How to Become a Straight a Student Free Essays

Contents Cover Page Title Page Introduction Part 1. Study Basics Step 1 Manage Your Time in Five Minutes a Day Step 2 Declare War on Procrastination Step 3 Choose When, Where, and How Long Part One Cheat Sheet Part 2. Quizzes and Exams Step 1 Take Smart Notes Step 2 Demote Your Assignments Step 3 Marshal Your Resources Step 4 Conquer the Material Step 5 Invest in â€Å"Academic Disaster Insurance† Step 6 Provide â€Å"A+† Answers The Plan in Action Part Two Cheat Sheet Part 3. We will write a custom essay sample on How to Become a Straight a Student or any similar topic only for you Order Now Essays and Papers Step 1 Target a Titillating Topic Step 2 Conduct a Thesis-Hunting Expedition Step 3 Seek a Second Opinion Step 4 Research like a Machine Step 5 Craft a Powerful Story Step 6 Consult Your Expert Panel Step 7 Write Without the Agony Step 8 Fix, Don’t Fixate The Plan in Action Part Three Cheat Sheet Conclusion Acknowledgments Getting in is just the beginning Copyright Page Introduction â€Å"My friends always wondered why I was never in the library, but instead in the student center socializing, or at a party, or at an event. They said I made it ‘all look so easy. ’† Anna, a straight-A college student This is not your average college study guide. Unlike the titles next to it on the shelf, none of the advice presented here was devised by professors or self-proclaimed academic skills experts. I promise that you won’t find any mention of the Cornell note-taking method, mental map diagrams, or any other â€Å"optimal learning technique† crafted in an office or laboratory—environments far removed from the realities of typical college life. Instead, this book reveals—for the first time—the study habits used by real straight-A college tudents. All of the advice that follows was distilled from a series of interviews I conducted with a large group of top-scoring undergraduates. These participants were drawn predominantly from the Phi Beta Kappa rolls of some of the country’s most rigorous colleges and universities—including Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Dartmouth, Brown, Columbia, Duke, Amherst, and Skidmore—and they were carefully chosen to represent a wide variety of academic concentrations. In each interview, I asked the student to detail his or her study habits. The questions ranged from the general (â€Å"How do you defeat the urge to procrastinate? †) to the specific (â€Å"What techniques or systems do you use to locate and organize sources for a research paper? †). If the questionnaire revealed the student to be a grind—someone who earns high grades simply by studying an excessive amount—I discarded the responses. I was interested only in students who improved their grades through smarter, more efficient study skills—not through longer hours and more painful study sessions. How did I know such students existed? I am one of them. When I arrived as a freshman at Dartmouth College, I had no idea how to prepare for exams or write college-level papers. Like most students, I left high school believing that to study meant to reread your class notes and assignments as many times as possible and that paper writing required you to sit down in front of your computer and start typing until you finished. The problem, however, is that college is not high school. The material to be mastered is much more complicated and the professors have higher expectations. In the college environment, simple brute force study methods can end up requiring a lot of time and causing a lot of pain. Nevertheless, most students still rely on them. And this is why they find themselves regularly pulling all-nighters and developing an antagonistic attitude toward their courses. The taxing effects and spotty success of these methods also underlie the common belief that only geniuses and grinds can score top grades. When I first entered college, I shared in these beliefs. But soon I became dubious. It didn’t take long for me to decide that there had to be a better way to learn the material. The results of my studying using simple techniques varied widely—I’d spend all night hacking away at an essay and end up scoring a B-, or give what I thought was a frantic last-minute review for a quiz and score an A. I constantly felt like I was behind in my reading, and there always seemed to be new deadlines on the horizon that I had to scramble to meet. It was truly a chaotic existence. But when I looked around, all of my friends seemed to be having the same experience—and none of them seemed willing to question it. This didn’t sit right with me. I wasn’t content to work in long, painful stretches and then earn only slightly above-average grades for my efforts. I wanted to be exceptional. And I wanted to achieve this without having to sacrifice sleep or my social life. To many students, such a goal may sound hopelessly hubristic. But I’m an optimist by nature, and, observing the sorry state of my current study skills, I was convinced that I could do better. It took me most of my freshman year to construct, through repeated experimentation, a toolbox of sufficiently improved study habits. But once I had perfected them, the results were profound. Of the thirty-six courses I took between my sophomore and senior years of college, I scored exactly one A- and 35 perfect As. The most stunning piece of this transformation, however, was how much less time I had to spend on studying. As my strategies became more refined, the hours required were reduced. By my senior year it got to the point where, during finals periods, I would sometimes pretend to be heading off to the library just so I wouldn’t demoralize my roommates, who were preparing for yet another grim all-nighter. What was my secret? Efficiency. The simple truth is that the brute force techniques used by most students are incredibly inefficient. When it comes to exam preparation, passive review is not an effective way to learn complicated concepts. It’s also mentally draining, which further diminishes the rate at which you can absorb and internalize information. For paper writing, this same problem holds. When you approach the task without proper preparation, it becomes incredibly tiring and you can end up spinning your wheels. After a while, even the formation of coherent sentences becomes difficult and time intensive. In contrast, the techniques I came up with were so streamlined that I could learn more material than my classmates and actually spend less time studying. By eliminating stupid habits and wasted effort, I transformed exam prep and paper writing from a dreaded chore to a targeted activity. For a while, I was convinced that I was unique for having discovered such a smart approach to learning. But, alas, this illusion was soon shattered. It occurred during the winter of my senior year, when I was attending a ceremony celebrating my induction, along with thirty other classmates, into Phi Beta Kappa. This group represented, more or less, the thirty students with the highest G. P. A. s out of my class of over a thousand. Accordingly, I had arrived at the venue prepared to spend the evening with some serious nerds. As it turns out, however, I was in for a surprise. Upon walking through the door that night, I was immediately struck by how many of the other students I knew socially. These were people who, given their level of visibility on campus, I never would have imagined were scoring straight As. They were magazine editors, frat boys, and crunchy environmentalists. I knew them from parties and campus clubs and through mutual friends. They were, for the most part, normal, well-rounded, and interesting—not at all the type of super-grind one might assume would occupy such an elite level of academic achievement. The lesson of that night was obvious: Perhaps I was not, in fact, as unique as I had first imagined. Maybe there were others out there who had discovered similar secrets to academic success. The writer instincts in me soon took over. Fascinated to know exactly how these seemingly normal students had done so well, I sent all of my fellow Phi Beta Kappas a survey about their study habits. Most were happy to share their methods and I quickly confirmed that my suspicions were true. Not only were many of them using innovative, homegrown study strategies, but many of these strategies were surprisingly similar to those that I had developed during the previous few years. At the time I had just finished editing the manuscript for my first book, How to Win at College, so I wasn’t exactly eager to get started right away with another massive writing project. But after seeing these initial survey responses, I knew I had stumbled onto something big. While most college students toil arduously through the study and paper-writing processes, there exists an elite group of undergrads who have discovered unconventional strategies for earning much higher grades in much less time. I wanted to share these secrets with other students, and thus the idea for this book was born. Soon I was sending out more questionnaires to more straight-A students at colleges around the country, until I gathered enough responses, from students with enough different backgrounds and majors, to distill the advice presented in this guide. In the pages that follow, you will discover the details of these often surprising study strategies. I’ve included examples and case studies throughout the book to demonstrate how to apply the advice in many different reallife academic situations. You will learn how to: †¢ Manage your time and deal with the urge to procrastinate. Take targeted notes in class. †¢ Handle reading assignments and problem sets with ease. †¢ Prepare efficiently for exams. †¢ Master the art of exam-taking. †¢ Write incisive critical analysis essays. †¢ Conduct thorough research. †¢ Write standout term papers. Remember, this advice comes from real students and was honed, through trial and error, in real college classrooms. This distinction is important. It’s what separates this book from the many existing study guides that sit next to it on the bookstore shelf. As mentioned, most study guides are written either by professors or academic skills experts, many years separated from their own college experience. The result is that the authors of these guides are disconnected from the realities of undergraduate life. For example, How to Study, by college professors Allan Mundsack, James Deese, and Ellin K. Deese, suggests that students wake up at 7 A. M. each morning, go to sleep by 11 P. M. each night, and on many days schedule only a single hour of â€Å"recreation,† with the rest of the time dedicated to attending class, eating, or working. One gets the feeling that these professors haven’t spent much time socializing with students lately. Even their plan for Friday—the biggest party night of the week—has the student working until 10 P. M. , taking a one-hour break, then turning in by eleven. Student Success Secrets, written by Eric Jensen, a learning expert and professional public speaker, offers equally out-of-touch suggestions. His tips to help you remember concepts learned from a reading assignment include â€Å"put it in a picture or poster—use intense colors,† â€Å"act out the material or do a fun role play in your own room,† or â€Å"create or redo a song; make a rap. Just try to imagine a sophisticated liberal arts major attempting to make a rap about her recent reading assignment concerning post-structuralist interpretations of pre-Victorian English literature! (Key question: What word rhymes with â€Å"Foucault†? ) The granddaddy of all unrealistic study guide s, however, just might be What Smart Students Know, by Princeton Review cofounder Adam Robinson. In this best-selling guide, Robinson suggests—and I swear I am not making this up—that students approach a reading assignment as a twelve-step process! That’s right, twelve separate steps. Before you even crack the actual assignment, Robinson suggests that you jot down questions about the importance of the reading and then take notes on what you know about the topic, what it reminds you of, and what you want to learn. He then asks you, among other things, to read the assignment a total of three separate times, write and then rewrite your notes, represent the information in picture form, construct â€Å"question charts,† and devise mnemonics to help you memorize the concepts. Needless to say, this approach to a simple reading assignment is humorously unrealistic. I even did a little math. For a typical college-level liberal arts course, a student might be assigned an average of two hundred pages of reading a week. In his book, Robinson provides a one-page sample reading and describes twenty-three different questions that students might ask about it. At this rate of twenty-three questions per page, spending thirty seconds on each query, we would end up spending around forty hours a week (i. e. , a full-time job’s worth of time) simply completing one of the twelve steps on the reading assignments for just one class. Sounds like a great plan! These examples highlight the simple truth that the advice in most existing study guides—written by â€Å"experts,† not students—is often impractical and time consuming. How to Become a Straight-A Student, on the other hand, is the first guide based on the experiences of real college students, and it was written to provide an alternative to the other titles on the market. In the pages that follow, you will find homegrown strategies that are compatible with the demands of your day-to-day student life. They may not be as elaborate as the intricate systems devised by the â€Å"experts,† but they’re easy to implement—and they get the job done. Best of all, when you start putting these strategies into practice, you will experience immediate results. Keep in mind: If you find a piece of advice that doesn’t quite fit your needs or circumstances, that’s okay. In fact, you should expect this. Each of the students I interviewed for this book had his or her own unique take on the best way to study. Follow their lead and, when stuck, experiment. Replace techniques you don’t like with ones that seem better. If these new techniques work, keep them; if they fail, replace them with something else. The key to improving your grades without becoming a grind cannot be found in any single study habit. It is, instead, rooted in the big picture decision to reject rote review once and for all and begin the flexible search for strategies that work better for you. Above all, remember that college is a multifaceted experience, of which grades are just one of many important pieces. It’s my hope that this book will help you painlessly conquer this one piece so you can have more time and energy to explore all of the others—the friends, the unburdened idealism, the heroic beer consumption—that make these four years so rich. A common complaint I hear from students is that they never seem to have enough time to finish all of their work. They vent about how many hours they spend—late nights reviewing in the library, weekends sacrificed to paper writing—but no matter how hard they try, there always seems to be something else due. As Matthew, a straight-A student from Brown, explains, it’s easy for college students to become â€Å"stuck in a state of permanent catch-up. † Understandably, these students feel like they have reached their academic limit; they believe that unless they forgo sleep or any semblance of a social life, there are simply not enough hours in the day to stay on top of all their schoolwork. Let’s start by getting one thing clear: This belief is false. The problem here is not the amount of available hours, but rather how each hour is spent. I know this from firsthand experience. While researching this book, I spent time with some of the country’s most accomplished students, and I can assure you that no matter how diligent you think you are, there is a Rhodes scholar out there who fits in three times the amount of work and activities you do and probably still manages to party harder than you would ever dare. I don’t mean to imply that everyone should aim to become a drunken Rhodes scholar (though it would certainly be fun to try); rather, my point is that a surprising amount of work, relaxation, and socializing can be extracted from a single twelve-hour day. A lack of time, therefore, isn’t enough to explain why so many students feel overwhelmed. So what does explain this phenomenon? The answer, as it turns out, has much more to do with how we work than what we’re trying to accomplish. As humans, our minds have evolved to prefer short-term tasks such as â€Å"run away from that lion† or â€Å"eat food. † Therefore, when you walk into the library on a Sunday morning with the goal of finishing all of your homework and writing a paper, your brain isn’t happy. The idea of spending eight consecutive hours trapped in a study carrel is dispiriting. Plus, it’s hard to focus for that long, so pretty soon fatigue will set in, your concentration will wander, and every distraction will suddenly seem impossibly appealing. Before you know it, the day will be over and you’ll realize that you haven’t accomplished much productive work at all. The next day, new assignments will pile onto those you didn’t finish on Sunday, and the tedious process starts all over again. Jason, a straight-A student from the University of Pennsylvania, uses the term â€Å"pseudo-working† to describe this common approach to studying. The pseudo-worker looks and feels like someone who is working hard—he or she spends a long time in the library and is not afraid to push on late into the night—but, because of a lack of focus and concentration, doesn’t actually accomplish much. This bad habit is endemic on most college campuses. For example, at Dartmouth there was a section of the main library that was open twenty-four hours a day, and the students I used to see in there late at night huddled in groups, gulping coffee and griping about their hardships, were definitely pseudo-working. The roommate who flips through her chemistry notes on the couch while watching TV is pseudo-working. The guy who brings three meals, a blanket, and six-pack of Red Bull to the study lounge in preparation for an all-day paper-writing marathon is also pseudo-working. By placing themselves in distracting environments and insisting on working in long tedious stretches, these students are crippling their brain’s ability to think clearly and efficiently accomplish the task at hand. The result is fatigue headaches and lackluster outcomes. The bigger problem here is that most students don’t even realize that they’re pseudo-working. To them pseudo-work is work—it’s how they’ve always done it, and it’s how all of their friends do it. It never crosses their mind that there might be a better way. Straight-A students, on the other hand, know all about pseudo-work. They fear it, and for good reason. It not only wastes time, but it’s also mentally draining. There is just no way to be wellbalanced, happy, and academically successful if you’re regularly burning through your free hours in long, painful stretches of inefficient studying. The students I interviewed for this book emphasized again and again the importance of avoiding this trap. In fact, when asked what one skill was most important in becoming a non-grind straight-A student, most of them cited the ability to get work done quickly and with a minimum of wasted effort. So how do these students achieve this goal? A big part of the solution is timing—they gain efficiency by compressing work into focused bursts. To understand the power of this approach, consider the following simple formula: work accomplished = time spent x intensity of focus Pseudo-work features a very low intensity of focus. Therefore, to accomplish something by pseudo-working, you need to spend a lot of time. The straight-A approach, on the other hand, maximizes intensity in order to minimize time. For example, let’s rank intensity on a scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 being the most intense). Assume it takes ten hours to finish studying for a test by pseudo-working with a low intensity score of 3. According to our formula, this same amount of work can be accomplished in only three one-hour bursts, each with an intensity of 10. The work that took you all day Sunday to complete could instead be finished by studying an hour after breakfast, an hour after lunch, and an hour after dinner—the rest of the day being free for you to relax! With this formula in mind, you can begin to understand why many straight-A students actually study less than their classmates: They replace long, low-intensity stretches of work with a small number of short, high-intensity sessions. Of course, this is not the whole story behind their success; what straight-A students actually do in these short bursts is also crucial—technique is just as important as timing. Part Two (Quizzes and Exams) and Part Three (Essays and Papers) of this book are dedicated to these technical details. But learning how to follow an efficient schedule, and banishing pseudo-work from your college experience for good, is a crucial first step toward your academic overhaul. To accomplish this transformation, however, you will need to gain control over your lifestyle—and that’s often no small task. For example, you will need to spread out the intense work sessions so that you have time in between to recharge. This requires basic time-management skills. You’re also going to have to overcome your urge to procrastinate, because scheduling your work is meaningless if you don’t actually work in the time you set aside. This requires self-motivation. Finally, to obtain the highest possible levels of intensity, you need to choose the right locations, times of day, and durations to study. If you aren’t careful about how you select these three factors, you can unintentionally sabotage your ability to focus. This requires a smart planning strategy. Part One will teach you how to satisfy these requirements. It begins with the presentation of a simple timemanagement system, customized for the busy college lifestyle. Don’t be frightened, the system is incredibly lightweight—it’s designed to require only five minutes a day of planning and can survive periods of neglect. Part One then continues with a collection of battle-tested strategies to help you fight procrastination. This advice comes straight from the experiences of real students and has been proven to work amid the chaos and distractions of the typical undergraduate lifestyle—it is simple, easy to apply, and surprisingly effective. This part concludes with a discussion of when during the day, where on campus, and for how long to study to maximize your productivity. The students interviewed for this book experimented extensively to find the right answers to these key questions, and, in this final step, I pass these answers on to you. Together, these basic skills are the foundation upon which all the advice in this book is built. Without them, you’ll be unable to implement the specific study techniques described in the parts that follow. Master them, however, and you will experience improvements in all aspects of your life—not just grades. You’ll have more free time, you’ll get the sleep you crave, you’ll party harder, and you’ll be able to devote more energy to your extracurricular interests. So relax. You are about to take your first step toward a much more enjoyable and productive college experience. Step 1 Manage Your Time in Five Minutes a Day Real straight-A students, like most reasonable students, hate time management. After all, college is supposed to be about intellectual curiosity, making new friends, and becoming obsessed with needlessly complicated drinking games. An overwhelming interest in time management is best left to harried business executives (or, perhaps, premeds). At the same time, however, you can’t abandon all attempts to keep tabs on your schedule. As mentioned in the introduction to Part One, all of the techniques described in this book require some ability to control your schedule. Ignore this skill, and you doom yourself to four long years of playing catch-up with your work. As Doris, a straight-A student from Harvard, states: â€Å"Time management is critical—it’s a skill that you absolutely must develop over the course of your time at college. † Most students, however, misunderstand the purpose of time management—they believe it’s used only to cram as much work as possible into the day. But this is not the main motivation behind controlling your schedule. As it turns out, a little planning goes a long way toward reducing your daily stress levels. Having deadlines and bligations floating around in your mind is exhausting—it makes it impossible to completely relax, and, over time, can lead you down the path toward a breakdown. However, once you figure out what work needs to be done and when, it’s like a weight being lifted from your shoulders. The uncertainty vanishes: When you work, you can fully concentrate on the assignment in front of you, and when you relax, you can do so without any anxiety. â€Å"I don’t believe in giving up anything,† says Jenna, a straight-A student from Princeton. â€Å"Not my social life, not my extracurricular activities, not my academic success. Basic control over your schedule breeds balance. This is why time management, as Doris stated earlier, is the key to getting the most out of all aspects of your college experience. The goal of Step #1 is to present a time-management system that helps you achieve this stress-free balance without requiring you to sacrifice the spontaneity and excitement of college. Specifically, we present a system tailored to the typical undergraduate lifestyle that meets the following criteria: 1. Requires no more than five to ten minutes of effort in a single twenty-four-hour period. 2. Doesn’t force an unchangeable minute-by-minute schedule on your day. . Helps you remember, plan, and complete important tasks be fore the very last moment. 4. Can be quickly restarted after periods of neglect. We will cover the details of this system in a few simple steps and then conclude with a detailed case study so you can see how it works in a realistic setting. What You Need This system requires two pieces of equipment. 1. A calendar: It doesn’t matter what type of calendar, and it’s not something that you have to carry around with you. It can be Microsoft Outlook or iCal on your computer, a cheap day planner, or one of those advertisement-laden freebies they hand out at orientation. It just has to be something that you can reference every morning that has enough space to record at least a dozen items for each day. 2. A list: Some piece of writing material that you can update throughout the day. This you do have to carry around with you, so make it something simple, like a sheet of paper ripped out of a notebook each morning. The Basic Idea Record all of your to-dos and deadlines on your calendar. This becomes your master schedule, the one place that stores everything you need to do. The key to our system, however, is that you need to deal with your calendar only once every twenty-four hours. Each morning, you look at it to figure out what you should try to finish that day. Then, throughout the day, whenever you encounter a new to-do or deadline, simply jot it down on your list. The next morning, you can transfer this new stuff from your list onto your calendar, where it’s safe. And we’re back where we started. That’s it. Pretty simple, right? The whole system can be summarized in three easy steps: (1) Jot down new tasks and assignments on your list during the day; (2) next morning, transfer these new items from your list onto your calendar; and (3) then take a couple of minutes to plan your day. Now, we’ll examine these steps in a little more detail. In particular, we need some strategies for how to plan your day each morning using your calendar and what to do when unexpected events interfere and turn that plan upside down (trust me, this will happen more often than not). Update Your Calendar Each Morning This is where the magic happens. Every morning, spend a few minutes to update your calendar and figure out what you should try to accomplish. This is the only serious time-management thinking you have to do for the whole day, so the demand is pretty reasonable. This updating process should proceed as follows: Find your list from the day before. It will probably look something like the example described in Figure 1. Don’t worry too much about how this list is formatted; we will discuss that shortly. For now, focus on the â€Å"things to remember† column, which contains the new to-dos and deadlines that were jotted down throughout the day. Figure 1. Sample List Tuesday—1/24/06 Today’s Schedule †¢ 10:00 to 12:00 Econ class †¢ 12:00 to 1:00 Lunch with Rob †¢ 1:00 to 1:45 Government reading †¢ 2:00 to 4:00 Government class †¢ 4:00 to 5:30 Finish government reading 5:30 to 6:30 Start French essay Things to Remember †¢ Econ study group, Thur. at 9 P. M. †¢ French quiz moved to Friday. †¢ Laundry †¢ Start researching summer internship opportunities. Transfer these new items onto your calendar. Write the deadlines on the appropriate dates, and write the todos on the days when y ou plan to complete them. Following the example of our sample list, you would first jot down the econ study group time under Thursday’s date and the French quiz under Friday’s date. You would then choose a day to do laundry and jot down a reminder under that date, and choose a day to start internship research and ot down a reminder under this date. You can move these items around on your calendar as many times as you want, so don’t worry too much about which date you initially choose for a new to-do. However, try to use some common sense. For example, if Wednesday afternoon and evening are packed with meetings and work, this might not be the best day to schedule doing your laundry. Similarly, if you have a big test Monday morning, don’t schedule a lot of annoying errands for Sunday; you’ll need your concentration for studying. If something is not especially time sensitive, such as the internship research example from above, don’t be afraid to put it on a day far in the future, at a point when you know you will be less busy—such as right after midterms or at the beginning of a new semester. Next, move the to-dos that you planned for yesterday, but didn’t complete, to new days on your calendar. In our sample list from Figure 1, the Today’s Schedule column describes to-dos planned from the day before. As you can see, in this example, all the to-dos were completed except the â€Å"Start French essay† task, so you would need to move this task to a new date. At this point, your calendar once again holds everything that you need to get done. Now it’s time to figure out your plan for the current day. Go ahead and trash yesterday’s list—it’s served its purpose—and grab a fresh sheet of paper to use as today’s list. Divide it into two columns, as shown in Figure 1, and label them Today’s Schedule and Things to Remember, respectively. Next, look at the calendar entry for the current day. It will probably contain a handful of appointments and todos. Your goal is to figure out how much of this work you can realistically accomplish. You might be tempted to simply copy all of these tasks into your Today’s Schedule column and then treat it as a simple to-do list for the day. Don’t do this! If you want to avoid getting overwhelmed by your work, you need to be smarter about your time. Here is what you should do instead: Try to label each of your to-dos for the day with a specific time period during which you are going to complete it. Be honest. Don’t record that you are going to study for three hours starting at three if you know that you have a meeting at five. And be reasonable about how long things really take—don’t plan to read two hundred pages in one hour. For simplicity, group many little tasks (errands that take less than ten minutes) into one big block (for example: â€Å"10:00 to 10:45—mail letter, return library book, buy new deodorant, fill out transcript request form at registrar†). Leave plenty of time for breaks. Give yourself an hour for meals, not twenty minutes. And, if possible, end your day at an appropriate hour; don’t try to fit in work right up until sleep time because you need to be able to unwind and relax. In general—though it may seem counterintuitive—be pessimistic. The truth is: Things will come up. Don’t assume that every hour that looks free in the morning will stay free throughout the day. Remember, the goal here is not to squeeze everything into one day at all costs, but rather to find out how many of the tasks listed for the day you actually have time to accomplish. If you can’t fit all the to-dos into your schedule for the day, no problem! Simply move the remaining items onto the calendar entries for future dates. You can deal with them later. Your final step is to record the tasks you will have time for into the Today’s Schedule column of your list. As shown in Figure 1, label each task with its time. That’s it. You can now reference your list throughout the day to remind yourself of what you should be doing and when. But here’s the important point: The specific times on your schedule aren’t set in stone—they’re more of a suggestion. As we will discuss shortly, you will be free to move tasks around throughout the day, depending on your energy level and unexpected events that may arise. The main reason you break down your to-dos into time slots is to help you avoid the common student mistake of overestimating your free time. Many well-intentioned students use a simple to-do list to keep track of their daily obligations. But without time labeling, they have no idea how much they can actually accomplish, leading to an unrealistic plan. A twelve-hour day seems like a large amount of time, but when you account for meals and classes and meetings and breaks and socializing, your schedule suddenly becomes a lot tighter. The equation is simple: If you overestimate your free time, then you are likely to put off work until it’s too late. And this leads to all-nighters, panic attacks, and shoddy performance. A realistic sense of time is arguably one of the most important factors in succeeding as a student. After a week or two of time labeling your to-dos, you will be well along your way toward developing this crucial trait. Use the List During the Day As you move through your day, use the rough schedule recorded under the Today’s Schedule column to remind yourself what you should be doing. Keep in mind that the student lifestyle is, generally, quite unpredictable. Things will always come up at the last minute. Work will take longer than expected, your roommate will point you toward some absurd Web site that immediately demands an afternoon of your scrutiny—you know how it goes. So adjust your time labels as many times as needed. But don’t procrastinate excessively! The list you constructed in the morning should contain a reasonable amount of work, so if your schedule doesn’t become too unexpectedly crazy, you should be able to accomplish most, if not all, of these tasks. In general, if you’re completing most of what’s on your list at least five days out of seven, then you’re as productive as any student realistically needs to be. If not, don’t worry—the next section of Part One will teach you how to combat your urge to procrastinate. Remember, your list also serves another important purpose. During the day you will probably encounter various new to-dos and deadlines that need to be scheduled. For example, a professor might announce the date of an upcoming exam, or a friend might give you the date and time for an upcoming study group. The key is to get these obligations out of your head as soon as possible so your mind is not unnecessarily cluttered. Jot down a quick reminder on your list, in the Things to Remember column, as soon as they occur. This takes only a few seconds, and then you can forget about them. The actual scheduling of these tasks will take place the next morning; all you have to do for now is scribble a few words on a piece of scrap paper. Remember, to-dos and deadlines that exist only in your mind drain your energy, distract your attention, create stress, and are more likely to be forgotten. When you’re working, you should be able to concentrate on working, and when you’re relaxing, you should be able to enjoy relaxing. But you can’t devote 100 percent of your energy to any activity when you have important reminders bouncing around in your head. Few students have the energy to schedule every new piece of information that comes along during the day. Think about this for a moment: If it’s the middle of the afternoon, and you are hungry, and everyone is just getting up to leave at the end of a long class, when suddenly the professor yells out a notice that a paper topic is due the following week†¦you’re probably not going to have the energy to stop packing up, take out a calendar, think about what steps are involved in coming up with a paper topic, and then schedule each step on the appropriate days. It would be nice if you did, because then you could purge the deadline from your mind and be confident that it’s safely recorded in your calendar—but this is unrealistic. And it violates our original criterion that any timemanagement system should require only a few minutes each day. That’s the power of the â€Å"things to remember† column of your list. You can’t expect yourself to be able to think seriously about time management at all points during your busy day. But the act of pulling out a piece of scrap paper from your pocket and quickly jotting down â€Å"anthro paper topic† requires minimal energy, no thinking, and barely any time. You don’t have to consider when to begin working on the paper topic, what steps are involved, or how many days it will require. You simply scribble down three words. The key is that the list is a trusted piece of storage. You are confident that tomorrow morning, when you’re doing your only time-management thinking for the day, you will see that reminder and record the appropriate steps in your calendar. Because of your list, the deadline will not be lost. It will be scheduled. Restarting After a Period of Neglect To date, I have yet to have successfully followed any time-management system without interruption for longer than two months. I try, but inevitably I hit a rough patch. Typically, this happens during the few days following a really busy period—I’m so exhausted from the intensity of the preceding work that I find myself unable to even mention the word â€Å"to-do† without breaking into a cold sweat. This happens to everyone, and you can expect that periodically it will happen to you too. Don’t fear these occasions, and don’t let them make you feel like a failure. They’re normal. The key point is that these lapses are temporary. After a couple days of swearing off my calendar, I always find myself growing uncomfortable with the increasing number of obligations that are free floating in my mind. Before I know it, I’m back into the swing of using the system again, and no worse for wear. The same will be true for you. Once you have learned the power of feeling organized, you will have a hard time going long periods without it. Fortunately, the system described here is adaptable to these periods of neglect. If you skip a few days, all you need to do upon restarting is to dump all the to-dos and deadlines free floating in your mind onto a sheet of paper and then push these back onto your calendar for future dates. Case Study: A Monday with Stephen Even the simplest systems can come across as confusing when first described. So let’s go through a quick example that will show you how to put this system into practice. Stephen’s story is based upon the real-life college experiences of myself and the many students I interviewed. If you’re already at college, what follows will seem familiar. If you haven’t yet started your undergraduate career, don’t panic! Yes, Stephen has a lot on his plate. Notice, however, how he uses our system to keep control of his many obligations. Though he can’t finish everything in one day, he remains confident that everything that needs to get done will get done in time. As you read this example, imagine how Stephen’s stress might increase, and his efficiency decrease, if he didn’t have his list and calendar to guide his actions and capture the new to-dos and deadlines that constantly pop up. Monday Morning Stephen gets up early because he has class at 9:30 A. M. —a horrible thing. He grabs his calendar from his desk and roots around in his hamper to find the sheet of notebook paper that he used as yesterday’s list. He has only a couple of minutes before class, but that’s okay. Our system requires very little time. Figure 2 shows what Stephen finds recorded on his calendar for today. Figure 2. Stephen’s calendar entry for Monday Monday—3/11/07 †¢ Finish reading for Tuesday Gov class. †¢ Gift for Dad’s birthday †¢ First step of research for Gov paper—find books, Xerox relevant chapters. †¢ Pay cell phone bill. †¢ Return Mark’s CD. First half of Econ problem set (due Wed) †¢ Pick topic for Anthro paper (due tomorrow). †¢ Read five chapters from Anthro book (need to catch up for Friday’s quiz). †¢ Dinner with guys—7 P. M. —Molly’s †¢ Ill-conceived toga party—10 P. M. —Alpha Chi Figure 3. Stephenâ€℠¢s list from Sunday Sunday—3/10/07 Today’s Schedule †¢ 1:00 to 3:00—read article for Anthro. †¢ 3:00 to 6:00—write Government essay. †¢ 7:00 to 8:00—dinner with Sarah †¢ 9:00 to 10:00—edit Government essay. †¢ 10:00 to 11:00—start reading for Tuesday’s Government Things to Remember †¢ Call home. †¢ Start researching summer nternships. †¢ Create schedule for practicing guitar? class Figure 3 shows what he finds scrawled on yesterday’s list. There are several things to notice here. First, Stephen has a lot of work recorded on his calendar entry for today. More than he can probably accomplish in twelve hours, so some of these to-dos will need to be moved to other dates. Also notice Stephen’s schedule from the day before (Sunday). This is typical. A fun night on Saturday inevitably leads to a late start and a large workload on Sunday. Stephen was too ambitious with his planning, and by 10:00 P. M. e was burnt out from working on his essay and never got around to starting the Government reading he had scheduled. So this task will need to be carried over to today. Finally, notice how Stephen’s Things to Remember column from yesterday includes some long-term projects, such as â€Å"Create schedule for practicing guitar. † This is a great use of the list! If you jot down ideas for extracurricular and personal projects as they occur to you, they will get moved onto your calendar and therefore won’t be forgotten until you finally get around to doing something about them. Now let’s see how Stephen gets a handle on all of this before class. What Does Stephen Do First? Stephen’s first step is to time label the tasks currently on his plate so he can determine how much he can actually get done. Between his calendar entry for today and the leftovers from yesterday’s list, Stephen has a lot of to-dos to schedule. His strategy is simple: He starts time labeling in order of importance until his schedule is full, and then moves the rest of the items to other days on the calendar. To effectively time label, however, he must first figure out how much free time he has available. Stephen quickly runs through the following in his head: I have class from 9:30 to 10:30, and another class from 11:00 to 12:00. It’s unlikely that I will get any work done between my 7:00 P. M. dinner and the Alpha Chi party that starts soon after. I should also try to squeeze in an hour or two for a predinner workout (have to look good in that toga), so I should aim to be done with all of my work by 5:00. With his free time now identified, Stephen can begin to time label his to-dos. Here is his thought process: In between class, from 10:30 to 11:00, I can squeeze in my three small tasks—pay cell phone bill, buy a birthday gift for Dad, and return Mark’s CD. After my second class, I will need to get lunch, but then I should get right to work on my Government reading because it’s due tomorrow! Let’s see, I have three Government articles to read, which will realistically take two hours, so I will label this task with 1:00 to 3:00. Hmmmm, I am running out of time here. I need to start that Econ problem set because those suck, and it’s due Wednesday morning, so I’ll label that task with 3:00 to 4:30. Okay, I am down to my final half hour. What else has to get done? My Anthro paper topic is due tomorrow, so I will have to squeeze that in at 4:30 to 5:00. And that’s all I have time for. At this point, Stephen is almost done. All that’s left is taking care of the still-unscheduled to-dos by moving them to future dates. Remember, these include both the unscheduled tasks recorded for the current day and the â€Å"things to remember† items from yesterday’s list. On yesterday’s list I have a reminder to Call home†¦this week is so busy†¦okay, I’ll jot that down on the calendar entry for Friday, I’ll be more relaxed by then. I really don’t have time right now for these other two reminders—start internship research and create guitar schedule—so I’ll jot those down on the calendar entry for the first weekend after midterms are over. I should have more free time then. Okay, what’s left? The unlabeled items from today’s calendar entry. No problem. I can move the Anthro reading to tomorrow’s calendar entry, and then move the Government paper research to Wednesday—I can work on it after I hand in my Econ problem set. Done! That’s it. Stephen has finished all of his serious time-management thinking for the day. Before leaving for class, he rips out a fresh sheet of notebook paper to use for today’s list. He divides it into two columns and jots down the tasks he scheduled for the day. Figure 4 shows what Stephen’s list looks like as he bolts out the door. The entire process described above would realistically take only around three to five minutes to complete. The more you use this system, the more natural it becomes. Before you know it, updating your calendar and dashing off a daily schedule will become as routine as taking a morning shower. Remember, this is the only serious timemanagement thinking that Stephen has to do all day. Now he’s ready to face his Monday with his mind free from worry about tasks he’s forgetting or due dates that are looming. He knows he has scheduled all the tasks on his plate and that they will get done eventually. He has a flexible plan. And he can trust it. Figure 4. Stephen’s list on Monday morning Monday—3/11/07 Today’s Schedule †¢ 9:30 to 10:30 Class †¢ 10:30 to 11:00—Gift for Dad’s birthday, pay cell phone bill, return Mark’s CD. †¢ 11:00 to 12:00—Class †¢ 12:00 to 1:00 Lunch/Break †¢ 1:00 to 3:00 Do Government reading assignment. †¢ 3:00 to 4:30 Start work on Econ problem set. †¢ 4:30 to 5:00 Come up with topic for Anthro paper. †¢ 5:00 to 7:00 Get huge. †¢ 7:00 Dinner followed by inevitable embarrassment at toga party (Note to self: Flex a lot at party. ) Things to Remember Now let’s see how Stephen holds up†¦ During the Day on Monday The day starts off fine. Stephen successfully finishes the small tasks that he scheduled for 10:30. During his second class, he remembers that he has some overdue library books that need to be returned. No problem. Stephen whips the list out of his pocket and jots down â€Å"Return books† under the â€Å"Things to Remember† column. A little later, the professor announces the date and time of the midterm—something else that needs to be scheduled. Again, no problem for Stephen. He adds â€Å"Sched. Gov midterm (4/5, 3 P. M. † to his list, and then leaves the classroom confident that these tasks will be scheduled appropriately tomorrow morning. After a leisurely lunch, Stephen hunkers down in the library to tackle his government reading. The articles are a little shorter than usual, so he finishes by 2:30, which is nice. As he leaves the library, however, Stephen runs into a friend who convinces him to tag along on a Wal-Mart run. To be honest, it didn’t take much convincing. College students, for some inexplicable reason, love Wal-Mart runs. After this (unavoidable) detour, Stephen gets back to campus by 3:30. Now he’s behind schedule. Quickly checking his e-mail, Stephen sees a message from a classmate asking if he wants to join a study group at 4:00 to work on the Econ problem set. Swiftly adapting, Stephen once again whips out his list and makes a couple of rapid changes to the Today’s Schedule column. He bumps up the Anthro paper topic work to start now, and then replaces his Econ problem set work with the study group that he just found out about. One of the big advantages of this system is its flexibility. Schedules will always change, but this the system makes it easy for you to regain your focus after getting sidetracked. Figure 5 shows the new state of Stephen’s list. Figure 5. Stephen’s list Monday afternoon Monday—3/11/07 Today’s Schedule †¢ 9:30 to 10:30—Class †¢ 10:30 to 11:00—Gift for Dad’s Return Mark’s CD. Things to Remember †¢ return books. †¢ Sched. Gov midterm birthday, Pay cell phone bill, (4/5, 3 P. M. ) †¢ 11:00 to 12:00—Class †¢ 12:00 to 1:00—Lunch/Break †¢ 1:00 to 3:00—Do Government reading assignment. †¢ 3:30 to 4:00—Choose Anthro paper topic †¢ 4:00 to 5:00—Work with group on Econ problem set †¢ 5:00 to 7:00—Get huge. †¢ 7:00—Dinner followed by inevitable embarrassment at toga party. (Note to self: Flex a lot at party. ) The Anthro work goes fine. Stephen finds a topic that he is happy with and then runs off to meet with his Econ group. During the meeting, the group agrees to meet again Tuesday morning to finish the problem set. Stephen quickly jots down â€Å"Econ group—10 A. M. † under Things to Remember and then heads off to the gym. He’s done with work for the day. The Aftermath Because he finished a lot of work during the morning and afternoon before the party, Stephen was able to really relax and have a good time that night. In addition, he successfully recorded all of the new to-dos and deadlines that cropped up during the day. Instead of bouncing around in his head and causing stress, they were safely placed in Stephen’s system and will be scheduled in due time. Most important, none of this required him to explicitly think about time management beyond the five minutes he spent planning that morning and the quick rescheduling he did in the afternoon. As suggested at the beginning of this case study, imagine for a moment what Stephen’s day might have been like without the simple time-management system. What if, instead, he’d employed the strategy used by most students and simply tried to remember what he needed to get done? It’s highly unlikely that the small tasks— returning a CD, buying a birthday gift, paying a bill—would have been completed. Without a schedule, people don’t like to do menial chores unless they’re 100 percent necessary. There’s also a good chance that he would have forgotten about the Anthro paper topic altogether after the last-minute study group came up. What about the big-picture reminders from Sunday—calling home, scheduling internships, creating a guitarpracticing schedule? Those would have been pushed out of his head completely by the demands of near-future deadlines. Without a system to capture them, we can’t expect Stephen to remember long-term ideas for any extended period of time. Most important, without the system, Stephen would have completed much less schoolwork on Monday. The day would have focused, more or less, only on the Government reading, because that was the only big task actually due the next day. Without time labels, Stephen would have had a much hazier understanding of his free time, so he probably wouldn’t have started this reading until later in the afternoon (for the most part, students don’t like to start any work without a large block of free time ahead of them). Remember, however, that this assignment took a couple of hours to complete, so that means if Stephen had waited until the afternoon to start, he would have finished only this single task by 5:00, with the Econ problem set and Anthro paper topic likely falling by the wayside. Instead, Stephen ended up finishing six tasks by 5:00, leaving plenty of time for exercise and debauchery during the evening. As you can see from the case study, this simple time-management system, which requires only a few minutes of planning each day, made Stephen significantly more productive and significantly less stressed. It will do the same for you. In other words, five minutes every morning and a sheet of scrap paper in your pocket are enough to transform you from a stressed-out student struggling to get things done, into an organized, relaxed, finely tuned academic machine. If you remember one lesson from this book, it should be the lesson of this case study: A little organization goes a hell of a long way. Step 2 Declare War on Procrastination In the previous section we introduced a simple time-management system to help you plan your day intelligently. That was the easy part. Anyone can spend five minutes to figure out what they should be doing. The real challenge is marshaling the motivation to actually do the work once it’s scheduled. Without some control over your schedule, you cannot be a happy and successful student—no matter how good your intentions. As you might expect, in conducting interviews for this book, I put a significant focus on the issue of procrastination. Anyone who makes straight As has clearly found a way to consistently get work done when it needs to be done, and I wanted to find out how. As it turns out, however, I was in for a surprise. Every student I interviewed was asked the following question: â€Å"How do you defeat procrastination? † As soon as the first responses were returned, it became clear that something was not quite right. I received answers such as: â€Å"I don’t. † â€Å"Rarely. † â€Å"I didn’t. † â€Å"I don’t think that you can. † These were not the responses that I expected—it didn’t make sense! Everything else they told me about how they studied and wrote papers clearly indicated that these scholastic studs were kicking some very serious procrastinatory ass, so why were they all claiming they didn’t defeat procrastination? What was going on here? Fortunately, many students went on to qualify this first reaction, and it was in these qualifications that I began to figure out what they really meant. â€Å"I don’t think that you can,† was how Lee, a straight-A student from Columbia, began his answer, but he soon added: â€Å"You just have to try to limit it. † Ryan, a straight-A Dartmouth student, started by claiming, â€Å"Really, I don’t defeat procrastination. † But then he continued: â€Å"Or, at least, I don’t think I do†¦although, I suppose, compared to the majority of students, I’m not as bad as I think. † I don’t know that I’ve yet defeated procrastination,† was how Christine, a straight-A Harvard student, began before concluding: â€Å"but I’ve found ways to make this inevitable tendency less destructive. † Over time, these extended responses began to paint a clear picture. When the straight-A students a nswered â€Å"I don’t defeat procrastination,† they really meant to say â€Å"I don’t defeat the urge to procrastinate. † And this makes perfect sense. To put it simply, some work just plain sucks, and you, like the straight-A students interviewed for this book, will want to procrastinate on this sucky work. It’s unavoidable. Therefore, the goal in this step is not to teach you how to love all work and never feel like procrastinating ever again. Instead, I’m going to describe some targeted strategies to help you sidestep this unavoidable urge when it arises—not destroy it altogether. This is how straight-A students prevent procrastination from destabilizing their schedule. They don’t rely only on willpower and good intentions, but instead deploy an arsenal of specific, tested rules that help them short-circuit their natural desire to procrastinate. These students, of course, aren’t perfect, and they still occasionally put off work for no good reason. But overall their strategies made them significantly more effective at following a study plan then their peers—and this made all the difference. What follows are five anti-procrastination battle plans drawn directly from my straight-A interviews. These techniques are not theoretical; they are exhaustively used by real students to beat down procrastination again and again. Trust them. Put them into practice immediately. Make them into a habit. The effect will be immediate. You may never fully rid yourself of the urge to procrastinate, and that’s okay. But with the right strategies in place, you can rid yourself of the fear that you’ll always give in to that urge. Procrastination Battle Plan #1: Keep a work progress journal Think about the last time that you procrastinated on something important. You can probably recall some of the wishy-washy excuses your mind concocted for delaying the work. Something along the lines of â€Å"I don’t have all the materials here with me now, but if I waited until tomorrow, I could get tarted right away with everything I need,† or â€Å"It’s getting late, and my concentration is waning, it would be a waste to start now, so I will wait to tackle this when I’m fresh in the morning. † Why are these excuses necessary? Why don’t we simply think: â€Å"This is boring, and I’m lazy, so I’m not going to do it,† which is much closer to the truth? The an swer is that your ego is a powerful force. We procrastinate, but we don’t want to admit to ourselves that we procrastinate. So we make excuses to ourselves to avoid the truth. A work progress journal is a simple tool that takes advantage of this reality to help you defeat procrastination. It works as follows: Buy a cheap spiral notebook, and keep it near your calendar. Each morning, when you work out your schedule for the day, quickly jot down in the notebook the date and the most important tasks that you are scheduled to get done. At the end of the day, if you’ve completed all of these tasks, simply jot down all completed. If you failed to complete some tasks, record this, along with a quick explanation. The system adds only an extra minute to your morning routine and requires only an extra minute each night before you go to sleep. It’s simple enough to turn into a habit. What’s amazing, however, is the journal’s immediate effect. Having to record, in ink, on paper, that you procrastinated over a task for no good reason is a powerful blow to your ego. It might be easy to tell yourself a few weak excuses for putting off a tedious assignment, but when you have to record these same excuses on paper their foolishness is exposed. You can no longer get away with lame rationalizations. This is especially true if you continue to delay the same task day after day. After seeing all of those excuses pile up in your journal, there will be no escape from reality: You are being lazy! Your ego won’t like this truth, so it will kick-start your motivation in an effort to avoid it. The journal, in this way, acts like a personal drill sergeant, sitting on your shoulder and yelling into your ear: â€Å"Soldier, I want you to go get me a pillow, because I know I must be dreaming. I thought I just saw you consider not starting your paper this afternoon, and I knnnoooowwww you wouldn’t try to pull that crap with me standing right next to you! Now go grab your notes and get workin’ before I make you record your laziness in ink where everyone can see it! Many students, myself included, don’t keep a journal all the time, but use it to help them get through unusually busy periods. For example, my work progress journal was a key force in getting me through my senior fall semester, which involved classes, grad school applications, and the writing of my first book. Others have had great success with the journal to keep focused on their LSAT preparati on while juggling the demands of regular class work. Some students go so far as to use the system with a friend, agreeing to review each other’s journal once a week. As Christine from Harvard suggests: â€Å"If you have a friend in the same class, check up on each other’s progress. † And even if you can’t find a willing journal partner, there are other ways to use friends to jumpstart your drive: â€Å"It helps to simply tell your roommates of your goals, and have them guilt-trip you into working. † Procrastination Battle Plan #2: Feed the Machine Low energy breeds procrastination. Most students know the feeling—your mind starts to feel sluggish, you begin to read whole pages of text without remembering a single word, and writing coherent notes becomes a Herculean task. It’s almost impossible to motivate yourself to stick to a schedule under these mental conditions. Accordingly, during long work periods, you need to feed your body the fuel it needs to perform at it How to cite How to Become a Straight a Student, Essay examples

Public Relations Contigenct Th Essay Example For Students

Public Relations Contigenct Th Essay Contingency Theory of Accommodation and Advocacy Contingency theory of accommodation/advocacy is a more realistic depiction of public relation strategies or models based on a continuum. The contingency theory represents the organizations possible stance on a wider range of publics than an individual one fostering rigid and exclusive categorization mostly found in a limited set communication models. Basically what the theory is getting at is opening the spectrum of the public to come to a more rounded synopsis of the issue or product. Amanda Cancel, Michael Mitrook, and Glen Cameron conceptualized the theory to offer a better understanding how the public relations field manages conflict and reaches out to the public in external communication. A study was done by 18 practitioners to see if the contingency theory made any sense to them. The theory itself offers 86 possible factors in the continuum at any given time to any given public. This allows the continuum offered to depict how an organizations stance toward one given public and not the outcome of the interaction with that public. The theory focuses then on what decisions led the organization to their stance in concern with greater or lesser accommodation to that public. One of the many factors suggests that more accommodation or more advocacy will be effective in gaining departmental and organizational objectives in the short and long term. The contingency theory further goes on to say that an accommodative stance, questionably a part of a two-way symmetrical communication may not be completely ethical, in fact it could be contrary and unethical to morally repugnant publics, for those who hold some positions to be morally absolute. A position of a moral magnitude holds more so than that of any belief in the dialogic process. This also bring into view ethical charges of paternalism and the convictions of an organization that advocacy is morally superior to two#8211;way symmetrical communication. Communication processes such as dialogue, compromise, collaboration and cooperation denote agreement, but engaging in these degrees are not always on the highest moral position. In certain cases taking a moral stance means putting the ethical principle above two-way symmetrical communication. The contingency theory attempts to structure a better understanding to dynamics of accommodation and advocacy while institute the ethical aspects of accommodation to the efficacy in public relations. This is one sample method that was used in the study of contingency. The sample test consisted of eighteen different public relation managers, ranging from middle to upper class. There are varieties of large corporations and of the practitioners represents one from around the country. The practitioners selected all represent corporations that are equally or more exposed than other organizations to positive and negative contact with the general public. This is the first reason for their selection and the second reason is related to their overall knowledge of their corporations history and associated culture, in comparison to a part-time practitioners knowledge. The research was done in three logical divisions. The first section asked the interviewee about the valid continuum between advocacy and accommodation. The second section analytically covers possible variables that could affect the corporations stances along the continuum and conveys associated models in conflict management. The third section summarizes the study into three groups: strongly supported variables, unsupported variables and new variables. Strengths for this study are insurmountable where in the entire variable range has such a broad spectrum that all aspects are covered. The variables of the business exposure and corporate culture are the two most allied aspects to the validity of the study itself. This offers the interviewer to collectively find out what is to be done and how it to be done in public relations to further a better advocacy of knowledge to public. .ue69916a99a5125d3fba8cce312697c29 , .ue69916a99a5125d3fba8cce312697c29 .postImageUrl , .ue69916a99a5125d3fba8cce312697c29 .centered-text-area { min-height: 80px; position: relative; } .ue69916a99a5125d3fba8cce312697c29 , .ue69916a99a5125d3fba8cce312697c29:hover , .ue69916a99a5125d3fba8cce312697c29:visited , .ue69916a99a5125d3fba8cce312697c29:active { border:0!important; } .ue69916a99a5125d3fba8cce312697c29 .clearfix:after { content: ""; display: table; clear: both; } .ue69916a99a5125d3fba8cce312697c29 { display: block; transition: background-color 250ms; webkit-transition: background-color 250ms; width: 100%; opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #95A5A6; } .ue69916a99a5125d3fba8cce312697c29:active , .ue69916a99a5125d3fba8cce312697c29:hover { opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #2C3E50; } .ue69916a99a5125d3fba8cce312697c29 .centered-text-area { width: 100%; position: relative ; } .ue69916a99a5125d3fba8cce312697c29 .ctaText { border-bottom: 0 solid #fff; color: #2980B9; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0; padding: 0; text-decoration: underline; } .ue69916a99a5125d3fba8cce312697c29 .postTitle { color: #FFFFFF; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 600; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 100%; } .ue69916a99a5125d3fba8cce312697c29 .ctaButton { background-color: #7F8C8D!important; color: #2980B9; border: none; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: none; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 26px; moz-border-radius: 3px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: none; width: 80px; min-height: 80px; background: url(https://artscolumbia.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts/assets/images/simple-arrow.png)no-repeat; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; } .ue69916a99a5125d3fba8cce312697c29:hover .ctaButton { background-color: #34495E!important; } .ue69916a99a5125d3fba8cce312697c29 .centered-text { display: table; height: 80px; padding-left : 18px; top: 0; } .ue69916a99a5125d3fba8cce312697c29 .ue69916a99a5125d3fba8cce312697c29-content { display: table-cell; margin: 0; padding: 0; padding-right: 108px; position: relative; vertical-align: middle; width: 100%; } .ue69916a99a5125d3fba8cce312697c29:after { content: ""; display: block; clear: both; } READ: Catcher in the rye 5 Essay The weaknesses that are also relative to the variables and the amount of time it takes to expend all the collected information of the interviewees. The study seems too extensive to possess any beneficial quality for the interviewer and interviewee and the information collected will not serve any purpose to the interviewee because they already are aware of what they know. An example of contingency of accommodation was where a Florida newspaper wanted to see how the public receiving their circulation felt towards it and what should be implemented in changing any problems the public saw as a hindrance. The contingency theory is, by any means, a good way of practicing public relations. One good test would be to see how accommodating one public stance and the corporation. For example, there is a property management company that owns a larger portion of the buildings in the city. A Planned Parenthood clinic wants to renew its lease but the company faces their other buildings being boycotted by anti-abortion groups. The property company hires you to try to advocate and accommodate the issues that are of major concern of this group. Is it possible to find a balance? What type of answers does the boycott want to here and what are possible changes for this altercation? The contingency theory possesses many positive attributes on focus toward accommodation of the publics expressed feelings. The key asset of the construction is the emphasis of mutual communication and prescriptive input towards the public. In that, keeping a wide range of possibility and precedent for organization of apparent issues. The major weakness is extreme accommodation towards one public in turn causing total disregard of issues and disproportionate conflict to another. The motive is then fixed to two-way symmetrical communication and improved stance of the model.

Business and Corporate Law New Zealand Law

Questions: 1. What are the Directors duties under New Zealand Law?2. What are the shareholders rights under New Zealand Law?3. In relation to the law of torts, discuss liability for negligent misstatements under common law and current New Zealand law? Answer: 1. Directors duties under New Zealand Law The New Zealand Companies Act, 1993 provides in details all the duties as well as the liabilities that are imposed by the law on the company directors. Generally, the duties of the director are owed directly for the company. Hence the company has the right to sue the director in the case of any breach by the director. However, along with the company the shareholders and the creditors also have the right to sue the director in case of any breach but under different sections (Chiu and Monin, 2003). One of the primary fiduciary duties of the director is to act as an agent of the company. The directors are supposed to act as the agent who would be responsible to take actions on behalf of the company. Hence it can be construed that the relation between the director and the company is similar to that of an agent and principal. Hence accordingly the director holds a position of trust in the company. The second most significant duty of the director is to act in good faith and that acts of the director should be in the best interest of the company. Nonetheless, there exist some obligations related to this duty of the directors. The director can exercise the given powers for the purposes specified for, the director is not allowed to use the funds of the company until he is authorized for the specific purposes. Further the director should always act in a bona fide manner. He should always act in accordance to the laws of the country that is according to the Companies Act, 1993 and also the constitution of the company. The director is also not allowed to trade in any such manner that can put the company at any serious risk and possible loss to the creditors of the company. The director also has some duties with regard to the employees of the company. The director is an employer of the company it is the duty of the director to consider the interests of the employees of the company. The director also has the duty of skill as well as care. When the director acts as the company director all the duties that he or she performs should be done with skill and care. The care, skill and diligence that the director utilizes in the performance of the duties should be similar to any other reasonable man in his place and in the same conditions would have done. However, this standard is comparatively high and while deciding on the each case the judges would consider each case differently the breach would not be considered merely based on the error in the decision (Lehman et al., 2005). During performance of the duties the director also is not supposed to display such skill that may be considered greater than what is expected from a reasonable director with the same experience and skill. In the case of any breach by the director the shareholders have the right to sue him. Collectively, the shareholders have the right to act against the director of the company for any legitimate reason that includes the breach of duties. 2. Shareholders rights under New Zealand Law According to the Companies Act 1993 there are a number of rights and remedies for the shareholders. These rights have been provided specifically under the laws of New Zealand. One of the primary rights available to the shareholder is the right to be bought out. The minorities in the company who dissent can compel the company to buy the shares after they have voted against the significant transactions of the company or any vital amendments to the Constitution or any such important right that is attached to the shares (Sealy, 2003). The second right available to the shareholder is the right to information. Any shareholder of a company has the right to make a written request for any important information to the company. The third right available to the shareholder is that they can claim for any inspection of any record. However, in this regard it must be noted that the records that has been asked for inspection is available in the company. The next right available to the shareholder is the right to question the management regarding any query. It is the board of directors who are to be held responsible for the management of the company. But the shareholders have the right to ask about any query to the directors regarding the management (Farrar, 2001). The next significant right for the shareholder is to approve all the important transactions. Any company cannot enter into any transaction until and unless all the shareholders in the special resolution have approved it. Further the shareholders have the right to sue the director. In case any breach takes place on the part of the director for any duty owed by the director, the shareholder holds the right to bring an action against the director for such breach. Finally, the shareholder also has the right of remedy for any repressive conduct carried out by any person on behalf of the company. Other than these rights of the shareholders, they also have the right to avoid the conditions of the Companys Act if they take any unanimous resolution amongst the shareholders. When the shareholders act together their rights increase and they can permit the company to obtain or trade their shares, or give financial assistance for purchasing shares or authorize the remuneration or benefits of the directors. However, it should be remembered that the shareholders should act together to utilize these rights. Further the company needs to satisfy the solvency test and the directors have to provide a certificate for that. The company also needs to conduct meeting annually. These meetings generally deal with financial reports, elections, director appointments and business resolutions. 3. Liability for negligent misstatements under common law and current New Zealand law A negligent misstatement may be considered to be such a statement of fact that is false and made honestly but in a careless manner. An opinion may also be regarded as a statement of fact incase such an opinion implies that the person making it has reasonable grounds for such opinion (McLay, 2010). It must be noted that for negligent misstatement action can be brought only in the law of tort and such an action arises only when there existed a duty to care while making such statement of opinion and there has been a breach of such duty resulting in the damage to the claimant. With regard to the financial matters there exists no duty of care for such statements. Any person would be responsible for the negligent misstatements only when those statements were made under the conditions which made the other party rely on them. This was stated in the case of Hedley Byrne v Heller Partners Ltd [1964] AC 465 (HL) and also in the case of Caparo Industries plc v Dickman [1990] 2 AC 605 (HL). Unde r such circumstances when a negligent statement has been used to make a person enter into a contract, such a statement may be considered as actionable and a term of contract or else it may result in payment of damages (Waddams, 2010). Under the English law, there were a number of cases which dealt with the issue of negligent misstatement. One of the oldest cases that dealt with this issue was the case of Derry v Peek (Derry v Peek, [1889]). The case was related to the tort of negligent misstatement in cases of pure economic loss. Some of the other issues in the case were fraud as has been given in contract, misrepresentation and fiduciary duty (Davies and Malkin, 2003). The House of Lords had held in this case that there existed no such duty with regard to care and skill with regard to the issuance of any prospectus to avoid the making of any misstatement and especially with regard to economic loss that results from the negligent misstatement (Dias and Markesinis, 1976). Another English law case dealing with this issue of negligent misstatement is Hedley Byrne Co Ltd v Heller Partners Ltd (Hedley Byrne Co Ltd v Heller Partners Ltd, [1964]). This case also deals with pure economic loss which was a result of negligent misstatement. Before this case, the general idea was that any party can owe a duty for caring of statements that is made on reliance. The remedy that was previously available in such cases was in contract law (Burrows, 2007). This idea was rejected in the case and House of Lords introduced the notion of assumption of responsibility. Hence from this case onwards the liability was recognized for economic loss even if it did not arise from the contractual relationship (Witting, 2004). After the decision of the House of Lords in the Hedley (Hedley Byrne Co Ltd v Heller Partners Ltd, [1964]) case, the courts in New Zealand also recognized these negligent misstatements. The difference in New Zealand was that the primary criterion for creating different section for liability in negligence was not mentioned here. Instead New Zealand laws preferred the principle based approach where the criteria was given but it was not considered necessary. The significance of the case in New Zealand was that in case of pure economic loss the liability did exist especially when it is caused as a result of negligent misstatement. One recent case on negligent misstatements is Caparo Industries plc v Dickman (Caparo Industries plc v Dickman, [1990]). It is the recent landmark case on the duty of care. In this case the House of Lords had held that for testing the presence of duty to care in negligence. The test introduced in the case was "three-fold test". According to this test, the harm that is caused must be reasonable and should be foreseen as given under Donoghue v Stevenson (Donoghue v Stevenson, [1932]). Secondly, there should be a proximal relationship between the parties and thirdly it should be fair and reasonable to impose the liability. Laws in New Zealand for negligent misstatements are not exactly as it has been given under the English common law. In this regard, a case may be mentioned. In the case of Scott Group Ltd v McFarlane the Court of Appeal had held that in the case of any negligence to the third party the auditor may be held liable since the audit report was relied upon. The Court had further discussed that the financial position of the Company was poor and there were chances of takeover by another company (Todd and Burrows, 1991). Hence the auditors had the duty towards the company of Scott Group to reveal the truth. Nevertheless, with regard to damages the Court had held that due to the fact that the company had not suffered any financial loss, they would not be entitled to receive any damages. It must be noted that the auditor had provided a disclaimer with regard to the exclusion of liability for the general public that included the Scott Group also. The court had held that the disclaimer was not sufficient to exclude the liability of the auditors in this regard. However, after this case, in most circumstances the disclaimers did exclude the liability to the members. Under the laws in New Zealand, for negligent misstatement another case may be mentioned. In the case of South Pacific Manufacturing v New Zealand Securities Investigations (South Pacific Manufacturing v New Zealand Securities Investigations, [2015]), a common approach was incorporated for the determination of duty to take care under all kinds of conditions. In this kind of approach the court would ask questions with regard to the duty to take care and related inquires regarding the policies and the proximity. It has been generally observed that these claims of negligent misstatement and the ones against public authorities has been observed beyond this approach and it falls under the distinct areas of liability in negligence. However, the contemporary decisions of the Court of Appeal have clarified all queries relating to the duty to care under novel situations which can be resolved by referring to the approach taken by the Court in South Pacific Manufacturing (South Pacific Manufacturing v New Zealand Securities Investigations, [2015]). References Burrows, A. (2007).English private law. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Caparo Industries plc v Dickman[1990]UKHL p.2. Chiu, P. and Monin, J. (2003). Effective Corporate Governance: from the perspective of New Zealand fund managers.Corporate Governance, 11(2), pp.123-131. Davies, M. and Malkin, I. (2003).Torts. Chatswood, N.S.W.: LexisNexis Butterworths Australia. Derry v Peek[1889]App Cas LR 14, p.337. Dias, R. and Markesinis, B. (1976).The English law of torts. Brussels: E. Bruylant. Donoghue v Stevenson[1932]AC p.562. Farrar, J. (2001).Corporate governance in Australia and New Zealand. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. Hedley Byrne Co Ltd v Heller Partners Ltd[1964]AC p.465. Lehman, C., Tinker, T., Merino, B. and Neimark, M. (2005).Corporate governance. Amsterdam: Elsevier JAI. McLay, G. (2010).Torts. Wellington, N.Z.: LexisNexis NZ. Sealy, L. (2003). Corporate Governance in Australia and New Zealand. By John Farrar. [Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2001. xxvi, 472 and (Appendices and Index) 52 pp. Paperback 33.99. ISBN 0195513142.].The Cambridge Law Journal, 62(2), pp.511-513. South Pacific Manufacturing v New Zealand Securities Investigations[2015]NZLR 2 (CA), p.282. Todd, S. and Burrows, J. (1991).The Law of torts in New Zealand. North Ryde, N.S.W.: Law Book Co. Waddams, S. (2010).The law of contracts. Aurora, Ont.: Canada Law Book Inc. Witting, C. (2004).Liability for negligent misstatements. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Range of Champagne

Building a strong customer relation with a product requires competent personnel to enable it thrive in the present dynamic and competitive business settings. For continuous and sustainable brand success, specialists should carefully select and position the products to the target market.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on Range of Champagne specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More The Champagne house has many skilled brand managers; they took different approaches and attempted several alternatives to position different brands of Champagne to their present status (Hirche 2012). Proper management of Champagne brands has increased the level at which customers identify themselves with the products. The strong brands have added significant values to Champagne products, as it is in the minds of consumers, thus most customers associate themselves with the brand. Dom Perignon brand makes Moet Chandon Wineries Company to generate mo re value than other Champagnes that lacks such strong brands. Conducting a well-organized advertisement for a product or service alters market perceptions. Advertisement of Champagne brands helped in formation of mental images in the minds of consumers. This has made it easy for the company to sell its common brands, such as Krug and Dom Perignon with ease, as there is little competition. Competition has been minimal in the sense that customers have developed strong taste and preference for the Champagne brands (Hirche 2012). In keeping with market dynamism, Champagne brands find there way into key functions like parties, football celebrations, and other significant functions. With such strong connections, consumers believe that Champagne brands are superior to generic wines. Dom Perigon, for instance, is an expensive brand that continues to dominate the wine market given the strong emotional association that it has with consumers. Therefore, consumers can pay premium rates to purch ase this brand, instead of acquiring cheap sparkling wines. This strong brand connection has enabled Moet Chandon Wineries Company to develop positive brand equity with consumers. Notably, the brand loyalty has taken a sustainable approach; it is reflected on the financial growth of the company. The strong brand connection that the firm enjoys from some of its brands indicates the difference that emanates from advertising different brands. It is nearly impossible for all brands to receive same market response. However, a single brand can influence the sales of other brands of the same company, as consumers do not only form strong connections with the brand, but also with the company (Brand Equity n.d.).Advertising Looking for essay on advertising? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More Product equity helps companies in value generation from three fronts. It is the emotional and intellectual attachments or associations that consumers have with a given product or service. For instance, customers can willingly pay more for a bottle of Krug or Bollinger to a bottle of generic Champagne, such as Mumm or Perrier Jouet (Brand Equity n.d.). This occurs in spite the lack justifiable difference in the tastes of the two brands to support the reason for the high premium. Advertisements build strong images in the minds of customers, such that they move from the awareness stage to sustainable loyalty with the brand. Adverts persuade consumers to prefer a given product to that of the competitors. It also reminds and reassures consumers of the acceptability of the product offering. After influencing consumers to choose a certain product over others, it becomes a brand name. Dom Perignon, Krug, and Bollinger are key brands that control the market share and sales of the manufacturing company; they influence the overall business outcomes. The road to brand loyalty begins with the Advert committees creating brand awareness among consumers. Then, there is the brand trial stage; here, consumers try to use the brand, and then develop preferences. At brand preference stage, emotional and intellectual associations arise, as consumers make repetitious purchases. Lastly, brand loyalty occurs. At this stage, consumers demand the brand and can pay premium rates to acquire it. With high loyalty comes strong attachment with the brand, such that consumers cannot substitute the brand for any other wine (Sutherland Sylvester 2000). According to Goode (2012), Champagne occupies an elevated space in the wine industry, and this has been due to massive advertisements that Grand Marques has carried out. The hard work has built brand equity for Champagne products, such that there is a guarantee in price elevation for any bottle of wine having the Champagne name. Even though there are expensive Champagne brands, the presence of inexpensive brands erode the brand equity. Product advertisement differs from one brand to another. For example, Dom Perignon brand has higher prestige level than Veuve Clicquot judging from the way consumers seek them. Bollinger brand trends more than the Taittinger brand. In a competitive and dynamic market, a product’s image is everything. Multiple campaigns by Moet Chandon Wineries Company have seen Krug and Dom Perignon top the most consumed list of brands. Advertisements also aim at changing consumers’ beliefs or mindsets on certain products or services. This increases the market segment resulting in development of a larger market.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on Range of Champagne specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Champagne brands are distributed to specific locations, associated with right personalities, and events. In addition, Moet Chandon Wineries Company has been using brand adverts to distinguish their products from those of the competitors (Chamberlin 1918). This has made it easy f or consumers to differentiate their products from others. Massive investment is required in order to build a prestige brand, and for Champagne, such investment is not a significant problem. For sustainable loyalty among consumers, the investment has to remove the pressure to sell that could lead to negative decisions from consumers in future. Advertisement is a major tool that alters consumers’ negative perceptions, and instils the brand image in their minds. With the image of Champagne brands in the minds of consumers, there is a barrier to entry of new products and reduction in competition from similar products. The move blocks new competitors from establishing their presence in the wine market, as consumers can forego buying wine if the brand is not available. Advertising has been a great weapon for the development of strong images of the Champagne brands. Champagne products remain unrivalled in the market even with other brands trending at high prices. Consumers put more value on Champagne than other beverages. A comparison of the sales of Roederer, Laurent-Perrier, and Veuve Clcquot reveal different market perceptions (Goode 2012). The knowledge consumers have about the named brands are different resulting in different brand equity measurements. Product equity is also comprehended from the point of tangible financial assets that a firm owns. This entails the strategic positioning and planning that a company has put in place to ensure successful transfer of products to consumers. The move to distinguish different brands of Champagne made the Wine firm to register positive market response, but at different levels. The images below show some of the major Champagne brands that are trending in the wine market. References Brand Equity n.d., UK Essays: Marketing. Web.Advertising Looking for essay on advertising? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More Chamberlin, H. H 1918, Champagne Song: or The Wine of Victory, Taylor Francis, Paris. Goode, J 2012, How to Manage a Champagne Brand, Some Thoughts, The Wine Anorack. Web. Hirche, M 2012, Brand Equity – the Case of Champ†¦ What?, Martins Winelust. Web. Sutherland, M., Sylvester, A. K 2000, Advertising and the Mind of the Consumer: What works, What Doesn’t, and Why (2nd ed.), Allen Unwin, St. Leonards, NSW. This essay on Range of Champagne was written and submitted by user Ellen Sharpe to help you with your own studies. You are free to use it for research and reference purposes in order to write your own paper; however, you must cite it accordingly. You can donate your paper here.

A Critical Look at Death of a Salesman

A Critical Look at 'Death of a Salesman' Have you ever loved a rock band that had lots of great songs you cherished? But then the band’s hit single, the one everyone knows by heart, the one that gets all the airtime on the radio, isn’t a song you particularly admire? That’s the way I feel about Arthur Millers   Death of a Salesman. It’s his most famous play, yet I think it pales in comparison to many of his less popular dramas. Although it’s by no means a bad play, it certainly is overrated. Wheres the Suspense? Well, you have to admit, the title does give everything away. The other day, while I was reading Arthur Miller’s esteemed tragedy, my nine-year-old daughter asked me, â€Å"What are you reading?† I replied, Death of a Salesman, and then at her request I read a few pages to her. She stopped me and announced, â€Å"Daddy, this is the world’s most boring mystery.† I got a good chuckle out of that. Of course, it’s a drama, not a mystery. However, the  suspense is a vital component of tragedy. Sure, when we watch a tragedy, we fully anticipate death, destruction, and sadness by the play’s end. But how will the death occur? What will bring about the destruction of the protagonist? When I watched Macbeth for the first time, I guessed that it would conclude with Macbeth’s demise. But I had no idea as to what would be his undoing. After all, he and Lady Macbeth thought they’d never be â€Å"vanquished until Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane Hill shall come against him.†Ã‚   How the heck is a forest going to turn against them?! Therein lies the suspense because, sure enough, the forest comes marching right up to their castle! The main character in  Death of a Salesman, Willy Loman, is an open book. We learn very early on in the play that his professional life is a failure. He’s the low-man on the totem pole, hence his last name, â€Å"Loman.† (Very clever, Mr. Miller!) Within the first fifteen minutes of the play, the audience learns that Willy is no longer capable of being a traveling salesman. We also learn that he is suicidal. Spoiler! Willy Loman kills himself at the end of the play. But well before the conclusion, it becomes clear that the protagonist is bent upon self-destruction. His decision to kill himself for the $20,000 insurance money comes as no surprise; the event is blatantly foreshadowed throughout much of the dialogue. The Loman Brothers I have a hard time believing in Willy Loman’s two sons. Happy: He is the perennially ignored son. He has a steady job and keeps promising his parents that he’s going to settle down and get married. But in reality, he’s never going far in business and plans to sleep around with as many floozies as possible. Biff: He’s more likable than Happy. He has been toiling on farms and ranches, working with his hands. Whenever he returns home for a visit, he and his father argue. Willy Loman wants him to make it big somehow. Yet, Biff can’t hold down a 9-to-5 job to save his life. Both brothers are in their mid-thirties. Yet, they act as though they are still boys. The play is set in the productive years following World War II. Did the athletic Lowman brothers fight in the war? It doesn’t seem like it. If they had, perhaps they would be completely different people. They don’t seem to have experienced much during the seventeen years since their high school days. Biff has been moping. Happy has been philandering. Well-developed characters possess more complexity. By leaps and bounds, the father is the best part of Arthur Miller’s play. Unlike many of the show’s flat characters, Willy Loman has depth. His past is a complicated tangle of regrets and undying hopes. Great actors such as Lee J. Cobb and Brian Dennehy have mesmerized audiences with their portrayals of this iconic salesman. Yes, the role is filled with powerful moments. But is Willy Loman truly a tragic figure? Willy Loman: Tragic Hero? Traditionally, tragic characters (such as Oedipus or Hamlet) were noble and heroic. They possessed a tragic flaw, usually a bad case of hubris. (Note: Hubris means excessive pride. Use the word hubris at cocktail parties and people will think you’re ever-so-smart! But dont let it go to your head!). In contrast, Willy Loman represents the common man. Arthur Miller felt that tragedy could be found in the life of ordinary people. While I certainly agree, I also believe that tragedy works best when the main character’s choices become whittled away, much like a masterful yet imperfect chess player who suddenly realizes he is out of moves. Willy Loman has options. He has a lot of opportunities. Arthur Miller seems to be criticizing the American Dream, claiming that Corporate America drains the life out of people and casts them away when they are no further use. Yet, Willy Loman’s successful neighbor continually offers him a job! Willy Loman declines the job without ever explaining why. He has a chance to pursue a new life, but he wont let himself give up his old, soured dreams. Instead of taking the decent paying job, he chooses suicide. At the play’s end, his loyal wife sits at his grave. She does not understand why Willy took his own life. Arthur Miller would claim that the dysfunctional values of American society killed him. However, I believe that Willy Loman suffered from senility. He exhibits many of the symptoms of Alzheimer’s. Why couldn’t his sons and his ever-attentive wife recognize his failing mental condition? It’s a mystery to me.

Business Marketing Communication Article Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Business Marketing Communication - Article Example Instead, both academics and practitioners are embracing models which acknowledge the autonomy and unpredictability of customers. Initially building communication was not identified and recognized as a task of strategic importance in an organisation, but now with cut throat competition and a deluge of marketing tools, building relations and spreading information has increasingly become more important. One reason for seeing marketing communications as tactical rather than strategic is that much of its development and execution has been outsourced to marketing services agencies offering a range of specialisms (such as design, creative consultancy or sales promotion). This casts some doubt on its position as a core competence. Furthermore, much advertising and promotion thinking risks being short to medium term because the people and organisations involved are constantly changing. Butterfield suggests that, because of the increased importance of company-wide brand values in providing competitive advantage, marketing is becoming a way of delivering a communications strategy, rather than the other way round. The traditional hierarchy of strategy has been challenged by the increasing importance of brands as

LAB Ethogram Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

LAB Ethogram - Assignment Example The bird flies with regular, up and down undulations of the wings, hops from branch to branch and swings its tail from side to side while on a perched (standstill) position. This is a carnivorous species which feeds on insects, both flying and crawling. This species specifically hunts its prey in-flight through abrupt flight from a perch. However, it also hops from branch to branch in search of food and at the same time runs along the ground alternating with regular hops, while turning over leaves in check of crawling insects hidden underneath. The second common behavior was that I would call ‘grooming’, whereby many of the birds could be spotted lining out their plumage, shaking of dust from their feathers, picking oil from their tails and applying it along the feathers and washing by beating their wings up and down on a water surface. Others of these behaviors can be termed ‘recreational’ for example when the bird lays itself under direct sunlight and opens up its wings to enable heat penetration in between its wing and body. Most of these grooming and recreational behaviors are individual, but, social behaviors could also be observed. These include cases where male birds, more bright in colours were spotted on display singing together. This is a characteristic of the mating period, when males go on display to attract females to mate with, hence leading to reproduction. Nesting is the next social behavior when two birds, presumable male and female are spotted combining efforts to construct a nest where the eggs will be laid, hatched and the young ones raised from. Response to calls was evident as to alert others of the discovery of a food patch or alert in case of a n intruder. This could be judged by the kind of response that followed any particular call. In conclusion, a number of behaviors were observed to be interconnected to the welfare of the species along to its biological processes. These include grooming, which was found out to