A Mind Full, a World Shattered :: Personal Narrative Writing

A Mind Full, a World Shattered At the end of a long road one will look back and ponder the experiences that time has moved along the path. There is no doubt I am leaving high-school a different person and I doubt there are few ideas that I once held that have remained the same. At times I miss the simple lessons, the easy test, the mindless homework assignments. I wasn't sure what I expected in high-school, but I am leaving with a mind full, and at times, a world shattered. I'm not sure education meant much to me when I began this path. Perhaps it meant a little more when I had to work for the knowledge I chose to keep or dismiss. I have come to realize that high-school was no more than life lessons, ways to cope, how to deal with people, and a way to test my boundaries mentally and emotionally. It took me awhile to realize that those test given prove nothing, those papers written in structured form prove little else than the thesis statement on the paper topic demanded by teachers. As I look back I can say I will take this with me: Understanding who I am is understanding what I have learned, what I have failed at, what I have questioned, and what I believe. I have learned to distrust words but adore their depth. I have learned to follow directions and to break the rules. I have learned that teachers are just people, with their own minds and beliefs that, in some way, have infiltrated the class room and what I have been taught. At times this has been a tremendous gift, other times a great tragedy. I have learned that a brilliant person is not one who can memorize facts or maintain a high GPA. I have learned grades do not reflect who I am and my abilities. Grades are only maintained to because people are afraid to just "be" and just "learn." I have realized that grades and competition may be the system used to induce hard work and dedication, but I also know that there are better ways because the system fails on a moment to moment basis. I have realized the most important people of this world are not those walking around with the most money or graduating from the best high-schools.

Art History :: essays research papers

EXTERNAL HISTORY: .Considered along with LAS MENINAS to be one of the most important masterpieces of DIEGO DE VELAZQUUEZ , as if final perido,this metological scene despits Minerra ´s dispute with Arachne over weaving abilities.Traditionally cosidered to represent women working at the tapestry workshop of Santa Isable but it now prored that it is mythological subject.It was probably painted around 1657.The title of "THE SPINNERS",as it ispopularly known,is a later invention and seems to have been inspired by the women who are spinning in the foreground they were workers in the Santa Isabel tapestry factory in Madrid.This Velazquez painting, considered for a long represent a generic theme,actually hides the depiction of a mythological theme draped in the everyday labour of a tapstry workshop.In the mid forties,sepcialists refused to interpet it as a simple every day scen.Their doubt were clarified when reearcher Maria Luisa Caturla brought to light aninventory in which an unknowed Velazquez ´s Fable of Arachae was mentioned,owned by huntsman to King Philip 4th,Don Pedro de Arcc.One of the problems that hindired the identification of the subject lay in the fact that the work did not belong to collections and documentary information existed about it. INTERNAL HISTORY: The Fable of Archa,as related in Ovid ´s Metamorphoese,tells how Minerva,goddess of the arts and of war,competes with Arachne,famous for her skill in spinning in weaving a tapestry.The young spinner was insolent enough to prevent in her work one of the love advantures of the goddess father Jove,and by way of punishment,she was transformed into a spider. ICONOGRAPHY: Even so,Velazquez had used Baroque recourse of inserting a picture within a picture since he was a youngman, and he linked to reverse the order of important of the story(i.e putting the trivial forward and the fundamental behind) This canvas was added onto it in the 18th century,on the upper part and both sides.It is not know if this aws done to restore it to its original state (it was thought to have suffered damage in the Alcazar fire of 1734) or if it was simply and attempt to complete the scene to make it larger.Certain scholar say it is an Apology of fine arts,intended to show the superiority of the art of painting over the hand crafts, while others see it a Political Allegory after Ripa ´s Iconology. TECHNIQUE: The Spinning wheels turns rapidily showing the loose Velazquez technique.The canvas was probable damaaged by the fire in the Alcazar(1734) and an upper s

Organizational Citizenship Behavior

What is organizational citizenship behavior (OCB)? Describe in your own way. Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) is behavior that goes beyond the basic requirements of the job, is to a large extent   left to one's own discretion, and is largely beneficial to the organization. OCB comes about as a result of job satisfaction. As employees that are highly satisfied with their jobs are more likely to think that they are being treated fairly , therefore trust in the organization and their employer is likely to arise . This then leads employee's to be more willing in helping out during extra hours voluntarily, volunteering for extra job activities, avoiding unnecessary conflict etc†¦ This is OCB. How is OCB different from normal working behavior? OCB is different from normal working behavior in the sense that the â€Å"employee goes out of his normal working behavior to get involved† (Allen, T. D. , 2006 ) into helping others and go beyond the normal expectations of their jobs. As a normal working behavior would be doing the tasks being asked of you and forced upon you as it is in your job description, but OCB differs from normal working behavior as â€Å"OCBs are employee behaviors that, although not critical to the task or job, serve to facilitate organizational functioning† (Lee and Allen, 2002, p 132). If you are a manager, how do you motivate your subordinates to exhibit more OCBs? Use the theories you have learned from different chapters. Firstly I would like to emphasize the importance of OCB to managers and the organization as a whole as successful organizations need employees who will do more than their usual job duties and provide performance that is beyond expectations and as I have mentioned before OCB describe actions in which employees are willing to go above and beyond their prescribed role requirements. Therefore reiterating the belief that these behaviors are correlated with indicators of organizational effectiveness, therefore showing us that OCB's are crucial for managers. Now, how to motivate subordinates to exhibit more OCB's, using Herzberg's two-factor theory that suggests that motivation factors (which include achievement, recognition, responsibility, growth, and work itself) are strongly related to job satisfaction. I can then say that if I was a manager I would have to make the jobs of my employees challenging, exciting , interesting and satisfying as employees who find their jobs to be such things, â€Å"tend to tolerate demanding supervision, avoid complaining, focus more on positive sides, and forgive organization’s minor faults. These kinds of behaviors are typically related to OCB. † (Herzberg et al. ’s 1959) Since hygiene factors are related to an individual’s job dissatisfaction, one can expect that hygiene factors may also influence an individual’s OCB. Therefore as a manager I would focus on placing hygiene factors such as job security, fringe benefits, and good work conditions so that dissatisfaction from the lack of these factors doesn't occur and OCB is therefore encouraged. Allen, T. D. (2006). Rewarding good citizens: The relationship between   citizenship behavior, gender, and organizational rewards. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 36, 120-143. Lee, K. , & Allen, N. J. (2002). Organizational citizenship behavior and workplace deviance: The role of affect and cognitions. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87(1), 131-142. Herzberg, F. , Mausner, B. , & Snyderman, B. (1959). The motivation to work. New York: Wiley.

P&G vs Unilever Executive Summary

Unilever and P&G – Comparative Analysis Executive Summary The Consumer Products Industry is the biggest industry in the world at the moment, with total revenues amounting to about 50% of all goods sold. It is comparable to the GDP of the 4th biggest economy in the world, and entails most of the products we use in our every day lives. There are 3 key factors that drive the industry today: developing markets, the emerging middle-class of developing countries and the millions of baby boomers in developed markets.The industry faces many challenges nonetheless, such as an increase in prices of raw materials, crude oil, crops and commodities – especially oil prices; the constant broadening of the industry caused by globalization; and an increasing tendency for consumers to shop at mass-discount shops rather than the well-established companies within the Industry. The main players in this industry are Unilever, P&G, Nestle, Johnson &Johnson, PepsiCo, Mars and Henkel. This repo rt focuses on the comparative analysis of Unilever and P&G. Some of P&G’s most famous brands are Braun, Gillette, Oral-B and Pantene.These and the top 50% of most well known brands account for 90% of P&G sales and more than 90% of its profits. Furthermore, 25 of these 50 brands go as far as generating more than $1 billion each in annual sales. Overall, the company markets its brands in over 180 countries across the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and the Asian region. Despite the recent crisis, P&G continued to experience growth due to a strategy of â€Å"investments in innovation, portfolio expansion, marketing support and consumer value†. The company is also investing $2 billion in R&D annually.As for Unilever, the company owns more than 400 brands, and 2 million people use Unilever an product on any given day. Unilever is based in 100 countries and sells products into more than 150. The long-term goals are continuous improvement and developing a sustainable business, and the company has over 6000 people working in R&D across the globe for a total of $1,3 billion worth of R&D investments in 2011. In terms of financial comparative analysis, market Ratios for both companies show that Unilever and P&G are attractive investments for investors.P&G has a higher EPS on average and is a more preferable investment currently for investors looking for high returns. The market ratios also show that Unilever has been improving its earnings and has a higher earning potential in the future as its EPS, P/E and payout ratio have been improving over time. P&G on the other hand currently has a higher yield as shown by the Dividend Yield ratio but its performance seems to be declining gradually as evident by the worsening Market Ratios.The Liquidity ratios of both companies clearly point out to the fact that the companies are not in a position to meet their immediate liabilities. However, this is not a matter of concern as both companies are la rge, stable and established businesses. The liquidity ratios show an adverse situation for the companies even though they are healthy otherwise. This is because the industry is such that the companies must have high current liabilities over extended periods of time and low assets due to very fast inventory turnover rate.The consumer goods industry requires that a company’s inventory turns be fast and the accounts payable be large over long periods of time to have a high level of efficiency and consequently profitability. It also assures both corporations a competitive edge and for this reason liquidity ratios must remain low which may seem unhealthy but in reality is helpful in this particular industry. From 2007 to 2011 Unilever consistently had higher growth rates in revenue, operating and net profit. During this time span P&G profit growth rates even were negative.This indicates that P&G is from an absolute point of view still bigger and more profitable, but Unilever is ca tching up. A closer look at the profitability ratios shows that both companies are doing very well with gross ratios of 43,80% (Unilever) and 50,56% (P&G). These ratios are above the 40% industry average and especially P&G is very profitable. This first indication is consistent with the further analysis of profitability ratios such as the net profit margin, which is still is 5% higher for P&G than Unilever.So far P&G has managed the increasing pressure on margins due to increasing raw material prices more successful than Unilever, but has to adjust its cost-structure to stop the ongoing negative trend of the last five years. Regarding efficiency ratios like return on capital ratios the previous dominance of P&G’s financial performance cannot be confirmed. Instead, Unilever outperforms P&G in all efficiency ratios, like the return on invested capital (16,89% vs. 10,42%), the return on assets (11,26% vs. 8,99%) or the return on capital employed (16,66% vs. 14,06%) for the time span between 2007 to 2011.This indicates Unilever outstanding capabilities to allocate its resources to the most profitable investments and to use the assets as efficient as possible. In terms of the debt situation for P&G and Unilever, analysis has shown that Unilever’s business is higher leveraged (D-E ratio 2,13) than P&G’s (1,09). This and the higher efficiency also explain why Unilever’s return on equity is much higher (36,06%) than P&G’s (18,78%). As a result of its high profitability and low debt-to-equity ratio, P&G’s TIE ratio is also much higher than Unilever’s (11,95 vs. ,61). The analysis has shown that P&G is a more conservative financed and highly profitable business whereas Unilever is more aggressive in terms of growth. Unilever already is highly efficient and has grown much faster than P&G over the last five years. If this trend is not reversed P&G will face increasing competition from Unilever in the close future. Weâ€℠¢ve calculated the average over five years for each company’s activity ratios and compared them as such because these ratios seemed to be relatively stable over time.They also appear to be in line with the companies’ strategies and policies, starting with the Asset Turnover being proportional to the return on equity: Unilever has a turnover almost double that of P&G. As we’ve mentioned earlier, fast inventory turnover is a characteristic of the industry, but Unilever seems to be doing better than P&G in these terms as well. We believe that Unilever’s focus on food products gives it a higher Inventory Turnover (9,09) compared to P&G’s household products focus (5,41).This gives Unilever a lower average age of inventory. Unilever also has a higher Day Purchases Outstanding Ratio, meaning they stretch suppliers much more by taking 88,40 days to pays them, compared to P&G’s 65,48 days. Strictly speaking, we would expect P&G to display a higher ba rgaining power to do its much higher Revenue, but this ratio shows a different story. Reasons for this could be due to geography, both in terms of differences in local management and in local regulations, and to the diversity of suppliers induced by the focus on 50 or 300 brands.In terms of the Day Sales Outstanding Ratio, it is P&G that seems to have the better policy this time. They convert Accounts Receivable to Cash in about 28 days versus 35 days for Unilever. Again, although smaller, this difference is important because it can reflect a difference in policies or diversity of suppliers. These two factors combined, low DSO and high DPO Ratios, lead to a negative Net Working Capital such as we had seen in our Walmart analysis. Compared to Assets, P&G has a negative NWC of -27% and Unilever of -20%.In conclusion, both companies show very strong financial health given the crisis, especially compared to the rest of the market. They are defensive values which show that their policies are working to resist the crisis. In absolute terms P&G is doing better as a company because it is a bigger, stronger, established firm. In relative terms the ratios paint another picture though: Unilever has been catching up to P&G in recent years, and their growth and financial management seems to be stronger than that of P&G.

Early 1920s and Hitler’s Rise to Power

The Rise of Hitler 1. Why did so many German people join the Nazi Party? In the early 1920s, Germany was especially hard-hit during the Great Depression after the first World War, mainly because of the Treaty of Versailles, which made Germany go into an extreme hyperinflation. People could not buy anything with a reasonable price. In 1922, a loaf of bread costed 163 marks. In September 1923, it would have costed 1,500,000 marks and in November of that same year which was the peak of the hyperinflation, the loaf of bread would be worth 200,000,000 marks.Prices were going up faster than people could spend their money. Naturally, workers were unhappy with the social and economic conditions in Germany. Then came Adolf Hitler, who formed a party known as the Nazis which promised many things that the workers and the people of Germany wanted and implemented his ideas through his propaganda. Hitler told people that he would make sure everybody got a job and that he would help the peasants. T hese ideas were implemented into his propaganda and proved to be very effective. . Why did the Munich Putsch 1923 fail? The Munich Putsch of 1923, also known as the Beer Hall Putsch was Adolf Hitler’s attempt to overthrow the Weimar government of Ebert and establish a nationalistic one instead in its place. The Munich Putsch failed because of several factors. First, Hitler had only about 35,000 supporters at that time so there was a shortage of rebels. Second, the Kahr had called in army and police reinforcements and 16 Nazis were killed.Hitler was threatening to shoot anyone that left the Beer Hall and didn’t rebel so not everyone was happy about participating in it, so when the police and army reinforcements came, most of them fled since they didn’t even want to be there in first place. Overall, the reason for the Munich Putsch failing is because the Nazis, despite not having enough supporters at the time, tried to force itself into power against superior mili tary and political forces. 3. Why did Hitler receive such a light sentence at his trial for treason?What were the consequences of his trial and time spent in prison? In 1923, after being arrested for participating in the Munich Putsch, Hitler served a fairly light sentence of 5 years and a 200 mark fine after being accused of high treason. Hitler actually only served 9 months of those 5 years in prison. However, the usual consequence of high treason was death. The question is, why didn’t Hitler get executed? In the courtroom at the time of the trial, Hitler used that time to make another one of his speeches, causing more people to join his cause.This also made the judge like him, so the judge gave him a particularly light sentence. However, even if the judge didn’t like him, he would have gotten a lighter sentence anyways. This is because there were many more German people supporting Hitler now and if the judge sentenced Hitler to death, then that might have caused an uprising or a protest. Therefore, the judge decided to send him to pay a 200 mark fine and serve a 5 year prison sentence, although he would be eligible for parole after 9 months.

Essay on poverty Essay

There are many reasons for pursing a higher education. A few persons revel in the intellectual excitement of academic exploration, others â€Å"consume† not only the knowledge that college provides but all the social dimensions associated with it—alcoholic stimulated parties, erotic adventures with new friends, athletic events and intramural sport participation, etc. But for most persons, a significant, maybe even the dominant reason, for going to college is that it supposedly will improve one’s prospect of acquiring a good job. In a sense, a college degree has long been considered a ticket to the middle class—an adult life with a good income and relatively high job security. From the standpoint of society, efforts to expand college graduation attainment rates have been justified by President Obama and major foundations (for example, Lumina and Gates) on a need to be competitive with other nations which have a larger proportion of adults with college degre es. This study argues that the conventional wisdom that going to college is a â€Å"human capital investment† with a high payoff is increasingly wrong. Evidence shows that currently more than one-third of college graduates hold jobs that governmental employment experts tell us require less than a college degree. That proportion of underemployed college graduates has tripled over the past four decades. In 1976, Harvard economics professor Richard Freeman wrote about The Over-Educated American—at a time when most college graduates, at the margin, entered professional, managerial and scientific positions traditionally considered jobs for college graduates. If we were â€Å"overeducated† at that point in time, what is the case today? Moreover, the push to increase enrollments has led to a majority of the increment of our stock of college graduates finding employment in relatively low skilled jobs, most of which are not particularly high paying (although there are excepti ons). We added roughly 20 million college graduates to the population between 1992 and 2008, for example, but the number of graduates holding jobs requiring less-than-college education skill sets rose during that same period by about 12 million; in other words, 60 percent of the total increase in graduates over the past two decades was underemployed. Anecdotally, most persons can see this is their everyday lives. For example, the senior author was startled a year ago when the  person he hired to cut down a tree had a master’s degree in history, the fellow who fixed his furnace was a mathematics graduate, and, more recently, a TSA airport inspector (whose job it was to insure that we took our shoes off while going through security) was a recent college graduate. Actually, these individuals are far more typical of many recent college graduates than is commonly supposed.

Process Improvement Plan Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 2

Process Improvement Plan - Essay Example For every group of data, the points on the X-Bar usually represent its average. The range chart on the other hand displays the difference between the lowest and the highest dimension in the group (SPC 2013). Statistical control limits also known as confidence band is normally attached to the weakening line so as to reduce the unexplained error. The confidence interval in the regression is normally based on past data. Control limits are expressed in terms of positive or negative mean absolute deviation (MAD). MAD is normally simple and useful when obtaining tracking signal. It is used to denote the average error that is in the forecasts. It measures the dispersion of the observed values from the expected values. When sign is put in consideration in the computation of MAD, the control limits are obtained. MAD is calculated by obtaining the sum of absolute deviations and then dividing it with the number of data points. Control limits can also be expressed in form of standard deviations. Standard deviation relates to mean absolute deviation when the errors in the project are usually dispersed. ‘The standard deviation’ is normally a bigger measure. For instance, if the MAD of a set of points was estimated to be 60, then the measure for the standard deviation would be 75. ... It is used to indicate whether the average of the forecast is keeping pace with any upward or downward genuine changes A typical control chart has two horizontal lines that are called ‘upper control limit’ (UCL) and lower control limit (LCL). If the process happens to be in control, almost all the samples fall between them and hence no action needs to be taken. If a point plots outside of the control limit it is taken that the procedure must be out of control and hence investigation is necessary and corrective action should be taken in order to find and eradicate the possible causes for the behavior. The sample points that are on control chart are normally connected with a straight line to make it easier to visualize how the sequence of those points has been evolving over time. Even if all the points happen to plot inside of the control limits and they act in a non-random approach then this is a signal that the procedure might be out of control. These limits are calculat ed from Range and ‘SPC X-Bar’ values. They are plus/minus three standard deviations from the average calculated and represent 99.97% self-assurance factor that any of the reading that falls between the limits can is an attribute of the regular process discrepancies (Confidence intervals: how they work, 2013). Effect of Seasonal Factors Using Process Performance Data Control: Measurement will help in reduction of variation. They help reduce overruns in expenditure so as the objectives agreed on can be achieved. Management assessment: The concept for process performance involves meeting the planned established operating goals, detecting of deviations from the planned performance levels and then restoring these performances to the levels planned or even