Stress in College: What Causes it and How to Combat it Essay -- Main C

Many first year college students face problems as they enter a new educational environment that is very different than that of high school. However, the common problem is that many first year students become stressed. For many students, college is supposed to be the most fun time of their life; however, their fun can be restricted if it is limited by stress and other mental illnesses. According to the National Health Ministries (2006), stress is caused by â€Å"greater academic demands,† the feeling of being independent from family, â€Å"financial responsibility,† homesickness, being exposed to meeting new people, peer pressure, â€Å"awareness of one’s own sexual identity,† and the abuse of drugs and alcohol (p. 2). However, the causes to first year students’ stress mainly include academic demand, parents, finance, and peer pressure. Stress is an important problem faced by many college students, especially first year students, and it can have some large impacts on college freshmen. For example, according to Hirsch and Keniston (1970), about half of first year students do not graduate from college due to dropping out (p. 1-20). Also, David Leonhardt (2009) agrees that the United States excels at putting â€Å"teenagers in college, but only half of students who enroll end up with a bachelor’s degree† (p. 1). In addition, the level of stress seems to increase each year. For instance, the National Health Ministries (2006) claim that many college students have become â€Å"more overwhelmed and stressed† than the student generation of the last fifteen years (p. 2). Also, the percentage of first year students feeling stressed is greater than thirty percent (National Health Ministries 2006). If the problem of stress is not resolved properly, th... ...-funding Lederman, Doug (2005). Pressure on College Prices. Inside Higher Ed. http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/04/20/access Lehigh University. Challenges in College. http://www.lehigh.edu/~incso/challenges.shtml Leonhardt, David (2009). Colleges Are Failing in Graduation Rates. New York Times, p. 1. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/09/business/economy/09leonhardt.html?_r=1 Lipman, Marc. Personal Interview. March 21, 2010. Marano, Hara E (2004). The Pressure from Parents. Psychology Today. Reviewed on January 24, 2007. http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200405/the-pressure-parents National Health Ministries (2006). Stress & The College Student. The University of Illinois at Chicago. http://www.uic.edu/depts/wellctr/docs/Stress%20and%20the%20College%20Student.pdf Zinsser, William. College Pressures. Norton-Simon Publishing, 1978.

Culture and Politics Essay

Culture and politics: An interesting concept, the idea of culture is hard to define. What exactly is culture? How does it affect us? In J. Harry Wray’s book Sense and Nonsense: American Culture and Politics, he says culture is â€Å"a shared symbol system, linking members of a group to each other and to history, thus providing them with an identity.† What this means is that culture is how different groups respond to and interpret symbols. As examples Wray talks about a aboriginal tribe in Malaysia who believe that thunder storms are the result of human violations of the natural order of things, whereas we see thunder storms as the mixing of a hot air mass colliding with a cooler one in the presence of certain conditions. Now that I’ve tried to define culture I want to try to show its importance. By defining culture as the way a collected group of people interpret symbols one must try to give an example of these symbols. Cultural symbols are essentially anything that is thought of as unique to a group people; however, it really could be anything such as a house, car, clothes, but also street signs, telephones, television, and radio. These cultural â€Å"symbols† are everywhere and usually we aren’t even aware that they are symbols of and to our culture. Since culture is the way we interpret these symbols, it is very important to realize that these symbols will affect our culture and moreover they will affect our politics. The ways our symbols will affect our politics are that they can change our perspectives and ideas about our communities and the world around us. Symbols in culture often affect politics and how government works, an example that Wray gives is the importance of family. In the U.S. family is stressed by almost every politician seeking office, however the Family Leave Bill took years to be voted into law. This controversial bill would allow a parent of a new born to take up to sixteen weeks of leave, without pay, without worrying about being fired. In Sweden, however, there were already different options for new parents. New parents there have the options of either parent taking up to a year off, with eighty percent of pay, or they can reduce their workload to five hours over the first few  years of early childhood at full pay. It makes me wonder why, in a society that is so focused on family that it took years to pass a bill that only gives one option and only to people who work for big businesses and in Sweden there were already at least two options. Another aspect of culture and politics is through multiculturalism. We generally think of society as a melting pot, but this really doesn’t explain multiculturalism well. Wray suggests that we think of our society as a mosaic, where different tiles represent different groups of people. This is a pretty good representation, but it is hard to decide how to split people up into different tiles. As more and more people come to the U.S. they change the society and may not fit into a tile that already exists. This shows how hard it is to actually define multiculturalism. Wray also suggests that we think of society as a cooking pot. As something is added to the stew it becomes part of the stew, sometimes it can even be completely dissolved onto the stew, but it can still be tasted. One way multiculturalism affects us is that it makes us more sensitive to differing views. In a society where there are people from different cultures you have to be able to listen to and make judgments for these people. In a society like ours you have to try to do what is good for everyone and that is hard when there are many cultures mixed together. Another way culture is affected is that you have different symbols to interpret and you will have different ways of interpreting these symbols. This will cause you to be sensitive to the views of others because you don’t know how symbols will be interpreted by other people therefore you have to think about how to make your ideas universal. In the end we see that culture is very important in our society and that it is very important to politics. Culture is present everywhere and sometimes we don’t even realize how it affects us. We also see that culture is very hard to define because there are so many different ways to look at culture, you can think of culture as symbols, or the way people live, or the native art or music. Whatever you think, culture is probably one of the most important influences on politics.

Democracy Building

Nowadays, it is common to have free elections in the country, to have right to vote and those are some of the characteristics that define democracy in some country. However, the question is how did the democratic regime developed what are the factors that helped in establishing the democracy? In this paper I will discuss the texts by Lipset Seymour, Moore Barrington, Przeworski Adam and Fernando Limongi and Skocpo Theda. All the mentioned authors answering the previous question. In their papers they discuss transition from the aristocratical type of government to more modernized and democratic government. The main noticeable variables in texts that kind of pushed for the democracy are economy, education, class structure in the society and political legitimacy. Right from the title of Seymour Lipset text â€Å"Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy† it is obvious that he means that economy and political legitimacy are necessary for development and maintenance of democratic regime in some country. Unlike Lipset, Przeworski Adam and Fernando Limongi in their article â€Å"Modernization: Theories and Facts† believe that the strong economy does not need to be necessary for the countries to develop the democracy but they believe that democracy have more chance to survive in countries with stronger economy. While Lipset, Przeworski and Limongi focus mostly on the influence of the economy on the development of democracy, Moore Barrington in his book â€Å"Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World† compares different countries and the regimes that influenced transition to more modernized countries. He describes in his book how independent bourgeois is necessary for transition from the agrarian society to more modern society (democracy). Alike Przeworski and Limongi disagree in some points with Lipotski, Skocpo Theda in her article â€Å"A Critical Review of Barriangton Moore's Social Origins† criticizes Moore. Skocpo admits that conflict between the classes is important for the development of democracy in the country but she also believes that bourgeois is not as necessary for the democracy as Moore explains. While Moore is focused more on political revolution in the countries, Skocpo is focused primarily on social revolution. I will go on and explain these texts more in depth and I will start first with Lipsent's article. â€Å"Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy† is written in very philosophical way, he used more qualitative method over quantitative, and the texts is not focused on small details much, so considering that it seems that Lipset used a macro-level of analysis. Lipset also used a deductive analysis because he has a hypothesis that he needs to test and he claims already in the first paragraph of his article â€Å"It his paper the problem is attacked from a sociological and behavioral standpoint, by presenting a number of hypotheses concerning some social requisites for democracy, and by discussing some of the data available to test these hypotheses† (Lipset, 69). Even though in his article Lipset believes that the main characteristic to have a stable democracy is strong economy, he also agrees that the class structure and historical events are also factors that can influence the development of democracy in a country. Through his essay Lipset indicates that Max Weber says how historical events can influence the country's political regime (72). Lipset also gave Germany as an example of a state who had good economy, growing industrialization, education but still could not develop stable democracy â€Å"†¦all favored the establishment of a democratic system, but in which a series of adverse historical events prevented democracy from securing legitimacy in the eyes of many important segments of society, and thus weakened German democracy's ability to withstand crisis† (Lipset 72). What Lipset also emphasizes is education. From his researchers he found out that the more democratic countries have the higher education. Another reason why the education is important the country's democracy is because â€Å"The higher one's education, the more likely one is to believe in democratic values and support democratic practices'7† (Lipset 79). However, there is also a connection between education and economy because the countries with the higher education are also the wealthy countries. In his essay he also compares some variables like urbanization, literacy, media participation, of some countries and political participation in the countries like Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Iran and Jordan. The Turkey scored the highest (Lipset 81). Even though Egypt is more urbanized than Turkey, Lipset supports Lerner opinion on that Turkey is more modernized state than Egypt because the literacy, participation and urbanization are increasing, while Egypt is â€Å"literacy homeless† (Lipset 81). Furthermore, like Moore, Lipset says that â€Å"burgher class whose existence was both a catalyst and a necessary condition for democracy,† from this we can see that the social classes are one of the factors that is important for development of democracy. Lipset also mentions that the better economy influences the class structure. However, the upper class did not like the idea of democracy because they wanted to be different from the lower class. Nonetheless the economical development for the lower class means â€Å"greater economic security, and higher education, permit those in this status to develop longer time perspectives and more complex and gradualist views of politics† (Lipset 83). With the economical development the middle class would be emerge. Lipset indicates that legitimacy and effectiveness are also necessary to sustain the democracy. Legitimacy is defined as â€Å"†¦the capacity of a political system to engender and maintain the belief that existing political institutions are the most appropriate or proper ones for the society† (Lipset 86). With effectiveness Lipset means that the government should take the more active role in political system (Lipset 86). As mentioned before economic development causes extension of the middle class, and with more people on the higher position government will become more efficient and will take the legitimacy more seriously. Through the whole essay Lipset is trying to explain how the development of the economy is essential for the establishment and substation of democracy. He uses many variables to prove his point. He compares different (rich, poor) countries to each other. Lipset has some good points and everything is supported by qualitative or quantitative evidence. He shows through his essay that strong economy is fundamental element in having a stable democracy but he concludes that democracy can survive only if people work together towards it, one man alone cannot do anything (Lipset 103). Alike Lipset, Adam Przeworski and Fernando Limongi in their article are also trying to explain how development of economy affects transformation from the dictatorship to democratic regime. However, through their article they try to discuss the points that Lipset says about relationship between development of economy and democracy, nevertheless as a mentioned before Limongi and Preworski do not agree with all the points that Lisent made in his essay. In their article they provide a lot of quantitative data to support their theory. Przeworski and Limongi started their essay by defining two types of democratization, endogenous and exogenous. The endogenous in this content means â€Å"†¦either democracies may be more likely to emerge as countries develop economically†¦Ã¢â‚¬  and exogenous â€Å"†¦or they may be established independently of economic development but may be more likely to survive in developed countries† (Preworski, Limongi pg2). Endogenous in their opinion is considered as a â€Å"modernization† theory, and in that theory, democratization is the final stage of modernization (Preworski, Limongi pg2). The endogenous theory describes us that the democracy can happened under the authoritarian regime if the country develops. On the other hand, exogenous is not considered a modernization theory. Furthermore, exogenous is focused more on economy, the wealthier countries are more likely to stay democratic than poor countries, and they agree with Lipset on this one. Therborn also highlights that the war caused democratization in European countries and not â€Å"modernization† (Preworski, Limongi pg 2). However, there also some dictatorship regime that collapsed because of economic crisis or because of the pressure from other democratic countries (Preworski, Limongi pg2). To get better sense if the â€Å"levels of economic development and the incidence of democratic regimes is due to democracies being more likely to emerge or only more likely to survive in the more developed countries.† they tested 224 regimes that existed during the 1950 to 1990, and all the regimes that existed during that time were either under the regime of dictatorship (123 countries) or democracy (123). They found out that when the per capita income reaches more than $6,000 in dictatorship countries, the country become more stable (Prewoski, Limongi pg 3). So that means that dictatorship survives in the countries that are wealthy, however out 123 dictatorship countries only 19 survived during these years (1950-1990). Even though the small number of countries remained under the dictatorship regime, it cannot be said for sure that dictatorship regime collapses when the country's economy develop, this is the proof that indeed economic growth does not need to lead to democracy right away. However, some countries after the dictatorship still could not get the $6,000 per capita income. According to that, countries managed to get rid of dictatorship and lean towards the democracy, even though, they were economically weak. That point supports exogenous theory, which shows us that democracy in the countries occur independently and even with the fragile economy countries can develop democracy. To conclude this point, unlike Lipsot, Prewoski and Limongi prove that development of economy is not necessary for democracy to emerge in some country. However, Prewoski and Limongi do believe that economic development keeps the democracy more stable, and it is likely that democracy in poor countries will not last. Furthermore, Preworski and Limongi, disagree with Lipset concept that when countries grow quickly, democracy will become more fragile. Preworski and Limongi with their data prove that Lipset is wrong † Moreover, democracies that grow slowly, at the rate of less than 5 percent per annum, die at the rate of 0.0173, while those that grow at a rate faster than 5 percent die at the rate of 0.0132†³(Preworski, Limongi pg 5). That means that democracies that grow faster than five percent per annum will die in a lower rate than the democracies that grow slower. Finally, Preworski and Limongi use deductive type of analysis, because they have a theory which they tested and then they concluded it. It also looks like they were more focused more on a micro level of analysis because they used data mostly from the per capita income. It seems that in both texts' democracy is treated as depended variable and economy as an independent variable, because they are trying to explain how democracy and the economic development are related. Lipset's essay and the article from Preworski and Limongi, both have some fair points. After first reading essay from Lipset it looked like he has proof enough and that economy is the key for the countries to establish democratic regime. On the contrary to Lipset, Preworski and Limongi give more quantitative data, and looking from it is noticeable that Lipset was wrong about that point. Nevertheless, Perworski and Limongi agree with Lioset about how economic development is crucial for democracy to sustain a country. Lipset uses education as an important aspect to stability of democracy and he supports with the evidence while Preworski and Limongi do agree that education is vital aspect for democracy to develop and sustain stable but they mention education just briefly and do not use much data to support it. In both texts we can see that they use different countries in their data, while Lipset is more focused on Latin America and Europe, Prewowski and Limongi take data from 135 countries. Both texts give attention to economy and how economy influences democracy.

Business planning Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Business planning - Essay Example This paper presents a brief feasibility study about the ‘logistics’ business based in London to channelize the distribution of fresh fruits and vegetables to retail outlets around UK. The business idea The ‘Fresher Pvt Ltd’ will be a unique logistic and supply chain company and an exciting experience of ‘freshness’ designed to fulfill the responsibility of providing the target market with ‘fresh’ and premium quality natural products. The business idea is about logistics based in London to collect freshest and supreme quality natural fruits and vegetables directly from farms in different countries and supply them to retail outlets such as supercentres and hypermarkets. The very basic functional principle of the company will be based on the ‘six rights’ that a normal logistic company is required to fulfill. Therefore, the ‘Fresher’ is highly concerned about distributing the right and fresh fruits and vegetabl es to right customers at the right time in the right condition at the right place and at the right price (Voortman, 2004, p. 3). The ‘Fresher’ is not just a new opening of a logistic business, but, it is the output of a new idea to uncover a hidden market opportunity for meeting the demand for ‘fresh’ fruits and vegetables available in large-scale retail outlets in lowest price possible. Fruits and vegetable goods presently available in supermarkets, hypermarkets and other retail outlets often lack the quality and values of freshness that customers expect them to be. The Fresher Pvt. Ltd proposes to replace these goods with ‘freshest and most genuine natural fruits and vegetables’ supplied directly from farms around UK and from abroad. For this purpose, the company plans to enter in to strategic alliance with large-scale farmers in both UK and foreign countries including India and Sri Lanka to collect the most freshest goods directly from the f arms and to transport them as quickly as possible with latest cold-storage facilities to make them available in large retail outlets. Going directly to farms in other countries and collect fresh fruits and vegetables from the farmers seems an idealistic social movement. Thousands of farmers in countries like India are deprived of better facilities and opportunities to market their products. They neither get advanced facilities to transport or quickly supply them to markets nor get right prices for the goods they supply to markets. The ‘Fresher’ is going to influence the media to gain wider reputation for a social movement to extend the helps to poor farmers in other countries. The company proposes to utilize the resources, mainly the excess agricultural products that have been of no proper marketing use for that the farmers in India and other developing as well as under developed countries did not effectively market their products due to fewer facilities or decreased de mand or reduced prices for their goods. The ‘Fresher’ would satisfy these farmers by providing financial assistance for post-harvesting preservation and for advanced transportation facilities. The Fresher will increase the demand for their goods and value their products to return fair prices for their vegetables and fruits. The company helps them by creating a market for these premium and fresh

High Cost Xerox Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

High Cost Xerox - Essay Example According to Slatter, there are six major sources of cost disadvantage which can lead to a firm having to charge higher prices than its competitors.Let us analyze and apply the six factors illustrated by Slatter, to the Xerox corporation to get a better picture of the negative consequences of high over head costs: Due to staggering assets and international ventures that this long standing company had accumulated over the past few decades, Xerox's cash position had become tenuous. Its liquidity had deteriorated to the point where capital markets froze Xerox out. Cash is king in an economy in recession. like in 2000,and Xerox was crippled with assets without cash flow. High overhead costs piled up due management's obsession with expensive quality control measures during a fairly weak financial position. A perfect quality index while being admirable ,costs a lot of money. The trade-offs associated with 100% quality proved to be too large ,leading Xerox to increase its pricing scheme ,thus creating a negative competitive position. Some international and even local markets were not willing to pay the price for quality especially when Japanese low cost ,high quality products began invading the market. Xerox's biggest weakness proved to be its financial situation, and specifically the heavy debt and the low profitability. The organization was too large leading to huge over head costs.Unlike its competitors who were concentrating on more advanced and diversified technology, Xerox employees were living in the past inspite of Xerox's attempts at diversification.They still were focused on being a copier company rather than a profitable documentation company or a modern information technology company. This resulted in loss of direction .Like all giant companies, it was difficult for talented innovators and entrepreneurs to survive, and instead the mediocrity had taken over and threatened the company from the inside. The once thriving copier division was still too influential and vetoed other innovative projects .(Johan Olsson,january 1996). This made Xerox have weak credibility on the IT-business side lending it a less sophisticated image than its competition. 2. Absolute cost disadvantages which result from competitors controlling strategic variable not available to the firm itself: Let us take the example of the Japanese company Canon,which proved to be Xerox's biggest and cleverest opponent. As a late entrant in the copier market, Canon was forced to concentrate on niches where Xerox was weak. One of these was the low end, which Canon attacked with a series of progressively smaller machines, culminating, in 1982, with the launch of the personal copier. Copiers were notorious for breaking down, a propensity Xerox exploited by charging for service calls. Canon realized that to be successful, a personal copier would not only have to be cheap, it would also have to be virtually service free. Canon's revolutionary solution was to include all the key components - drum, charger,

Research Methods Law Term Paper Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Research Methods Law Term Paper - Essay Example Moreover, this paper also shows different types of quantitative research and how it is helpful for findings and analysis of relevant data about the criminal justice. Discussion The aspect of criminal justice may entail the requirement of dealing with a few attractive dodgy characters. However, when it comes to conducting a research related to cases which are presented in the courts; two types of methodology are believed to assist to solve such crimes. The first is quantitative figures and statistics marked across graphs, charts, reports and spreadsheets which delivers indisputable confirmation of theories. Qualitative research techniques assist criminalists or investigators to recognize the reasons behind committing crimes and solves through case studies, interviews and profiling (Smith, Liu & Lindquist, 1988). Quantitative research techniques encompass the entire bases of scientific investigation and pairing mathematical perspectives with subjective data. A criminal justice professi onal may apply regression analyses to utilize inductive reasoning, calculate timelines, place people and proofs in context to the concerned circumstance and make non-biased evaluations. Operating computer models, analyzing evidences and implementing systematic as well as personality tools assists the criminalists to understand the suspect well enough to depict their attitudes which helps to portray scenarios of case studies as well as test theories and further assists to solve cases (DiCristina, 1997). Criminalist is an individual who is considered to be quite proficient in collecting and examining physical evidences of crime. Criminalists utilize quantitative techniques to ensure confidences regarding inductive statistics, Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) and ballistic tests, proof-based comparisons, crime-based neighborhoods and family demographics, previous offenders’ data, crime mappings, meta analyses, computer based structures and evaluations of anthropological data which ar e believed to be associated with forensic tests (Higgins, 2009). Survey Research: In this method, a research technique dependent on survey is utilized in case of criminal justice which concentrates on the use of statistical data. Hypothesis needs to be developed through this type of research which primarily deals about the way a given population is likely to react to different issues in criminology. According to the survey research program of â€Å"Sam Houston State†, it has been found that the primary objective of survey research is to notify the general public as well as public officials with an exact picture of attitude regarding various types of crimes and several ethical as well as legal issues within the organizations associated with criminal justice. There are three methods of survey research for instance personal interview, mail questionnaire and telephone survey. This type of research is considered to be quite essential as it can deliver legislators the various forms of actions which can be undertaken concerning different significant issues which affect the aptitude of bureaucrats’ related to law enforcements for carrying out businesses (Sukamolson, 2012). Time Series Research: This technique is designed for conducting researches on criminal justice and

BHE 415 - Community and Domestic Violence (Module 4-SLP) Essay

BHE 415 - Community and Domestic Violence (Module 4-SLP) - Essay Example The rate of physical violence towards the elderly people is more than the street violence and the studies have shown that elderly people are more likely to be harmed by family members than the strangers (Quinn & Tomita 1997 p33). The fact that most of the abuse is caused at the hands of children, spouse or close relatives make it shameful for the elders being abused to report it to the authorities. There are different reasons for not reporting the abuse and most of them are based on the fear of being exposed in the society. Some of the reasons that lead to not exposing the torture and the abuse are protection of the family privacy, embarrassment in front of people, humiliation, fear that they will be tortured more if the abuse is reported, a belief that they deserve the abuse and the fear that if the abuse is reported then they will be sent to the care center and hence lose the privacy of life (Elder Abuse Awareness n.d.). However, there are other reasons like elderly people being incapable of understanding that they are being abused. Elderly people suffering from mental problems like dementia and Alzheimer’s are not in position to understand that they are being abused(Quinn & Tomita 1997 p53). In the book, ‘Mental abuse and neglect’, a case of a elderly woman who was 78-year old and was a widow, is described. In this case, the elderly woman confused her son to be her husband and was being sexually exploited by her son. So even the physical and mental incapability of reporting the abuse is a cause of the abuse not getting reported. The short term consequences are mostly physical in nature like bruises over the body, scratches, scars