? With Email Marketing, you can easily connect your preferred email platform to with just a couple clicks. Write click-worthy email subject lines†¦every time.  With Email Marketing, you can use ’s *exclusive* Email Subject Line Tester to optimize and perfect every subject line to drive  more  opens,  more  clicks, and  more  conversions. Get full visibility into your ENTIRE  marketing strategy.  Say â€Å"buh-bye† to disjointed marketing content (and constantly jumping from screen to screen). With Email Marketing, it’s easy to see how your email campaigns relate to the rest of your marketing strategy and quickly make adjustments if necessary. And when it’s this easy to manage + optimize your already-powerful email marketing strategy†¦ †¦imagine how much  more  ROI you can drive with everything in one place.  Ã°Å¸Ëœâ€° currently integrates with MailChimp, Constant Contact, Active Campaign, and Campaign Monitor.

American Politics - USA Patriot Act Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

American Politics - USA Patriot Act - Essay Example Congress approved the USA Patriot Act on October 26, 2001, scarcely six weeks after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The bill was passed with modest discussion at the altitude of the anthrax contagion scare when many policymakers did not have right of entry to their offices. A stable stream of revelations, and the resulting news media reports, have represented a president starving for power, doing no matter what is necessary -- lawful or not -- to defend this country. In the rouse of such news, some officials in Congress see flaw and an prospect to burn down one of President Bush's fundamental weapons in the war on terror: the USA Patriot Act. The USA Patriot Act, petite for Uniting and intensification America by providing suitable Tools necessary to interrupt and hinder Terrorism Act, is not one unconnected law. Most of its 132 pages adjust present federal statutes ranging from foreign observation to money laundering and were in the hopper previous to September 11. The Patriot Act, though, extends Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) authority by counting the issuance of "roving wiretaps" that can track a person from, in case, a public phone to a neighbor's processor to a library processor. Critics say this is a contravention of the Fourth Amendment, which needs that merits must "particularly" explain the position to be explored and the people or things to be detained.

Writing about Literature Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Writing about Literature - Essay Example It allows exploration of diverse innate capabilities of an individual such as to sympathize, investigate, laugh, learn/absorb and wonder (Clugston, 2010). It lets a person reflect on the importance of life’s common human experiences by highlighting common place practices and recognizing shared human interests and emotions. It helps in linking feeling to thinking and safeguarding a vision of the ideal, thus, enabling a connection between intellect and imagination (Clugston, 2010). It restores the past and serves as compendium of history since writers usually incorporate the traditions, norms, societal conditions and complexities of their society in their writings (Clugston, 2010). This helps future generations to realize the kind of situations that existed. For instance, war time literature informs modern-day readers about the negativities of war and this is why wars are avoided now. Most importantly, it simulates human imagination, since writers can easily let readers see things clearly by using a variety of visual elements such as factual descriptions, exquisite details, expressions and word pics. This course will develop the skills of understanding human nature and emotions, addressing the innate urge to seek ideals and recognizing the most effective way of sharing personal experiences and impressions with the world. It can develop the skill of making a fair and worthy comparison between the real and imaginative world. It will encourage the ability of using critically important elements like metaphor, simile and use of persona in order to formulate an effective piece of literature (Clugston, 2010). Literature writers aim to help the reader create an intentional imaginative connection with the writer’s world, which can only be achieved through these elements. It will help in differentiating between the writing styles of various literary geniuses. Lastly, it will help in exploring the indispensable but

An Analysis of Robert V. Remini's Andrew Jackson Versus the Cherokee Essay

An Analysis of Robert V. Remini's Andrew Jackson Versus the Cherokee Nation - Essay Example Their rationale was that since â€Å"they no longer threatened white settlements,† then they should not be expelled from their lands in Georgia and relocated to the Indian territory, which is located in present-day Oklahoma (48). In addition to this national sentiment against the proposed Indian Removal Act, various individuals that politically represented the Cherokees – John Ross, John Ridge and Major Ridge – sought audience with Jackson on a possible compromise regarding the looming Indian removal, but to no avail (51-53). Perhaps, two other instances that showed the resolve of the Cherokees was when a number of Cherokee chiefs went to Washington in an effort to prevent the signing of the treaty, and when John Ross encouraged the Indians to ignore the newly signed treaty (53-56). Although the author does not mention it, the Cherokees were partly to blame for what happened to them two years after the Indian Removal Act was signed. Had they only remained obedien t to Jackson and the laws of the state, the bloodshed of 1838 would not have been as worse. Much of the blame also rested upon John Ross. Unlike his contemporaries John Ridge and Major Ridge, who were more liberal-minded and were willing to make compromises with the government, John Ross approached the issue rather conservatively and â€Å"acted imprudently and made impossible demands on the President† (52). Among the rather outrageous requests of Ross in behalf of the Cherokee people included a five-year protection of the Indians using federal troops as well as $20 million for the â€Å"reimbursement for losses† (53). Even after Jackson’s rejection of such requests, Ross remained stubborn and encouraged the Indians to remain in their territory even after the two-year deadline had elapsed (55-56). It was, however, the Indians themselves who suffered the consequences as many of them were slaughtered by federal troops and many more suffered in â€Å"The Trail of Tears† (56). If only Ross had not maintained his pride and had only explained to his people the wisdom in obedience, the Cherokees would not have been massacred and would even have perhaps thanked Ross for it. The author, however, puts the blame lightly on the Cherokees and Ross and somehow considers Andrew Jackson the man behind the murders: â€Å"He had become obsessed about removal† (56). Sharp Knife, as Jackson was called by the Cherokees, despite the ruling of the Supreme Court in 1831, perhaps influenced the passing of the law in 1830 â€Å"prohibiting white men from entering an Indian country† (48). Jackson also asked Schermerhorn to secretly negotiate the treaty with the Treaty Party of the Cherokees in an effort to advance the signing of the Indian Removal Act (53). Moreover, Jackson did not show any mercy or concern for the large delegation of Indian chiefs who went to Washington in 1835 (53-54). Lastly, the man who called himself the â€Å"Great Fathe r† of the Indians was the one who â€Å"regularly badgered [President] Van Buren about enforcing the treaty† (56). These were all proofs that Andrew Jackson did not play the game fairly and tried to outsmart the Cherokees by resorting to secret tactics just to have the treaty signed and have the Indians removed in no time.

Threats confronting the U.S. in 2030 Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Threats confronting the U.S. in 2030 - Assignment Example According to the report, demand for these resources will likely grow by over 40% owing to the rapidly expanding global population, it is postulated that these demand will become difficult and in some places impossible to address. Shortages are likely to be caused by a variety of factors that are already in play today such as rapid negative climate change and the possibility of an energy crisis resulting from dying up of oil and other natural energy deposits. These changes are expected to affect the Middle East and Africa especially in regard to water, these regions already have water problems today and it is thus not difficult to predict that without drastic policy changes both therein and globally, the trend will continue to its logical conclusion; which is the water and food crisis. Another of the issues that are to be found in the report has to do with economic revolution in which the dominance of traditionally superior nations and blocks such as the US and EU may challenge. America may not necessarily be the economic super power it has been since the end of the cold war by the year 2030. The report suggests that China, owing to its rapid per-capita growth and industrialization, could overtake the USA to become the world’s leading financial powerhouse. The EU could also suffer from the possible withdrawal of Greece in the aftermath of the pre-2008 financial crisis from which it is still trying to recover, nevertheless, the report suggests that should Greece decide to withdraw, that could be disastrous for the bloc and may even result in a collapse. Recent history and current events have shown how the use of communication technology has enabled people to challenge governments, especially despotic ones and resulted in the toppling of several autocrats suc h as Egypt’s Mubarak and Gadaffi. While the reports predicts citizens may have more power to reach such ends in

HNC Electrical Engineering Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

HNC Electrical Engineering - Essay Example Fortescue, who introduced the method around 1918.....(1) However, it remained difficult to understand the three-phase system working under this concept, as any change in the voltage or current in any single phase could result in the corresponding changes in other two phases as well. Therefore, only two-phase alternating current was used in the power systems and it had 90-degree difference between the phases.(2n) Hence the two-phase power-generating concept was developed. However, we have evidence of using two-phase generators by connecting two single-phase ones, as early as 1890s........(2) In simpler terms, three-phase power system is the one that uses three different wires. One wire can be a neutral cable, which facilitates the system to use higher voltages while transmitting low voltages in domestic appliances. However, those machines that use high voltage allocations, the neutral cable requirement is not there as negligible loads are connected between the phases. In three phase power systems the power load is well distributed, as all the three wires have same magnitude of current with balance power load. Most of the countries have their own color-coding of the wires to distinguish the same in case of repairs. The three-phase power system is the widely used power in all industries, as it has balanced power load with uniform phase angle difference. However, the requirement of the household appliances and applications can be met with the single or two-phase systems as well. All electric motors are the fine example of three-phase power usage, as a three phase induction motor runs efficiently and has high starting torque with trouble-free design. The application of such motors can be found in fans, blowers, compressors etc. While these are medium and large size motors, application of very small three phase motors can be found in computer fans etc. The main advantage

Threats confronting the U.S. in 2030 Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Threats confronting the U.S. in 2030 - Assignment Example According to the report, demand for these resources will likely grow by over 40% owing to the rapidly expanding global population, it is postulated that these demand will become difficult and in some places impossible to address. Shortages are likely to be caused by a variety of factors that are already in play today such as rapid negative climate change and the possibility of an energy crisis resulting from dying up of oil and other natural energy deposits. These changes are expected to affect the Middle East and Africa especially in regard to water, these regions already have water problems today and it is thus not difficult to predict that without drastic policy changes both therein and globally, the trend will continue to its logical conclusion; which is the water and food crisis. Another of the issues that are to be found in the report has to do with economic revolution in which the dominance of traditionally superior nations and blocks such as the US and EU may challenge. America may not necessarily be the economic super power it has been since the end of the cold war by the year 2030. The report suggests that China, owing to its rapid per-capita growth and industrialization, could overtake the USA to become the world’s leading financial powerhouse. The EU could also suffer from the possible withdrawal of Greece in the aftermath of the pre-2008 financial crisis from which it is still trying to recover, nevertheless, the report suggests that should Greece decide to withdraw, that could be disastrous for the bloc and may even result in a collapse. Recent history and current events have shown how the use of communication technology has enabled people to challenge governments, especially despotic ones and resulted in the toppling of several autocrats suc h as Egypt’s Mubarak and Gadaffi. While the reports predicts citizens may have more power to reach such ends in

Oppositional Defiance Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Oppositional Defiance - Essay Example This is exactly what transpired with the counselor who was handling Paul. She expected the good behavior presented during their initial week of interaction would continue, which prospectively will allow the child to interact with other children in a normal manner. However, this has not been the case and she became more concerned as the child’s behavior became more violent and disrupted over the next few weeks (McKurdy, 2009). Upon analysis of the case scenario, there were some plausible approaches which the counselor may have carried out in order to effectually deal with the child’s behavior. Moreover, the following pages will discuss some legal and ethical issues when the counselor agreed to isolate the child when he displayed disruptive behavior (McKurdy, 2009). First, there were some questions posed by the author at the end of the case study. The first question was if the educational needs of the child were met by the behavioral treatments given by the school administrators and the special education teachers. From my perspective, the educational needs were definitely not addressed adequately to meet the individual needs of the child. There was an excerpt where the counselor, upon the recommendation of her supervisor, placed the child on timeouts or isolation whenever he turned violent or disruptive. The child even had to spend a whole day in isolation, not being able to learn or participate in class. This punishment has even more damaging implications because the child over the next few weeks spent more time in the isolation room rather than in class (Mckurdy, 2009; Knoster, Wells, & McDowell, 2007). The second question pertained to her referral to her supervisor regarding the abrupt behavior change of Paul. The current system employed by her organization and her supervisor strictly adhered to a behavioral modification approach. As a fresh graduate who may be

Compare and Contrast Essay Example for Free

Compare and Contrast Essay Love is an emotion that deeply alters a person’s thought-process. This emotion can bring out the best of people or even make them question who they are and what they’re willing to give up for the person they love. In Judith Ortiz Cofer’s short story â€Å"Catch the Moon†, she suggests that love can change a person for the better by making them want to improve themselves. However, in W. D. Wetherell’s short story â€Å"The Bass, The River, and Sheila Mant†, he suggests that love can make a person try to be someone they are not, ultimately leading in disappointment and regret. Although both authors center their stories on the topic of love, they differ greatly from their character conflicts, character changes, conflict resolutions, and their themes. In â€Å"Catching the Moon†, Luis Cintron and his father constantly argue and never get along very well. However, when Luis meets this girl named Naomi, he experiences an emotion that reconnects him with his dad. Meeting Naomi causes Luis to experience love—an emotion he hasn’t felt since the death of his mother—and causes him to want to develop better character because he knows that his mother would want him to be happy. In order to prove his improved character to both Naomi and his dad, Luis searches all night for a hubcap that will match the one that Naomi is looking for. After hours of searching, Luis finally finds the hub cap and rushes to bring it to Naomi. Cofer states that Luis, â€Å"†¦waited to give her [Naomi] the first good thing he had given any one in a long time† (Cofer, pg. 240). This quote demonstrates that because of his new love, Luis was ready to change his personality for the better and that love can truly reconnect old flames from within oneself. â€Å"The Bass, The River, and Sheila Mant† portrays a different message than that of â€Å"Catching the Moon†. In this short story, the narrator faces an internal conflict between choosing over his two passions—Sheila Mant and fishing. The narrator has always dreamed about impressing Sheila Mant, but he wavers when Sheila criticizes fishing for being dumb and boring. Regardless of her opinion, the narrator continues his mission of impressing Sheila by taking her on a boat ride and going to a popular party. On the way to the party, a fish gets caught on the fishing line the narrator left out  on the boat, and by the struggle the fish puts up, he knows that it’s the bass he’s been waiting all summer to catch. Emotions rush through his head, and even though the narrator has waited all summer for this fish, he chooses Sheila instead. The narrator cuts the line, goes to the party with Sheila, and has his heart broken when she chooses to ditch him for another guy. From this experience, the narrator learns that there are plenty of fish in the sea and that he shouldn’t have changed himself just to get a girl to like him. He even goes on to say that, â€Å"There would be other Sheila Mants in my life, other fish, and though I came close once or twice, it was those secret, hidden tugging in the night that claimed me, and I never made the same mistake again† (Wetherell, pg. 150). This quote demonstrates the story’s theme of not changing who you are for love because it will only result in regret and disappointment. Love is a very complex emotion. There are a lot of rules and regulations to love, as well as a lot of exceptions to these rules. All in all, in order to have a happy relationship, one must do want makes oneself happy. If someone’s happiness is put in jeopardy just because of a relationship, then the relationship was definitely not meant to be. In other words, when entering a relationship, don’t choose the better boy or girl; choose the boy or girl that will make you a better person. Works Cited Cofer, Judith Ortiz. Catch the Moon. 2003. Holt Literature and Language Arts. 4th ed. Austin, Texas: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 2003. 234-40. Print. W. D. Wetherell. The Bass, The River, and Sheila Mant. 2003. Holt Literature and Language Arts. 4th ed. Austin, Texas: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 2003. 245-50. Print.

The Effect Of Anxiety On An Athletes Performance Psychology Essay

The Effect Of Anxiety On An Athletes Performance Psychology Essay Competitive state anxiety is defined as a tendency to perceive competitive situations as threatening and to respond to these situations with feelings of apprehension and tension.(Martens, Vealey Burton, 1990). Competitive state anxiety can be split into cognitive and somatic components, cognitive being negative mental thoughts and concerns about ability and performance for instance indecision and loss of confidence, with somatic being the physiological responses to anxiety such as increased heart rate and muscle tension. It is important to measure both intensity and direction to determine the effect of anxiety on an athletes performance as it allows interpretation of results and can subsequently be used to assist the athlete to alter their thoughts before a competition and to improve performance. The intensity component indicates the levels of competitive anxiety in relation to factors such as situational antecedents (Woodman Hardy, 2001), and direction allows interpretation of results as facilitative or debilitative to performance (Jones, 1995). The athlete in this study is an 18 year old female triathlete. The study was conducted before and after a British Universities Colleges Sport (BUCS) national duathlon championship. The event involved a 3.2km run followed by a 16km bike ride and another 3.2km run in which she came 12th in a time of 54 minutes 52.747 seconds, which was similar to her previous best performances. Results The results for cognitive A-state and somatic A-state anxiety from the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 (CSAI-2) are indicated in the table and graph below. The scores can range from 9 (low) to 36 (high) for intensity, and from -27 (very debilitative) to 27 (very facilitative) for direction. Cognitive Anxiety Somatic Anxiety Intensity 19 14 Direction -8 0 The CSAI-2 indicated that she had low to medium intensity cognitive anxiety and that this would be slightly debilitative to her performance. In contrast, she suffered from low somatic anxiety but had a direction score of 0 signifying that the somatic symptoms she felt would affect her performance neither positively nor negatively. In the interview it was discovered that she felt that the competition was quite important but was not a main race for her although there were a lot of elite competitors in the race. She also added that as it was a BUCS race she felt pressure from her coach as well as herself to do well for the university. The pressure helped her motivation to keep going through the middle of the race, which turned out to be similar to her previous performances. Prior to the race she felt worried but as the race started she kept setting aims to keep up with people and overtake other competitors. The race started early which gave her less time to warm up after a hard training week leading up to the race. Despite the amount of training in the week before the race, she said she had high energy which was helpful to her performance. Discussion The multidimensional theory of anxiety (Martens et al., 1990) indicates that as cognitive anxiety increases, performance will drop. This theory only considered intensity, however later research led to the direction aspect (Jones, 1995) being added and anxiety considered as debilitative or facilitative. Before the race, the athlete was feeling low-medium intensity cognitive anxiety, which should result in a medium to high performance. However, the CSAI-2 results indicated that the cognitive anxiety she was feeling would have a detrimental effect on her performance. Neither somatic or cognitive anxiety were seen as facilitative to performance and research has found that males consistently report higher facilitative perceptions than females (Wiggins, 1998). If cognitive anxiety levels increase too high then, combined with elevated physiological arousal, could lead to a dramatic decline in performance as explained by the catastrophe theory (Hardy Fazey, 1987). Wiggins (1998) also discovered that cognitive intensity was higher than somatic intensity but somatic direction was higher (more facilitative) than cognitive direction. This was evident with the athlete but neither component of anxiety was considered to be facilitative. Studies have shown that athletes intensity of cognitive anxiety is highest before competition and then declines significantly from pregame to postgame (Butt, Weinberg, Horn, 2003). This was evident for the athlete as anxiety eased as the race started. Prior to the race, she was experiencing low-medium cognitive anxiety and felt moderately nervous. The main symptoms of cognitive anxiety suffered by the athlete were concern about the competition, the race result and self-doubt as well as concern that others would be disappointed with her performance. This intensity and pressure helped her feel motivated and stay strong, and any nerves disappeared once she started the race and positive thoughts helped channel her focus on the task in hand. Somatic anxiety intensity has been found to fluctuate over time but direction remains stable (Butt et al., 2003). Intensity was found to be highest before the game and declined during competition. The athlete in this study suffered from low intensity somatic anxiety before the competition but this was not facilitative or debilitative. The main symptoms of somatic anxiety were nervousness, jitteriness and increased heart rate. It was evident that the intensity decreased when the competition started as the nerves eased and she felt energetic. A study of athletes (Hanton, Wadey, and Connaughton, 2005) found that many of the debilitating symptoms remained prevalent after years of many competitions, were reported to fluctuate closer to the event and particularly at higher levels of competition. The event that the data for this study was collected from was for the triathletes first BUCS competition. This shows that even after competing in many previous events as well as internationally, anxiety was still found to be a debilitating factor towards performance. Another discovery made by Hanton et al. (2005) was that an athletes main routine before a competition is to be physically prepared over mentally prepared. Physical readiness, such as warming up and training in the build up weeks, was found to allow the athletes to compete at an elite level despite debilitating anxiety symptoms. However, when comparing athletes who mentally prepared and those who did not, performance was higher in those who had mentally prepared. A problem for the athlete in this study was that due to the race start time being moved forward, she did not have sufficient time to physically warm up let alone to mentally prepare. Failing to warm up properly may have had a detrimental effect on her performance as a warm up can increase the speed of muscle contraction and relaxation, increases heart rate and blood flow to working muscles, in addition to mentally focusing on the task in hand. The coherence between the CSAI-2 questionnaire before the event and the interview afterwards was strong. The athlete felt low-medium cognitive anxiety from the CSAI-2 including self-doubts and concern about the result, and this was backed up afterwards in the interview when she said that she was worried and feeling pressure before the race. She also stated that she was suffering from nerves before the race in both the CSAI-2 and the interview. Conclusions and Recommendations From the CSAI-2 questionnaire and interview I can construe that the anxiety suffered by the athlete did not affect her performance negatively. The intensity of cognitive anxiety was low-medium and somatic anxiety was low intensity before the race. Too much anxiety would have a detrimental effect on performance due to high pressure, negative thoughts and attentional narrowing. Too little anxiety could lead to lack of concentration, focusing on unimportant cues from the environment, external distraction. I establish that the athlete had moderate levels of anxiety which can increase effort as the athlete is not overcome by pressure. In the interview after the race she said that any pressure and negativity was focused onto a positive attitude and setting goals to improve her position. Although I consider the athlete was unaffected by her anxiety levels, if the direction aspect of cognitive and somatic anxiety can be made facilitative, it may have a beneficial impact on performance. To do this there are a number of techniques that sports psychologists can use to manipulate an individuals judgment of a competitive situation, including self talk and imagery. A consistent finding across studies is that sport performers have a stronger preference for problem-focused strategies for overcoming anxiety, and perceptions of cognitive anxiety as debilitative are associated with behavioural disengagement and venting of emotions (Ntoumanis and Biddle, 2000). Self talk can be used to help anxiety responses such as self-doubt. This can be positive, having the ability to win, or negative, not being able to lose. Self-talk can help to increase concentration on the task at hand. Imagery can be used to improve self-confidence and overcome nerves. It involves mental picturing a perfect performance or remembering a previous performance that the athlete would like to repeat. It can be used with mental rehearsal, planning the events and tactics of the event or in the case of the triathlete, the race. She had positive thoughts during the race, but if these can begin before the race then her start may improve, as the pressure and worry may be relieved.

Wondrous Strange :: Character Analysis, Kelley Winslow

Life is the condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death. â€Å"It is believed that in life no one can change your happiness but you; therefore, you have the power to change anything about yourself or your life that you want to change† (de Angelis, Barbra). The struggles that the main character, Kelley Winslow, faces strongly affects herself, as well as drives the plot for the reason that she struggles with the decisions she makes, she encounters physical hardships as well as mental that allows her to eventually find her identity. Some people may say that a person has not found themselves; however, you do not find yourself. People create ones self. During the process of creating ones self, you have to know what you fear, and what you cannot live without. Kelley learns what she is afraid of, and who she does not want to lose. â€Å"†¦fear of losing him, sorrow of what he has already risked for her† (Livingston 274). In the novel Kelley finds out that she is adopted. â€Å"Emma†¦ Was I†¦ adopted† (Livingston 222). In continuation to this, Kelley learns from her aunt, Emma, that she is adopted. She also leans more about where she came from, who her birth parents are, and about faerie history. This proves that Kelley wants to know more about where she came from, which leads to making her own identity. In order to create herself, Kelley needs to know more about her heritage. She also learns what she likes, and does not like and what she wants to do with her life. â€Å"Kell ey was speechless. She dreamed of this†¦ This is it. This is my big break!† (Livingston 5), â€Å"Kelley was a Faerie princess. In defiance of the Faerie king, she had taken up her destiny on her terms" (Livingston 316-317). This shows that she accepts herself, in addition to gaining her goals. Kelley Winslow goes went through a huge development, and journey in finding herself, even through the many obstacles she faces. Decision is a mental process you conduct to result in a making of a selection of a choice. Kelley Winslow had made various decisions throughout her life, which had made an impact on her characteristics. Kelley says, â€Å"Hey! Do you need help?" (Livingston 32).

IT Business Outsourcing Essay

Outsourcing basically means a process of constricting to another party. It is done at the outsourcing client’s location under their supervision. There are many essential factors which are needed to decide whether to outsource the information process or not. First major factor is the activity or the process itself. Main concern should be the process, whether it’s really needed to be outsourced (Loh et. al, 1992). If it is core job to that organization, then its better not to outsource it. If the task really requires highly efficient skills which is not available in your organization, then it’s better to outsource it. Second most important factor is the financial strategy. While deciding whether to outsource, main goal of company is to save money. It’s essential to verify, what will be the total cost in both the cases, if the task to be performed within the organization or outside. Hence, the main factors for deciding why to outsource are outsourcers cost, their capabilities and the potential end product which ultimately will reduce the risk and increase organization profit. Influence of Risk Assessment on the decision making process when seeking to outsource information processes Risk is always associated with the process of outsourcing. Many organizations who went for outsourcing, failed and few of the reasons are like cultural misalignment, end product not as per the quality and deadlines or delivery times missed. There are mainly two types of risk associated with the process of outsourcing: external risk and internal risk. Read more:Â  Essay on Business Process Outsourcing External risks are those risks which occur outside the organization and upon which organization do not have any control. these risks includes a search of outsourcer who will offer the required skills in a cost effective manner, an exchange rate fluctuation that can impact the cost savings, lack of ability to guard organization intellectual protection property and physical location of outsourcer which includes economic and political risk as well (Aubert, 1998). Internal risks are those risks which occur inside the organization while outsourcing. Language is the most targeted risk if outsourcing happen between two different countries where English is not the primary language and the ability of communicating to outsourcers in a remote location where technology is not so updated. Influence of change management requirements on the decision making process when seeking to outsource information processes One of the key factors for a successful outsourcing is the organizations effective change management policy. Organizations who failed to manage the changes effectively suffer a lot. Within an organization, the most important change management program is to create such a reliable communication strategy, so that the employees don’t feel scared about the job security. There should be proper redeployment and retention plans for all employees to make them feel secure. Proper training should be provided to make them understand how to deal with outsourcers. Few change management factors during this process are good leadership quality, crystal clear procedures, strategy safeguarding stakeholder’s interests, communication strategy and a change-over course of action for every step (Wullenweber et al, 2008). Inclusion of different entities by business when making decisions on the processes to outsource and the third party entity to outsource to Businesses include entities when time comes to decide whether to go for outsourcing or not. When an organization needs a process to be outsourced, decision of top level (CEO or a Director) is essential. Without their confirmation, company can’t think of moving ahead. After the confirmation, now its middle management turns to check whether all the important factors are going in favor of outsourcing or not. Here come different entities like finance, Hr, marketing, quality and third party. Finance department will check outsourcing in terms of cost saving, while HR will check if the company really needs outsourcing staff or it has its own (DiRomualdo et. al. , 1998). Marketing people will do a survey to acquire a list of best outsourcing companies and quality will judge whether the decision is anywhere hampering the quality and how to improve it in future. Third party will also play a vital role as their location, cost of doing outsourcing and few other factors will also effect the decision (W. McFarlan et. al, 1995).

Independent learning Essay

STUDENT VOICES BOOK_Layout 1 2011/10/07 11:57 AM Page 115 The Foundation Programme, I think, taught me how to work and be a person who is more reliant on myself. So if I don’t do the work and I don’t get the grades, I know it is on me. Varsity is where you have to be more responsible for all your actions. You have to be aware of whatever you are doing. You just can’t be negli- gent. (Chipo ? MSAFP) At university, you are just given assignments at the beginning of [the] semester and then you have to make sure that you do them well in time. There is no one to manage you and push you to do those assignments. In high school the teachers al-ways ask you about the assignments: â€Å"Did you do it? Why didn’t you do the as- signment well, and on time? † But here if you don’t do the assignment on time, they subtract marks and then you fail. (Lebogang ? MSAFP) Like them, Tony and Jaco also emphasised that a student must take responsibil- ity for their studies. For Tony, rather than parents, â€Å"you decide† and for Jaco, â€Å"everything is just up to you†. I think it is all about you taking responsibility for your own work. You ? nd in high school, if you’re with your parents, your parents are there to put pressure on you. You ? nd your parents saying, â€Å"No more TV. Go and study now. † But now, it’s you yourself. You decide your study times. You decide whether you’re going to do an assignment or not. You balance your social life and your school life. You balance it yourself. It’s not your parents who do that for you now. (Tony ? MSAFP) Basically time management is left to you for everything. You don’t have people telling you that this has to be done. Everything is just up to you. For me, it wasn’t a challenge because I had come from a working background. (Jaco ? MSAFP) Similarly, former DoTS students highlighted that taking responsibility to learn is essential for persisting with university study. Pip and Copernicus also empha- sised the importance of keeping up to date without the guidance of teachers and parents. For Pip, taking responsibility was â€Å"quite hard†, while for Copernicus, taking responsibility was â€Å"one of the biggest things†. I suppose just learning for ourselves and taking that much responsibility for our own learning, that was quite hard. (Pip ? DoTS) Compared to high school, everything’s your responsibility now. You have to make sure you do it. I think that was de? nitely one of the biggest things for me. If I was going to struggle with anything, it was being responsible. (Copernicus ?DoTS) Alicia, Kirsty, Tara and Max considered taking responsibility for their studies to be part of becoming independent. For Alicia, â€Å"you’ve got to keep on top of it† and for Kirsty â€Å"it’s all independent† and â€Å"there’s no one chasing you†. It’s very independent here. You’ve got to keep on top of it. There’s no one to tell you, â€Å"This is where you’ve got to be at. † (Alicia ? DoTS) It’s all up to you I suppose. It’s all independent. If you don’t do the readings, there’s no one chasing you to say you’ve got to do them. If you don’t have an as- signment in, there are not many excuses you can use to get an extension. (Kirsty ? DoTS) CH A P TE R 6 INDEPENDENT LEARNING 116 STUDENT VOICES BOOK_Layout 1 2011/10/07 11:57 AM Page 116 Like them, Tara and Max emphasised the importance of taking responsibility for their studies. For Tara, â€Å"it’s up to you†. For Max, university study involves â€Å"less guidance basically† and you â€Å"do it on your own†. Obviously it’s up to you to get the assignment in on time. To write it, you’re not really going to have a lot of help from other people like teachers. It was hard to be responsible for yourself, not having the teachers constantly having tabs on you and things like that, and not guiding you through. That took me a little while but I got used to it eventually. (Tara ? DoTS) First year wasn’t dissimilar to high school. It was with less guidance basically. So there was just the requirement for you to be more independent, to go out and do it on your own. (Max ? DoTS) For school leavers who were used to being reminded by teachers to complete their work, an adjustment to independent learning at university was a stark con- trast, but they emphasised the centrality of independent learning in university study. Rachel, Meg and Caitlyn each re? ected on the dif? culty of working inde- pendently. For Rachel, studying without a teacher supervising her was the hard- est. While for Meg, adjusting to not having anyone to remind her was the most dif? cult thing, Caitlyn observed â€Å"nobody is going to chase you†. Having to work by myself at home I’d say was the hardest, because the teachers weren’t sitting there saying, â€Å"Right, you’ve got 45 minutes to get this piece of work done. Go and do it. † (Rachel ? DoTS) The most dif? cult thing was probably not so much the fact that you are on your own, but the fact that people won’t remind you. You’ve got to make sure that you’ve got that assignment done. That’s all on you. I think the responsibility was pretty heavy because you’re so used to everybody else taking care of you. Now you’re a grown-up, you’re here and you’ve got to do it yourself. (Meg ? DoTS) Here you have to be independent. Nobody is going to chase you if you don’t hand in the assignment. Not that lecturers don’t care, but you’re just another name on the list. Their job is to teach and your job is to learn and if you’re not keeping up your end, I guess it’s just too bad. (Caitlyn ? DoTS) Besides taking responsibility for their own learning, former pathways students also struggled with self-motivation, self-discipline, and self-direction. Sammy, Marie and Tony all learned to direct themselves to study. For Sammy, â€Å"you have to learn to do things†. For Marie, â€Å"you don’t have anyone on your back telling you†. For Tony, not completing work is the student’s â€Å"loss†. Independence matters most. I would also say self-motivation. It taught me to study for myself because of the deadlines and the lecturers were pushing. You have to learn to do things for yourself because no one is going to do them for you. (Sammy ? MSAFP) I think a lot of people struggle with self-discipline, especially if you don’t have anyone on your back telling you, â€Å"Look, it’s 8 o’clock. You have to go to class. † (Marie ? MSAFP) If you don’t do it, it is your loss. (Tony ? MSAFP) INDEPENDENT LEARNING 117 6 STUDENT VOICES BOOK_Layout 1 2011/10/07 11:57 AM Page 117 In contrast, Jaco arrived as a very self-directed student who had no trouble keep- ing up to date. For Jaco, â€Å"if you start something, you ? nish it†. I’m one person to really work to my timetable. I don’t like to be late for anything. If anything needs to be done, it needs to be done the proper way. That’s some- thing I’ve grown up with from my parents. If you start something, you ? nish it, period, within the time frame. (Jaco ? MSAFP). Choosing to be a university student and making a conscious decision to learn are important for becoming a self-directed learner. Caitlyn, Denise and Sorcha pointed out that each student must make the choice to study for themselves. For Caitlyn, a student ? not the person’s mother ? must â€Å"make the decision to do it†. For Denise, a student must â€Å"want to do it†. For Sorcha, a student must become self-regulated and must â€Å"be interested in studying†. Being independent, having to do things for yourself, is hard. The work is chal- lenging, but I expected that. It’s not like when you’re in Year 12 and your mum wants you to ? nish and your school wants you to ? nish. My mum probably could- n’t have told you what I was doing at uni. There is no one to sort of push you along. You have to make the decision to do it yourself. (Caitlyn ? DoTS) Studying at school you’ve got no choice. You’ve got people on your back remind- ing you of what you have to do, when it has to be done, and how to do it, whereas at university you have to be motivated and want to do it. You have to be self-directed. (Denise ? DoTS) You have to be interested in studying, otherwise no amount of motivation or teacher-input can help. You’ve got to be a self-regulated learner. You can’t lean on your friends to take you through an exam. (Sorcha ? DoTS) Deciding to learn is not always an easy process for new students. Having com- menced the DoTS pathway three years after ? nishing high school, Nursing stu- dent Vaughan struggled to become a self-directed learner. A dif? cult thing was probably the self-directedness of uni. I’ve never been self-di- rected. I still struggle with it a little bit [in my third year]. (Vaughan ? DoTS) While Vaughan struggled with self-directedness throughout his degree, during the DoTS pathway, he sought professional advice to ? nd that he had to â€Å"get on with it† himself. I’d gone and seen the counsellors and they alerted me to the reality that no one is going to do it except me, so there are no quick ? xes there. We had a bit of a chat about things and you realise you have to get on with it. (Vaughan ? DoTS) Becoming a self-regulating learner involves taking individual responsibility for learning, for keeping up to date, and for becoming independent. These require- ments for university study appear to be well recognised by former pathways stu- dents even though many struggled, as do most new university students, with the initial transition. CH A P TE R 6 INDEPENDENT LEARNING 118. STUDENT VOICES BOOK_Layout 1 2011/10/07 11:57 AM Page 118 PUTTING IN EFFORT Putting in effort to learn, to understand the materials and to complete the re- quired work are among the most demanding aspects of university study. In South Africa, Accounting lecturers at Stellenbosch University assumed high stu- dent failure rates were due to poor preparation on the part of the students. Their Accounting students agreed, with one third suggesting that their classmates did not put in suf? cient effort and half believing they themselves did not study hard enough. These students also suggested that attending class and putting in effort  were among the most important factors for persisting with university study (Steenkamp, Baard & Frick, 2009: 151? 152). Former MSAFP and DoTS pathways students attested to the importance of putting in effort. Pip, Lisa, Vaughan, Sorcha and Reap explained putting in effort in terms of understanding course materials. For Pip, it was important to â€Å"make an effort to understand†. For Lisa, it was important to â€Å"get the answers† and â€Å"know your stuff†. For Vaughan, it was important for a student to learn the course materials and â€Å"know† they â€Å"did it† by themselves. I always make an effort to understand. I de? nitely don’t do the amount of work outside my contact hours that I should, but I make an effort to understand it. When I do have contact hours, I’ll make an effort to understand it and, if I don’t, then I go out and read up on it. I think it makes a difference if you want to be here and you actually want to understand the work. I think that’s what makes a good uni student. (Pip ? DoTS) I know that I’ve got to get things done. If I don’t get them done, then I’m not going to get the answers. We have quizzes each week and you can’t answer the quizzes if you haven’t studied and you don’t know your stuff. (Lisa ?DoTS) I read my chapter and I don’t collaborate with other people. I just tend to do it by myself because I want to know that I did it by myself, not because someone else has written down all the answers for me. (Vaughan ? DoTS) Like them, Sorcha and Reap emphasised the importance of making an effort to learn. For Sorcha, â€Å"you can become smart† with hard work and effort. For Reap, â€Å"you can’t fake it†. You can be smart and not do the work and not be successful and not achieve your goals, whereas if you have the time, the passion and all that, you can become smart. (Sorcha ? DoTS) You can’t breeze through uni. You’ve got to be able to do the work. You can’t fake it. (Reap ? DoTS) A willingness to put in effort to learn involves having the right attitude toward study which includes commitment and dedication. Barbara and Kendall believed that without the right attitude it is dif? cult for new students to adapt to univer- sity and experience academic success. For Barbara, university â€Å"has to be your number-one priority† and for Kendall, a student should â€Å"work so hard for it†. I think you have to be committed. You have to be committed to go to uni. Just be- cause you’ve got the brain, you got the marks, you got accepted, you might as  INDEPENDENT LEARNING 119 6 STUDENT VOICES BOOK_Layout 1 2011/10/07 11:57 AM Page 119 well go and do it ? it’s not really the right attitude, because you’re a nuisance, mostly to the tutors and lecturers. You have to be committed. You have to be there because you want to be there. I think it has to be your number-one priority to a certain extent. Get your assignments done. Get your uni work done. Then play. (Barbara ? DoTS) I just think you have to be dedicated. You have to know what you want. You have to work for it. It’s not just going to fall in your lap. Once you get it, it’s the best. Like I’m not even ?nished my course yet, but I’ve just got a job as a Division Two nurse and I’m wrapped. You work so hard for it and when you get there, it’s the best. (Kendall ? DoTS) A willingness to put in effort coupled with an attitude of dedication and com- mitment are attributes of an independent learner. Becoming an independent learner involves a new approach to study. Former pathways students contrasted their expectations of university learning with their experiences of becoming independent learners. Anna and Simon re? ected on different ideas about students and study. For Anna, a student should be â€Å"smart†,  Ã¢â‚¬Å"independent† and have a â€Å"love of learning†. For Simon, study at university in- volves thinking, discussing, â€Å"collaborating your thoughts and learning new things† as well as reading, reasoning and writing. [st3:When I was in Year 12 I would say that you have to be smart to come here. But doing DoTS teaches you what you need to be. You have to have a love of learning. You have to be an independent learner. (Anna ? DoTS) I remember in high school that I didn’t know what studying was. Now, for me, studying means doing what I need to do. I think of doing the work that re- quires me to think and learn something outside a lecture. Thinking is part of studying and so is discussing. It’s a process. You’re collaborating your thoughts and learning new things. An assignment is a good example. Because you have to read extra material, you have to have an understanding, you have to do your rea- soning and you have to put your ideas down. (Simon ? DoTS) Like Simon, Tony recognised the differences of degree study. For Tony, study at university involves â€Å"work on your own† and â€Å"research on your own†. In MSAFP I was used to having, let’s say, three tutorials in a week and in those tu- torials I could work through that assignment with my lecturers and ?nd out what I have to do. But you ? nd in undergrad you only have one tutorial in a week and you have to do your work on your own, research on your own and everything. (Tony ? MSAFP) Becoming an independent learner involves students also recognising when they need help. Asking for help is an issue that new university students, and particu- larly pathways students, ? nd challenging. For example, in the UK, low SES stu- dents studying at Shef? eld Hallam University tended not to ask for help but rather accepted their dif? culties with university study as though they were a nor- mal part of life. In in-depth interviews, both mature-aged students and school leavers reported they rarely approached tutors and instead preferred to draw on informal supports and peer networks. One student reported being afraid the CH A P TE R 6 INDEPENDENT LEARNING 120 STUDENT VOICES BOOK_Layout 1 2011/10/07 11:57 AM Page 120 tutor would think she was a â€Å"slacker†, while others drew on a â€Å"strong sense of self-reliance† coupled with an â€Å"immense determination to succeed† (Clegg, Bradley & Smith, 2006: 107? 108, 111). Similarly, in a survey of 101 direct entry Business students in Scotland, the majority did not disclose personal issues that  might affect their study (Barron & D’Annunzio-Green, 2009: 20). Although students may be reluctant to consult tutors in person, they are also reluctant to seek help online. In Australia, at a new suburban campus of the Uni- versity of Queensland, students knuckled down to study independently and without assistance. More than 80% of the students rarely, if ever, asked for help, support, or assistance online (Ballantyne, Madden, & Todd, 2009: 306). New stu- dents may not feel comfortable to ask for help when they deal with new lectur- ers and tutors each semester. Both mature-aged students and school leavers at  the University of Wollongong felt that interaction with their lecturers, whether online or face to face, was important in feeling comfortable enough to ask for help (Lefoe, Gunn & Hedberg, 2002: 44). Other students, studying Psychology at Macquarie University, found they only received help from a tutor when they asked directly for assistance (Plum, 1999: 244? 245). While former DoTS students described independence at university as being â€Å"up to you†, they also pointed out that assistance is available when requested. Paige, Therese and Helen each stressed the importance of seeking assistance and asking for help. For Paige, it is important not to be scared to seek advice. For Therese, it is important to â€Å"ask them†. For Helen, it is important to â€Å"take the initiative† and â€Å"go and ask for help†. I think you have to make sure that you’re not scared about going to ask for help, because people are there to help you. (Paige ? DoTS) My brother did say to me once that the lecturers are there to help you. If you have a question, you must ask them. (Therese ? DoTS) I think you have to be more independent. You have to be willing to put in the work and you have to be willing to ask for help. Those who aren’t willing to ask  for help, they fall by the wayside. When you know you might be drowning, you’ve just got to get up and take the initiative. Like in a workplace, no one will come and ask you. You’ve got to go and ask for help yourself. (Helen ? DoTS) Furthermore, Helen outlined the strategies she used in asking for help when, as a pathway student, she was â€Å"afraid† or just â€Å"con? dent enough† to seek advice. I would just go and ask whoever I needed to ask. I’d knock on people’s door ? lecturers, tutors, anyone. If I was a bit afraid of asking, I’d actually ring and ask at the front of? ce, â€Å"Who do I speak to? † and they’d put you through. I was con? dent enough to do that, I think, from working in my gap year. If I hadn’t worked that year, I think I probably wouldn’t have been. (Helen ? DoTS) Putting in effort helps a student adjust to the new style of independent learning at university. Independent learning requires a student to become metacognitive about their learning and study habits, so they are aware of when to seek advice. Taking the initiative to ask for help is an attribute of a student who is taking con- trol of their learning and becoming independent. INDEPENDENT LEARNING 121 6 STUDENT VOICES BOOK_Layout 1 2011/10/07 11:57 AM Page 121 THE RIGHT ATTITUDE. Students cannot become independent learners unless they have the right attitude to study and a willingness to learn. Melinda, Lisa and Vaughan recognised the importance of a willingness to learn in university study and each drew on their vocational motivation to persist with university study. For Melinda, wanting to learn is â€Å"probably number one†. For Lisa, it is important to â€Å"want to learn†. For Vaughan, it is important to have a â€Å"desire to learn† to absorb information. Wanting to be a student and wanting to learn are probably number one. Wanting to actually do it, because you’ll never do it if you don’t want to. You have to want to learn. If you just want to be a nurse, you can be a nurse with just a pass. But to be a good nurse, you have to want to be a student. You have the chance to learn, so you can get High Distinctions, so that you can be a great nurse, not just a nurse. (Melinda ? DoTS) I want to learn. I never used to want to learn, but I do now. I actually want to learn about all the different things and how everything works in Nursing. (Lisa ? DoTS) I think it’s about willingness to learn too. There’s a mountain of information out there. If you’ve got no desire to learn, you’re not going to take any of it in, so  you’ve got to want to be there. (Vaughan ? DoTS) The right attitude helps a student actually complete the work. A student’s atti- tude to learning is important in accepting the responsibility of a university work- load. Whether a student’s most recent learning experiences were at a secondary school, a vocational college, or in the workplace, becoming an independent learner in a university environment necessitates a different attitude (Booth, 1997). Age may also in? uence a student’s attitude. In Australia, mature-aged students have been found to be more committed to study than school leavers. Compared  to school leavers in outer western Brisbane, twice as many studying parents (over the age of 25) never skipped classes and regularly used support services. Moreover, students more than one year out of school were more con? dent and decisive than school leavers and were seven times more likely to complete the weekly readings (22% versus 3%) (Ballantyne, Madden & Todd, 2009: 307? 308). While it may be the case that mature-age students have the right attitude to study, many school leavers in the MSAFP and DoTS pathway also demonstrate the right attitude. Having a willingness to change may best indicate a student’s capacity to ad-just to independent learning as well as to enable academic engagement and epis- temological access. In the UK, a University of Nottingham survey of History stu- dents found two-thirds of students expected to change over the period of their degree, suggesting that adjustment to university is an ongoing process and not just a dif? cult phase at the beginning of the ? rst year. These History students, who preferred discussion and debate over any other method of learning, ex- pected to develop open-mindedness, interpersonal communication skills, and in- dependence (Booth, 1997: 209, 214; see also Brownlee, Walker, Lennox, Exley &  CH A P TE R 6 INDEPENDENT LEARNING 122 STUDENT VOICES BOOK_Layout 1 2011/10/07 11:57 AM Page 122 Pearce, 2009). Their positive attitudes to learning enabled them to persist with study. Similarly, former MSAFP and DoTS pathway students highlighted the in? u- ence of a student’s attitude in persisting with university study. Persistence de- pends on motivation and engagement as well as commitment and a sense of re- sponsibility to learn. Sammy, Elaine and Lindy af? rmed a willingness to learn underpins success in university study. You have to want to do something to achieve success in it. (Sammy ?MSAFP) If you put your mind to it and tell yourself you can do it, you can be successful. That’s what I think. (Elaine ? MSAFP) I tell myself, â€Å"This is your future. The future is in your hands. † Nobody can write my exam for me. Nobody can study for me. It’s my future. It’s my life and the way I live it is my choice. I make myself study by looking at everyone else studying. When they’re all studying, I get motivated to study. (Lindy ? MSAFP) Like them, Meg, Paige and Therese each clearly articulated a willingness to learn and recognised that university study is serious business. Meg and Paige high-lighted that the right attitude helps a student achieve success, while Therese stressed that skills development is made possible when a student has the right attitude. When I came here, I was 19 and I was ready to start being a grown-up. What I do now is going to play out my future. Every step I take is towards where I want to be. (Meg ? DoTS) I think I’m a lot more focused now. I know what I have to do and what needs to be done, that I can’t slack off and that I have to meet deadlines. I know that be- cause I’ve chosen to do this, I have to put in the effort. (Paige ? DoTS) You should actually want to be here and to take it seriously. You’re not here just to have fun. With skills, you can develop them over time. You can teach yourself how to study and what’s the best way to study, how to ? nd information that you need and that is relevant, then to be able to differentiate between what’s relevant and what’s not relevant. But that comes with time I think. (Therese ? DoTS) Other former pathways students expressed an awareness of their changing atti- tudes to study. Caitlyn recalled, with some humour, the dependent attitude she overcame during the ? rst semester of the DoTS pathway. I remember actually asking the lecturer if I could have my birthday off, and he said no! (Caitlyn ? DoTS) Chloe and Lisa re? ected on their changing attitudes toward their social lives as they became more serious about study. Chloe gave up excessive partying on weekends, while Lisa changed her â€Å"party life into uni life† I went out every weekend and got drunk. I’ve given that up now, because a hang- over lasts quite a few days with me. It really knocks me down. (Chloe ? DoTS) I just needed to change my party life into uni life. I liked to hang out with my friends more and go out on the weekends. But that’s changed now. (Lisa ? DoTS) INDEPENDENT LEARNING 123 6 STUDENT VOICES BOOK_Layout 1 2011/10/07 11:57 AM Page 123. Vicky, Lisa and Melinda reiterated that a student’s attitude is re? ected in their be- haviour and highlighted that choosing to attend classes re? ected a commitment to study and a sense of responsibility to learn. Turn up to- class. Don’t just say, â€Å"If I miss this lecture, it won’t matter,† because it will. The blackboard site doesn’t give you everything. (Vicky ? DoTS) I know there are compulsory classes, but you have a choice of what you want to learn and what you want to do. (Lisa ? DoTS) If you don’t want to go to lectures, don’t. If you don’t want to go to tutes, don’t. If you don’t want to do the readings, don’t. It’s your education that suffers from it and it’s your grades. I don’t want to say there are not people there to help you, but they’re only there if you ask for help. (Melinda ? DoTS) Former students of both the MSAFP and DoTS pathways point out that success- ful students are self-disciplined. Sammy, Chitalu and Chloe re? ected on how self- discipline helped them not only to keep up to date, but also to enjoy studying. I have a personal laptop and when I ? nd myself playing [games], then I think that tomorrow I have a tutorial and if I have studied enough for that. If I haven’t, I im-mediately switch off, so I start reading my lecture slides and trying to understand the questions that might be discussed in the tutorial. (Sammy ? MSAFP) It’s not really hard work when you are disciplined and you do what you’re sup- posed to do. But when you take it lightly and you just have fun, it really becomes hard work. (Chitalu ? MSAFP) I don’t really need to make myself do it because most essays I enjoy writing and enjoy learning. I guess I’m pretty disciplined. (Chloe ? DoTS) Yet, other former pathways students also pointed out the risks of procrastination and avoidance. Chipo, Tara and Lisa re?ected on wasting time and delaying, or avoiding, study commitments. For Chipo, postponing study is â€Å"time wasted†, while for Tara and for Lisa, it was easy to â€Å"put things off† or put â€Å"everything aside†. If you waste your time, time wasted is time that you can never get back. I had to learn these things as I went along because, you know, you postpone things. You say, â€Å"Oh no, I’ll do it later† and then next thing you discover you’ve got an assign- ment due tomorrow. (Chipo ? MSAFP) I tend to procrastinate a little bit and to put things off. (Tara ? DoTS) At the start, I was too busy stressing out and putting everything aside and not  even thinking about it. In the second half of my ? rst year, I got the hang of what uni is all about and what you’ve got to do to get by. (Lisa ? DoTS) Like them, Daniel, who returned to study from the workforce, tended to pro- crastinate. The solution was to have his life â€Å"timetabled†. I’m a terminal procrastinator. I always have been and stupidly enough I’ve been conditioned to actually continue to do so because I keep getting reasonable results in spite of procrastinating. I timetable a lot. I have my life timetabled so I start the semester saying, â€Å"Alright, I have this on this day and this on that day† and then. CH A P TE R 6 INDEPENDENT LEARNING 124 STUDENT VOICES BOOK_Layout 1 2011/10/07 11:57 AM Page 124 around work I schedule one day where I focus on each subject. On that day, whether it is travelling on the train or at home in the afternoon, I do all of the reading and work on assignments and stuff like that. I allocate the time to do the work. (Daniel ? DoTS) One aspect of independent learning that former pathways students found easy was being â€Å"in control† of their own study. In contrast to high school where stu- dents felt pushed, particularly by teachers and through competition with their  peers, at university students directed their own learning. Lindy found being in control â€Å"the easiest thing† about becoming an independent learner. The easiest thing was being in control. I didn’t have a very hard time getting used to being in control. (Lindy ? MSAFP) Like Lindy, Grace, Andrew, Julia and Max appreciated the autonomy of univer- sity study. Arts students Grace and Andrew both preferred studying at university over studying at high school. Grace felt she was â€Å"making up for† bad habits at high school, while Andrew felt as if he were ? nally â€Å"doing something†. In high school I hated studying, so I ? nd it really strange. I ? gure I’m making up for what I didn’t do in high school. (Grace ? DoTS) I did uni pretty well actually. I kind of preferred it to high school. Because, for one, I felt like I was doing something. With high school, it’s kind of like what you have to do. We were there because we had to be. At uni, it was where I wanted to be. (Andrew ? DoTS) Similarly, Julia and Max had no trouble taking control of their learning. Educa- tion student Julia viewed her learning as an opportunity, while Arts student Max found his own progress â€Å"inspiring†. I can’t believe people don’t hand work in because that’s just beyond me. I just  think why would you not even give yourself a chance? When I saw the mark for attendance, I thought I’m going to make sure I attend every class because that’s marks I can count on and I would never not hand anything in because every mark is another step closer. (Julia ? DoTS) It’s all on yourself. You’re responsible for failing. You’re responsible for doing your assignments. You’re responsible for passing. You’re responsible for your grades. There’s no one pushing you along. It’s inspiring to think that you’re con- trolling your own learning. (Max ? DoTS) Having the right attitude to study is important for success. Regarding themselves as serious, responsible and goal-oriented students, some former pathways stu- dents were openly critical of their peers who did not share the same â€Å"right atti- tude† to study. Andrew and Rachel were both critical of students who aim for a minimum pass, regarding them to be â€Å"unmotivated†. I come across a lot of unmotivated students who are like, â€Å"I’m just here to get a pass and get my degree and get out. † (Andrew ? DoTS) I actually ? nd a lot of people are only motivated to get that pass score. They are not that motivated to go the extra mile. (Rachel ? DoTS) INDEPENDENT LEARNING. 125 6 STUDENT VOICES BOOK_Layout 1 2011/10/07 11:57 AM Page 125 Like them, Jenna regarded some of the other students as having the wrong atti- tude for studying. Describing their attitudes as â€Å"very lazy† and â€Å"very blas †, Jenna contrasted her own willingness to learn and to put in effort with their lack of motivation and poor attitudes. There are de? nitely some students who are very lazy in their attitude. They don’t go to classes. They don’t do the reading. They have a very blase attitude and I ? nd that very frustrating because I’m here to learn and I put in the time and effort. (Jenna ? DoTS).