Life Hacks for College Students

When you head off to college, it can be a new and exciting experience, but, it can also be overwhelming. For students who have never lived alone before, heading off to college, and finding themselves in a more independent lifestyle than ever before, can be an adjustment. Check out these tips and life hacks for college students that can make your life easier than you ever thought possible.   Learn How to Do Laundry Before You Go to College Believe it or not, there’s an art to laundry, and if you don’t master it, you might wind up needing a whole new wardrobe. Most college students can’t afford that! Doing laundry means remembering a few rules, and understanding how to take care of your clothes means you will save both time and money. What kind of rules? Wash like fabrics with like fabrics (don’t mix towels and silk), like colors with like colors (white clothes and red clothes do not get along well!), and not everything goes in the dryer. You don’t want a shrunken sweater, pants covered in towel fuzz or pink socks and shirts, so learn how to properly wash and dry your clothes before you go off to college (or invest in a laundry service).   Fake a Clean Outfit, Even if Laundry Day Has Passed You know its going to happen ... youre going to put off laundry day and your clothes arent going to get the washing they need all the time. Theres help though. Put dryer sheets in your drawers (or bags or piles of clothes) to keep them smelling fresh, even if they are on day 2 or 3 or 5 of being worn. Febreeze also helps if youre pushing it, and its less assaulting to the nose than bathing in cologne and perfume. Bonus tip: keep dryer sheets handy because they can also eliminate static cling. Hamper Backpack and Laundry Detergent Pods A good hamper backpack can make lugging your clothes to the laundry room easier than carrying a laundry basket while juggling detergent and fabric softener. As a bonus, many of these backpacks even have places to carry your detergent and fabric softener. Have a long way to walk? Avoid lugging large and heavy bottles of detergent by buying detergent pods in bulk instead. Then, you just need to carry a few pods at a time with your laundry. Use dryer sheets instead of liquid, and once again, youve lessened your load.   Always Stock Up on Plastic Baggies From storing leftover food to carrying those laundry detergent pods, plastic baggies are a must-have to keep stocked in your dorm room. They are a great way to store receipts you need, wrangle that mess of pens and pencils you have, and store band-aids and other meds. In a pinch, they can even double as a bowl or cup, and they are a great way to seal up leftover food that youre tossing so it doesnt stink up the room. We all know that taking out the trash isnt always a top priority.   Save Money by Eating in the Dining Hall Most colleges offer awesome dining hall plans, and taking advantage of these plans can save you money over always ordering out. You may not like everything that’s served, but if there’s a salad bar, sandwich bar, pasta bar, or pizza station, you can often find something. Many dining service plans offer unlimited food when you eat there, but they may limit what you can carry out. Fear not! Most dining halls will allow drinks to be taken out, and so hiding your foraged food can be a cinch. Always carry a giant empty water bottle or two to store that forbidden extra food in, so that you can stealthily carry it out of the dining hall. A clear water bottle won’t work, as you’d be able to see through the bottle to know you’re breaking the rules. Be smart, don’t go crazy carrying like 10 water bottles - that’s a bit suspect - and always wash your water bottles thoroughly in between food foraging sessions. Juice Up Your Technology Stock up on extra external chargers and cords to get through the day. It’s too easy to run out of battery mid-lecture and miss important notes or not have your calendar at the ready, or worse, not be able to find out about the latest party, catch an Uber or order pizza at night. Keeping extra cords and chargers in your backpack can be a life saver. Some of the most popular cords are retractable cords that don’t take up a lot of room in your bag and that have multiple connection ports, so you can charge your chargers, iPhone, camera and whatever other electronic goodies you may have, right from the same cord. Buy two or three cords just in case you lose one or want to charge two things at once because you know you will. And remember to have the plug for the outlet or a charging port that charges multiple devices at once. Keep one by your bed at night and one in your bag for emergencies.   Incentivize Studying (with Snacks and activities) We’ve all been there. The night is quickly coming to an end and you’ve got a paper due tomorrow or a test to study for, and you just aren’t motivated. That pizza your roommate ordered is calling your name or that party everyone is going to is so tempting. You dont have to recreate the scene from Legally Blonde where Elle forgoes Greek Week completely ... just show a little self-discipline by creating a rewards system for yourself to keep going. You know you’ve got 30 minutes before the party starts? Instead of pre-party festivities, focus on that science lab you need to write up and get it done. Making it in that 30-minute time slot means you get a reward - pizza or a party. If you don’t make it? You have to stay back. This means you need to have some self-discipline, but challenging yourself to reach goals and rewarding yourself afterward can be a great strategy to get things done, especially if you plan in advance. Add another level of incentives by giving yourself bigger rewards for exceeding expectations. Ace that exam? Treat yourself to a night out or order wings and pizza. Whatever it is that will motivate you to work, use it.   Turn Your Wall Into a Schedule Here’s that plan in advance advice that I just mentioned. Get a white board calendar, idea paint (if your dorm allows it) or larger paper desk calendar and attach it to your wall in a place that you will see it well from any spot in your room. Use it to write down class times, block off study times and important meetings, and even outline sports, activities, and parties you plan on attending. Use a different color for each class or activity (check out the next bullet for more color-coding ideas) and on day one of your classes, invest some time in filling this calendar out with class dates and deadlines in one color. Take the syllabus from every class and fill in the calendar with all the dates and deadlines that are posted. Take a picture of it on your iPhone so it’s always with you, too. If you use an online calendar, take the time to match it to the whiteboard - yes, do both! The more ways that you can remind yourself of what you need to do, the more successful - and on time - you will be. Color Code Your Classes If organization  isn’t your strong suit and you’re a paper-based study type, color code your classes by getting notebooks, folders and book covers (throwback time - remember your middle school days of wrapping textbooks in paper bags?) in a color that matches the marker on your whiteboard that we just mentioned. Chances are, a typical pack of markers has everything you need. Then, as you’re glancing quickly at what’s coming up, you can easily grab the colored materials that you need. Record Lectures While You Take Notes Assuming youre a note taker, you should still take manual  notes, but also get your iPhone recording the lecture (don’t forget that extra external charger!). That way, if you don’t understand something in your notes, you can go back to the recording for clarification. Know you’re going to need to review a certain part of the lecture? Make a star in your notes and write down the time stamp of when that material was covered so you can easily find the right moment without having to listen to everything. There are plenty of apps out there to help with note taking if you need one.   If youre not already, consider a cloud-based service for digital notes so they are always accessible. Find a good note-taking app like Evernote or even just use Google Docs and make folders for every semester and every class. This allows you to store recordings and all your notes online, making them super easy to search. Dictation apps and programs like Dragon and even just your iPhone allow you to dictate your notes and essays without having to type. For many students, this saves a lot of time and energy. Just be sure to proofread and edit carefully. We all know that autocorrect can make mistakes. Start Slow and Ramp Up Your Studies in Years Two and Three Many students hit the ground running at full speed during year one, and don’t get properly acclimated to school. Use your first year to take the typical number of classes - don’t overload - and start with the basic pre-requisites and maybe just a fun class (if you can get in). Take the time to enjoy college for the first year, and then in your next two years, start testing yourself academically with harder classes and heavier schedule loads. Get a Pinterest Account Really? This is a life hack? Yes. When it comes to college, living on a budget in a tiny room, Pinterest will become your best friend. From food ideas to storage and space saving tips, Pinterest is a plethora of great ideas. Recipes in Mug? You’d be surprised how many things you can make using a mug and a microwave, and Pinterest is the best place to find endless recipes and ideas for creating a gourmet meal in the dorm. Cant find a home for everything? Its not surprising. Dorm rooms aren’t known for being super spacey and luxurious, but Pinterest has a plethora of awesome ideas on how to save space, stay organized and even pimp out your dorm room so that you’re one of the hottest stops on the floor. Alarm Yourself Alarms are great for getting up, but they also can help throughout the day. Set alarms for every class, study group, and meeting so you’re never late. Give yourself 15-20 minutes before class to get there. If you’re someone who is often late, set multiple alarms for each class so you don’t risk snoozing them.

Normative Ethics And Ethical Ethics - 1586 Words

Normative ethics is a study that tries to determine which things are good, which actions are right, which motives are worthy and which character traits are virtues. In other words, normative ethics is a philosophy about what we should morally do. Metaethics is a theory about normative ethics which is concerned about what exactly do normative ethics are claiming. This is a philosophy about the nature of moral claims, moral judgements and moral disagreements made by the normative ethics. Many theologians believe that religion is the only basis for morality. The Divine Command Theory is a view that an action, behaviour, choice is morally good or right because it is commanded by God and something is morally bad or wrong if God forbids it†¦show more content†¦Divine command theorist claim that since God’s character and nature is perfectly good, He would not command us or allow us to act in a way that He forbids or is bad for us (Alston 1990, p. 317). Because God is a legi timate authority and commands us to act in ways that are morally right, then that alone can serve as a reason for us to act and obey such commands regardless of our desires being satisfied or not. For example, believers of God who believes that God’s commands or wills has some motivation for us to do x may think that this is their motivational force. However, what about the atheists who don’t believe in God? Some people can make moral judgements without believing in God at all and this then leaves a possible claim that not all moral judgements require motivational force. Thus, it seems that atheists contradict themselves when they make moral judgements. For instance, Atheists may say that â€Å"God doesn’t exist and lying is wrong and if the divine command theory is true then it actually means that â€Å"God doesn’t exist and God commands or wills that we do not lie† which is obviously inconsistent. Furthermore, the divine command theory poses wh at is called a Euthyphro-like dilemma which deals on the question whether â€Å"an act is pious because it is loved by the gods or is loved by the gods because it is pious† (Alston 1990, p. 304). In this case, is an action good or

Behavioral Assignment Free Essays

For example if the company is performing admirably, your payments are not going to increase, but if you compare this situation With an equity investor, the market will incorporate to the stock price these results and your remover will be higher. On the other hand if the company Starts having some problems and cannot achieve its goals, your payments will remain the same. This situation only changes when the default risk increases, and this doses â€Å"t happen in a very quick span of time In the case of equity, the scope for disagreement is larger and more sensitive, because the payoffs are uncertain and depend on the beliefs of the fundamental value of the company. We will write a custom essay sample on Behavioral Assignment or any similar topic only for you Order Now It can be also seen below that equity payoffs are linear with respect to investor beliefs in relation to underlying asset value; however, debt up-side payoffs are fixed at some constant rate, ND are consequently non-linear (I. E. Concave) in the investor beliefs about the fundamental value. Source: Hong Serer 2011 b) Safe debt has less default risk than risky debt, which means that its payoffs are more protected and the payoff graph has a more concave shape. The more secure an asset is, the less sensitive the investors are to the beliefs about fundamentals. The upside is here more bounded and is less sensitive to disagreement. When a bond is more risky there is a greater probability for default and the investors are more sensitive to the changes in the fundamental value of the company. Beliefs start having a greater influence on the asset valuation. In the following formula we can see that if the default probability is very low, the safe debt payoff will also be lower and less sensitive to disagreements. C) When optimism increases investors start seeing debt more as a risk-free asset that has less upside with reduced resale option. Rising optimism leads to larger misprinting. In this scenario the optimistic investors will continue to buy the bonds from the pessimistic investors, so there will be more optimistic investors holding the asset and the disagreement among the investors will be owe, and lead to a lower price volatility. The bond will also have less turnover. The pessimistic investors won t become optimistic, they just want to sell their bond. The model suggested by Hong and Serer(2013) considers a two-date trading model with dates t -?O, 1, N risky assets and the risk-free rate as r. The dividend delivered by the risky asset at time t=l is given by the equation: , where represents the cash flow beta of asset I, and is the state of the macro economy. There are two groups of investors: 1) The optimists (group A), who believe that the economy will be better in t=l -b EAI[z = +h 2) The sometimes(group B), who believe that the economy will be worse – 3) So the expected difference between optimists and pessimists is given by: EAI[z] – BE[z] = When is small (I. E. Low macro disagreement) , the equilibrium price will depend both on the optimists and pessimists valuation, equaling However, when X is large (high disagreement about future macroeconomic conditions), the demand of pessimists (given by ) is so low that it will hit short sale constraints. Thus, the equilibrium price will be determined only by optimists’ valuation, since the pessimists will be sidelined from the market: . This equilibrium price is higher than the unconstrained price, which means that the stock N will be over-priced, due to high macroeconomic disagreement about fundamental factors, when compared to the traditional CAMP model prediction. As predicted by the dividend equation: , the higher the beta of the stock, the higher the effect of the disagreement about its future cash flows will be. Thus, short-sale constraints will occur with higher probability for high-beta, high risk stocks. Short-sales constraints might be binding for some investors due to institutional reasons. An example are mutual funds, which are prohibited to worth stocks directly by certain government acts and regulations. According to the arguments above, misprinting is more pronounced for high- beta stocks or for periods of higher disagreement. Thus, stocks from higher beta sectors such as technology, consumer retail, automotive, construction are more likely to experience overpricing and bubbles. Higher disagreement occurs either at times, when market optimism prevails -? continuous bull markets, combined with expansionary monetary policy for prolonged period, or when market pessimism prevails – crisis times, described by high volatility ND panic sell-offs, causing stocks to be undervalued. Bubbles are often hard to detect and ascertain, but tend to form most often when certain industry sectors are experiencing a technological revolution. Bubbles, crashes and financial crisis have been a repeating occurrence for long (e. G. He South Sea Bubble, canals and railroads in the 1 sass, the Internet in the sass) (Predetermine McKee, 2012). A technological revolution in an industry causes a boom in asset prices; however, as the momentum of the bubble increases, the rise in prices cannot be justified anymore by fundamentals as people continue to make ever-rising valuations. It is difficult to identify an asset’s true fundamental value, and this is especially true for ne w technologies that have may seem as the next big thing, but have uncertain long-run prospects. Similarly, pastor Versions (2008) argue that bubbles in stock prices can occur after technological revolutions if the productivity of the technology to be implemented is unknown and subject to learning. This affects both the level and volatility of stock prices. Critically, stock prices of innovative firms initially rise due to optimism and DOD news about the productivity of the firm due to the technological innovation, but eventually fall as the technology risk alters from affecting only the firm to being systematic (Pastor Versions, 2008). The bubbles can only be observed retrospectively, and are most greatly amplified in revolutions than involve high uncertainty and fast adoption. For example the expansion of both railroads in the sass and internet infrastructure in the 1 sass was characterized by overstatement that ultimately depressed prices on an aggregate level as additional projects had negative returns due to industrialization. Also, in the case of the internet bubble, investors were lured in to invest by promising companies such as Amazon and America Online, but later companies had often no idea how to be commercially viable and essentially were riding the bubble (Dominant, 2014). Bubbles may hence be amplified by speculation and the idea that individuals observe and adopt the behavior of others (Levine Jack, 2007). Especially in the case of the internet bubble optimists tend to push up the asset price, whereas more pessimistic investors cannot counterbalance this due to short-sale constraints (Predetermine McKee, 2012). Thus genealogical revolution tends to lead to projects with initial profits, and leads to overoptimistic tendencies for the whole industry. As prices exceed fundamentals and new entrants/projects turn sour, the bubble eventually collapses. In the case where there is only one share of the asset available and there is one optimist and one pessimist in the market, the pessimist will sell the asset to the optimist at a price higher than the mean evaluation of the two investors. Here the single optimistic buyer can absorb the entire supply of one share. The average price is 75, thus the traded price will be in the range 75. The traded price rises when there are two homogeneous groups Of investors, I. E. When there are more optimistic traders in the market. They will bid up the price until it reaches the valuation of the optimists, I. E. 100. This will be the traded price. Thus, as according to Miller (1977) without short selling the price of the asset is increased if there is a divergence of opinion. In such a market the demand for the asset will come from the traders who have the most optimistic expectations of its value. The most optimistic investor tends to win the bidding and their evaluation of the asset ends up being its actual price. This can be also seen in the diagram below. Supply is inelastic at N, so the price is higher than the equilibrium rate. Only optimistic traders will trade at the prices where the demand curve meets the inelastic supply curve. Also, as seen in the diagram, different investors have different demand curves; the most optimistic one will have the highest valuation. (Source: Miller, 1977) Due to the binding short selling constraint, less optimistic traders who would like to short an asset cannot do so. Thus this is necessary for optimists to be able to set prices. Also volume is crucial. The more optimists there are will signify that the asset’s price will be bid up to the valuation of optimists. This is especially true when the asset is scarce (e. . Only one or a few exist), as in this case there will be ample demand by the optimists (who may be a minority in the market) bid up and set the prices. The price of a security is higher the greater the divergence of opinion about the return from the security (Miller 1977). So we can say that if there is a big divergence of opinion in the market, the price will be even higher because the price only reflects the optimistic investors, and this also causes more v olatility and more risk to the stock. Since the annual discount rate is a variable, and the time to maturity T is a constant, we can apply the rule: Then the expected value that the optimist attaches to the bond is given by: , 51 once The expected value Of the pessimist is given by: b) The difference of the natural logarithms of their attached values is: In According to the result, there is a positive correlation between the bond maturity T and the level of the disagreement between the investors, so the longer the bond maturity T, the higher the disagreement between the optimist and the pessimist will be. ) According to Miller (1977) the greater the disagreement the higher the rice. As we saw in the previous step bonds with longer maturity have greater disagreement, which leads to stronger misprinting because the price of the bond will only be affected by the optimistic investors (since pessimistic investors cannot affect the prices because of short-sale constraints). Thus, misprint ing will be more pronounced at the long end of maturities, than at the short end. Also the longer the maturity of the bond the higher the expected return, according to a regular bond yield curve. If misprinting is more pronounced, the price of bonds will go up, causing a shift downwards in the lied curve, so average realized bond returns should be lower than the expected. A) Investor B starts with rational beliefs at t-?O, so his expectation of an upward move is â€Å"10=0. In case of an upward move at node u his expectation of an upward move TTL is given by: , A further move up to position u will give: A move down to position dud gives: An initial downward move to d yields: Going another node down to ad: And moving up in the second period to du gives: b) Investor Bi’s beliefs about the value of the stock seem irrational at point ‘dud’ and ‘du’ since at ‘dud’ his expectation of an upward move is , while at ‘du’ it equals . Actually these positions represent one and the same point on the binomial tree, whe re the fundamental value of the asset should be constant. How to cite Behavioral Assignment, Papers Behavioral assignment Free Essays Even though according to Prospect theory the individualistically function is concave in the gains region, implying that they are risk averse, its shape changes to convex for very small probabilities. Usually people treat the outcomes based on a reference point, usually their current wealth, from which they evaluate gains and losses. For that reason a certain gain of $1 0 is not perceived as bringing any significant utility to let’s say average middle-class individual, while the possibility, even though small, of winning SIS 000 would actually bring a quite significant change to his wealth. We will write a custom essay sample on Behavioral assignment or any similar topic only for you Order Now The opposite goes for the perceived utilities and the utility function, when in the loss region. Even a small probability of losing a significant amount ($10 000), which will severely affect the wealth of the individuals is misperceived as relatively high and undesirable as opposed to the certain, but small loss of $10, which will not affect the wealth of the person around his reference point. Some real life analogues of the conducted experiment might be buying a lottery ticket, where the individual even gets a small, but negative payoff, on average, or establishing a start-up business, where an entrepreneur invests capital with the hope Of receiving higher return in time, instead of investing the money in a bond or a bank deposit at a risk-free rate. Examples for certain small losses might be a person buying insurance policies and paying a small premium, but avoiding the risk of theft, road accident etc. Q. The distribution is not normal, but rather positively skewed, with higher percentage of positive earnings surprise than negative. There is also bunching at the O value, inferring a high probability that the average of analysts’ forecasts coincides with the actual earnings reported. This distribution of recast errors actually implies that analysts have a downward bias when producing their estimations. A reason for this might be that analysts have asymmetric loss function, implying that they can be more harshly punished for under-prediction than for over-prediction. This is due to reactions of investors who, in most cases, have prospect theory utility functions, rather than conventional expected utility functions I. E. Their losses hurt more than gains of the same magna etude increase utility. In terms of the earnings surprise this means that when the actual earnings miss analysts’ projections, he negative returns on stocks in the following days are much more pronounced due to investors unwilling to hold the stock and selling with larger volumes. In the opposite case of a positive surprise, investors’ utility function is less steep in the gains region and the magnitude of increased purchases of the stock is less pronounced. Boon and Woman (2002) estimate at least six reasons for the analysts’ downward bias when producing forecasts: internal pressures for earning higher brokerage commissions, pressure from management of companies that analysts cover, herding behavior to follow other analysts’ projections, pressure from large institutional investors that analysts work with, conflicts with analysts’ personal investments or unintentional cognitive biases of the analysts. Other plausible reference points in terms of expected earnings might be results from past quarters + some premium/discount, depending on how the company performed in the most recent quarter, or the earnings reported by companies, operating in the same industry I. E. Competitors. Investor A If the stock goes up, he would be keener to sell in order to realize his gains. The Prospect Theory utility function, which is concave in the region of gains, wows us there will be a point where an increase in his profit will bring very low marginal utility, so at this point the investor would be keen to sell. If we assume that the investor bought when , the more the stock rises and moves into more concave regions, , until it reaches the point of sell: If the stock goes down, he will hold the stock because he won ‘t accept his loss and try to hold it until the price of the stock returns to the price where he bought the stock (his reference point). He would be more concerned with the potential value of losses and gains than the total wealth outcome, so he would be more inclined to sell when the stock was in the gain-making region, and less likely to sell and more likely to hold at the loss-making region. This is an observation of the disposition effect, tested by Dean (1998). Investor B If the stock goes up he will like to buy more shares. As an optimistic investor, he would trade more because of the profits that he is making, and the belief that he has information that others don t and that if the stock its going up, the momentum is likely to continue. If the stock goes down, he will like to sell because for him the market it’s telling him that this stock its not worth holding anymore. The most important thing for him in order to make a decision for buy or sell is to receive a signal from the market and as an overconfident investor he would think that he has information that the market doses ;t and could benefit from that In other words he will consider the pure noise from the stock price movement as a signal and overweight it () The two investors could trade when the price of the stock rises, relative to their reference point because in that point investor A is more willing to sell and realize the gain and investor B is more willing to buy, because of the overestimated weight on the signal. Also they could trade when the price goes down and reaches a certain point when investor A no longer can hold the position (has sustained huge losses) and investor B could get a signal from the market, that the stock is already undervalued. A) 1 . Overstatement – empirical data show that there are cases when Coos truly believe that certain investment policies are creating value for the company. However, their beliefs are quite often in discrepancy with the broad view of market participants, which is reflected in the stock value. These investment incentives are more pronounced in companies, that are cash rich, nice Coos will not be constrained by lack of funds and allocate the available cash according to their overconfident beliefs. 2. Corporate Financing – instead of opting for the more rational choice of choosing sustainable mix of debt and equity financing, combined with the use of the company’s outstanding cash, overconfident Coos tend to use larger percentage of financing with cash or debt, since they consider equity financing excessively costly and believe that the market is undervaluing their company. . Overbidding in acquisitions – scholarly research has found evidence that overconfident Coos overestimate their ability to generate returns for their company. This is why such Coos have a tendency to overpay for target companies and undertake mergers that actually bring lower than expected value. A proof for this might be found in market reactions after announcement, where the negati ve return after the announcement is more pronounced for companies, whose managers are considered as overconfident by investors. In the last two decades U. S firms spent more than $ 3. 4 trillion on mergers, and if CEO ;s were thinking only about the interests f their shareholders probably they would have acted in a different way, because their actions caused losses amounting to roughly $220 billion (Maintained, Tate 2007). B) CEO overconfidence does not necessarily have to be a bad thing, since this aspect is quite closely con nested with affinity to taking higher risk. Higher risk, in turn, might lead either to more pronounced negative or positive outcome for the company, and thus also allowing for a beneficial outcome to shareholder interests. Also, such individuals, for reasons connected with their genetics or upbringing, are among the most successful and influential people n society. As discussed in the paper â€Å"CEO overconfidence and innovation† by Galas, Simoom (2011 more confident Coos tend to disregard the risk of failure and thus more eagerly indulge in RD and innovation strategies, which eventually bring higher value to shareholders. Real life examples of such Coos might be Steve Jobs (Apple Inc. ), Leon Musk (Tests Motors). Question 5 In the presented case, an overoptimistic person will tend to have higher anticipatory utility during his youth, but eventually as time progresses the actual realization will with a high probability be less than his anticipations, so e will get lower realization utility. The total utility he gets will depend on the weights he puts on those two utilities. If you educate your child to be overoptimistic, in the future for example when he receives his pension fund he will expect certain amount of money, let’s say $1,000 per month, but instead if he actually receives $900 he will feel as if he lost $100, regardless if that amount of money represents a good income for him or not. On the other hand if he receives $1 r 1 00 he won ‘t feel the satisfaction of having more money. The feeling when you lose is deeper than when you win. How to cite Behavioral assignment, Papers

Emily Dickinson And Harper Lee Essay Example For Students

Emily Dickinson And Harper Lee Essay In a poem by Emily Dickinson she implies that there is nothing like reading abook to take your imagination to great places. She states, There is nofrigate like a book to take us lands away. Such an idea that excites theimagination to take us places is expressed in Harper Lees To Kill aMockingbird. In To Kill a Mockingbird there is a great use of symbolism toignite the human imagination. The title of the book is only mentioned in thestory when the father of the protagonist, Atticus Finch, tells his children thatif they have to kill birds, they can kill any bird, but tis a sin to kill amockingbird. Although this may seem peculiar, the use of symbolism is evidentin the fact that the main protagonists of the story all have a last name that isthe name of a type of bird. Such as the wrongly accused and later killed TomRobinson. Also the dedicated lawyers family name is Finch. Another way thisstory uses our imagination greatly is in the characterization of Boo Radley.Throughout the majority of the story you just hear of him through gossip storiesof the neighbors or through the childrens imaginative games. Boo was alwaysthe amusement to the children due to the fact they had never seen him and alwaysheard of the threat he was and were kept away from his house. This sparks theimagination to think and try and create an image of Boo Radley through the eyesof these young children. There is great irony in the story as well. As mentionedabove, Boo Radley was the main focal point for the childrens games, due themystery of whom he was. They always thought he was their major threat and if hewere to catch them, he would kill them. The view of the reader dramaticallychanges in the end when this same man ends up saving the childrens lives fromthe drunken dirt bag of the town, Bob Ewell. In conclusion, one can see that theuse of literary devices can absolutely take your imagination away. This is seenfrom the symbolism of names, to the characterization of mysterious characters orthe dramatic irony of the change of view of the reader. So, the imagination cantravel to places you never thought could, just by reading words from a paper.

How to Create a Blog Content Strategy - What 4 Years of Experience Have Taught Me

Having a written blog content strategy is what separates the good blogs from the truly great ones.You basically  double your chance of success with a written blog strategy. According to Content Marketing Institute, 60% of organizations with a written content strategy are effective, compared to only 32% of those with a purely verbal content strategy being effective.(Chart by Visualizer Lite.)Ive been blogging professionally since 2013, and if its taught me anything, its that a blog content strategy is a necessity if you want to see true results.Not only does a written plan increase your chances of success, it also saves you hours of time you would have wasted on the wrong promotion strategies, writing about the wrong topics, and working with the wrong influencers.Are you ready to save time, drive more traffic, and see more blogging success? Then, keep reading! Here are the five steps to a great blog content strategy:Five Steps to Craft a Blog Content StrategyThis guide will be divid ed into five steps:Define your goals.Perform some target market research.Come up with topic ideas and keywords to target.Create a content calendar.Build amazing content.Quick preface: A good blog content strategy should answer three questions:Why are we making content in the first place?What content do we need?How do we get that content to accomplish our goals?Lets start with why.Step 1: Define your goals.If you dont take anything else away from this article, take away goal-setting. Having a clearly defined goal will set you up to push through all the other steps, all the hours of writing, and all the obstacles bound to show up.Your goal is your why, and the stronger it is the more success youll have.Just take a look at Simon Sineks TED talk about the power of why. Its 20 minutes of pure gold (seriously, go watch it) about why we need to lead from a place of why were doing something, not how were doing it or what were doing. His diagram looks like this:(Source: Pinterest)So, how do you define your why your blog goal?   Answer these questions. Do you want todrive foot traffic to your shop or office?increase sales or generate leads?educate prospects and customers on what you do?update your customers on whats going on with your business?attract prospects from outside of your local area, such as clients from overseas?build a brand?Choose no more than two or three of these objectives for your blog content strategy. Any more and your blog will become unfocused and wont succeed at anything.For example, I have a blog for my freelance work. My primary goal is to generate leads for my services, with secondary goals of educating prospects on what I do and building a brand around my name.Be specific with your goals. Simply saying get more traffic isnt enough. You need to include how much traffic you want and in what timeframe. A better goal would be Increase sales by 15% in three months. Very specific.Once you have your why, its time to figure out what kind of content y ou need. In order to do that, you must go through:Step 2: Perform some target market research.Let me ask you something; Have you ever taken a shower and you just  couldnt quite get the water to the right temperature? It was lukewarm, so you turned it juuuust a hair, then it was scalding hot?While frustrating, it shows you how a very small amount of effort can cause something to go from lukewarm to hot. Youve heard this before its called the extra mile.This step is that small centimeter tweak that will take your blog from mediocre to great.So, how do you do target market research?For starters, ask yourself a few good questions:Where does my audience hang out online? (Certain blogs, social media platforms, forums, Facebook groups, etc.)What is their biggest gripe at work? (Maybe they hate their commute or their boss, or theyre bored, or they arent getting enough traffic to their website.)What sort of content or articles do they most enjoy reading? (Look at your Google analytics for your blog, if you have it. Which posts did the best? You can also use BuzzSumo to see what your competitors most shared articles are.)To give you more clarity, I asked Brad Smith, the content expert behind Codeless, his thoughts on target market research. Heres his advice:Almost every company knows about their customers demographics (i.e. who they are). But, they know next to nothing about their psychographics (i.e. why they buy).Successful blog posts follow the old Problem Agitate Solution (PAS) copywriting principle. They begin by introducing the root problem readers are facing. Then they agitate those problems by digging into the symptoms and pain points. Finally, they present a solution (whether thats an idea, tip, hack, or simply positioning their product/service as the solution).But, you cant do that effectively without understanding (1) what youre readers are trying to achieve, (2) whats preventing them from doing it, and (3) whats going to happen to them if they dont achiev e it.Find the answers to those three questions (using surveys, interviews, etc.) and youll be able to create blog content that does a hell of a lot more than just rack up social shares.Brad SmithThere you have it the secret is to find out the underlying motivations of your target readers, then helping them achieve those goals.Once you have an idea of who youre writing for, next up is:Step 3:  Come up with topic ideas and keywords to target.Lets start with keywords:Keywords are the bread and butter to an effective blog content strategy. Without them, youre going to be hard-pressed to rank well on search engines. Without ranking on search engines, youll have an even harder time getting a lot of consistent traffic.Despite the overload of information from alleged SEO experts, keyword research and SEO (search engine optimization) isnt all that difficult.Let me break it down for you in three simple steps:Find some keywords you want to rank for that have high search volume and low-ish c ompetition.Write mind-blowingly good blog content that includes your main keywords in the title, body, headers, and image alt text (dont overdo it, though. 3-7 times in an article is plenty, depending on the length).Work on getting backlinks to that article with your main keywords as the anchor text (i.e. if your main keyword is marketing strategies, you want the link to your site to be connected with the text marketing strategies). But be careful not to overdo this either. Too many optimized anchors might trigger Google in a wrong way.Of course, there are plenty of other complications like page load speed, time spent on page, and (for Bing, at least) the  number of shares the article received. But, if you master the three things above, youll be on your way to the first page of Google.That said, you dont need to base all your topics on keyword research. I asked Cara Hogan, a content strategist and consultant, her take on coming up with topics. Heres what she said:Keyword research is a great way to come up with new ideas and opportunities for content, but SEO should not drive your entire content strategy. It should factor in, but not fully control, the topics and message of your content. You may find an opportunity for a specific keyword, but you should then combine that information with your knowledge of your target market and personas to write the best possible content.Cara HoganI didnt let her leave it at that. Instead, I pressed for an example. Heres what she told me:I wrote a blog post about the book Crossing the Chasm and applied the lessons of that book to various startups. The SEO for Crossing the Chasm is impossible because its a hugely popular book. So, Amazon and a number of links associated with the author are always going to be first.However, that post was hugely successful and garnered a lot of traffic simply because it gave practical and real-world examples for startup leaders to understand a specific concept within the book. So, when you googl e crossing the chasm the book is always going to be first, but if you google startup crossing the chasm, my post ranks #3.Cara HoganThe takeaway? Always try to target keywords, but dont let them stop you from writing on a great topic.Step 4: Create a blog content calendar.A content calendar keeps you on track and creates a system to ensure your content is always top-notch and published on time. The best calendars also have social sharing and email marketing info baked in to make things organized and easy.To help explain the importance of this step and how it plays into your overall blog content strategy, I asked Cameron Conaway, an investigative journalist and content marketing manager at Klipfolio, his thoughts on creating a content calendar. Heres what he told me:A great content calendar gives you a birds eye view and has your teams editorial process baked into it. For our team at Klipfolio, we found this combination in Airtable.It allows us to make real-time updates, organize all content assets, and have end-to-end visibility into who is working on what, when each piece is due, and which persona and stage of the funnel each piece of content is for.This allows us to go from half-baked idea to pitch to Yo Editor—a column we created where a writer can @ their editor if theyre stuck or ready for an edit on their first draft.Cameron ConawayTo help you understand the whole yo editor thing, heres what their spreadsheet in Airtable looks like:You can also use a free tool like Trello  or Google Calendar to create your blog content calendar, but if youre looking for a fully dedicated calendar with extra features to help you grow your blog, a tool like CoSchedule  may be more helpful.Its your choice, though. For instance, here at ThemeIsle, weve been using Trello quite successfully since the blogs birth. Our main board:Step 5: Build amazing content.Youve got your keywords, youve created a content calendar, you know who youre writing for. Now its time to act ually build your content.I say build, not write, because great content isnt just written its assembled.An amazing piece of content needs to beWell-written (meaning proper spelling and grammar, and doesnt use unnecessarily complex language or terminology.)Researched (meaning uses stats, case studies, and examples to show youve done your homework.)Media rich (meaning plenty of high-quality and highly relevant images.)Formatted for skimming (meaning use plenty of headers, subheaders, bulleted lists, block quotes, bolding, and italics.)Pro tip: You can get free high-quality images from MyStock.Photos  or even make your own images with tools like Canva and others.ConclusionWhile it may be tempting to fire off your blog posts as they come to mind, having a written blog content strategy will save you hours of headaches. Plus, youll see  way more success.It only takes a few hours to put together an awesome blog content strategy. As the old adage goes, if you have four hours to chop dow n a tree, you stand a better chance if you take one of those hours to sharpen your axe. Or something like that.This blog content strategy is the equivalent of sharpening your axe. Youll be far more prepared and probably have more fun if you take the time to put it together.Have any questions about crafting a content strategy for your blog? Feel free to speak up in the comments section below.Free guide5 Essential Tips to Speed Up Your WordPress SiteReduce your loading time by even 50-80% just by following simple tips.

A Harvard Business School Essay Standards Essay Example

A Harvard Business School Essay Standards Essay Example A Harvard Business School Essay Standards Paper A Harvard Business School Essay Standards Paper Each students aiming at entering the HBS has to be familiar with the Harvard Business School essay standards. Compilation of this type of academic paper is a compulsory demand for each applicant. To write a winning paper, one needs to get familiar with the standards and main requirements. Primarily, it is necessary to get acquainted with the nature of the assignment. By its nature, it resembles the motivational letter which is always added to the standard set of applicant documents. It is descriptive and may imply info describing the achievements, aims, and plans of the applicant. Harvard Business School essay is far from the usual understanding of a motivational letter or descriptive essay. It is a complex assignment demanding serious approach from a student. A motivational letter can influence the choice of the committee greatly. That is why a student should pay many efforts and take care of a paper to make it properly written. In this assignment, an applicant has to describe his achievements and goals he reached currently. He can also implement info that characterizes his strength. Mentioning one’s weaknesses will also be an advantage. People respect those, who can critically assess oneself. Students can even mention their sources of motivation and discuss the factors, which influenced their choice of a higher education institution. Exists no standards of content. Originality and unique approach are the advantages for a student. With the help of a properly written motivation letter, a person can get a place at HBS and make one’s dreams come true! How to write HBS essay Each type of written assignment has its structural and content standards. A writer working on a delivery of a specific paper has to take into account all the important details to compile an essay in accordance with all rules. A Harvard Business School essay is a type of the assignment which by its nature resembles a motivation letter. It should be attention-grabbing, effective and informative to enable the student to convince the admission committee to accept him or her. It is important to take into consideration one’s target audience. Judging from it, one has to compile his or her document. A target audience, which is going to receive one’s Harvard Business School essay is going to read hundreds of students essays. However, your task is to compile a unique text that will be attention-grabbing and informative. You have to provide a number of strong arguments explaining that you are the one deserving a place in HBS. All the info you present should be perfectly polished. Try to write an essay that can impress you personally. Apart from that, you need to formulate a catchy title. It will help to attract the attention of the committee and distinguish your paper from a variety of available variants. All in all, while working on a compilation of this type of task you have to apply creative thinking and your original ideas. The great strategy will be to demonstrate the ability to think outside the box and approaching the life situations taking non-standard decisions. Do not forget to be odd, however, try not to exaggerate too much. Share your experience, demonstrate your achievements and describe your strength and weakness. All in all, being genuine and truthful is the best way to persuade the admission committee. Structure and content demands of the HBS essay Concerning the formatting peculiarities, Harvard Business School essay has to comprise an opening paragraph, body paragraphs, and a closing section. Each of these parts has its content specificities. Before moving to the very writing part, try to comprise an outline and plan your writing. Note a number of statements to have the body for your future essay. Choose interesting facts and experiences to enhance your essay only with the relevant info. Now you are ready to move to the introduction compilation. Start with an attention-grabbing statement. Bear in mind the fact the hook sentence will set the tone for the future writing. The next statement should provide the background. A target reader should be able to get the main sense, and you have to prepare him to get the main info. Set the scene and make the reader interested in the material. Write a clear thesis motivating your intention to enter the HBS. The following step is the creation of the main body section. You have to enhance it with the description of your achievements, experiences, and plans for the future. Try to explain the admission committee officer that you are the one, who deserves the place at HBS and you will pay for all the efforts to do your best. Enhance the section with real-life examples and proves. The last step is a compilation of a concluding part. The conclusion has to sum up all the info presented. It should serve as a sense-loaded and logical ending for your Harvard Business School essay. It should call a pleasant feeling after the target reader finishes reading it. All in all be clear and concise. Stick to the notes made in your outline. Do not make the text to overloaded. Try to be brief but relevant you will succeed! paperap.com can create a perfect paper for you! Compilation of a winning Harvard Business School essay is a challenging task for an inexperienced applicant. On the web exists a variety of professional business plan writing services, which can assist in the preparation of this assignment. However, not all of them are credible and reputable. paperap.com is a primary quality business plan service. Its specialists can quickly and easily prepare an ideal Harvard Business School essay for you. We hire a crew of the best specialists, who can quickly and easily cope with your task. Do not lose time! Contact us and, make an order now! To make an order on Thewriteyessay.com, you have to enter the website and fill in the ordering form. There you have to indicate your main requirements and mention all your wishes. After you need to pay for the assignment and our specialists will start the preparatory process. You need to set the deadline, and your assignment will be delivered on time! paperap.com is a perfect tool for people needing assistance with the delivery of Harvard Business School essay. We hire a crew of advanced specialists, who can quickly prepare a winning application essay for you. They are familiar with all the effective writing strategies that can help you to get the place at a school of your dream! You can contact us at any time, make an order and get your best paper here! For a reasonable price and within the shortest deadlines, you can get a winning Harvard Business School essay from the advanced experts! Contact us and make an order! 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Movie review (runaway jury) Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Movie review (runaway jury) - Essay Example The hearing of any legal case takes place after the process of selecting a jury is successful. In the movie, ‘Runaway Jury, the process of selection is tampered with by a series of manipulations. Most importantly, the jury is asserted if it is discerned to be honest and does not deem of favoring the plaintiff or the defendant. However, the defendant’s attorney makes efforts to tamper with the process of selecting a consortium of jurors who will act in favor of the defendant’s position in the case. The law provides that a manipulated jury does not qualify to foresee or even issue any verdict before it is termed as clear from ill motives (Kovera, Margaret & Brian 35). In the movie, the sobriety and purity of the jury be opposed by the ill motives by one of the jurors, Nick Easter. According to the law, if either of the lawyers representing the plaintiff or defendant believes or speculates feasibility of the jurors to have prejudiced objectives vis-Ã  -vis the case, he or she ought to request the judge to dismiss the jury. In the movie, a similar situation arises. Consequently, the lawyer remains cornered by the challenge posed by Fitch, a jury consultant, concerning the stand to make. However, the law provides that only a manipulation free jury can issue a cognizant and acceptable verdict in a legal

Business Environment Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 5000 words

Business Environment - Essay Example Although the organization is well capitalized and enjoys a global presence, its reputation has constantly been at stake following several fines related to environmental pollution and inadequate maintenance of equipment and facilities. The company has also been accused of ranking poorly in terms of upholding human rights according to some quarters. In view of the company’s business environment, it may well be concluded that the company has a bright future although it needs to make certain adjustments to continue achieving astronomical growth. The research and findings of this report are based on information drawn from a range of reputable secondary sources including the company’s website. BP Oil Limited, formerly known as British Petroleum Incorporates, is a private limited company whose country of origin is the United Kingdom (British Petroleum, n.d). Incorporation on 20th December, 1947, the company has been in existence for close to 63 years and has achieved significant growth economically and in terms of global presence. With its headquarters located in St James’s, London, BP Oil Ltd ranks among the largest privately owned energy corporations globally. In fact, the company is among the six â€Å"supermajors† as it deals in natural gas, oil exploration, and marketing of petroleum products. The multinational organization is currently listed on the London Stock Exchange and features among the 100 most highly capitalized companies in the United Kingdom (FTSE 100) (British Petroleum, n.d). Its capitalization was approximated at 119,039 million Euros as of October, 2009. As a result of the merger between BP Plc and Amaco in 1998, the company has continued to sell Amoco brands in the United States to-date. This is primarily due to the fact that Amoco gasoline brands have been rated by consumers as among the best in the market for close to 16

Intellectual property law (UK) Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Intellectual property law (UK) - Essay Example The present UK law regulating trademarks is the Trade Marks Act 1994. According to the Act, a "trade mark" means any sign capable of being represented graphically, which is capable of distinguishing goods or services of one undertaking from those of other undertakings. A trademark may, in particular, consist of words (including personal names), designs, letters, numerals or the shape of goods or their packaging.1 It is clear that any sign, including designs, is capable of being registrable when conditions are met. Shape of goods can be registered as trademarks. Though not explicitly worded, it is accepted that shapes include both two-dimensional and three-dimensional shapes. The general elements of a trademark include the capability of being represented graphically and distinguishing the goods or service from those of other undertakings. The distinguishing, or, distinctive capability of a trademark is essential, which can be seen from many UK and EU cases. For example, in the Procter & Gamble Company v Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market, a registration was applied for a square tablet with slightly rounded edges and corners, but the registrar refused the application under Article 38 of Regulation No 40/94 on the ground that the mark applied for was devoid of any distinctive character.2 Descriptive Trade Marks This trademarks law is in contrast to what we will refer to as "descriptive" trade marks-that is, naming a product or company using words that describe what it is or what it sells. For instance, if one were to open a blue jean manufacturer in London, and refer to the company as "London Blue Jeans" this is considered a "descriptive trademark, and until recently was not allowed under UK law due to the highly descriptive nature and arrangement of the words. Rights of Trade Marks The UK Trade Mark Act 1994 Article 9 (1) provides that "the proprietor of a registered trade mark has exclusive rights in the trade mark which are infringed by use of the trade mark in the United Kingdom without his consent." This article and Article 43 (1), which provides that the registration of a trade mark may be renewed at the request of the proprietor so long as the renewal fee has been paid3, conferred actually perpetual monopoly on the proprietors. Purpose and rationale: General rationale of IP law The intellectual property rights, argued by economists, are accorded in that if everyone would be allowed to take the advantage of the results of innovative and creative activities freely, the problems of "free rider" would have been rise. Therefore, no one would try to create anything, such as a car or plane if no special advantages would be given, and the economic growth and prosperity would become impossible. The IP law, to solve the problem, confers rights on those who invested (the creator, inventor or who paid for it) on the creations the right of monopoly to ensure that they would make use of the creation to maximize profits4. However, at the same time, there is also a principle of IP law to afford free accesses to those rights to the public after a certain period of monopoly in that it will enhance the economic development of the society with trade mark as an exception. Purpose and rationale: Trade Marks Law The function of trade marks, non-exceptive

Impact of the Black Death on Art in Europe

Impact of the Black Death on Art in Europe How significant was the Black Death for painting in Siena, Florence and  Padua in the second half of the fourteenth century? From 1280 until the advent of the Black Death, Florence, Siena and Padua had been growing in wealth and size, but the outbreak of disease in 1348 and the years following led to the deaths of between a half and two thirds of their populations (Norman, 1995, II, 8). This ‘catastrophic fall’ led to the culmination of many building projects, notably the construction of the Duomo Nuovo in Siena (Norman, 1995, II, 135), but the significance of the Black Death with respect to painting is disputed. Since the publication of Meisss work, Painting in Florence and Siena After the Black Death (1951), the connection between the Black Death and a change in art during the second half of the fourteenth century has been the subject of discussion among art historians. Henk Van Os, for example, argues that Meiss was not the first to identify this trend, but that he was the first to attribute it to the social and religious upheaval which accompanied the Black Death (Van Os, 1981, 238). There has been much discussion as to whether the Black Death could be seen as quite the decisive event that Meiss alleged. The debate focuses on three crucial areas of thought: firstly, whether the works that Meiss cites are correctly dated (i.e. whether they can with certainty be placed before or after 1348); secondly, whether the Black Death was actually a causative factor in the perceived change in style; and, thirdly, whether there was one shift or several in the artistic course of the fourteenth century. In view of these disputes, we must beware of taking too simplistic an approach. For an example of the first element of this debate, we can look to the Triumph of Death in the Camposanto at Pisa and Barna da Sierras frescoes in the Collegiata of San Gimignano, both cited by Meiss as being typical of artistic production after the Black Death. Subsequent scholarship has cast doubt on Meiss’s theory because the former work is now believed to have been produced in the 1330s (Smart, 1978) and the latter is now dated before 1348 (Van Os, 1981, 240). We must also consider that some of the qualities most characteristic of late Trecento painting are already present, as Meiss himself was the first to recognise, in the frescoes by Taddeo Gaddi in the Baroncelli Chapel (Smart, 1978, 108). As this chapel was painted during the years 1328-34, it demonstrates an early change in style which also undermines Meiss’s thesis. The second element of the debate concerns the change in religious thought that occurred as a result of the devastation of the Black Death. Norman comments on the popularity of altarpieces depicting Saint Sebastian and the overt association of his sufferings with those of the victims of plague (Norman, 1995, I, 187-195), but there is also a subtler change in style represented by the Strozzi Altarpiece (1357). Meiss argued that painting typical of the early fourteenth century dwelt on ‘familiar and universal human experience‘ (Meiss, 1951, 28) and that it had been succeeded by a greater emphasis upon the hierarchical and dogmatic expressions of religious life, an elevation of the church and a mystification of the deity. Giotto had pioneered an artistic style that was marked by its realistic depiction of three-dimensional space, harmonious use of colour and the creation of a sympathetic response in the viewer. These features came to be characteristic of early fourteenth pain ting, yet the Strozzi Altarpiece rejects the depiction of concrete space, the figures ‘hover’ and show a ‘lack of exact spatial placement‘, the colours are ‘disjointed and uneasy‘ and the painting creates a distancing sense of awe and mystery, which Cole describes as ‘strange‘, ‘eerie‘, ‘stern and unforgiving‘ and ‘aloof’ (Cole, 1976, 134-6). Meiss argued that this style was a conscious return to the Byzantine influenced art of the previous century (Meiss, 1951, 10) and that it is a reflection of the religious emphasis upon guilt and atonement that was a reaction to the Black Death. We may also notice an interest in the symbolic rather than realistic representation of figures in the St John the Baptist Altarpiece (1370/80) by Giovanni del Biondo, where John tramples his enemy, Herod, underfoot. John has the same austere look and there is the same sense of psychological withdrawal that has been obse rved in the face of Christ in the Strozzi Altarpiece. However, in Padua it is difficult to discover much evidence for the rejection of ‘realism’ in artistic style during the second part of the century. Altichieros decoration of Lupis funerary chapel in the Santo, far from attempting to distance the viewer, uses space and form to draw the spectator in. His use of landscape reminds us of Lorenzetti and his figures are clearly inspired by Giotto, especially the women who gather near the foot of the cross and embrace in a manner reminiscent of Joachim and Anna and the angels who have the substance and expression of those we see in the Arena Chapel. The scale, proportion and design of this fresco suggest that this scene is being played out just beyond the walls of the church and that we are viewing it as though through the arches of a loggia. The colours are harmonious and subdued and there is an impression of nearness and reality. Altichiero’s style is more developed and detailed than earlier works, but its underlying in tent and spirit owes much to his legacy from the earlier fourteenth century. In Siena we also find more contradictory interpretations of the changes that occurred in the mid-century. Henk Van Os has described the way in which social upheavals following the Black Death led to profound changes in patronage: the wealthy elite lost much of their political power and a class of nouveau riche sprang up who had less interest in artistic commissioning. Much of the art became imitative and conservative and was more often commissioned in the provinces surrounding Siena. In the city itself, only the wealthy body of the Ospedale of Santa Maria della Scala, which had received many bequests from victims of the Black Death, continued commissioning new altarpieces, one of which, by Bartolommeo Bulgarini, included the Assumption of the Virgin, a painting which Van Os believes to exhibit very full, monumental figures, entirely in the tradition of Pietro Lorenzetti (Van Os, 1981, 245). He argues that this painting does not show signs of the flat, hierarchical, mystical design wh ich Meiss attributed to it, but that it takes the form of a plastically realistic version of the Assumption and so stands within the earlier traditions of Sienese painting (Van Os, 1981, 245). Certainly, the treatment of the Virgin and the use of elaborate gold effects reflect the Sienese craftsmanship established by Duccio and Simone Martini. Van Os concludes that changes in artistic production after the Black Death were principally due to different sites of patronage rather than changes in religious thought . The third aspect of the debate concerns the question of whether Meiss was right to propose that there was a single significant shift around 1348. Smart and Norman, for example, argue that the Strozzi Altarpiece was not such a significant departure as Meiss had argued because the precedent for such a depiction of Christ had been set in the Stefaneschi Altarpiece, painted by one of Giotto’s associates and dated late 1320s early 1330s (Smart, 1978, 122 and Norman, 1995, I, 184). Although many critics agree that the middle years of the fourteenth century can be described as a period of reassessment in the history of Tuscan painting (Smart, 1978, 107), there are significant arguments that that the evolution of artistic style went through a number of phases, not just one sudden change linked to the Black Death. John White discusses two stylistic changes in the second half of the fourteenth century: the first more conservative and less adventurous and the second in which exploration and experiment again came to the fore (White, 1993, 542). Cole also argues that, as well as the change in the middle of the century, there was another change in style around 1375 and a renewed interest in both the form and content of Giottos art (Cole, 1976, 140). It is clear that, since Meiss’s original theory was proposed, much work has been done by other art historians to challenge his ideas. Although the production of art in Florence in this period did take on different forms from earlier ones and the theory that this was due to the religious reaction provoked by the Black Death can be given some credence, there is less evidence of this trend in Padua and Siena. It is therefore my conclusion that the middle part of the century saw a brief set-back in artistic endeavour, which was due to the devastation caused by the Black Death, but that the fourteenth century was mostly a period of successive developments building on the work of the earlier masters. 1500 words Bibliography Cole, Bruce (1976), Giotto and Florentine Painting 1280-1375, New York. Meiss, Millard (1951), Painting in Florence and Siena After the Black Death, Princeton. Norman, Diana, ed., (1995), Siena, Florence and Padua: Art Society and Religion 1280-1400. Volume I: Interpretative Essays, London. Norman, Diana, ed., (1995), Siena, Florence and Padua: Art .Society ad Religion 1280-1400. Volume II: Case Studies, London. Van Os, HenkThe Black Death and Sienese Painting: a Problem of Interpretation, Art History, 4,1981, pp. 237-49. Smart, Alastair, 1978, The Dawn of Italian Painting 1250-1400, Oxford. White, John, 1993, Art and Architecture in Italy 1250-1400, London.

Tybalts Misinterpretation in William Shakespeares Romeo and Juliet :: Romeo and Juliet Essays

Tybalt's Misinterpretation in Romeo and Juliet Romeo and Juliet is the story of two "star-crossed lovers who take their life" (prologue). Their families were ancient enemies based on an ancient grudge no longer known, but still strong. Romeo and Juliet fall passionately in love ignoring the fact they are, by household, enemies. Friar Lawrence joins them in marriage in hope "to turn their households' rancour to pure love"(p. 43). They married without their families' permission or knowledge and against their society's conventions. Neither Romeo nor Juliet could live without the other by their side and were willing to do anything to be with each other. Shakespeare believes that acting in response to knowledge without evidence or thought can lead to disaster in the end. Misfortunes occurred due to Tybalt and Mercutio's misinterpretation of Romeo's reluctance to fight. Tybalt came to pick a fight with Romeo and instead of getting what he wanted, Romeo continued to hold back because of his marriage to Juliet. Tybalt continued to push for conflict not understanding Romeo's unwillingness. Mercutio also misunderstands Romeo's reluctance to fight and decides to stand up for him by challenging Tybalt to a dual. Tybalt and Mercutio end up fighting. When Romeo stepped in between the fighting Mercutio believed that the dual had ended. And as Mercutio was taken off guard Tybalt attacked and Mercutio was killed. Romeo wanted to get Tybalt back for what he had done and make Mercutio's death of some worth. Romeo used his rage and grief to slay Tybalt. All of this had happened because of Tybalt's and Mercutio's little misinterpretation of Romeo. Both acted without thinking or waiting for a little sense of the matter or any kind of explanation. Two lives were taken as a result and one banished from his true love. Romeo's banishment from Verona resulted in Friar Lawrence's failure to form a back up plan of any kind in case Romeo would not receive the letter or learn of the plan with Juliet. Right after Friar Lawrence received news that Juliet was to be married to Paris he created a plan right on the spot. The plot involved taking a substance that would make her appear to be dead. He said that he would send a letter to Romeo

My Favorite Book Essay

Although Great Britain and the U.S. have the English language in common, they are two unique nations with different cultures, government systems, and traditions. Holidays and celebrations also vary between the two countries. Even Christmas and other Christian holidays, although celebrated by both countries, have some key differences. New Year * New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day are celebrated by both Great Britain and the U.S. on December 31 and January 1 every year. According to ProjectBritain.com, it wasn’t until 2000 that fireworks were used in Great Britain to celebrate the holiday, although this tradition has been long-established in the U.S. In the U.S., 10 seconds before midnight, a countdown from 10 to one takes place, and it’s traditional to kiss loved ones at midnight. In Great Britain, at the stroke of midnight, it’s traditional to open the back door, letting the old year out, and to ask the first dark-haired man who’s spotted to bring salt, coal, and bread through the front door. These represent, respectively, money, warmth and food, meaning that the new year will bring a sufficient amount of these. In both countries, a New Year parade takes place on New Year’s Day: the Rose Bowl Parade in Pasadena, California in the U.S. and the New Year’s Day Parade in London, England, which starts when the famous Big Ben clock strikes noon. Easter The Christian holiday of Easter is celebrated by both Americans and British by decorating eggs, visits from the Easter Bunny and egg hunts. Great Britain has additional, popular Easter customs, such as egg rolling: rolling hard-boiled eggs down hills in a competition. Autumn Holidays * The differences between American and British holidays is especially evident during the autumn, although both countries celebrate Halloween in the same way, by dressing up in costumes, bobbing for apples, and going trick-or-treating. Thanksgiving isn’t celebrated in Great Britain. Americans observe this holiday with a great feast on the fourth Thursday of November. The British celebrate Guy Fawkes Day on November 5 in remembrance of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605, a plan by Guy Fawkes and others to blow up the Houses of Parliament to protest the fact that King James didn’t change Queen Elizabeth I’s anti-Catholic laws. Today the holiday is commemorated by fireworks and burning Guy Fawkes effigies on bonfires. Christmas and Boxing Day * According to LearnEnglish.de, the British place less importance on Christmas Eve than other countries. Instead, they pay more attention to Christmas Day and Boxing Day. In both the U.S. and Britain, Santa or Father Christmas comes at night; American children leave milk and cookies for him, whereas British children leave mince pies and sherry or milk. Some traditional British Christmas Eve activities include singing Christmas carols, attending midnight church services, and going out to a pub. In the U.S., Christmas Eve is celebrated in many ways, such as by opening one present each, singing Christmas carols, attending midnight mass, or eating a special dinner. In both countries, Christmas Day is celebrated by opening presents in the morning and eating a turkey dinner, although other entrees are also popular in the U.S., such as crown roast. In Britain, it’s traditional for Queen Elizabeth to broadcast a message on Christmas Day. Boxing Day, which is celebrated on December 26 in Britain, is the time to give gifts to friends, servants, and tradespeople. It has become a big shopping holiday in Britain, similar to Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, in the U.S. Boxing Day isn’t observed by Americans. Holy Cross (Khachverats)Observed on:September13 The Armenian Church celebrates this holiday on the Sunday nearest September 14, which is devoted to the Holy Cross (Surb Khach). This holiday also serves as a memorial to those who have passed away.| Holy Translators Day (Targmanchats ton)Observed on: October 13 This holiday is dedicated to the creators of Armenian alphabet Mesrop Mashtots and Sahak Partev, Translators and Interpreters of the Bible. The Armenian alphabet was invented in order to translate the Bible into Armenian and paved the way for the first Golden Age of Armenia. Over the centuries, Armenian writers, philosophers, mathematicians, and scientists, have taken inspiration from the Holy Translators’ legacy to achieve excellence in scholarship, creativity, and world acclaim in spite of long periods of devastation, attack, conquest and subjugation. | Purification (Trndez) Observed on: February 14 According to religious custom this holiday is connected with the idea of coming forward to the Lord with fire, after 40 days of his birth. The Armenian Church celebrates it on February 14th – 40 days after January 6th, from which it derives the religious name: coming forward to the Lord. The main ceremony of it is a bonfire, symbolizing the coming of spring. The Transfiguration (Vardavar (The feast of water)) Observed on: July 19 In the traditional Armenian range of holidays, the Transfiguration is the major summer holiday and is celebrated 14 weeks after Easter. In pre-Christian Armenia this holiday was associated with the pagan goddess Anahit, to whose heathen temple the young and the old went on pilgrimage. The word Vardavar has two meanings: â€Å"the flaming of the rose and â€Å"to sprinkle with water. According to legend, the goddess Astghik spread love through the Armenian land by sprinkling rosy water and presenting roses. The god Vahagn kept and protected that love, constantly fighting against evil. This feast was transformed after the adoption of Christianity. On Vardavar in modern times, everybody pours water on one another, starting in the early morning; no one is allowed to feel offended or displeased by mischief on that day.

Cognitive Approaches in Psychology

In this essay I will outline two approaches in psychology, compare and contrast them as well discussing the nature and nurture debate regarding both approaches. I will be examining a theorist from each approach outlining and evaluating his theory including the positive alltributes along with the negative. Finally I will include a therapy from each theorist and approach. The Behaviourist approach focuses on the concept of explaining behaviour by observation, and the belief that our environment is what causes us to behave differently and suffer illnesses.The Behaviourist approach believes that behaviour is influenced by each and every individuals experiences. This could include their background, social and home living circumstances. Behaviourist psychologists argue that when we are born our mind is ‘tabula rasa’ meaning a blank state and that events taking place in our life time can affect and change the way we behave. Behaviour is the the result of stimulus response, i. e all behaviour no matter how complex can be reduced to a simple stimulus response. All behaviour is learnt from the environment.We learn new behaviour through classical and operant conditioning. Classical conditioning is stimulus- response. If a stimulus that results in a emotional response is repeated along with another stimulus which does not cause an emotional response, then eventually the second stimulus will result in the same emotional response. Classical conditioning is therefore learning by association. Some assumptions are made on the behaviourism approach, for example one assumption made is that there is no mind or body dualism and that everything we do is because of behaviour and not because of the mind.A second assumption would be that discovering a stimuli that causes behaviour associations between stimlulus and response will allow us to predict and control behaviour. They also viewed learning as a change of behaviour due to experience. However some critics object again st the behaviourist view that behaviour is determined by our enviromnets as psychologist Garrett (1996) suggested that ‘†¦ behaviour is now shaped by what goes on inside their heads†¦ and not simply by what goes on in the external environment’ (p. 19) Operant conditioning is a method of learning that occurs through rewards and punishments for behaviour.Through operant conditioning, an association can be made between a certain behaviour and a consequence for that behaviour. For example if a good thing is presented and a certain behaviour is encouraged then the behaviour will increase, this is called positive reinforement. However if the good thing is taken away then the behaviour will decrease. For example is a dog is told to fetch the ball and every time it fetches the ball it gets rewarded with a treat. This would influence the dogs behaviour to always fetch the ball as it will be rewarded.Another key feature of the behaviourist approach is the social learnin g theory. The social learning theory focuses on the learning that occurs within a social context. It considers that people learn from one another including such concepts as observational learning, imitation, and modeling. It says that people can learn by observing the behaviour of others and the outcomes of their behaviour. The cognitive approach deals with metal processes or cognitions. These mental processes include memory, thinking and perceptions. Cognition means â€Å"knowing†.Therefore cognition is the mental act or process by which knowledge is acquired. Cognitive psychology has been influenced by the developments in computer science and comparisons have often been made between how a cumputer works and we process information. The main focus of the cognitive approach is how information received from our senses is processed by the brain and how this processing affect how we behave. Cognitive processes show examples of hypothetical constructs. This means that we can not d irectly analyse processes such as thinking but we can dissect what a person is thinking based on how they act.Cognitive psychologists use laboratory experiments to study behaviour. This is because the cognitive approach is a scientific one. These experiments would involve participants taking part in memory tests in strictly controlled conditions. An assumption made about the cognitive approach is that there exists a circular relationship between learning, meaning and memory. The basis for cognitive theories follows this patern in which what is learned is affected by its meaningfulness, the meaning is determined by what is remebered and the memory is affected by what we learn.The cognitive approach places itself in direct opposition to the behaviourist approach which mostly ignores mental processes. The cognitive approach is internal whereas the behaviourist is external as it focuses on the human environment. The cognitive approach examines behaviour which is directed through the min d rather then the body. It studys the thought processes, memory, language, perception and decision making. Whereas the Behaviourist approach examines our behaviour by our responses to our surroundings and the events taking place around us which may influence us to act in a certain way through imitation.It assumes that we learn things by associating certain events with certain consequences and that we will behave in the way that achieves the most desirable consequences. There are many methods in which the cognitive approach examine. Such as the holistic method which is a view that all aspects of people’s needs such as the psychological, physical and social should be taken into account and seen as a whole. The nature and nurture debate is one of the longest running debates in the area of psychology in which theorists have various different views and opinions.Nurture is the view that everything we learn is through interaction with our surrounding environment, this could include with people, family and mass media. Some assumptions of this approach would be that the nurture theory did not discount that genetics exist but argues that they simply made no difference to how we behave and act. Studies on children temperament showed the most crucial evidence for the nurture theory. Another would be that the nurture argument is most represented by the behaviourist approach as behaviourists believe that all behaviour is the outcome of learning through conditioning.The nature theory focuses on the heredity and specific genes which can determine passing on of traits such as eye colour and skin colour. The nature theory would suggest that even personality, intelligence and aggression is also encoded in our DNA. Some assumptions of this approach would be that behaviour is innate, conditions such a schizophrenia show genetic links and a large amount of research shows that there is a link between hormones and aggression. Behaviourism follows the nurture approach as it stu dies that we learn from our environment, hence making this approach nurturist.It believes that our behaviour is influenced by our surroundings. Watson- the father of behaviourism quoted: ‘Give me a dozen healthy infants and my own specified world to bring them up in and I will garantee to take anyone at random and train him to become any kind of specialist I might select: doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant chef and yes beggar and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tenancies, abilities, vocations and race of his ancestors. ’ Watson is clearly stating that he could change any person from any different social background and race if he could bring them up in his own way.His statement strongly argues the nurture side of the debate. He argued that human behaviour could be conditioned depending on their surroundings. On the other hand the Cognitive approach is an interaction between the two nature and nurture. As much as it focuses on reactions of the senses to the bra in and the mind which make it nature it also has many nurture altributes also. The cognitive psychologist would recognise that experience and the environment also contribute and shape these innate abilities. Piaget’s therory backed this up as he believed that humans use their experiences to construct new understandings.He agreed that both nature and nurture are important, humans move through universal stages due to maturation however the rate they mature in depends on experience. He said that people are, by nature active contributors to their own development. Piaget’s argued that both nature and nurture interact to produce cognitive development. He said that the nature side helps the maturation of the brain and the body, along with the ability to percieve and learn. Whereas the nurture helps with the adaptation of children and how they respond to their enviroment. Bandura was a behaviourist theorist.He believed that there are three sources of models which influenced hu mans behaviour, these included the family, the mass media and the sub-culture. He conducted a number of experiments in which he carried out on children. One of his experiments involved an inflatable Bobo doll, his aim was to investigate the effects of observing aggression in an adult model. The procedure of this experiment was for it to take place in a playroom containing a range of toys. Young children watched an adult attacking a large inflatable Bobo doll by hitting it with a hammer and saying ‘pow’!Once the adult left the playroom, the behaviour of the children was then observed. A control group of children who did not see the adult attack the doll were also observed in the playroom. The results showed that the children who had seen the adult attack the doll also attacked the doll in similar ways. However the children who had not seen the adult attack the doll did not. The conclusion to this was that children learned particular behaviours towards the Bobo doll throu gh observational learning and then copied the behaviour when given a chance.Two years later he conducted a similar experiment however this time it was to observe the effects on modelling by children of seeing a model reinforced or punished for a behaviour. This experiment, like the previous involved a bunch of children watching and adult kick and attack a Bobo doll but this time get rewarded for it. Another set of children watched the same thing however saw the adult get punished for it. The children in the group that saw the model being punished were later offered a reward if they could reproduce the behaviour they had observed.The results showed that the children in the group that saw the model get punished for the attack were less likely to imitate that behaviour. This experiment concluded that observation is enough for behaviour to be learned, however reinforcement is necessary for the behaviour to be modelled. The values of Bandura’s social learning theory were that it e xtended the operant conditioning theory. It focused on the idea of the influence of the social environment in behaviour therefore providing an explanation for cultural and individual differences.It could account for individual differences and allowed for more complex human behaviour. Bandura’s theory had a role to play in personality theory and introduces the idea of vicarious learning. Although the criticisms are that his theories are reductionist, environmental and determinism. Reductionist ways of explaining behaviour often examine one single cause ignoring other explanations. Reductionism attempts to understand and describe the human behaviour in terms of simple components or units. Any explanation of behaviour at its simplest can be described as reductionist.This approach reduces a complex behaviour to a simple set of variables which offer the possibilities of identifying a cause and effect. The reductionist approach is therefor a from of determinism. Determinists believ e that it is possible to predict behaviour by identifying the cause of behaviour. His theories were also criticised as being environmental, meaning that the environment that he uses in his experiments can affect the human behaviour. The use of violence towards a doll in his experiments were not ethical as he only used children.It was also sociably incorrect as it was influencing violence to receive a reward. The biological influences are ignored, lack cohesiveness and still excludes influences such as emotions. Jean piaget was a psychologist who studied the development of children’s understanding and how their minds work. His theory on how the children’s mind works and develops has been hugely influential, specially in educational theory. Piaget was particularly interested in the way in which a child’s mind matures in the different developmental stages and how their maturing increases their capacity to understand their world.His theory was that all infants have the same structures and they all have innate reflexes and schemas. He believed that children cannot undertake certain tasks until they are psychologically mature enough to do so. He thought that childrens thinking develop at different stages, and that at certain points the mind would mature into different capabilities such as the first transition taking place at 18 months, then at the age of 7 and 11 or 12. He meant that before these ages children could not have a capable understanding of certain things in certain ways.The stages which took place according to this theory were firstly the sensorimotor stage which takes place between birth and two years. At this stage the child can identify itself and acts as an agent of action purposely banging on pots and pans to make noises to hear the reaction. The child can differentiate self from objects and learns object permanence realising that objects still do exist even if they are not in sight. The second stage is the pre-operational stage . This is the stage in which the child learns to use language and images to identify objects.However their thinking is still egocentric indicating that they cannot see things from another persons point of view. This stage usually takes place from the age of two till seven. The third stage is called the concrete operational stage, this takes place between the ages of seven and eleven. The final stage is called the formal operational stage, at this stage children start to think about the future and ideological problems. The child’s cognitive structure is more like that of an adults and includes conceptual reasoning. His theory was successful in the fact that they used his theory as a basis for scheduling in the school curriculum.His theory has a huge influence on the understanding of cognitive development and it was the first comprehensive theory of children’s cognitive development. His theory also challenged the traditional idea of the child being passive in development , also as his theory was scientifically based this made it come across as more accurate. However his theory has received some criticism, some critics challenged some of his developmental stages such as the sensorimotor stage and the pre-operational stage. Gelman questioned what Piaget viewed about children as young as four not being able to take on another persons point of view.Gelman believed that it was possible for children to do so. Behaviour therapy refers to techniques based on classical conditioning. This therapy consists of using learning principles to change maladaptive behaviour. There are a number of various behaviour therapies including systematic desensitisation. This therapy is a form of counter conditioning using a hierarchy of fear. One example could be to remove a phobia of animals. The patient is taught how to relax so that relaxation and fear cancel each other out, to do this hypnosis or tranquillisers may be used.It is believed that it is impossible for a person to experience two opposite emotions at the same time. The systematic part of the therapy involves a recorded series of contacts with the object of the phobia. Whilst relaxing a least frightening image of the object is introduced to the patient until this can be done without the patient having any feelings of anxiety. Some of the therapies based on classical conditioning are effective, such as the systematic desensitisation therapy. However it is mostly effective only for anxiety disorders and addictions. They are more effective in phobias than in psychotic disorders.An advantage is that the therapies are relatively quick and only take a few months to work as oppose to psychodynamic treatment which can take years. There is also a high success rate, McGrath found that systematic desensistisation to be effective for around 75% of people with phobias. In the case of single sessions success, if conducted in one session it is proved that 90% of patients with phobias made vast improvements and some were even fully recovered. Systematic desennsitisation helped treat one of the most difficult phobias to treat called agoraphobia, this therapy however helped between 60-80% of cases.Critics of these therapies would suggest that many patients with phobias may have no recollection of bad experiences with the object and simply just have a phobia, therefore the therapies would not be effective and solve the problem. Psychodynamic theorists would say this is due to the symptom being a sign that something unconscious is wrong with the patient. Another disadvantage is the unpredictable effects that the therapy can have on the patient such as heart attacks and hyperventilating. The cognitive approach has many therapies to explain and modify behaviour.Cognitive forms of therapy include the Ellis rational therapy, which is now more commonly known as rational emotive behaviour therapy. Ellis came to conclusions about patients negative thoughts and their tendencies to catastrophise s ituations making things seem so much worse then they actually are. This therapy focuses on when irrational thoughts are seen as the main cause of all types of emotional distress and behaviour orders. The aim of this therapy is to exchange the irrational unreasonable with the more positive and realistic beliefs and ways of thinking. Patients are encouraged to ‘look on the bright side’.Ellis identified patients irrational beliefs and ideas which are emotionally self defeating and are mostly associated with psychological problems such as negative thoughts and feelings about ones self. Patients are told to practice certain positive statements like â€Å" I can do† rather then â€Å" I can’t do† to help them create a more positive state of mind. The benefits of using such therapies are that it is a structured therapy with outcomes which are achievable, these methods are becoming more commonly used as they are short term and are cost effective aswell as e conomically effective.This therapy is appealing towards patients who find insight therapies which look deep into their inner emotions and problems seem less threatening and intimidating. Although there are disadvantages of this therapy. It may not uncover the problem completely, however it does almost try to empower patients to help themselves with their issues and feel better. It also may not work well for adults who are not willing to take part and collaborate with the therapist to achieve a new way of thinking. It may also not be successful for those who feel that they can’t achieve self happiness without something or someone else contributing towards it.This therapy is mostly successful for clients suffering from anxiety disorders, stress management and sexual problems. Studies have shown that this therapy is more effective in depression than drugs are and the relapse rate is proved to be lower with cognitive behavioural therapy. This from of therapy has been proved to be more effective then anti depressants. In conclusion, I have included all the points mentioned in the introduction that I said I would include in my essay, I have outlined and evaluated two approaches and discussed two theorists and therapies for each approach.