Tuesday, November 26, 2019

The Ultimate Guide To Beating Makeshift Marketing For Good (13 Articles)

The Ultimate Guide To Beating Makeshift Marketing For Good (13 Articles) makeshift marketing |ˈmÄ kËÅ'SHift  Ã‹Ë†mrkÉ™diNG| noun the temporary, sub-optimal solution for getting your marketing mayhem together. It’s a real thing. Click play and see what I meanI cant tell you how many marketers Ive met whose solution for â€Å"keeping their sanity† involves spreadsheets organizing spreadsheets. Who’ve decided endless meetings to â€Å"get on the same page† is par for the course. Who’ve succumbed to â€Å"on the fly† project management because that’s just the nature of the job?! And who’ve settled for a cobbled mess of one-trick tools becausewell†¦? At , this is the enemy were helping marketers across the world defeat! And that  means you! No more #MakeshiftMarketing! You need 📈 A productivity tool designed specifically for marketers 🠐 ¦ With a bird’s eye view 📅 An active, living calendar with color labels, tags, drag drop functionality, timelines, discussion threads, templates, multiple views, and MORE 📠 A place where you can manage, collaborate, AND publish 🠤â€" Where you can templatize your workflows 🛠  Integrate with all your favorite tools 🠧 ¡ 💠° And prove the ROI of your kick a$$ marketing efforts. You need a fix And in this ultimate guide to beating makeshift marketing for good, a fix you will get! Youll find 13 of our very best resources on how to go from zero to a hundred in short order. Heres Something Special (Because We Like You) First, though, we have something special just for you. You can pick a time to schedule a personalized marketing demo of   just for you and  your team. Sure, you can check out all of these amazing resources to lead change, influence others, organize the chaos, and then sustain your awesome results or you can get a short cut in line to success in just 30 minutes with a marketing demo with a expert. Your call. Pick your time now  or read on! Youll find the resources organized in four key categories: Leading change: why and how you can do this! Influencing others: science-informed ways to lead bosses, peers, and your team. Organizing chaos: the incredible power of organization. Sustaining results: how to keep growing once youve hit your stride. Now, lets keep plowing ahead!

Saturday, November 23, 2019

Bad College Essays 10 Mistakes You Must Avoid

Bad College Essays 10 Mistakes You Must Avoid SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips Just as there are noteworthy examples ofexcellent college essaysthat admissions offices like to publish, so are there cringe-worthy examples ofterrible college essays that end up being described by anonymous admissions officers on Reddit discussion boards. While I won’t guarantee that your essay will end up in the first category, I will say that you follow my advice in this article, your essay most assuredly won’t end up in the second. How do you avoid writing a bad admissions essay? Read on to find out what makes an essay bad and to learn which college essay topics to avoid. I'll also explain how to recognize bad college essays – and what to do toif you end up creating one by accident. What Makes Bad College Essays Bad What exactly happens to turn a college essay terrible? Just as great personal statements combine an unexpected topic with superb execution, flawed personal statements compound problematic subject matterwith poor execution. Problems With the Topic The primary way to screw up a college essay is to flubwhat the essay is about or how you’ve decided to discuss a particular experience. Badly chosen essay content can easily createan essay that is off-putting in one of a number of ways I’ll discuss in the next section. The essay is the place to let the admissions office of your target college get to know your personality, character, and the talents and skills that aren’t on your transcript.So if you start witha terrible topic, not only will you end up with a bad essay, but you risk ruining the good impression that the rest of your application makes. Some bad topics show admissions officers that you don’t have a good sense of judgment or maturity, which is a problem since they are building a class of college students who have tobe able to handle independent life on campus. Other bad topics suggest that you are a boring person, or someone who doesn’t process your experience in a colorful or lively way, which is a problem since collegeswant to create a dynamic and engaged cohort of students. Still other bad topics indicate that you'reunaware of or disconnected from the outside world and focused only on yourself, which is a problem since part of the point of college is to engage with new people and new ideas, and admissions officersare looking for people who can do that. Problems With the Execution Sometimes, even if the experiences you discuss could be the foundation of a great personal statement, the way you’ve structured and put together your essay sends up warning flags. This is because the admissions essay is also a place to show the admissions team the maturity and clarity of your writing style. One way to get this part wrong is to exhibit very faulty writing mechanics, like unclear syntax or incorrectly used punctuation. This is a problem since college-ready writing is one of the things that’s expected from a high school graduate. Another way to mess this up is to ignore prompt instructions either for creative or careless reasons. This can show admissions officers that you'reeither someone who simply blows off directions and instructions or someone who can't understand how to follow them. Neither is a good thing, since they are looking for people who are open to receiving new information from professors and not just deciding they know everything already. Ignoring directions to this degree is not creative, just annoying. College Essay Topics To Avoid Want to know why you're often advised to write about something mundane and everyday for your college essay? That's because the more out-there your topic, the more likely it is to stumble into one of these trouble categories. Too Personal The problem with the overly personal essay topic is that revealing something veryprivate can show that you don’t really understand boundaries. And knowing where appropriate boundaries arewill be key for living on your own with a bunch of people not related to you. Unfortunately, stumbling into the TMI zone of essay topics is more common than you think. One quick test for checking your privacy-breaking level:if it’s not something you’d tell a friendlystranger sitting next to you on the plane, maybe don’t tell it to the admissions office. Examples: Describinglosing your virginity, or anything about your sex life really. This doesn’t mean you can’t write about your sexual orientation – just leave out the actual physical act. Writing in too much detail about your illness, disability, any other bodily functions. Detailed meaningful discussion of what this physical condition has meant to you and your life is a great thing to write about. But stay away from body horror and graphic descriptions that are simply there for gratuitous shock value. Waxing poetic about your love for your significant other.Your relationshipis adorable to the people currently involved in it, but those who don't know you aren't invested in this aspect of your life. Confessing to odd and unusual desires of the sexual or illegal variety.Your obsession with cultivating cacti is wonderful topic, while your obsession with researching explosives is a terrible one. Some secrets are better behind lock and key. Or behind industrial strengthrack and pinion matching machined gears and pressure bolt. Too Revealing of Bad Judgment Generally speaking, leave past illegal or immoralactions out of your essay. It's simply a bad idea to give admissions officers ammunition to dislike you. Some exceptions might be if you did something in a very, very different mindset from the one you’re in now (in the midst of escaping from danger, under severe coercion, or when you were very young, for example). Or if your essay is about explaining how you'veturned over a new leaf and you have the transcript to back you up. Examples: Writing about committing crime as something fun or exciting. Unlessit's on your permanent record, and you'd like a chance to explain how you've learned your lesson and changed, don't put this in your essay. Describingdrug use or the experience of being drunk or high. Even if you're in a state where some recreational drugs are legal, you're a high school student. Your only exposure to mind-altering substances should be caffeine. Making upfictional stories about yourself as though they are true. You're unlikely to be a good enough fantasist to pull this off, and there's no reason to roll the dice on being discovered to be a liar. Detailing yourpersonality flaws. Unless you have a great story of coping with one of these, leave deal-breakers like pathological narcissism out of your personal statement. You're better off not airing your dirty laundry out in public. Seriously, no one wants to smell those socks. Too Overconfident While it's great to have faith in your abilities, no one likes a relentless show-off. No matter how magnificent your accomplishments, if you decide to focus your essay on them, it's better to describe a setback or a moment of doubt rather that simply praising yourself to the skies. Examples: Bragging and making yourself the flawless hero of your essay. This goes double if you're writing about not particularly exciting achievements like scoring the winning goal or getting the lead in the play. Having no awareness of the actual scope ofyour accomplishments.It's lovelythat you take time to help others, but volunteer-tutoring a couple of hours a week doesn’t make you a saintly figure. Cheering on a team? Awesome. Cheering on yourself? A little obnoxious. Too Clichà ©d or Boring Remember your reader. In this case, you're tryingto make yourself memorable to anadmissions officer who has been reading thousands of other essays. If your essay makes the mistake of being boring or trite, it just won’t register in that person’s mind as anything worth paying attention to. Examples: Transcribingyour resume into sentence form or writing about the main activity on your transcript. The application already includes your resume, or a detailed list of your various activities. Unless the prompt specifically asks youto write about your main activity, the essay needs to be about afacet of your interests and personality that doesn't come through the other parts of the application. Writing about sports. Every athlete tries to write this essay. Unless you have a completely off-the-wall story or unusual achievement, leave this overdone topic be. Beingmoved by your community service trip to a third-world country. Were you were impressed athow happy the people seemed despite being poor? Did you learn a valuable lesson about how privileged you are? Unfortunately, so has every other teenager who traveled on one of these trips. Writing about thistends to simultaneously make you sound unempathetic, clueless about the world, way over-privileged, and condescending. Unless you have a highly specific, totally unusual story to tell, don’t do it. Reacting with sadness to a sad, but very commonexperience. Unfortunately, many of the hard, formative events in your life are fairly universal. So, if you’re going to write about death or divorce, make sure tofocus on how youdealt with this event, so the essay is something only you could possibly have written. Only detailed, idiosyncratic description can save this topic. Going meta.Don’t write about the fact that you’re writing the essay as we speak,and now the reader is reading it, and look, the essay is right here in the reader'shand. It's a technique that seems clever, but has already been done many times in many different ways. Offering your ideas on how tofix the world. This is especially true if your solution is an easy fix, if only everyone would just listen to you. Trust me,there's just no way you are being realisticallyappreciative of the level of complexity inherent in the problem you're describing. Starting with a famous quotation. There usually is no need to shore up your own words by bringing in someone else's. Of course, if you are writing about a particular phrase that you've adopted as a life motto, feel free to include it. But even then, having it be the first line in your essay feels like you're handing the keys over to that author and asking them to drive. Using an everyday object as a metaphor for your life/personality.â€Å"Shoes. They are like this, and like that, and people love them for all of these reasons. And guess what? They are just like me.† Shoes are from several centuries ago and tend to be used as flower vases. And that's true for me too! Too Off-Topic Unlike the essays you’ve been writing in school where the idea is to analyze something outside of yourself, the main subject of your college essay should be you, your background, your makeup, and your future.Writing about someone or something else might well make a great essay, but not for this context. Examples: Paying tribute to someone very important to you. Everyone would love to meet your grandma, but this isn’t the time to focus on her amazing coming of age story. If you do want to talk about a person who is important to your life, dwell on the waysyou've been impacted by them, and how you will incorporate this impact into your future. Documentinghow well other people do things, say things, are active, while you remain passive and inactive in the essay. Being in the orbit of someone else's important lab work, or complex stage production, or meaningful political activism is a fantasticlearning moment. But if you decide to write about, your essay should be about your learning and how you've been influenced, not about the other person's achievements. Concentrating ona work of art that deeply moved you. Watch out for the pitfall of writing ananalytical essay about that work, and not at all about your reaction to it or how you’ve been affected since. Check out our explanation of how to answer Topic D of the ApplyTexasapplicationto get some advice on writing about someone else's workwhile making sure your essay still points back at you. If you write your essay about art, be theguy all the way on the right, looking right at the audience to explain what's happening. Don't be the guy who is totally absorbed bywhat he's looking at. (Image: Pieter Christoffel Wonder [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons) Want to write the perfect college application essay? Get professional help from PrepScholar. Your dedicated PrepScholar Admissions counselor will craft your perfect college essay, from the ground up. We'll learn your background and interests, brainstorm essay topics, and walk you through the essay drafting process, step-by-step. At the end, you'll have a unique essay that you'll proudly submit to your top choice colleges. Don't leave your college application to chance. Find out more about PrepScholar Admissions now: Too Offensive With this potential mistake, you run the risk ofshowing a lack of self-awareness orthe ability to be open to new ideas. Remember, no reader wants to be lectured at. If that’s what your essay does, you are demonstrating an inabilityto communicate successfully with others. Also, remember that no college is eager to admit someone who is too close-minded to benefit from being taught by others. A long, one-sided essay about a hot-button issue will suggest that you are exactly that. Examples: Ranting at length about political, religious, or other contentious topics. You simply don't know where the admissions officer who reads your essay standson any of these issues. It's better to avoid upsetting or angering that person. Writing aone-sided diatribe about guns, abortion, the death penalty, immigration, or anything else in the news. Even if you can marshal facts in your argument, this essay is simply the wrong place to take a narrow, unempathetic side in an ongoing debate. Mentioninganything negative about the school you’re applying to. Again, your reader is someone who works there and presumably is proud of the place. This is not the time to question the admissions officer's opinions or life choices. Don't make your reader feel like they've suddenly gotten in the ring with you. College Essay Execution Problems To Avoid Bad college essays aren't only caused by bad topics. Sometimes, even if you’re writing about an interesting, relevant topic, you can still seem immature or unready for college life because of the way you present that topic – the way you actually write your personal statement. Check to make sure you haven't made any of the common mistakes on this list. Tone-Deafness Admissions officers are looking for resourcefulness, the ability to be resilient, and an active and optimistic approach to life – these are all qualities that create a thriving college student. Essays that don't show these qualities are usually suffering from tone-deafness. Examples: Being whiny or complaining about problems in your life. Is the essay about everyone doing things to/against you? About things happening to you, rather than you doing anything about them? That perspective is a definite turn-off. Trying and failing to use humor. You may be very funny in real life, but it's hard to be successfully funny in this context, especially when writing for a reader who doesn’t know you. If you do want to use humor, I'd recommendthe simplest and most straightforward version:being self-deprecating and low-key. Talking down to the reader, or alternately being self-aggrandizing. No one enjoys being condescended to. In this case, much of the function of your essay is to charm and make yourself likable, which is unlikely to happen if you adopt this tone. Being pessimistic, cynical, and generally depressive. You are applying to college because you are looking forward to a future of learning, achievement, and self-actualization. This is not the time to bust out your existential ennui and your jaded, been-there-done-that attitude toward life. Edvard Munch probably didn't submit "The Scream" as his admissions essay. He smartly saved all that existential angst for his post-bac! (Image: Eduard Munch [Public Domain], via Wikimedia Commons) Lack of Personality One good question to ask yourself is: could anyone else have written this essay? If the answer is yes, then you aren’t doing a good job of representing your unique perspective on the world. It’s very important to demonstrate your ability to be a detailed observer of the world, since that will be one of your main jobs as a college student. Examples: Avoiding any emotions, and appearing robot-like and cold in the essay. Unlike essays that you've been writing for class, this essay is meant to be a showcase of your authorial voice and personality. It may seem strange to shift gears after learning how to take yourself out of your writing, but this is the place where you have to put as much as yourself in as possible. Skipping overdescription and specific detailsin favor ofwriting only in vague generalities. Does yournarrative feel like a newspaper horoscope, whichcould apply to every other person who was there that day? Then you’re doing it wrong and need to refocus onyourreaction, feelings, understanding, and transformation. Your college essay isn't the place to be indistinguishable. Off-Kilter Style There’s some room for creativity here, yes, but a college essay isn’t a free-for-all postmodern art class. True, there areprompts that specifically call for your most out-of-left-field submission, or allow you to submit a portfolio or some other work sample instead of a traditional essay. But on a standard application, it's better to stick to traditional prose, split into paragraphs, further split into sentences. Examples: Submitting anything other than just the materials asked for on your application. Don't send food to the admissions office, don't write your essay on clothing or shoes, don't create a YouTube channel about your undying commitment to the school. I know there are a lot ofurban legends about "that one time this crazy thing worked," but they are either not true or about something that will not work a second time. Writing your essay in verse, in the form of a play, in bullet points, as an acrostic, or any other non-prose form.Unless you really have a way with poetry or playwriting, and you are very confident that you can meet the demands of the prompt and explain yourself well in this form, don't discard prose simply for the sake of being different. Using as many â€Å"fancy† words as possible and getting very faraway from sounding like yourself. Admissions officers are unanimous in wanting to hearyournot fully formed teenage voice in your essay. This means that you should write at the top of your vocabulary range and syntax complexity, but don't trade every word up for a thesaurus synonym. Your essay will suffer for it. If you dress like this every day, you can use all the fancy words you like. Failure to Proofread Most people have a hard time checking overtheir own work. This is why you have tomake sure that someone else proofreads your writing. This is the one place where you can, should – and really must – get someone who knows all about grammar, punctuation and has a good eye for detail to take a red pencil to your final draft. Otherwise, you look likeyou either don’t know the basic rules or writing (in which case, are you really ready for college work?) or don’t care enough to present yourself well (in which case, why would the admissions people care about admitting you?). Examples: Typos, grammatical mistakes, punctuation flubs, weird font/paragraph spacing issues. It's true that these are often unintentional mistakes. But caring about getting it right is a way to demonstrate your work ethic and dedication to the task at hand. Going over the word limit. Part of showing your brilliance is being able to work within arbitrary rules and limitations. Going over the word count points to a lack of self-control, which is not a very attractive feature in a college applicant. Repeating the same word(s) or sentence structure over and over again. This makes your prose monotonous and hard to read. Repetition: excellent for mastering the long jump, terrible for keeping a reader's interest. Bad College Essay Examples – And How to Fix Them The beauty of writing is that you get to rewrite. So ifyou think of your essay as a draft waiting to be revised into a better version rather than as a precious jewel that can’t bear being touched, you’ll be in far better shape to correct the issues that always crop up! Nowlet’s take a look at some actual college essay drafts to see where the writer is going wrong and how the issue could be fixed. Essay #1: The â€Å"I Am Writing This Essay as We Speak† Meta-Narrative Was your childhood home destroyed by a landspout tornado? Yeah, neither was mine. I know that intro might have given the impression that this college essay will be about withstanding disasters, but the truth is that it isn't about that at all. In my junior year, I always had in mind an image of myself finishingthe college essay months before the deadline. But as the weeks dragged on and the deadline drew near, it soon became clear that at the rate things are going I would probably have to make new plans formy October, November and December. Falling into my personal wormhole, I sat down with my momto talk about colleges. â€Å"Maybe you should write about Star Trek,† she suggested, â€Å"you know how you’ve always been obsessed with Captain Picard, calling him your dream mentor. Unique hobbies make good topics, right? You'll soundcreative!† I played with the thought in my mind, tapping my imaginary communicator pin and whispering "Computer. Tea. Earl Grey. Hot. And then an Essay." Nothing happened. Instead, I sat quietly in my room wrote the old-fashioned way. Days later I emerged from my room disheveled, but to my dismay, this college essay made me sound like justa guy who can't getover the fact that he'll never take the Starfleet Academy entrance exam. So, I tossedmy essay away without even getting to disintegrate it with a phaser set on stun. I fell into astate of panic. My college essay. My image of myself in senioryear. Almost out of nowhere, Robert Jameson Smith offered his words of advice. Perfect! He suggested students begin their college essay by listing their achievements and letting their essay materialize from there. My heart lifted, I took his advice and listed three of my greatest achievements - mastering my backgammon strategy, being a part of TREE in my sophomoreyear, and performing"I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General" from The Pirates of Penzance in public.And sure enough, I felt inspiration hit me and began to type away furiously into the keyboard about my experience in TREE, or Trees Require Engaged Environmentalists. I reflected on the current state of deforestation, and described the dichotomy of it being both understandable why farmers cut down forests for farmland, and how dangerous this is to our planet. Finally, I added my personal epiphany to the end of my college essay as thecherry on the vanilla sundae, as the overused saying goes. After 3 weeksof figuring myself out, I have convertedmyself into a piece of writing. As far as achievements go, this was definitely an amazing one. The ability to transforma human being into 603words surely deservesa gold medal. Yet in this essay, I was still being nagged by a voice that couldn't be ignored. Eventually, I submitted to that yelling inner voiceand decided that this was not the right essay either. In the middle of a hike through Philadelphia's Fairmount Park, I realized that the college essay was nothing more than an embodiment of my character. The two essays I have written were not right because they have failed to become more than just words on recycled paper. The subject failed to come alive. Certainly my keen interest in Star Trekand my enthusiasm forTREE are a great part of who I am, but there were other qualities essential in my character that did not come across in the essays. With this realization, I turned around as quickly as I could without crashing into a tree. What Essay #1 Does Well Here are all things that are working on all cylinders for this personal statement as is. Killer First Sentence Was your childhood home destroyed by a landspout tornado? Yeah, neither was mine. Funny, striking, memorable – this sentence has it all: A strange fact.There are different kinds of tornadoes? What is a "landspout tornado" anyway? A late-night-deep-thoughts hypothetical.What would it be like to be a kid whose house was destroyed in this unusual way? Direct engagement with the reader.Instead of asking â€Å"what would it be like to have a tornado destroy a house† it asks â€Å"wasyour house ever destroyed." Speaking of tornadoes, how awesome was the Wizard of Oz? Gentle, Self-Deprecating Humor That Lands Well I played with the thought in my mind, tapping my imaginary communicator pin and whispering "Computer. Tea. Earl Grey. Hot. And then an Essay." Nothing happened. Instead, I sat quietly in my room wrote the old-fashioned way. Days later I emerged from my room disheveled, but to my dismay, this college essay made me sound like just a guy who can't get over the fact that he'll never take the Starfleet Academy entrance exam. So, I tossed my essay away without even getting to disintegrate it with a phaser set on stun. The author has hiscake and eats it too here: both making fun of himself for being super into the Star Trekmythos, but also showing himself being committed enough to try whispering a command to the Enterprise computeralone in hisroom. You know, just in case. A Solid Point That Is Made Paragraph by Paragraph The meat of the essay is that the two versions of himself that the author thought about portraying each fails in some way to describe the real him. Neither an essay focusing on his off-beat interests, nor an essay devoted to his serious activismcouldcapture everything about a well-rounded person in 600 words. Great Exit With this realization, I turned around as quickly as I could without crashing into a tree. The essay illustrates its own stopping by having the narrator literally stop in the middle of a hike and narrowly avoid a collision. That’s funny and clever without being too gimmicky. The ending should be short and sweet, so your reader doesn't start wishing you'd turn into a human cannonball. (Image: fir0002via Wikimedia Commons.) Where Essay #1 Needs Revision Rewriting these flawed parts will make the essay shine. Spending Way Too Long on the Metanarrative I know that intro might have given the impression that this college essay will be about withstanding disasters, but the truth is that it isn't about that at all. In my junior year, I always had in mind an image of myself finishingthe college essay months before the deadline. But as the weeks dragged on and the deadline drew near, it soon became clear that at the rate things are going I would probably have to make new plans formy October, November and December. After 3 weeksof figuring myself out, I have convertedmyself into a piece of writing. As far as achievements go, this was definitely an amazing one. The ability to transforma human being into 603words surely deservesa gold medal. Look at how long and draggy these paragraphs are, especially after that zippy opening. Is it at all interesting to read about how someone else found the process of writing hard? Not really, because this is a very common experience. In the rewrite, I’d advise condensing all of this to maybe a sentence to get tothe meat of the actual essay. Letting Other People Do All the Doing I sat down with my momto talk about colleges. â€Å"Maybe you should write about Star Trek,† she suggested, â€Å"you know how you’ve always been obsessed with Captain Picard, calling him your dream mentor. Unique hobbies make good topics, right? You'll soundcreative!† Almost out of nowhere, Robert Jameson Smith offered his words of advice. Perfect! He suggested students begin their college essay by listing their achievements and letting their essay materialize from there. Twice in the essay, the author lets someone else tell him what to do.Not only that, but it sounds like both of the â€Å"incomplete† essays were dictated by the thoughts of other people and had little to do with his own ideas, experiences, or initiative. In the rewrite, it would be better to recast both the Stark Trekand the TREE versions of the essay as the author’s own thoughts rather than someone else’s suggestions. This way, the point of the essay – taking apart the idea that a college essay couldsummarize life experience – is earned by the author’s two failed attempts to write that other kind of essay. Don't be a passive panda. Be an active antelope. Leaving the Insight and Meaning Out of His Experiences Both the Star Trekfandom and the TREE activism were obviously important life experiences for this author – important enough to be potential college essay topic candidates.But there is no description of what the author did with either one, nor any explanation of why these were so meaningful to his life. It’s fine to say that none of your achievements individually define you, but in order for that to work, you have to really sell the achievements themselves. In the rewrite, it would be good to explore what he learned about himself and the world by pursuing these interests. How did they change him or seen him into the person he is today? Not Adding New Shades and Facets of Himself Into the Mix So, I tossedmy essay away without even getting to disintegrate it with a phaser set on stun. Yet in this essay, I was still being nagged by a voice that couldn't be ignored. Eventually, I submitted to that yelling inner voiceand decided that this was not the right essay either. In both of these passages, there is the perfect opportunity to point out what exactly these failed versions of the essay didn'tcapture about the author.In the next essay draft, I would suggest subtly making a point about his other qualities. For example, after the Star Trekparagraph, he could talk about other culture he likes to consume, especially if he can discussart forms he is interested in that would not be expected from someone who lovesStar Trek. Or, after the TREE paragraph, the author could explain why this second essay was no better at capturing him than the first. What was missing? Why is the self in the essay shouting – is it because this version paints him as an overly aggressive activist? Star Trek fans are a dime a dozen. But a Trekkie who is also a graffiti aficionado? Now that's a novel intersection of cultural tastes. Want to build the best possible college application? We can help. PrepScholar Admissions is the world's best admissions consulting service. We combine world-class admissions counselors with our data-driven, proprietary admissions strategies. We've overseen thousands of students get into their top choice schools, from state colleges to the Ivy League. We know what kinds of students colleges want to admit. We want to get you admitted to your dream schools. Learn more about PrepScholar Admissions to maximize your chance of getting in. Essay #2: The â€Å"I Once Saw Poor People† Service Trip Essay Unlike other teenagers, I’m not concerned about money, or partying, or what others think of me. Unlike other eighteenyear-olds, I think about my future, and haven't become totally materialistic and acquisitive. My whole outlook on lifechanged after I realized that my life was just being handed to me on a silver spoon, and yet there were those in the world who didn’t have enough food to eat or place to live. I realized that the one thing that this world needed more than anything was compassion; compassion for those less fortunate than us. During the summer of 2006, I went on a community servicetrip to rural Peru to help build an elementary school for kids there. I expected harsh conditions, but what I encountered was far worse. It was one thing to watch commercials asking for donations to helpthe unfortunate people in less developed countries, yet it was a whole different story to actually live it. Even after all this time, I can still hear babies cryingfrom hunger; I can still see the filthy rags that they wore; I can still smell the stench of misery and hopelessness. But my most vivid memory was the moment I first got tothe farming town. The conditions of it hit me by surprise; it looked much worse in real life than compared to the what our group leader had told us. Poverty to me and everyone else I knew was a foreign concept that people hear about on the news or see in documentaries. But this abject poverty was their life, their reality. And for the brief ten daysI was there, it would be mine too. As all of this re alization came at once, I felt overwhelmed by the weight of what was to come. Would I be able to live in the same conditions as these people? Would I catch adisease that no longer existed in the first world, or maybe die from drinking contaminated water? As these questions rolled around my already dazed mind, I heard a soft voice askingme in Spanish, â€Å"Are you okay? Is there anything I can do to make you feel better?† I looked down to see a small boy, around nineyears of age, who looked starved, and cold, wearing tattered clothing, comforting me. These people who have so little were able to forget their own needs, and put those much more fortunate aheadof themselves. It was at that moment that I saw how selfish I had been. How many people suffered like this in the world, while I went about life concerned about nothing at all? Thinking back on the trip, maybe I made a difference, maybe not. But I gained something much more important. I gained the desire to make the world a better place for others. It was in a small, poverty-stricken village in Peru that I finally realized that there was more to life than just being alive. What Essay #2Does Well Let's first point out what this draft has going for it. Clear Chronology This is an essay that tries to explain a shift in perspective. There are different ways to structure this overarching idea, but a chronological approach that starts with an earlier opinion, describes a mind changing event, and ends with the transformed point of view is an easy and clear way to lay this potentially complex subject out. Arranging your narrative in order of what happened when is a simple and surefire strategy. (Image: User:Lite via Wikimedia Commons) Where Essay #2Needs Revision Now let's see what needs to be changed in order for this essay to pass muster. Condescending, Obnoxious Tone Unlike other teenagers, I’m not concerned about money, or partying, or what others think of me. Unlike other eighteenyear-olds, I think about my future, and haven't become totally materialistic and acquisitive. This is a very broad generalization, which doesn’t tend to be the best way to formulate an argument – or to start an essay. It just makes this author sound dismissive of a huge swath of the population. In the rewrite, this author would be way better off just concentrate on what she want to say about herself, not pass judgment on â€Å"other teenagers,† most of whom she doesn’t know and will never meet. I realized that the one thing that this world needed more than anything was compassion; compassion for those less fortunate than us. Coming from someonewho hasn’t earned her place in the world through anything but the luck of being born, the word â€Å"compassion† sounds really condescending. Calling others "less fortunate" when you're a senior in high school has a dehumanizing quality to it. These people who have so little were able to forget their own needs, and put those much more fortunate in front of themselves. Again, this comes across as very patronizing. Not only that, but to this little boythe author was clearly not looking all that â€Å"fortunate† – instead, she looked pathetic enough to need comforting. Inthe nextdraft, a better hook could be making the essayabout the many different kinds of shifting perspectives the author encountered on that trip. A more meaningful essay would compare and contrastthe points of view of the TV commercials, to what the group leader said, to the author's own expectations, and finally to this child’s point of view. It may help to imagine you have the compound eyes of an insect. How many different perspectives can you see and describe? Vague, Unobservant Description During the summer of 2006, I went on a community servicetrip to rural Peru to help build an elementary school for kids there. I expected harsh conditions, but what I encountered was far worse. It was one thing to watch commercials asking for donations to helpthe unfortunate people in less developed countries, yet it was a whole different story to actually live it. Even after all this time, I can still hear babies cryingfrom hunger; I can still see the filthy rags that they wore; I can still smell the stench of misery and hopelessness. Phrases likeâ€Å"cries of the small children from not having enough to eat† and â€Å"dirt stained rags† seem likedescriptions, but they're really closer to incurious and completely hackneyedgeneralizations. Why were the kids were crying? How many kids? All the kids? One specific really loud kid? The same goes forâ€Å"filthy rags,† which is both an incredibly insensitive way to talk about the clothing of these villagers, and again shows a total lack of interest in their life. Why were their clothes dirty? Were they workers or farmerssotheir clothes showing marks of labor? Did they have Sunday clothes? Traditional clothes they would put on for special occasions? Did they make their own clothes? That would be a good reason to keep wearing clothing even if it had â€Å"stains† on it. The rewrite should either make this section more specific and less reliant on cliches, or should discard it altogether. The conditions of it hit me by surprise; it looked much worse in real life than compared to the what our group leader had told us. Poverty to me and everyone else I knew was a foreign concept that people hear about on the news or see in documentaries. But this abject poverty was their life, their reality. If this is the â€Å"most vivid memory,† then I would expect to read all the details that havebeen seared into the author'sbrain. What did their leader tell them? What was different in real life? What was the light like? What did the houses/roads/grass/fields/trees/animals/cars look like? What time of day was it? Did theyget there by bus, train, or plane? Was there an airport/train station/bus terminal? A city center? Shops? A marketplace? There are any number of details to include here when doing another drafting pass. Reading vague generalizations is like trying to make sense of this blurry picture. Is it flowers? Holiday lights? Confetti? Who knows. And after a while, who cares? Lack of Insight or Maturity But this abject poverty was their life, their reality. And for the brief ten daysI was there, it would be mine too. As all of this realization came at once, I felt overwhelmed by the weight of what was to come. Would I be able to live in the same conditions as these people? Would I catch adisease that no longer existed in the first world, or maybe die from drinking contaminated water? Without a framing device explaining that this initial panic was an overreaction, this section just makes the author sound whiny, entitled, melodramatic, and immature. After all, this isn’t a a solo wilderness trek – the authoris there with a paid guided program. Just how much mortality is typically associated with these very standard college-application-boosting service trips? In a rewrite, I would suggest including more perspective on the author's outsized and overprivileged response here. This would fit well with a new focus on the different points of view on this village the author encountered. Unearned, Clichà ©d â€Å"Deep Thoughts† But I gained something much more important. I gained the desire to make the world a better place for others. It was in a small, poverty-stricken village in Peru that I finally realized that there was more to life than just being alive. Is it really believable that this is what the author learned? There is maybe some evidence to suggest that the authorwas shaken somewhat out of a comfortable, materialistic existence.But what does â€Å"there is more to life than just being alive† even really mean? This conclusion is rather vague, and seems mostly a non sequitur. In a rewrite,the essayshould becompletely reoriented to discuss how differently others see us than we see ourselves, pivoting on the experience of being pitied by someone who you thought was pitiable. Then, the new versioncan end byon a note of being better able to understand different points of view and other people’s perspectives. It's important to include deep thoughts and insights into your essay - just make sure your narrative supports your conclusions! The Bottom Line Bad college essays have problems either with their topics or their execution. The essay is how admissions officers learn about your personality, point of view, and maturity level, so getting the topic right is a key factor in letting them see you as an aware, self-directed, open-minded applicant who is going to thrive in an environment of independence. The essay is also how admissions officers learn that you are writing at a ready-for-college level, so screwing up the execution shows that you either don’t know how to write, or don’t care enough to do it well. The main ways college essay topics go wrong is bad taste, bad judgment, and lack of self-awareness. The main ways college essays fail in their execution have to do with ignoring format, syntax, and genre expectations. What’s Next? Want to read some excellent college essays now that you've seen some examples of flawed one? Take a look through our roundup of college essay examplespublished by colleges and then get help with brainstorming your perfect college essay topic. Need some guidance on other parts of the application process? Check out our detailed, step-by-step guide to college applicationsfor advice. Are you considering takingthe SAT or ACTagain before you submit your application? Read aboutour famous test prep guides for hints and strategiesfora better score. Want to improve your SAT score by 160points or your ACT score by 4 points?We've written a guide for each test about the top 5 strategies you must be using to have a shot at improving your score. Download it for free now:

Thursday, November 21, 2019

Management Accounting Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Management Accounting - Assignment Example Economists and accountants imply that two diverse fields in terms of cost and variance analysis. Therefore, when economists describe cost through variance analysis and standard costing, they include the sacrifice of opportunities and important choices. From an accountant’s perception, standard costing and traditional budgeting are prospective, subjective, and occasionally costs-evaded. The following paper will look into the alleged advantages, and demerits of standard costing, variance analysis and traditional budgeting in management accounting (Callahan, Stetz, and  Brooks, 2011, p. 199). Certain criticisms of traditional budgeting arise from the descriptions of the significant terminologies used by economists and accountants in the government and organizations (Emmanuel, Kominis and Slapnicar, 2008, p. 2). Time management is the establishment of interceding variables that improve the perception of time. A budget is an estimated total cost or income for an operation or activity covering a particular period. This way, accounting managers are able to ease pressure on their behaviors and perceive control over time and operations assumed significant in variance analysis (Emmanuel, Kominis and Slapnicar, 2008, p. 3). A budget can also be an arrangement for the management and control of assets and expenses. Motivation in variance analysis involves control through a set of processes, instruments, performance measures that organizations or governments deploy to lead and inspire all workers to accomplish set goals (Callahan, Stetz, and  Brooks, 2011, p. 199). Human relation s association forms part of the base for motivation in accounting to enhance an easy repetitive assignment involving financial compensation of all transactions in an organization (Eker, 2007, p. 105). Performance evaluation is the valuable control of the chief tasks from diverse units. These units are normally situated at the very end of the production procedure

Tuesday, November 19, 2019

HR's Role in an Organization Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

HR's Role in an Organization - Essay Example Huge responsibility is laid on medical staff, whom we entrust with the most important thing that we have – own health. In this respect, the process of choosing and recruiting the right employees becomes the most initial for medical establishments. Effective and correct work of personnel influences on the customer’s satisfaction, which in its turn affect competitiveness, reputation and profits of the hospital. Sometimes one little mistake of medical employee is able to cause drastic and destructive consequences, which also not always can be remediable. For avoiding such situation and providing clients with highly qualitative treatment, it is recommended to take the recruitment, development and training of human resources into careful consideration. It is important to realize the significance of appropriate personnel, which is able to become the biggest competitive benefit of the organization only on conditions that a company implements various programs of constant develo pment and improvement of workers’ productivity. ... Human recourses as competitive advantage Today more and more companies start to realize that human is the most significant factor for pushing own business to effectiveness and profitability. However, only few of them pay much attention at personnel development, considering such action as money-loosing. In reality numerous practical examples show that the more entrepreneur spends up on own staff the bigger return comes later on. Competition can be rather unsteady phenomenon, which depends on various elements. The most considerable of them is highly professional service that makes clients content and creates customer’s loyalty. Frequently one detail of personnel’s work can affect customer’s attitude to the whole company. And with a help of word of mouth one unsatisfied consumer is able to influence on groups of people, which in own turn can proceed the chain of negative review. But if a company has a qualified team of real specialists, who posses deep knowledge alo ng with good interpersonal skills and comprehend the significance of customer’s satisfaction, then such enterprise will be in demand on the market. That is why effectively used human resources can become a huge competitive advantage that manages to attract new customers and affect the financial results of company’s performance later on. Despite developed equipment and new techniques used during medical procedures, the personnel of Laurel Surgery and Endoscopy Center guarantees a good old-fashioned patient care. Medical staff of the center looks after each client extremely attentively, ensuring pre- and post-operative treatment, the questions about which potential patients may find out from the

Sunday, November 17, 2019

Seamus Heaney’s poem “Blackberry Picking’ Essay Example for Free

Seamus Heaney’s poem â€Å"Blackberry Picking’ Essay In Seamus Heaney’s poem â€Å"Blackberry Picking’ the poet vividly recreates a seemingly unimportant event in which he goes blackberry picking as a child. However by the end of the poem this experience acquires increased significance. Throughout Heaney’s description of this event we are made aware of the theme, Heaney’s childhood hopes and dreams in contrast to the harsh realities of life. This theme is effectively conveyed through the tone of excitement and anticipation in the first stanza while picking the berries, which transforms into an atmosphere of disappointment and regret in the second stanza as the berries have rotted. Heaney is able to develop this supposed insignificant event using techniques such as language, sentence structure, imagery, contrast and tone in order to create sympathy within the reader and allow them to reflect upon the transient nature of childhood ideals. During the first half of the poem Heaney makes no attempt to sentimentalise the event that is Blackberry picking, as we can tell when he writes, ‘Our hands were peppered with thorn pricks,† the recurring plosive ‘p’ sound in this sentence allows us to hear the skin of his hands being punctured yet still we can tell that young Heaney was enthralled by Blackberry Picking. The first stanza of the poem also has numerous examples of youthful imagery. The boy anxiously awaits the first glossy purple clot,’ almost jewel like, conveying how significant and majestic these berries were to the young Heaney. He uses this metaphor in order to compare the blackberries to blood, a live-giving force that is full of goodness. Some of the blackberries are green, hard as a knot and this image portrays the boy himself, young and innocent, not yet mature himself. The blood imagery continues throughout the poem with summers blood illustrating a dominance of the colour red t hroughout. The reader associates these images of vibrant red with vitality and life, as is Heaney’s intention, to accurately portray to the reader the sheer excitement of childhood, in stark contrast with the reality to come in the second stanza. The second half of the poem describes how the blackberries rot and there is a noticeable change in tone from youthful exuberance to frustration and disappointment. The image of the boy finding the rotting blackberries is described using alliteration; we found a fur a rat-grey fungus, the harsh fricative f sound illustrates the tone of frustration and disappointment within Heaney which is also transferred to the reader through this shocking visual image which everyone can identify with. The fungus is likened to the fur of a grey rat, an image that is not appealing and directly contrasts with the previous descriptions of thickened wine where the flesh was sweet. Heaney uses visual imagery such as this in order to immerse the reader in a sensual experience so that they almost feel as if they are there in the moment with Heaney and will thus be subject to feeling the same disappointment Heaney feels in the last stanza. Towards the end of the poem we are made aware of how significant this memory is to Heaney. Heaney conveys an emotional reaction when the berries rot: â€Å"I always felt like crying,† Heaney’s tone at this point shows his absolute devastation as it is such a simple sentence, made emphatic by the fact it has been put at the start of the line. This line is also the first time Heaney has used ‘I’ which personalises the statement, making the reader feel closer to the author, as if he is confiding in us. Using the word â€Å"always† suggests that this great excitement followed by disappointment is an annual occurrence for Heaney and so the reader must also feel disappointment when presented with the idea that this disappointment is part of a cycle. In the final line of the poem Heaney’s character conveys the significance of his childhood experience picking blackberries. He introduces an air of naivety when he says, â€Å"Each year I hoped they’d keep, knew they would not.† Heaney uses a paradox here to highlight his sense of naivety as he continuously hopes for a way to make the berries last each year, through this line we can tell that, although aware the poem was an elegy throughout, â€Å"knew they would not,† allows the reader to understand that this is not a traditional Christian elegy in that there is no consolation for Heaney, he is aware that as an adult he cannot recapture his halcyon days, but he cannot accept it, which is evident through the abrupt finality of his last statement. In conclusion, it is evident that Heaney uses a variety of contrasting ideas, imagery and sentence structure in order to his feelings of disappointment to the reader in this poem. Through the contrast between the ripe and rotting blackberries and the youthful enthusiasm transformed into bitter disappointment, Heaney manages to convey the reader, the idea of the transience of the halcyon days during childhood which are never seen with the same excitement through an adult’s eyes and although we are led to acknowledge this disappointment, we are not encouraged by the author to accept it, thus the final tone and lasting impression of the poem is one of disappointment that the ideals of childhood cannot be reclaimed and that with age, comes an unwanted but realistic perspective.

Thursday, November 14, 2019

Utopian Society in Brave New World by Aldous Huxley :: Brave New World Essays

In the novel Brave New World written by Aldous Huxley a dystopia is presented of a Utopian society where happiness is brought through a drug and your predestined life follows. Aldous Huxley conveys different conflicts with characters being isolated from the society they are being forced to live within. In which, these characters, are brought about reliance of soma, a drug, to stabilize their life. As well as this, the novel expresses the on going battles of having a society that is "perfect". Therefore, because of the isolated, delusional nonperfected-society, the World State introduced in Brave New World defines a Utopian Society. Throughout the story the characters are presented in different social classes. In this World State, society isn't broken down into race, sex, or wealth, it deals with the intelligence level of a human being. Character by character is presented with a strong detachment from reality and the lack of freewill they are given. "It is only kind of pre-natal conditioning envisioned in Brave New World itself, in which the beings produced from bottles are so changed that they are no longer Homo sapiens, that will permanently keep men down" describing the fact that the people made in these test tubes are not normal men (Woodcock 273). Here, you see the outlook that no one could be an acceptable human being when being produced from a bottle. From the top, Alphas, and the bottom, Epsilons, where society is created through test tubes, in which, "Alphas and Betas [remain], (in incubators), until definitely bottled, while the Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons were brought out again, after thirty-six hours to undergo Bokanovsky's Process. . . where eight to ninety-six buds and (where) every bud will grow into a perfectly formed embryo. . . (and the Epsilons suffer) oxygen-shortage for keeping an embryo below par. . . (where) the lower the caste. . .the shorter the oxygen, (and) the brain will be affected first" (Huxley 4-5,15). With the first breath of life, the people have already been determined their fate. As well as the Neo-Pavlovian, which is a procedure to condition kids to respond or not respond to different objects. Roses and books were placed in front of eight month old babies, and "the babies at once fell silent, then began to crawl towards (the roses). . .(and) the crawling babies came squeals of excitement, gurgles and twitterings of pleasure.

Tuesday, November 12, 2019

Stefan’s Diaries: The Craving Chapter 19

By the time we reached the Sutherlands', our horse's lips were covered in foam and its eyes were rolling back until they were ringed with white. â€Å"Not much of a racehorse,† he said carelessly, leaping down and giving it a pat on its neck. â€Å"Wouldn't surprise me if it dropped dead from the exertion.† I stepped out of the carriage, a putrid smell assaulting my nose as if the Thayers had taken up residence next to a slaughter yard. â€Å"I think he may already be dead,† I said gingerly. I took a deep breath and steadied myself. I had to be ready for whatever came next, be it Damon taking action against the Sutherlands or having to spend the night with my new bride. If that happened, it would be hard to keep my own promise of no more compelling humans†¦. Steeling myself, I headed for the door. â€Å"Not so fast, brother,† Damon said, putting a hand on my chest. Then he slipped it inside my waistcoat as lightly as a pickpocket, and pulled out the check Winfield had written me. â€Å"I'll be needing this,† he explained happily. â€Å"Oh yes. Money without the tracks,† I said bitterly. â€Å"Much less obvious than robbing a bank vault. So tell me, what about the cab driver? A dead man in the middle of the road – what about those tracks?† â€Å"Him? No one will notice him,† Damon said, obviously surprised by my interest. â€Å"Look around, Stefan. People die in the streets here all the time. He's no one.† Damon had become the type of vampire who had no problem with killing even when it didn't directly benefit him, and he committed murder at the drop of a hat. When I killed in my first days, it was always for thirst, or self-protection. Not for sport. And never simply for the kill. â€Å"Besides, it really, really irritated you,† he added with a grin. â€Å"And isn't that what it's all about?† He gave a little bow and indicated I should enter our new home first. Looking up at its beautiful gray walls and growling gargoyles, I wished no one had ever invited me in, that I had been forced to remain outside forever, a poor creature relegated to the park. And then somebody screamed. Damon and I both rushed in, practically tearing the door off its hinges in our effort to get through. Margaret was standing in the living room, white as a sheet, her hand over her mouth. And it was very obvious why. The entire place was spattered in what my spinning mind could only assume was black paint, until its smell hit my nose with the force of a truck: blood. Human blood. Gallons and gallons of it slowly dripping down the walls and congealing in pools on the floor. It threw me off guard, my vampire senses reeling from the sheer quantity. Damon held one hand over his face, as if trying to stifle the sensations, and pointed with his other hand. At first all I saw was a pair of stockinged legs askew on the rug, as if someone had too much to drink and fell down. Then I realized they weren't attached to a body. â€Å"No†¦Ã¢â‚¬  I whispered, sinking to my knees in horror. The bodies of Lydia, Bridget, Winfield, and Mrs. Sutherland were scattered around the room in pieces. The family I had married into to protect, the innocent humans I was trying to keep safe from Damon's psychopathic tendencies, were all dead. But they hadn't just been murdered – they had been torn apart and brutalized. â€Å"What did you do?† I growled at Damon, fury turning my eyes red and beginning the change. â€Å"What did you do?† I was going to rip his neck out. It was as simple as that. He was a monster, and I should have killed him long ago, long before he had a chance to destroy other people's lives. But Damon looked just as shocked as I felt. His ice-blue eyes were wide with unfeigned surprise. â€Å"It wasn't me,† he said. Margaret shot him a look that could have killed. The way he spoke it was as if he could have been him, just as easily – just not this time. â€Å"I believe you,† Margaret said softly, shaking her head in abject grief. I was surprised. Why, after all the questions, all the glares, all the arguments, why did she believe him now? Why, when she – again rightfully – assumed he was just after the money and had fled the moment the documents were dry, did she believe he wasn't the murderer? But oddly I believed him, if for no other reason than the callousness of his tone. As if she could read my thoughts, Margaret turned her eyes to me. â€Å"I can always tell when someone is lying,† she said simply. â€Å"It's a†¦ gift, I suppose.† I thought about what Bram had said – how Margaret had hurt him just by looking at him. I touched my ring, thinking of the witch, Emily, who'd cast a spell over it to protect me from the sun. Was it possible that Margaret had powers, too? I opened my mouth to ask her, but tears were leaking from her eyes. Now was not the time for an interrogation. Taking a deep breath I rose and went over to what was left of the bodies, trying to discover a clue or reason for the massacre. The other half of Mrs. Sutherland's body was sprawled on its belly next to the couch. One arm was stretched out, as if she were trying to get up, trying to crawl to her youngest daughter. Bridget's throat had been torn out and all of her limbs had been snapped in half. Her face was untouched, however. In death she looked like the little girl she really was, the soft rose of her cheeks slowly fading to an icy white, her lips opened slightly as if she were asleep. Her eyes, wide and green and clear as a china doll's, were still open in shock. I gently put my hand over her face and pulled her lids down. Lydia was frozen with a hand over her face, like an ancient Roman tomb carving, dignified even in death. I turned away from her ruined torso, the white bones of her back sticking through her cracked chest. Winfield looked like a big, slain animal, a buffalo brought down in its prime. There were surprisingly neat gashes down his side, like something had been trying to butcher him. Finally, I went over to Margaret and put my arms around her, turning her head so she wasn't staring at the scene of carnage anymore. She clung to me, but stiffened in surprise when my hand brushed the skin on the back of her neck. After a moment she pulled away. Shock seemed to slowly settle down over her features. She sank into a chair and regarded the room again, this time with a blank face. â€Å"They were like this when I arrived,† she began slowly. â€Å"I stayed at the Richards' longer than everyone else, looking for the two of you, trying to find someone who had seen you leave. Bram and Hilda and the usual gang had left earlier, planning some silly antics for your wedding night. A shivaree or something. I just assumed you two took off for Europe with your dowry.† â€Å"Europe,† Damon said thoughtfully. I glared at him. â€Å"The door was open,† she continued, â€Å"and the stench†¦Ã¢â‚¬  We fell into silence. I didn't know what to say or do. In ordinary, human circumstances, my first move would have been to get Margaret away from the house and call for help. â€Å"Did you call for the police?† I asked suddenly. Margaret met my gaze. â€Å"Yes. They'll be here soon. And they'll think it was you, you know.† â€Å"It wasn't,† Damon repeated. She nodded, not bothering to look at him. Her skin was milky pale, as if some of the life had gone out of her when her family had died. â€Å"I know, but you are not innocent, either.† â€Å"No, no, we are not,† Damon said in a distant voice, looking at Lydia's cold body. For a moment, his features softened and he looked almost like a human in mourning. Then, he shook his head, as if snapping himself out of a reverie. â€Å"Margaret, I'm sorry for your loss,† he said perfunctorily. â€Å"But Stefan and I must run.† â€Å"Why should I leave with you?† I challenged, the blood making my head spin, my thoughts whirling dizzily in my brain. â€Å"Fine, stay here, get arrested.† I turned to Margaret. â€Å"Are you going to be all right?† She gave me a look as if I was mad. â€Å"My entire family is dead.† Her voice quavered on the edge of sanity. I put my hand out and touched her shoulder, wishing I could say or do something. No one deserved this. But words wouldn't bring her family back. As Damon and I turned to go, the telltale clip clop of a police wagon pulling up in front of the house sounded, along with the firm orders of a chief directing his men. â€Å"Out the back,† I said. Damon nodded and we ran through the dining room and kitchen to the door that opened on the courtyard. My hand was just about to touch the doorknob when Damon grabbed me, finger to his mouth. He pressed himself up against the wall, indicating I should do the same. My predator's senses picked up what Damon had already figured out: There was a man, no, a pair of men, waiting silently outside with guns drawn, exactly prepared for us to escape that way. â€Å"I'll just quickly dispose of them,† Damon said. â€Å"No! Upstairs,† I whispered. â€Å"Window.† â€Å"Fine.† Damon sighed, and the two of us started to creep quietly up the servants' staircase. An explosive bang from the front hall made us freeze in our tracks. â€Å"You, upstairs, you and you, to the parlor!† A stern voice was barking orders. From the sounds of footsteps, an entire fleet of policemen was beginning to sweep through the house. Damon and I gave up any attempt at being quiet, storming up the stairs as fast as we could. There was a casement window at the top, which he threw open triumphantly, prepared to jump to freedom. Below, in the side yard, a dozen armed policeman stood, aiming rifles at the building. And with his drama, Damon had neatly alerted them all to our presence. Bullets began to fly. Though they would not kill us, they would slow us down. I threw myself to the floor, feeling the sting of lead graze my neck. â€Å"Coal chute,† I suggested. Without bothering to wait for an answer I streaked back downstairs with vampiric speed, my brother close behind. Police now swarmed all over the rooms on the main floor, but even those who caught a glimpse of us running to the cellar didn't quite know what they saw: blurry shadows, a trick of the eye. The darkness of the basement proved no problem for us, and in a split second we were in the coal room, behind the furnace. I forced open the tiny slanted door that led to the driveway and leaped out, turning to give my brother a hand. And that's when I felt the gun at my neck. I turned around slowly and raised my hands. A small crowd of New York's finest stood there, along with most of the neighborhood, who had come to watch the manhunt. Damon and I could, with little difficulty, have taken them all. And it looked like my brother was itching for a fight. I shook my head, whispering, â€Å"We'll draw far more attention resisting arrest right now.† The truth was, it would be far easier to escape later, when we didn't have a crowd gawking at us. Damon knew it as well as I did. Damon sighed a dramatic sigh and pulled himself out of the chute, leaping neatly to the ground. An officer strode forward bravely – but only once his men had our arms behind our backs and jostled us a bit, letting us know who was in charge. â€Å"You two are under arrest for grand larceny, murder, and anything else I can find that will have you hanging from a tree in Washington Square for the death of the Sutherlands,† the officer said through even, square teeth. They dragged us out, pushing more than was necessary. With shoves and a final kick each we were thrown into the back of a paddy wagon, and then the door was slammed behind us. â€Å"They were good people,† the chief hissed in Damon's face, through the bars. Damon shook his head back and forth. â€Å"I've had better,† he whispered to me. Through the bars of the wagon I stared back at the house I'd called home for the past week. Margaret stood framed in the doorway, her black hair stark against the glowing lights of the house. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she said something so softly that even my sensitive ears barely heard it. â€Å"Whoever did this will pay.†

Saturday, November 9, 2019

Beautiful Delhi Escorts Looking for VIP Peoples

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Thursday, November 7, 2019

2 Easy Ways to Coach Yourself into Happiness and Success

2 Easy Ways to Coach Yourself into Happiness and Success A lot of people nowadays are hiring life coaches to provide them with accountability and structure in creating a fulfilling life. It’s easy to get complacent, and we are often not our own best coaches. But not everyone can afford a life coach, and even those who can might get coaching for a year then go back to being â€Å"self-coached.† In this month’s Success Magazine, an inspiring article about self-coaching (Be Your Own Life Coach) offered two exercises that will help you coach yourself- if you put them into action, of course. Both options were suggested by coach Marshall Goldsmith, Ph.D. Option #1: Did I do my best to†¦ Here’s the first exercise: Ask yourself each day: Did I do my best to†¦ Set clear goals? Make progress toward goal achievement? Be happy? Find meaning? Build positive relationships? Be fully engaged? When I read this list, I liked it so much that I put it on my calendar to complete at 9pm every night. I am on day 3 and grateful for the ritual! I have shared the exercise with friends as well, and they have enjoyed going through the list for themselves at the end of a day. I encourage you to join me and try answering these questions every day for two weeks. At the end of those two weeks, ask yourself in how many areas you are seeing improvement. I’d love to hear a report! Option #2: Daily Question Process With this exercise, your first project is to come up with 20 to 30 questions relating to your goals and who you want to be. The questions must have either yes/no or number answers. Keep them short and easily answered. And spin them toward the positive! For instance, â€Å"How much do I weigh?† â€Å"How many minutes did I meditate today?† â€Å"Did I treat my employees well?† â€Å"Did I make time to spend with my family?† (You would not write questions like, â€Å"Did I eat too much today?† â€Å"Was I stressed out?† Notice how much your energy dropped just reading those questions!) Put your positively-framed questions in the first column of a spreadsheet, then write the days of the week in the next 6 columns. Although not specified in the description offered, I would put a final column for a rating of your quality of life for the week, with a scale from 1 to 10 (I can’t bring myself to suggest a 0 as another person suggested in describing a self-coaching journal!) Once you create your spreadsheet for the week, you will have a scorecard that will reveal, over time, what activities lead you toward fulfillment and the life you want. Of course you can change your questions over time as you meet certain goals and have others change. Here’s the rub†¦ If you were hoping there would be a self-coaching technique that would not require your thinking or writing about something every day, I’m afraid you’re out of luck. As much as I wish I could have a single thought and change my life, I must accept that it’s daily check-ins and accountability that truly create change. Since human beings are notoriously unaccountable to ourselves, I suggest putting a system into place and having someone to whom you report on your daily self-coaching activities. I put my â€Å"Did I do my best to†¦Ã¢â‚¬  exercise on my calendar, and I have a friend I talk to at least once/week about how I’m doing. Consider creating a dinner-time ritual with your family to discuss how you’re doing, or even a check-in at the office! You can create a life-coaching group for yourself! There are many possibilities of how to stay honest as you take on self-coaching. What are your ideas of how to do this? Will you take on one of the exercises offered here? Please share below!

Tuesday, November 5, 2019

Definition and Examples of Drawl

Definition and Examples of Drawl Definition A drawl is  speech that is characterized by drawn-out vowels and syllables. This informal term is often used by non-linguists in a pejorative way. Contrary to popular belief, Americans in the southern states dont pronounce words more slowly than other speakers of American English. The phenomenon perceived as  a drawl is  a result of adding glides to vowels to create diphthongs and triphthongs. Words may seem slower because they contain more sounds (World Englishes Vol. 2: North America, 2012).   See Examples and Observations below. Also see: AccentAccent PrejudiceBrogueDiphthongLinguicism Voice (Phonetics) Examples and Observations [The mission of Trident submarines] is to launch a massive and final lethal blow in the event that the worst has happened: nuclear combat toe-to-toe with the Ruskies, in the memorable drawl of Major T. J. King Kong, the Slim Pickens character in Dr. Strangelove.(Timothy Egan, Run Silent. Run Deep. Run Obsolete. The New York Times, July 14, 2010)All of the children of the Fox say feerst for first, beerst for burst, theerst for thirst. Why, no one knows. It seems to be a tribal accent, not only among all of Foxs children, but among all of their young cousins on the Foxs side. It is almost as if they were creatures of some isolated family, immured for generations on some lonely island, cut off from the world, and speaking some lost accent that their ancestors spoke three hundred years ago. Moreover, their tone is characterized by a kind of drawlnot the languorous drawl of the deep South, but a protesting drawl, a wearied-out, exasperated drawl, as if they have almost given up hope of ma king Foxor someoneunderstand what ought to be obvious without any explanation whatsoever.(Thomas Wolfe, You Cant Go Home Again, 1940) When it started kicking off, someone said to me, This is your time in the sunshine, [John] Bishop explains in a warm Liverpudlian drawl so thick it’s as if his words are forming in a cement-mixer. That sentence hit home because it really feels like that.(Dominic Cavendish, John Bishop: Ordinary Bloke, Comedy Star. The Daily Telegraph, August 6, 2010)Xiaowei had mastered those tricky English irregular verbs, perfected a convincing American drawl and could rattle off the 10 biggest U.S. cities by heart.(Hannah Beech Shanghai, High Hopes. Time magazine, December 17, 2001) The Southern DrawlThere are two distinct interpretations of the term southern drawl: the common or folk notion and the linguistic definition (Montgomery 1989a: 761). In common parlance, the southern drawl is a synonym for southern accent or southern speech and refers to the putative slowness of southern speech, often attributed to the heat or to the laziness of its speakers. It is thus often used derogatively, a s is the term brogue or even the term dialect itself. In contrast, linguists use the term to refer to the lengthening and raising of accented vowels, normally accompanied by a change in voice pitch. It involves the addition of a second or even a third vowel but does not necessarily entail a slower overall speech tempo (Montgomery 1989a: 761).(George Dorrill, The Phonology of English in the South. English in the Southern United States, ed. by Stephen J. Nagle and Sara L. Sanders. Cambridge University Press, 2003) Tom Wolfe on the Drawl of the Airline PilotAnyone who travels very much on airlines in the United States soon gets to know the voice of the airline pilot . . . coming over the intercom . . . with a particular drawl, a particular folksiness, a particular down-home calmness that is so exaggerated it begins to parody itself (nevertheless!its reassuring) . . . the voice that tells you, as the airliner is caught in thunderheads and goes bolting up and down a thousand feet at a single gulp, to check your seat belts because it might get a little choppy . . ..Well!who doesnt know that voice! And who can forget it,even after he is proved right and the emergency is over.That particular voice may sound vaguely Southern or Southwestern, but it is specifically Appalachian in origin. It originated in the mountains of West Virginia, in the coal country, in Lincoln County, so far up in the hollows that, as the saying went, they had to pipe in daylight. In the late 1940s and early 1950s this up-holl ow voice drifted down from on high, from over the high desert of California, down, down, down, from the upper reaches of the Brotherhood into all phases of American aviation. It was amazing. It was Pygmalion in reverse. Military pilots and then, soon, airline pilots, pilots from Maine and Massachusetts and the Dakotas and Oregon and everywhere else, began to talk in that poker-hollow West Virginia drawl, or as close to it as they could bend their native accents. It was the drawl of the most righteous of all the possessors of the right stuff: Chuck Yeager.(Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff, 1979)

Sunday, November 3, 2019

Woman and Law Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Woman and Law - Essay Example Dr Bourne terminated her pregnancy and, therefore, faced prosecution. However, she was acquitted because he was able to prove his point that the victim was suicidal and in case the baby had been born the women might have been a physical or mental wreck. Key Cases with Facts: The Bourne case gave precedent to abortion as the physical/mental health of the woman was indeed in danger had she not had an abortion. it is necessary to take medical opinions from experts, along with considering moral perspectives as well, as to whether to save the life of the foetus or the mother in case an abortion is required. Current Law: - Abortion Act of 1967 Definition of Abortion Law Act: - This act, passed in 1967, defines the types of allowed abortions. A woman can get an abortion before 28 weeks of conception; abortion is also allowed in case the life of the mother is in serious mental or physical danger or in case the born baby will be severely handicapped† Evidence proved: - Personal Evidence : - The Psychiatrist The Gynaecologist Prosecution: . We, as members of the Western society, have certain responsibilities towards our women and the way they lead their lives. To ban practices such as abortion is a strike on their freedom and liberty. No matter how inhumane the practice of abortion appears to be, we have no right to stop it by force or get someone in court just because they want to have a kid. Before the Abortion Act of 1967 the British society was quite strictly against this practice and women carrying out abortion were prosecuted under federal law. Morally, abortion is a complicated procedure. There are two perspectives to everything; one is white and the other black. On the white side a woman, being a member of the free living world, has the right to carry out abortion. On the black side it is wrong because a life is being killed and some people might consider it infanticide. But that is just a perspective, and it has to be made clear that abortion, in other part s of the world, is used for purposes which are unbelievable irrational and make no sense whatsoever. (Barnett, 1997) For example, let’s take the example of India. Just in the state of Maharashtra, every year more than 4.5 million women are forced to get an abortion (Saha, Duggal, Mishra, More, & Khaire, 2004) because, with the use of sonogram, families are able to identify the sex of the baby; if the baby is male then all is well but if it is a girl she might be aborted, the reason being that girls are not considered the â€Å"Bread Winner† in the Indian society. Abortion in this and similar cases is wrong. It must also be comprehended that abortion has increased at an alarming rate, since the passing of the Abortion Act of 1967, The number of abortions carried out since the passage of the Abortion Act 1967 is unacceptably high. Medically, abortion is beneficial in certain cases. Number one, in case of rape if a woman gets pregnant and decides not to abort the baby, th e woman is at a risk of suffering post-natal depression which can, with time, endanger the baby’s health. The second case is when a child has been conceived because of an incestuous relationship; in this situation there is a high probability of the child being defective. Third is in the case of Thalassemia or HIV; if both the parents are suffering from one of these conditions there is a probability that the child might also contract it or it can even result in the death of either the child or the mother at the time of delivery. In my personal opinion pregnancy is more about men dominating women, and I can say it with 100% surety that if men were to get pregnant instead of women, abortion would definitely be a blessing. In the English society abortion is on a rise and women, mostly teenagers, are getting abortions at an