Three challenges you face while completing graduate study and three Research Paper

Three challenges you face while completing graduate study and three strategies you use to address the challenges - Research Paper Example The reasons personal motivation has become such a challenge are clear. I have been going to school for so long, I am simply getting tired of it. I have delayed personal satisfaction for so long to pursue my education that I feel I am facing the limits of my endurance. In short, I have been investing too much for too long without any significant return. The effects of this personal motivational challenge are depressing. It takes extra effort to get going toward daily tasks such as attending class or completing homework or studying for tests. What happens is that the quality of my work suffers, and in the end, I do not feel like I have satisfactorily internalized the material to be mastered. It sort of makes the entire process of advanced study self-defeating. As debilitating as this personal motivational challenge is, my method of address must be just as crucial. I draw upon my experience as a psychology researcher to address this problem. What seems to be happening is that I am getting burned out because I am not enjoying my own life enough. To address this imbalance, I should be more deliberate about how I enjoy my leisure and recreation time. I should set aside certain times of certain days just for specific leisure time and recreational activities. My hope is that this practice will be a source of more effective self-renewal that I may c completes my goals both more comfortably and more effectively. This brings us to my next challenge, time management. The reasons for time management difficulties are mainly my job duties and procrastination. These problems may be directly related to the sources of my self-motivational problems as described above. The effects of my time management difficulties are stress and lack of quality free time. At this point, I see that all of these challenges are entwined with one another to some degree. It represents a heuristic for a unified system of procedural protocols to manage myself as human resources as well as address my needs as a human being. My method of address for challenges in time management is periodic re-organization. When I am not working optimally, I must take a step back, re-evaluate trends in my performance, and re-organize tasks in time to achieve more productive ends. This process of self-assessment and self-adjustment helps me keep work from piling up. To do it more consistently is to take total command of my time and productivity. Financial challenges for students in general are common, but for graduate students, they are even more so. Reasons for these financial challenges are due to student loans and lack of external financial support. The effects of these financial challenges are difficulty focusing on tasks because of monetary worries and a limit on ones physical quality of life. My method of address is an easier said than done but has potential long range solidity. What I have opted to do is to build an information consulting business. It is directly related to my education for the most part, and it promises a prosperous future as the business grows. Nevertheless, it actually constitutes another major challenge in a student's life already full of challenges. The challenges I face while completing my graduate study are about personal motivation, time management and financial costs. As such, I have developed certain strategies to address these challenges. Most people will

Victory Spirit Essay Example for Free

Victory Spirit Essay William Safire and James Wood are two different people, with different ideas, different views, but do have similar writing styles. In William Safire’s â€Å"A Spirit Reborn† he talks about the Gettysburg Address in comparison to 9/11 and he also analyzes the Gettysburg Address in more depth and has a specific purpose for writing his article. On the other hand in James Wood’s â€Å"Victory Speech† he talks about how President Obama flowed through different things, Wood also analyzes certain details of Obama’s speech, and offers some critique. â€Å"Now, as then, a national spirit rose from the ashes of destruction† (Safire 41). The Gettysburg Address was given after a horrible incident, with very tragic losses. By going through these destructive events, our nation becomes stronger, and more bonded together. After 9/11, the Gettysburg Address was reborn to bring us remembrance, togetherness and encouragement through tough times. In his essay, Safire states that 9/11 was â€Å"the worst bloodbath on our territory since Antietam Creek† (41). By bringing back past events such as the battle of Antietam, Safire probably strikes a lot of strong emotion from his readers by using it in comparison to 9/11. To reuse a speech such as the Gettysburg Address at a time such as after 9/11 was unlikely to be thought of, since they were two different events, 138 years apart. In Safire’s article in the New York Times, he analyzes the Gettysburg Address in more detail. He talks about how â€Å"you will hear the word dedicate five times† (Safire 42), and what each one of them stand for. For example, he says the first two refer to â€Å"the nation’s dedication to two ideals mentioned in the Declaration of Independence†¦ ‘Liberty’†¦ ‘that all men are created equal† (Safire 42). The third is pointed towards a certain blessing of the location of the battle of Gettysburg, and the fourth and fifth dedications are directed back to the thoughts of liberty and that all men are created equal, for which the deceased men of the battle fought for. Safire also notices that â€Å"the speech is grounded it conception, birth, death, and rebirth† (42). He mentions some specific quotes such as â€Å"The nation was ‘conceived in liberty’†¦ delivered into life – by ‘our fathers† (Safire 42). He also brings up death and re-birth by pulling more quotes from Lincoln’s memorable speech. Safire does not want us to â€Å"listen to only Lincoln’s famous words and comforting cadences† (43). Instead he wants us to remember the message Lincoln was giving to us, he wants us to appreciate the deceased and the missing, and wants to remind us that â€Å"this generation’s response to the deaths of thousands of our people leads to ‘a new birth of freedom† (Safire 43). â€Å"First he moved through the people†¦ Then he moved through the country†¦ then he moved through time† (Wood 611). The purpose Wood says for Obama doing this; was â€Å"to bind those wounds by binding us together† (611). By bringing people from different ages, orientation and gender, from different states and cities, Obama hopes to bring our nation back together as one nation. He also mentions how Ann Nixon Cooper, who is one hundred and six years old, had voted using just a finger, to show how the times have changed. Wood analyzes some details of Obama’s speech, such as how â€Å"Yes we can† changed to â€Å"Yes we did† and â€Å"Yes we may†. Noticing the impact those few words had on the crowd by saying it was â€Å"extraordinarily moving in its sobriety† (Wood 611). Wood also mentions how he added it to past tense, using a note of being uncertain. He also draws attention to Obama’s use of the word promise, after Obama says â€Å"I promise you – we as people will get there† in reference to a hard road to get to change. Wood says the word promise is used in acknowledgement to Martin Luther King’s speech from Memphis, King says â€Å"and I’ve seen the Promised Land, I may not get there with you† but Obama knows he will indeed get where we are going. In the beginning of Wood’s â€Å"Victory Speech† he talks about how â€Å"last Tuesday night was a very good night for the English language† (610). Since James Wood is a critic, it is only fitting that he give some feed-back on Barrack Obama’s speech. He says that â€Å"many of us would have watched in tears as President-elect Obama had just thanked his campaign staff and shuffled off to bed† (Wood 610). Wood says that his speech was filled with such history and emotion, that if he just grumbled thanks, American would not be satisfied. In the end both Safire and Wood had analyzed two different speeches in depth, but Safire had a specific purpose for doing so, to bring emotion, while Wood critiqued. There were a lot of differences, but some similarities, not many, but some.

Internal Validity in Longitudinal Homeless Research

Internal Validity in Longitudinal Homeless Research Establishing Internal Validity in Longitudinal Research with the Homeless Introduction When working with the homeless, it is necessary to identify potential factors that may contribute to the process of entering or exiting homelessness. These factors may take the form of demographic information, socio-economic status, and familial support, to name a few (Johnson et al., 1997; Chamberlain Johnson, 2013). Some of these variables may be described as negative reinforcements, in that they exacerbate a person’s likelihood of experiencing prolonged homelessness (Aubry, Klodawsky, Coulombe, 2012). These may include substance use, mental illness, arrest history, and absence of support network (Fazel et al., 2008). The temporal relationship between variables of this nature and homelessness is of particular interest to researchers. Determining whether substance use or mental illness precede and predict one’s chances of entering homelessness, or whether these variables have a greater chance of occurring following the manifestation of homelessness, will have implica tions for the development of interventions. While substance use and mental health disorders are shown to occur at increased rates among the homeless as compared to the general population (Fazel et al., 2008), teasing out their particular relationship with the onset, life course, or outcome of homelessness may be difficult to do. In their longitudinal investigation of 344 single adults recruited from municipal homeless shelters in the New York City area, McQuistion, Gorroochurn,Hsu, andCaton (2013) sought to measure the constructs of substance use and mental health, among others, to discover what relationship they had with whether or not someone experienced chronic homelessness, recurring homelessness, or successful rehousing over an eighteen-month period. The authors hypothesized that recurrent homelessness would be associated with characteristics that limit or impede a person’s ability to function, and additionally sought to determine if these characteristics may be independently predictive of recurrent homelessness, o r if they are associated with other outcomes (McQuistion et al. p. 2, 2013). Defining the variables The dependent variable in this report is described as the life course of experienced homelessness. The researchers limited their participants to exclusively include those who were experiencing homelessness for the first time, so as to observe differences in individual characteristics of those who go on to experience recurrent or chronic homelessness and those are rehoused. The authors recruited participants from the municipal shelter system, and relied on retrospective self-report to measure the continued progress of housing status. Interviews were conducted every six months, while brief check-in interviews were conducted monthly, in an effort to reduce recall bias. As the study proceeded, the authors divided participants into one of three categories: (1.) those experiencing recurrent homelessness – one or more further lapses of homelessness following rehousing, (2.) chronic homelessness – the absence of any housing following baseline interview, and (3.) stably housed à ¢â‚¬â€œ the acquisition and successful retaining of fixed permanent dwelling (McQuistion et al. p. 3, 2013). As a dependent variable, life course of homelessness in this study is sufficiently nuanced to include a wide range of possible experiential outcomes over a span of time, but the concept of â€Å"homelessness† itself is narrowed by the restraints of the study’s recruitment technique. While drawing their entire recruitment pool from the municipal shelter system of New York City ensured that participants were experiencing true homelessness (McQuistion et al. p. 2, 2013), this definition of homelessness still excludes those who may be sleeping in cars, residing in homeless encampments, occupying public spaces, or otherwise absent from the shelter system. There will be no way to say whether the results obtained in this study would be any different for people who may not utilize shelters upon entering homelessness. The independent variables in this study are described as â€Å"risk variables† (McQuistion et al., p. 3, 2013), demographic characteristics, and personal history information. The authors describe only a few of the instruments that were used in gathering this information. Upon initiating the baseline interviews, participants were screened for criteria of DSM-IV Axis I disorders (including substance abuse disorders). The Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV was used for this purpose, for the sake of brevity. The only Axis II diagnosis screened was antisocial personality disorder, because it is the only Axis II disorder in which behavioral history is the primary criteria (McQuistion et al. p. 2, 2013). While this may be convenient, excluding the diagnosis of other personality disorders further limits the generalizability of this data. History of living arrangement, education, income, employment history, criminal justice involvement, history of childhood placement, and current familial support were also obtained (McQuistion et al,. 2013). â€Å"Out-of-home placement† in childhood was defined as residing with a non-relative before the age of 18 (McQuistion et al., p. 3, 2013). Once again, the definition of this construct may be too narrow in scope, as it overlooks those who have had a similar â€Å"out-of-home placement† experiences, but have been placed with distant relatives through foster care. Familial disorganization during childhood was assessed by asking a series of questions related to parental substance abuse, parental criminality, family violence, and other similar items. According to the authors, â€Å"family disorganization† as a construct had a reliability ÃŽ ± coefficient of .71 (McQuistion et al. p. 3, 2013). Other reliability coefficients for the remaining instruments were not disclosed. Relationship between variables Following data collection after eighteen months, cases were divided into the aforementioned three categories of homeless life course (McQuistion et al. p. 3, 2013). The authors then used multinomial logistic regression analysis to investigate the relationship between each of the housing categories and the risk variables, while controlling for demographic characteristics (McQuistion et al. p. 6, 2013). Some noteworthy associations were discovered. On its own, substance abuse was associated with increased rates of recurrent homelessness when examined in a bivariate analysis (McQuistion et al. p. 8, 2013). Among the risk variables and dependent variables, no isolated variable was statistically significantly associated with housing status outcome following multinomial logistic regression analysis. However, the authors point out that upon combining three factors – (1.) substance abuse within 30 days prior to baseline interview, (2.) history of arrest, and (3.) a diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder – an outcome of recurrent homelessness could be exclusively predicted. These findings suggest that while no single variable may predict the life course of homelessness, a grouping of risk factors may increase the likelihood of one outcome over another. There are associations, particularly between substance use and the homeless life course, but they may not reach critical influence unless they occur in conjunction w ith other factors. These findings further illustrate the idea that the phenomenon of homelessness is complex, hard to explain, and involves the culmination of many forces (McQuistion et al., 2013). Discussion – internal validity The internal validity at issue in this study comes down to establishing the relationship between three statistically significant risk factors and an outcome of recurrent homelessness, specifically whether one causes the other. While the authors took steps to safeguard against the threat of confounding and selection bias by virtue of the potential independent variables they accounted and controlled for, there are still issues with establishing internal validity. Although the three variables that were collectively linked with recurrent homelessness were temporally established as preceding the outcome, there are alternative explanations for this. Arrest history and antisocial personality disorder have historically been closely related (Hodgins, Cà ´tà ©, 1993; McCabe et al., 2012). That these both occurred together is redundant, and suggests that one variable that could have covered both of these simultaneously had to be divided to produce the appearance of a significant association. Furthermore, the authors describe a substance use disorder within the past thirty days of the baseline interview as being the third predictive variable for recurrent homelessness. That reported substance abuse was present prior to the baseline interview – and subsequently the first of many recurrent homeless episodes – throws doubt on the temporal assumption of one variable causing the other. Participants could have forseen their entry into homelessness as their support networks fell apart, began using a substance to cope, entered homelessness, and continued using. In this case, entry into homelessness may have brought on substance use, rather than the alternative. That there exists this alternative explanation casts doubt on the internal validity of asserting cause-and-effect between this article’s dependent and independent variables. While this article does contribute to our understanding of the factors associated with recurrent homelessness – and may even suggest a temporal relationship – it is not flawless. Research attempting to identify the possible causes of a complex phenomenon like homelessness will undoubtedly encounter difficulties in doing so. Regardless, it is the collective contributions of these efforts that will continue to inform our knowledge base, and consequently our interventions, with this population. References Aubry, T., Klodawsky, F., Coulombe, D. (2012). Comparing the housing trajectories of different classes within a diverse homeless population. American Journal Of Community Psychology, 49(1-2), 142-155. Chamberlain, C., Johnson, G. (2013). Pathways into adult homelessness. Journal Of Sociology, 49(1), 60-77. Fazel, S., Khosla, V., Doll, H., Geddes, J. (2008). The prevalence of mental disorders among the homeless in Western countries: Systematic review and meta-regression analysis. PLoS Medicine 5(12), 0001–0012. Hodgins, S., Cà ´tà ©, G. (1993). Major mental disorder and antisocial personality disorder: A criminal combination. Bulletin Of The American Academy Of Psychiatry The Law, 21(2), 155-160. Johnson, T. P., Freels, S. A., Parsons, J. A., Vangeest, J. B. (1997). Substance Abuse and homelessness: Social selection or adaptation. Addiction, 92, 437–445. McCabe, P. J., Christopher, P. P., Druhn, N., Roy-Bujnowski, K. M., Grudzinskas, A. r., Fisher, W. H. (2012). Arrest types and co-occurring disorders in persons with schizophrenia or related psychoses. The Journal Of Behavioral Health Services Research, 39(3), 271-284. McQuistion, H. L., Gorroochurn, P., Hsu, E., Caton, C. M. (2013). Risk factors associated with recurrent homelessness after a first homeless episode. Community Mental Health Journal, doi:10.1007/s10597-013-9608-4 1

Descriptive Essay - The Woods in Autumn -- Descriptive Essay, Descripti

The Woods in Autumn      Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   It is not true that the close of a life which ends in a natural fashion- --life which is permitted to put on the display of death and to go out in glory- --inclines the mind to rest.   It is not true of a day ending nor the passing of the year, nor of the fall of leaves.   Whatever permanent, uneasy question is native to men, comes forward most insistent and most loud at such times.   There are still places where one can feel and describe the spirit of the falling of leaves.      Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   At Fall, the sky which is of so delicate and faint a blue as to contain something of gentle mockery, and certain more of tenderness, presides at the fall of leaves.   There is no air, no breath at all.   The leaves are so light that they sidle on their going downward, hesitating in that which is not void to them, and touching at last so intangible to the earth with which they are to merge, that the gesture is much gentler than a greeting, and even more discr...

Synthesis of Cis-Norbornene-5, 6-Endo-Dicarboxylic Anhydride

IntroductionThe Diels-Alder reaction is a [4+2] cycloaddition of a conjugated diene and a dienophile. This type of reaction was named for Otto Diels and Kurt Alder who were the first to investigate this reaction (Weldegirma, 2012). The Diels- Alder reaction is one of the most important reactions in all of organic chemistry because of the applicability of it. This reaction can form new carbon-carbon bonds and new stereocenters.The Diels-Alder reaction has high synthetic utility for making unsaturated 6-membered rings (Kahn, 2011). The more electron-withdrawing elements there are in the reactants, the faster the reaction will move forward. In the case of cyclopentadiene and maleic anhydride, the reaction takes place quite quickly due to the many electronegative oxygen present in both reactants.Mechanism:Side Reaction: Experimental:Table of Chemicals: CyclopentadieneMaleic AnhydrideEthyl AcetateHexane66.10 g/mol 98.06 g/mol 88.11 g/mol 86.18 g/mol MP: -90 º C BP: 39-43 º C MP: 52.8à ‚ º C BP: 202 º C MP: -83.6 º C BP: 77.1 º C MP: -96–94 º C BP: 68-69 º C Cyclopenta-1,3-diene Furan-2,5-diene Ethyl Acetate HexaneResults:The crystals obtained through the Diels-Alder reaction were not plate-like, as were expected. We obtained crystals that were a small and more powdery than plate-like. Even though our crystals did not turn out as we had hoped, the melting point range for our crystals was very close to the literature value.The calculations for the percent yield are as follows: First, the moles of the reactants must be calculated:Through these calculations we can see that the cyclopentadiene is the limiting reagent is the cyclopentadiene because the reaction between cyclopentadiene and maleic anhydride is a 1:1 reaction. Thus, the maximum amount of moles of cis-Norbornene-5, 6-endo-dicarboxylic anhydride we can produce is:Now that the theoretical yield has been calculated, we can compare the experimental yield with the theoretical yield:DiscussionTh e literature value for the melting point of cis-Norbornene-5,  6-endo-dicarboxylic anhydride is 165 º C. The experimental value we obtained through the Diels- Alder reaction was 160- 163 º C. We were only able to produce a yield of 20.2%. A yield this low was not expected, but was enough to measure the melting point to see if we had indeed produced cis-Norbornene-5, 6-endo-dicarboxylic anhydride.As cyclopentadiene is left out over a period of a few days, the molecules slowly dimerize and thus become dicyclopentadiene. Dicyclopentadiene would not result in the desired product, cis-Norbornene-5, 6-endo-dicarboxylic anhydride, so this must be remedied. In order to un- dimerize dicyclopentadiene, it must be heated to just under its boiling point to make fresh cyclopentadiene. With our melting point being so close to the literature value for cis-Norbornene-5, 6-endo-dicarboxylic anhydride, it is very likely that the desired product was obtained.This reaction does not seem to be ver y efficient at all. By using 0.2mL of cyclopentadiene, we only were able to produce about 0.05g which, at a 20.2% yield, is very low.Conclusion:The Diels- Alder reaction is one of the most important types of reactions in organic chemistry (Weldegirma, 2012).This reaction is so important because of its ability to form new carbon-carbon bonds.Diels- Alder reactions are used constantly in the medical field due to its diverse uses. It has been in studies of ribozymes and creating ribozymes synthetically (Jaschke, 2000).I believe that we did accomplish what we set out to do in this lab. We were able to form cis-Norbornene-5, 6-endo-dicarboxylic anhydride crystals and were able to achieve a very pure product.

Organisation culture

So often when we think of a company's strategy, organizational culture is the missing puzzle piece. Instead, attention is focused on customers, competitors, and financial resources. The neglect of organizational culture is unfortunate since leaders are responsible for so many other demands, but an understanding of the organization's culture and its potential for enabling a positive deviant strategy is important.Organizational culture is the shared beliefs, principles, values, and assumptions that hape behaviour by building commitment, providing direction, establishing a collective identity, and creating a community. It manifests as the organization's behaviour that has endured over time and allowed the organization to adapt to the environment. Therefore, culture is the glue that holds together an organization's strategy and becomes institutionalized as members repeat patterns of successful behavior. The effectiveness of culture depends on its alignment with the organization's environ ment, resources, values, and goals.Moreover, it requires lea ders to understand how the culture can be a vehicle for creating positive deviance. Steve Jobs excels at aligning Apple's culture with its strategy. Jobs has built a culture that is driven by a vision to make great products. Innovating is the dominant value of Apple's culture. Employees are rewarded for experimenting, risk taking, and creativity. As Jobs describes in an interview, the challenge to innovate is a norm of Apple's culture: It was a great challenge. Let's make a great phone that we fall in love with.And we've got the technology. We've got the miniaturization from the iPod. We've got the sophisticated operating system from Mac. Nobody had ever thought about putting operating systems as sophisticated as OS X inside a phone, so that was a real que stion. We had a big debate inside the company whether we could do that or not. And that was one where I had to adjudicate it and Just say, ‘We're going to do it. L et's try. ‘ The smartest software guys were saying they can do it, so let's give them a shot. And they did. Going beneath the surface of Apple's culture, Jobs has infused the quest for excellence as a mantra. Jobs has purposely created a culture where employees are encouraged to treat their work as a calling that is worthwhile and to pursue excell ence in their endeavors. Therefore, a large role for Jobs and his leadership teams is creating processes to recruit and socialize employees into Apple's culture. When recruiting for Apple senior positions, Jobs contended that intelligence organisation culture. Organisation culture So often when we think of a company's strategy, organizational culture is the missing puzzle piece. Instead, attention is focused on customers, competitors, and financial resources. The neglect of organizational culture is unfortunate since leaders are responsible for so many other demands, but an understanding of the organization's culture and its potential for enabling a positive deviant strategy is important.Organizational culture is the shared beliefs, principles, values, and assumptions that hape behaviour by building commitment, providing direction, establishing a collective identity, and creating a community. It manifests as the organization's behaviour that has endured over time and allowed the organization to adapt to the environment. Therefore, culture is the glue that holds together an organization's strategy and becomes institutionalized as members repeat patterns of successful behavior. The effectiveness of culture depends on its alignment with the organization's environ ment, resources, values, and goals.Moreover, it requires lea ders to understand how the culture can be a vehicle for creating positive deviance. Steve Jobs excels at aligning Apple's culture with its strategy. Jobs has built a culture that is driven by a vision to make great products. Innovating is the dominant value of Apple's culture. Employees are rewarded for experimenting, risk taking, and creativity. As Jobs describes in an interview, the challenge to innovate is a norm of Apple's culture: It was a great challenge. Let's make a great phone that we fall in love with.And we've got the technology. We've got the miniaturization from the iPod. We've got the sophisticated operating system from Mac. Nobody had ever thought about putting operating systems as sophisticated as OS X inside a phone, so that was a real que stion. We had a big debate inside the company whether we could do that or not. And that was one where I had to adjudicate it and Just say, ‘We're going to do it. L et's try. ‘ The smartest software guys were saying they can do it, so let's give them a shot. And they did. Going beneath the surface of Apple's culture, Jobs has infused the quest for excellence as a mantra. Jobs has purposely created a culture where employees are encouraged to treat their work as a calling that is worthwhile and to pursue excell ence in their endeavors. Therefore, a large role for Jobs and his leadership teams is creating processes to recruit and socialize employees into Apple's culture. When recruiting for Apple senior positions, Jobs contended that intelligence organisation culture.