Are Women Better Parents Than Men Essay Example for Free

Are Women Better Parents Than Men Essay Bringing up the children has been the mother’s duty since time immemorial. However, things are changing fast as there are single persons opting for adoption and couples unwilling to tide it through together who are opting to take up the job single handed. There is much to support the mother’s role as the primary caregiver of the family and the young ones, especially through reasons embedded in tradition as well as convenience. However, there have been many examples of single men coming forward, with the nurturing spirit surfacing strongly. Would they fare equally well as any woman or would they be at sea, if confronted by the daunting task of caring for a real child 24/7? The external responsibilities that a male usually carries out in a family—set up as the breadwinner and the protector—give him a tough aura that comes in the way of visualising him performing the mother’s role. However, this cannot be used as a benchmark to determine whether the man is capable of providing children with equal, if not more, tenderness, love and care. The perception that precedes any male when it comes to parenting may well have become redundant now, or is it still the same? Are men likely to fare badly at parenting, or have they become more sensitive to the needs of children in a changed environment? In fact some would rather believe that they better than the mothers as well. So do men actually make better parents than women? All individuals are different from one another and may respond or perform at different levels as per their individual capabilities. However, if a generalist idea has to be formed it would be so that women generally make the better parents as they have the innate maternal instincts that allow them to take the best care of their children. Women would have subconsciously built a bond with the child even before it is born. Carrying a child in the womb for nine month is sufficient for strong emotional ties to be formed that are beyond understanding of average human relationships. Nature has implanted the nurture and care automatically in women. Bringing up life in its first few years is extremely important and to ensure safety and survival the women are attuned intrinsically to this need. For the men this part might be the difficult bit. They are seen largely making valuable contributions in a child’s development after he/she has achieved control over bodily functions and has reached a certain level of comprehension. However, there are certain ways in which a father or a male can contribute in the upbringing of children that women cannot do complete justice to. Men are generally rational and logic driven and decisions/choices and actions are based on sound reason. The way a father can allow a child to go all out and grow up would not be possible with mothers, who are more protective and would be daunted by the slightest crunch in the heart. Of course, the exceptions are always there but the go getting spirit, courage and fierce determination can be imparted very well by the male only. It is important as it makes the child more worldly wise and equipped with a skill that will not be taught in any school as a part of the curriculum. An initial advantage that lies with the woman is that she is the one who is physically and mentally programmed naturally to do a better job of parenting. Women generally are more sensitive and attentive to even the smallest needs exhibited by the children. They are inherently good listeners, blessed with more patience to deal with hours of bawling. It can be very challenging to keep comforting little children as they are not able to express or communicate at times about what bothers, pains or frightens them. Mothers are usually patient at such time and are willing to put aside hours to calm and reassure them. The important part worth taking notice of is that the young years are really crucial in the formation of a self-confident and a secure individual. If the children are neglected and ignored, they are likely to shape up as insecure somewhere and no matter how much of inputs and care are given after they grow up, that deficit cannot be made up for. I personally think that women are more capable of adding this tremendous value to a child’s life. However, in the light of recent developments I would like to differ and cite the alternative point of view. The equations in today’s world are changing and the women are actively seeking employment and pursuing very challenging careers. Though the idea of motherhood is very fascinating, the actual process of bringing up a child can be very demanding. And here is where the male’s rational, organised and practical outlook counts. They can make it tick even in such a very demanding situation and hence men are capable of being better parents. I would still say that there is no doubting the fact that mothers make better parents as they are known to be more balanced, especially in crunch situations. If we were to take a neutral scenario where the financial pressure and the emotional mess of a broken household are absent, women are capable of dealing superbly with the task. Usually, the women are projected as emotional wrecks, poor decision makers and incapable of providing a secure future only in situations where they are not educated enough to go out and earn. Other than that, there are ample examples where independent single women have done a splendid job of parenting. I feel that the women are capable of a healthy left brain- right brain activity balance and create and nurture life adeptly. I do agree that there are some very valuable skill sets that may be the exclusive domain of women, but there is much that men may be capable of doing. Men are usually not known to be very expressive about their ideas or their feelings. They are more of the doers. The fact that I really appreciate about fathers is that they are capable of imparting many critical life lessons to their children without actually making them look like lessons. Children emulate their elders. A practical parent would teach the child to evaluate situations without really reacting at the drop of a hat. Men are good at controlling their emotions and by exhibiting more of the controlled reactions in crisis situations teach them calm, analytical approach. Then, there is the general conduct adopted toward the various people that instils etiquette, politeness and fist lessons in people skills. The other issue with the females is that even when the child has grown up, they may still be clinging on somewhere. Men will not be so edgy about letting go. I really feel that men are better parents as they are capable of a more hands off approach. TIt comes across as a logical conclusion of this debate that the role of both man and woman is equally significant as parents and it is not necessarily so that women make better parents. Most women make good parents as they are better listeners and tend to be more attentive to one’s needs. Being more sensitive than males, women can forge a closer relationship with their children. Father is commonly seen as the rationalist, but this is not always true. Some fathers can make better parents than mothers; and this could be largely attributed to an individual’s personal upbringing, the childhood he or she experienced and the values that they believe in. If one has had a loving family unit and an environment that made him/her feel loved, it inspires a quite confidence and self-assurance which further gets translated into further parenting. Therefore, it is really immaterial as to whether men or women make better parents. Anyone, with a more mature and balanced outlook is likely to do a better job of parenting—being hands off when required and involved when desired.

Enhancements of IC Engines in Real-world Conditions

Enhancements of IC Engines in Real-world Conditions   Aatif Shaik, Aditya Upadhyaya R, Gowtham,  K N, Sachin B N Abstract – Optimizing engine performance of IC Engines is a very shady field. Other than reputed companies Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), who publish their reports, the rest of the industry does not throw much light into aftermarket modification field. As an end-user, a customer wanting to optimize his vehicle in terms of power, mileage usability is often mislead into buying products modifying his automobile that will produce no useful gains. This mini-project will be done on 2-wheeler motorcycles ranging from 150cc-350cc. It aims at bridging the gap between the products and the end-user’s knowledge of it. It will take on many such optimizing/modifying techniques, such as installing air-filters, spark plugs, exhaust systems, engine oils etc., and try to demystify what is actually happening there for the use of the said end-user. This mini-project will involve testing of various parameters of an engine, such as Brake Horse Power, Torque, Exhaust Emissions, Inlet Manifold Pressure etc., of a completely stock Engine. It is again tested after modifications for the same parameters. The results are then compared to give an outline of the effect of the modification. Each modification is done separately for the results to be completely independent of each other. All of the tests are conducted in real-world conditions, so as to ensure the reliability of the result. The final report (end of the project work) will give a much needed clarity on the modifications; will also comment on the safety of using such techniques and its cost effectiveness for the end-user. Market Situation – In a stock motorcycle (factory-made, unmodified), it is so designed that the whole system is as generic as possible. That is, it is supposed to be appropriate for a wide-band of end-users. Taking this line, the manufacturers tune down most of the engine parameters in favour of mileage fuel efficiency, as these are the two major parameters that an end-user looks while buying the automobile. As time passes, the user, who now is accustomed to the automobile, might feel the need to enhance and optimize his automobile. He therefore researches about all the modifications that he can do to his automobiles, so as to increase the performance and efficiency. Parameters for testing – Power produced (at the wheels) Torque produced (at the wheels) Fuel efficiency These parameters were chosen because of the following reasons – Power produced at the wheel was taken, instead of engine power, because this gives an accurate idea of how the motorcycle will perform in the real world. It also includes the losses that will occur due to external conditions, and therefore will give a realistic feel to the test. Torque produced at the wheel was taken, instead of engine torque, because of the same reasons as above, that is, it will give an accurate idea of performance in the real world. Fuel efficiency is an obvious factor and a parameter to be considered, as most endusers will ultimately look at this for their decisions. It gives an indication of how well the engine is taking the modifications and will also represent whether the modification done is cost-effective or not. Specifications of modifications used – Results – Air filter modification For load testing, there is a 1.11sec difference in acceleration timings, in partial load conditions. Whereas, there is a 1.24sec difference in acceleration timings with full load condition. In both cases, the modified motorcycle’s timings were better. For the crispness of throttle, it was seen that the modified setup has a better crispness than the stock setup. For initial fuel efficiency, it was seen that the stock setup fared better than the modified setup. For the cold starting test, it was seen that there is no difference between stock and modified setup. Dyno test Synthetic Oil modification – For load testing, there is a 2.25sec difference in acceleration timings, in partial load conditions. Whereas, there is a 2.17sec difference in acceleration timings with full load condition. In both cases, the modified motorcycle’s timings were better. For the crispness of throttle, it was seen that the modified setup has a relatively better crispness than the stock setup. For initial fuel efficiency, it was seen that the stock setup fared better than the modified setup. For the cold starting test, the stock setup fared badly, whereas the modified setup. Dyno Test – Exhaust Muffler modification For load testing, there is a 2.1sec difference in acceleration timings, in partial load conditions. Whereas, there is a 1.65sec difference in acceleration timings with full load condition. In both cases, the modified motorcycle’s timings were better. For the crispness of throttle, it was seen that the modified setup has an extremely good crispness when compared to the stock setup. For initial fuel efficiency, it was seen that the stock setup fared better than the modified setup. For the cold starting test, it was seen that there is no difference between stock and modified setup. Dyno Test – Discussions – Air Filter – The modified setup performed better than the stock setup, because of the extra amount of air going into the engine cylinder. This allowed the fuelinjected to calibrate and add more fuel to the air-fuel mixture, thereby gaining power. In the modified setup, as there is no restriction, aside from the filter material, the engine was free to suck air to its maximum capabilities, allowing the fuel-injection system to inject more fuel, thereby increasing power and torque. This is seen as the constant increase throughout the power-band. The crispness of throttle was better in modified setup because the lesser obstruction in the intake system, which allowed air to be sucked in freely. Cold-starting was not affected because of the fuel-injected system, which automatically calibrates the appropriate amount of fuel to be injected in all conditions. Synthetic Oil – The modified setup performed better than the stock setup, as the synthetic oil gives better lubrication than the stock setup. This is due to the inherent nature of the synthetic oil, which provides better lubrication and wear-resistance throughout all temperatures with respect to stock mineral oil. The crispness of throttle was better in modified setup because the lesser friction, which allowed that engine to rev freely and quickly. Due to greater lubrication, lesser friction was present, thus minimizing friction losses, which attributed to the higher power and torque output in the modified setup. Cold-starting was better in modified setup, as the inherent nature of the oil made less viscous allowing it to start freely and quickly, compared to stock setup. The synthetic oil also kept the engine temperature lower than the stock setup, thus further helping it to work efficiently. Exhaust Muffler – The modified setup performed better than the stock setup, as the free-flow exhaust muffler allowed the exhaust gases to flow out more freely than the stock setup. This allowed the piston to have lesser load on it to push the gases out, therefore giving a higher power and torque output. This can be seen in the consistent increase in power and torque from 3500rpm. As the load on the piston decreased, the engine was allowed rotate freely, thus giving it a more free nature, whereas the stock setup constricted the engine very much. The crispness of throttle was better in modified setup, because of the free flowing gases in the exhaust system, which allowed that engine to push more and more gases out for the same rpm. Cold-starting was not much different compared to stock setup, as the starting depended on initial air-fuel mixture temperature, which doesn’t get affected by this modification. Final Conclusion – It depends on the end-user on whether he wants to do certain modifications. From the results and discussions, we can see a general increase in performance for all the modifications used, provided those are done under correct procedures. These results were fairly satisfying, and also laid to rest some of the general misconceptions that were attached to such modifications. Apart from power enhancing, the mini-project also tried to bridge the gap between the aftermarket modifications and the customer’s knowledge of it. Dealing with how the actual results of how a modification might work-out and whether their claims were correct. It is concluded that the manufacturer’s claims of increasing power and performance which are indeed true, But the manufacturer also claims increase in mileage which is not true since it comes with of a small drop of mileage. If the end-user can adjust with the drop, then they can find the modifications useful. References Effect of Intake air filter condition on vehicle fuel economy. By Kevin Norman, Shean Huff, Brian West United States Department of Energy. Synthetics vs Mineral Oils By A Jackson Exhaust Tuning on 4 stroke Engine; experimentation simulation By Gordon P Blair, D.O Mackey , G.F Chatfield Society of Automobile Engineers Internal Combustion Engines MIT Open Courseware Professor. Wai Cheng

Leadership And The Competing Values Management Essay

Leadership And The Competing Values Management Essay This chapter has two parts: a management theory part of leadership and the competing values framework that puts the topic of research in context; and the second part provides a background insight on the applied field of research which is newspapering in Yemen. This part of the literature review chapter represents an attempt to dive into the ocean-deep literature on leadership is exerted to provide a theoretical background on this heavily studied domain in management. This argumentative collection and discussion of leadership literature will attempt to provide a quick overview of leadership different definitions and the associated theories that enrich leadership literature. A quick reference to the most important models and tools used in leadership studies will be made and discussed. From the various models, the selected theoretical framework of leadership the (Competing Values for Leadership) by Quinn (1983, 1993, 2006) will be subject of more focused presentation and discussion. The reasons of selecting this model not any other will be explained. This part concludes with reference to effective leadership and the role of leadership in the overall organizational effectiveness. 2. 2.2. Leadership 2.2.2.1 Leadership as an Area of Research Due to the extensive attention, leadership is one of the most extensively researched  areas  in organizational contexts for the significance role leadership play in organizations or at a larger scale in nations. Early studies and theories of leadership provided theoretical frameworks which were used as basis for the following eras of studies. Historically, leadership was studied from different perspectives and the following chronology of major studies and resulted theories: the Personality Traits (1841-1927); the Power and Influence of a Leader (1928-1956); the Behavioral Leadership (1955- 1983), where famous Managerial Grid Model was first presented by Blake and Mouton in 1964; the Situation theory (1943-1978) with a new research model: Open-Systems Model presented by Kats and Kahn in 1978; the Contingency approach to leadership (1964-1989) during which the situational theory presented by Hersey and Blanchard, 1969-1977); the Transactional model (1958-1979);and finally the Transformational approach (1977-1989). This volume of theoretical work is categorized under four generational groups. These are in chronological order: Trait theories, Behavioral theories, Contingency theories, and Transf ormational theories. Across sectional, leadership becomes an interdisciplinary field with contributions from political science, psychology education, history, agriculture, public administration management, community studies, law, medicine anthropology, biology, military sciences, philosophy and sociology. In many of these disciplines, leader ship is now an established subfield (Goethals, et al., 2004 p. xxxiv). These different approaches to leadership across management and organizational literature particularly the researches made in the second half of last century call for different leadership styles, and competencies. However, Hofstede (1980) argued that most process leadership theories share a common factor which is their advocacy for à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦participation in the managers decisions by his/her subordinates participative management' (Hofstede, 1980 p. 56). As referenced above, the past century witnessed a remarkable change in the field of leadership research and the major in-depth wave of studies started in seventies and eighties. Two features stand out when the current situation is compared to that of today. These two features are the greater optimism about the field and its greater methodological diversity (Bryman, 2004). However, the evolution of leadership theories did not stop at this stage, a new era emerged in which researchers attempt to develop a more integrated approach to leadership (Vilkinas, et al., 2006). One of the most important theoretical advancement toward this result is the Competing Values Framework (CVF) for leadership (Quinn, et al., 1981, 1983), (Denison, et al., 1993), (Cacioppe, 1998), (Vilkinas, et al., 2006). 2.2.2.2 Definition of leadership Different scholars come up with different theories and consequently introduce their definition to the term leadership based on their respective areas of study. Leaderships guru, Bernard M. Bass (1990) for instance, considers leadership as one of the worlds oldest preoccupations and that its understanding has figured strongly in the quest of knowledge. Leaders of organizations or nations who were described as effective leaders did not have necessarily the same traits, which poses a challenge to the traits theory, especially when it come to the secondary attributes. Researchers traced the lives of these leaders and came up with general characteristics that distinguish leaders from subordinates. John Gardner, in his book On Leadership by Free Press in 1989, studied a large number of North American organizations and leaders and came to the conclusion that there were some qualities or attributes that did appear to mean that a leader in one situation could lead in another. These characteristics included: Physical vitality and stamina; Intelligence and action-oriented judgment; Eagerness to accept responsibility; Task competence; Understanding of followers and their needs; Skill in dealing with people; Need for achievement; Capacity to motivate people; Courage and resolution Trustworthiness; Decisiveness; Self-confidence; Assertiveness; and finally Adaptability/flexibility (Doyle, et al., 2001). On the contrary, leadership gurus Bass and Stogdill conceive leadership as the focus of group processes, as a matter of personality, as a matter of inducing compliance, as the exercise of influence, as particular behaviors, as a form or persuasion, as a power relation, as a instrument to achieve goals, as an effect of interaction, as a differentiated role, as initiation of structures, and as many combinations of these definitions. Under each phrase above, scholars define leadership, and the handbook defines leadership as à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ an interaction between two or more members of a group that often involves a structure or restructuring of the situation and the perceptions and expectations of the members. Leaders are agents of change-persons whose acts affect other people more than other peoples acts affect them, (Bass, 1990 pp. 20-21) Bass and Stogdill (1990) present above a competency-based definition, which comes after an extensive digest of the various concepts and approaches of organizational leadership. This definition goes along with Chemers (200) who defines leadership as process of  social influence  in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task (Chemers, 2002). As leadership is a process not a person; involves influence; occurs in groups; and involves a common goal, Northouse (2010) defines leadership as à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal (Northouse, 2010 p. 3). Following the same path yet in a wider scope, John W. Gardner (1993) defines leadership as à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦the process of persuation or example by which an individual (leadership team) induces a group to pursue objectives held by the leader or shared by the leaderand his/her followers (Gardner, 1993 p. 1) Another example of the process perspective leadership is found in Burns book Leadership (1978), in which he introduced two types of leaders: transformational leader and transactional leader, presenting a new approach to leadership literature. Burns (1978) said, à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ transforming leadership ultimately becomes moral in that it raises the level of human conduct and ethical aspiration of both leader and the led, and thus it has a transforming effect on both. (Homrig, 2001). However, these two types are deemed as modern leadership styles in the organizational contexts. The argumentative set of definitions brought above are built on the interaction between a leader and follower, rather than the personality traits or behaviors of a leader, although leadership traits approach suggests otherwise. This approach suggests that if these traits are truly present in a person, they will manifest themselves almost without regard to the situation in which the person is functioning (Gardner, 1993 p. 6). The researched confidently can argue that a leader is identified by followers/subordinates as well as an organization or any collective effort with a common goal that provides situational context in which he/she practices leadership. However, having those traits identified in a person, but without people of context, the traits will make of him/her a leader just for the sake owning them. In conclusion, it can be inferred that leadership is process of complex behavior whereby a person is set to inspire, and motivate his/her followers toward achieving common goals that are not effectively achievable otherwise. 2.2.2.3 Leadership vs. Management Both leadership and management are used in organizational context with little sensitivity to the terms especially when the right balance is maintained among all organizational elements that include people, processes, design, system, and technology. However, Doyle, et al. (2001), argued that not all managers, for example, are leaders; and not all leaders are managers. An attempt to make a distinction between managing and leading, one risk of this separation is that management is pushed into the background. Technically there is an overlap of domains and activities between management and leadership and thus in literature you will find managerial leadership (Gosling Mintzberg, 2003). Although leadership is not confined to management, there is wide agreement that the most successful organizations have strong, effective leaders. Most organizations contain both formal and informal leaders, some of which are in management positions, some are not (Albarran, 2006). To lead is to take risks on behalf of purpose and the greater good.   To manage is to mitigate risk on behalf of the bottom line.   A successful organization does both as well as a successful executive. A valuable employee at any level of the organization does both too (McBride, 2010). Although Gardner (1993) believes that leaders perform managerial jobs, he made several points to differentiate managers from leaders. The manager is more tightly linked to an organization than is the leader. Although he stresses on the interchangeable roles of leaders and managers, he argues that leaders do not necessarily have organizations and used Ghandi who was a leader before he had an organization (Gardner, 1993 p. 4). This leads to the term managerial leadership which is more practical in terms of leadership development and training. 2.1.2.4 Leadership Models and Tools As highlighted above, leadership has been studied extensively and dimensionally for more than a century (Seters, et al., 1990). The remarkable change and dimensional development in leadership research resulted in the introduction of several models and frameworks on leadership. Some researchers combine more than one theoretical framework to come up with a unique approach based on the scope of their studies. Yet, each approach is based on a theoretical framework whether it examines leaders personality traits, and behaviors or examine leadership as a process of interaction. Numerous tools and instruments have been developed to examine, study, and evaluate the impact of leadership in search of developing effective leaders (Ladyshewsky, 2007). Over the last decade the 360-degree review process has become a very popular tool in evaluating the impact of Leadership Development programs. The 360-degree assessment is now replacing the traditional performance appraisal (Toegel, et al., 2003). Despite its growing popularity, is not without its weaknesses. Some of these weaknesses include collusion to promote self-interests and selection of raters who will influence results positively. This reduces the value of the 360-degree review because the opportunity for receiving accurate feedback is lessened. Managers, peers and subordinates may also ground their responses using different perspectives because of their relationship to the ratee. These tools give a comprehensive understanding of the roles, and behaviors of leaders/managers One of the recent popular tools is The Leadership Circle Profile (TLCP), which contributes effectively to major advances on the best 360 instruments. As a validated tool, TLCP is designed to measure a battery of key leadership competencies. The Leadership Circle Profile is designed to integrate many of the best theoretical frameworks from the leadership, adult development, psychological and spiritual bodies of knowledge. Few, if any, 360 tools have a theoretical framework to complement their research base. TLCP has a rich and integrated theory base. This allows practitioners to use multiple frameworks that help the client connect the data to deeper insight (Anderson, 2006). Bryman (2004) concludes that leadership research is dominated by a single kind of data gathering instrument-the self-administered questionnaire. The field is replete with countless studies that employ questionnaires within the context of experimental, cross-sectional, and longitudinal designs. The Ohio State LBDQ scales, Fiedlers LPC scale, and more recently the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ), which exemplify respectively the style, contingency and new leadership phases of the fields development, are emblematic of this feature. The questionnaire has become the instrument of choice for researchers working in a variety of different theoretical traditions and within different research designs. The Full Range Leadership Development Theory provides the backbone for analyzing the leadership style of each manager by using the MLQ (Saad, 2008). The different tools and models create more confusion for organizations, leaders/managers, and researchers which is more valid or more appropriate as each assumes and defines different set of competencies (Cacioppe, et al., 2000). Regardless of the confusion between these models and framework in the leadership literature, none can argue if one particular framework to be right while others are wrong. Rather, the most appropriate frameworks should be based on empirical evidence, should capture accurately the reality being described (in other words, they should be valid), and should be able to integrate and organize most of the dimensions being proposed (Cameron, et al., 2006). One of the most popular leadership-management assessment instruments that integrates several aspects of leadership and previous models is the Competing Values Framework (CVF) introduced by Quinn and colleagues in 1981 and 1983. The CVF has been the subject of several organizational studies ever since. In all previous studies, it achieved high level of reliability and validity (Yu, et al., 2009) based on all empirical studies structured around the concept of organizational effectiveness (Quinn and Rohrbaugh, 1983; Quinn  et al., 2003; Belasen, et al., 2008; (Cameron, et al., 2006); (Denison, et al., 1993) (Ladyshewsky, 2007) (Quinn, 2006) (Vilkinas, et al., 2006) (Vilkinas, et al., 2009). The CVF instrument is developed to study the behavioral complexity of leaders (Denison, et al., 1993) and a later stage the CVF, which was developed in the early 1980s as a tool to examine the organizational culture and its variables was introduced as a framework of leadership effectiveness (Cameron, et al., 2006) (Belasen, et al., 2008). 2.1.3 The Competing Value Leadership 2.1.3.1 Theory and Definition The Competing Values Framework was developed initially from research conducted on the major indicators of effective organizations (Cameron, et al., 2006, p 33). It was developed as a result of empirical research on the question of what makes organizations effective (Quinn, et al., 1981) followed by studies of culture, leadership, structure, and information processing (Denison, et al., 1995) (Cameron, et al., 2006). Those conducting the preliminary research asked certain key questions like: What are the main criteria for determining if an organization is effective or not? What key factors define organizational effectiveness? When people judge an organization to be effective, what indicators do they have in mind? A spatial model was developed from the judgment data. It indicated that three value dimensions, focus (taskpeople), structure (controlflexibility), and time (short-termlong-term) underlie conceptualizations of organizational effectiveness. Furthermore, the model suggested some fundamental criteria of organizational effectiveness that differentially reflect these three value dimensions (Quinn, et al., 1981). However, Quinn and Rohrbaugh (1983) conducted further analysis and came up with two major dimensions; (a) one that differentiates a focus on flexibility, discretion, and dynamism from a focus on stability, order, and control; and (b) a second that differentiates a focus on an internal orientation, integration, and unity from a focus on an external orientation, differentiation, and rivalry (Cameron, et al., 2006, p 34). Figure 1: The Competing Values Framework Together these two dimensions form four quadrants, with four different organizational cultures. Figure 1 illustrates the relationships of these two dimensions to one another. What is notable about these four core values is that they represent opposite or competing assumptions: flexibility versus stability and control, internal versus external. The upper left quadrant, for example, identifies values that emphasize an internal, organic focus, whereas the lower right quadrant identifies values that emphasize an external, control focus. Similarly, the upper right quadrant identifies values that emphasize an external, organic focus, whereas the lower left quadrant emphasizes internal, control values. The competing or opposite values in each quadrant give rise to the name for the model, the Competing Values Framework. The resulted quadrants are labeled to distinguish their most notable characteristics-clan, adhocracy, market, and hierarchy, which were derived from the scholarly literature. They also match key management theories about organizational success, approaches to organizational quality, leadership roles, and management skills (Cameron, et al., 2006, p 35-37). 2.1.3.2 The Competing Values Approach to Leadership The Competing Values Framework (CVF) has been named as one of the forty most important models in the history of business (Cameron, 2010). The framework was developed as a result of extensive empirical researches focusing on organizational effectiveness (Quinn, et al., 1983). It predicts that balancing the full range of leadership roles should help managers perform their job effectively; yet, limited cognitive and emotional resources constrain employment of the full range of roles (Belasen, et al., 2008). 2.1.3.3 The CVF Leadership Quadrants In keeping with the emphasis of this model on behavioral complexity and leadership as a portfolio of capabilities, the eight roles in the model are defined in terms of a set of skills necessary to perform each role (Denison, et al., 1993 p. 6). The figure 2 below highlights the rights managerial leadership roles. Figure 2 Eight CVF roles of managerial leadership (Denison, et al., 1993 p. 6 27) Figure 2 suggests a spatial model with eight separate roles presented in terms of two underlying dimensions, with a specific set of relationships among these roles. The roles should take the form of a circle within these two dimensions, such that some pairs of roles (such as the monitor and the coordinator) should be very closely related, while other pairs of roles (such as the mentor and the producer) should be far less closely related. Opposite roles are presumably more contradictory and adjacent roles are more similar. One might expect, for example, that a leader who was highly proficient as a mentor would also have facilitator skills in their behavioral portfolio, but might be somewhat less likely to be highly proficient as a director or producer (Denison, et al., 1993 p. 9). 2.1.3.4 The CVF Leadership Roles As we have seen above the CVF has four quadrants with four types of cultures, the Competing Values leadership model divides each of its four quadrants into two leadership roles (Quinn, et al., 1983), (Denison, et al., 1993), (Cameron, et al., 2006), (Belasen, et al., 2008), (Cameron, 2010). The CVF leadership quadrants and roles are explained below (Denison, et al., 1993, pp. 6-8). The upper-right quadrant, which the effectiveness framework links to open-systems theory and the process of adaptation to the organizations external environment, defines two leadership roles: Innovator Role The innovator is creative and envisions, encourages, and facilitates change. Broker Role The broker is politically astute, acquires resources and maintains the units external legitimacy through the development, scanning, and maintenance of a network of external contacts. Moving clockwise to the lower right quadrant, labeled the rational goal model in the effectiveness framework, two more leadership roles are specified. These roles emphasize the rational pursuit of goals external to the group, and the leaders role in defining and motivating the attainment of those goals. Producer Role The producer is the task-oriented, work-focused role. The producer seeks closure, and motivates those behaviors that will result in the completion of the groups task. Director Role The director engages in goal setting and role clarification, sets objectives, and establishes clear expectations. The lower left quadrant is referred to in the effectiveness framework as the internal process model and places primary emphasis on internal control and stability. Two additional leadership roles are specified in that quadrant. Coordinator Role The coordinator maintains structure, does the scheduling, coordinating, and problem solving, and sees that rules and standards are met. Monitor Role The monitor collects and distributes information, checks on performance, and provides a sense of continuity and stability. The upper left quadrant is referred to in the framework as the human relations quadrant, placing primary emphasis on human interaction and process. Two final leadership roles are defined within that quadrant. Facilitator Role The facilitator encourages the expression of opinions, seeks consensus, and negotiates compromise. Mentor Role The mentor is aware of individual needs, listens actively, is fair, supports legitimate requests, and attempts to facilitate the development of individuals. 2.1.3.5 Leadership Effectiveness Extensive research by management scholars has identified critical competencies that characterize the most effective leaders and the most effective organizations worldwide. Quinn and Cameron (2006) introduced an instrument that assesses 20 key areas of leadership competency based on the Competing Values Framework. The leadership skills being assessed were not arbitrarily selected, but were derived from more than a dozen studies of leadership effectiveness. Figure 3 The Competing Values Framework culture, leadership, value drivers, and effectiveness. The focus of this study is to identify the competing values leadership roles of the chief editors of the participant newspapers, rather than assessing their competencies. Therefore, the suggested leadership competency assessment by Quinn, et al. (2006) will not be used in this study. However, it is of paramount significance to get a comprehensive view of the CVF different instruments. The congruence of leadership competencies and organizational culture leads to effectiveness, according to Quinn and Cameron (2006). To create value, managers competencies must be congruent with their organizations dominant culture. Demonstrating leadership competencies in the quadrants that dominate the organizations culture is associated with higher levels of success for the leader (Cameron, et al., 2006, p. 160). The management guru, Drucker (2006) in his book Effective Executive argued that effective executives should be able to manage time; choose what contributed to the organization; know where and how to mobilize strength for best effect; setting the right priorities; and knitting all of these together with effective decision-making. 2.1.3.6 CVF Model Application Though the framework is most often thought of as a leadership tool it has shown to have many important advantages. The CVF can be used for all aspects and levels in organizations. For example, It can be applied to personal style, yet the same framework can also be used to assess communication, leadership, organizational culture, core competencies, decision making, motivation, human resources practices, quality, employee selection, organizational capabilities, organizational change patterns, strategy, financial performance and many others (Cameron, 2010). The CVF is an approach to thinking that is, to interpreting or making sense of complex phenomena as well as to developing a repertoire of competencies and strategies that address the complexities being encountered (Cameron, et al., 2006). Criticism Development of the CVF Model Beyond the organizational effectiveness, the CVF has been studied and tested in numerous organizations for the past 25 years by scholars and professional experts not only in the United States but also in China (Vilkinas, et al., 2009); Australia (Vilkinas, et al., 2006); Malaysia (Yiing, et al., 2009); Yemen (Al-Marhadhi, 1996) and elsewhere. As a tool, the CVF is not only used in academic research, but also in as an assessment tool in the service industry (Degraff, et al., 2010). Although the model has been widely used in management and leadership research and development, it receives some criticism and further development by other researchers. Hooijberg (1996)  questioned the two dimensions of the CVF model and some of the questionnaire items that measure the leadership role distributed across the model. According to Cacioppe et al (2000), who reference the work of Hooijberg (1996) the CV framework, for instance, does not adequately capture vision or customer orientation roles or competencies that are fundamental to many models of leadership and management. As a result, Cacioppe and Albrecht developed a framework that used several of the aspects of the CV model supported by research with modifications to a number of roles and question items (Cacioppe, et al., 2000). Further application and empirical testing of the CVF led to further advancement. In response to developing researches, Quinn and colleagues developed the model further. In Australia, for instance, the Integrated Competing Values Framework (ICVF) was approached by Vilkinas and her co-authers who introduced the Integrator, as the ninth leadership role (Vilkinas, et al., 2006). Why the CVF? The Competing Values Framework provides a theory of effective leadership through managing tensions, which is the subject of this research. It includes predictions that congruence among disparate elements in organizations leads to success, paradoxical management is required for effectiveness, and comprehensive strategies and tactics representing all parts of the are needed to create value. (Cameron, et al., 2006, p.158-159). The selection of the CVF as a framework for this research is not because it is the best model or framework, but rather because of the significance it has left on leadership and organizational effectiveness, through hundreds of studies around the world. Moreover, the simplicity of the model; and its relevance to the internal and external competing environments of newspapering in Yemen represent supportive factors for selection. Besides, the CVF as a model can be applied as a multi-purpose model to assess leadership effectiveness; leadership managerial competencies, organizational culture, and overall organizational effectiveness. The abundance of literature on CVF, its measurement tools, research questionnaires, and analysis frameworks contribute positively to be the chosen model for this research. The CVF has been adopted in various organizational contexts as an assessment as well as a development tool. According to Quinn and Cameron (2006), the CVF is valid and significant for organizational and personal contexts alike. Chapter II: Literature Review Part 2 Yemeni Newspaper Industry 2.2.1 Introduction This part of the literature review is dedicated to the newspaper history, background and industry in general. A discussion of the environment, newspapers exist is given with examples and citations from existing literature. The overall part aims to present a comprehensive view of newspapering in Yemen with existing merits and challenges. 2.2.2 Background The Republic of Yemen embarked on democracy, political plurality and public freedoms in 1990 after northern and southern parts of the country were reunified. The reunification gave birth to a national constitution which guarantees political and social rights and public freedoms including freedom of the press. The emerging democracy in Yemen and plurality of the political system necessitated the plurality of media as one of the main pillars of a healthy democracy. Although the state continues to control the broadcast media including TV and radio until today, a wide spectrum of print media outlets exists. Although, Yemen has known journalism as early as 1872 when the Turks established a printing press and issued Yemen and then Sanaa newsletters in both Arabic and Turkish (The Evolution and Development of Journalism in Yemen, 2008) Free press plays a key role in sustaining and monitoring a healthy democracy, as well as in contributing to greater accountability, good governance, and economic development. People need to be able to watch the performance of their government and public authorities through a free and independent coverage of relevant news and events. Media as an educational tool is supposed to contribute to raise peoples awareness about their rights and duties. It is assumed that the news media can best fulfill its functions in a democracy if there is a rich and pluralistic information environment that is easily available to all citizens. There is a large body of American literature which suggests that if TV has taken over from the press as our main source of news this may limit our capacity to learn about public affairs; newspapers are believed to be far more effective than television at conveying detailed information necessary to understand complex and detailed policy issues (Norris, Fall 2000). In Yemen today, there are three major types of media: broadcast (TV and Radio); print (newspapers and magazines); and electronic (internet). 2.2.3 Classification of Print Media in Yemen The print media, which includes newspapers and magazines, in Yemen is categorized into three categories from ownership perspective: public or state-run newspapers, political or partisan newspapers, and privately owned newspapers (Al-Asaadi, 2007, Raja, 2010). However, Hassan Mansour (2009) added a fourth category that includes newspapers published by civil society organizations or trade unions, which I believe shoul

Paranoid Schizophrenia: They’re Out To Get Me Essay examples -- Menta

Paranoid Schizophrenia: They’re Out To Get Me Introduction Paranoid Schizophrenia is a serious psychotic disorder that impairs a person’s perception of reality, causing the mind to lose contact with the real world. This disorder greatly affects one’s ability to negotiate the activities of everyday life, such as school, work, or social situations. In 1898, Emil Kraepelin was to the first to provide information regarding schizophrenia naming it â€Å"dementia praecox†, and defining it as a psychosis with an early onset of intellectual deterioration (Schiffman & Walker, 1998). Ten years later, a Swiss psychiatrist, Eugen Bluler renamed the disorder using a combination of the Greek words â€Å"skhizein† and â€Å"phren† meaning split mind (Barlow & Durand, 2011). He believed the unusual behaviors were a split from the basic functions of personality and reality. Today, there are misconceptions about the term schizophrenia in which society confuses a split mind with a split personality. The broad definiti on of schizophrenia continues to be researched and narrowed into subtypes with specific presenting characteristics. Paranoid schizophrenia is one of the five major sub-types listed in the Fourth Edition of the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders; Text-Revised (DSM-IV-TR) with the list continuing to expand as the criteria identifies specific related symptoms or behaviors (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). Although this disorder only afflicts 1% of the total population of the United States, this amounts to over 3 million people living with the disorder. Diagnosis Diagnosis of this syndrome typically occurs in late adolescence through early adulthood with the onset of behaviors marking deterioration in the abilit... .... (2010). The history of mental illness: From "skull drills" to "happy pills". Student Pulse, 02(09), 1-4. Retrieved from http://www.studentpulse.com/articles/283/the-history-of-mental-illness-from-skull-drills-to-happy-pills Maguire, G. A. (2002). Comprehensive understanding of schizophrenia and its treatment. American Journal of Health-System Pharmacists, 59(5), 4-11. doi: 1079-2082/02/0901Maguire, National Institute of Health. National Institute of Health, National Institute of Mental Health. (2009). Schizophrenia (09-3517). Retrieved from U.S. Department of Health and Human Services website: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/schizophrenia/schizophrenia-booket-2009.pdf Schiffman, J. & Walker, E. F. (1998). Schizophrenia. In H. Friedman (Ed.) The Disorders: Specialty Articles from the Encyclopedia of Mental Health. Academic Press: New York.

The Lord of the Flies :: Free Essay Writer

The Lord of the Flies William Golding uses much symbolism in his novel, The Lord of the Flies, to help readers gain a greater understanding of his message. He uses symbolism in three important areas: objects that have symbolic value as references to ideas, characters that symbolize important historical and religious people, and the setting which frames the conflicts on the island in comparison to the whole world. Objects are the first part of the story that are symbolic. Many objects in The Lord of the Flies have important symbolic value. The conch shell represents power and authority, and Ralph uses it to call for the boys to come to meetings. Whoever has the shell has the power to talk. The conch shows how people use objects to give power, like a crown, sceptre, or other thins that show who has power. We also learn that objects don’t really give power when people choose not to obey it, like Ralph’s conch. The pig’s head, or Lord of the Flies, is an important object. To Jack it is a sacrifice for the beast. This object shows that people will make religions and rituals to control their world, even when what they think is not true. The Lord of the Flies is also a symbol of Satan, or the Devil. When Simon talked with the Lord of the Flies, he learned what the real evil was, which is the evil in people’s hearts. The Lord of the Flies is a symbol of the things we make up to be the cause for evil, when those things aren’t the real reason. The fire is a symbol of hope and rescue. When the fire was burning bright, it was because the boys were working hard to get rescued. When the fire burnt out, it was because many boys, like Jack, didn’t care anymore about being rescued. In the end, the fire that got them rescued was not meant for rescue. It was there because Jack was burning down the island to kill Ralph. This shows us that we get things from luck instead of hard work. The objects in the story are used by characters that also have symbolism. The many different characters on the island are symbols of important people. They show how the real world is made up of people. Ralph is a good leader who cannot control bad people like Jack. Ralph is like Franklin Roosevelt before World War II who could not stop the war from breaking out.

College Pressure

â€Å"What's wrong with the students of today? Back when I was a student we had a better attitude! † Criticisms like this are often heard from parents and teachers, in the newspapers and other media? And it's been that way ever since education began. No matter what society or era you consider, there are always plenty of wise authorities pointing out that â€Å"The students of today† are somehow failing to grasp the true meaning of university education. Or maybe it's the other way around: Are universities failing to grasp the true meaning of students? This text examines different aspects of this question and discusses the many pressures that modern students face. College  Pressures William Zinsser I am master of Branford College at Yale. I live on the campus and know the students well. (We have 485 of them. ) I listen to their hopes and fears — and also to their stereo music and their piercing cries in the dead of night (â€Å"Does anybody care? â€Å"). They come to me to ask how to get through the rest of their lives. Mainly I try to remind them that the road ahead is a long one and that it will have more unexpected turns than they think. There will be plenty of time to change jobs, change careers, change whole attitudes and approaches. They don't want to hear such news. They want a map — right now — that they can follow directly to career security, financial security, social security and, presumably, a prepaid grave. What I wish for all students is some release from the grim grip of the future. I wish them a chance to enjoy each segment of their education as an experience in itself and not as a tiresome requirement in preparation for the next step. I wish them the right to experiment, to trip and fall, to learn that defeat is as educational as victory and is not the end of the world. My wish, of course, is naive. One of the few rights that America does not proclaim is the right to fail. Achievement is the national god, worshipped in our media — the million-dollar athlete, the wealthy executive — and glorified in our praise of possessions. In the presence of such a potent state religion, the young are growing up old. I see four kinds of pressure working on college students today: economic pressure, parental pressure, peer pressure, and self-induced pressure. It's easy to look around for bad guys — to blame the colleges for charging too much money, the professors for assigning too much work, the parents for pushing their children too far, the students for driving themselves too hard. But there are no bad guys, only victims. Today it is not unusual for a student, even one who works part time at college and full time during the summer, to have accumulated $5,000 in loans after four years — loans that the student must start to repay within one year after graduation (and incidentally, not all these loans are low-interest, as many non-students believe). Encouraged at the commencement ceremony to go forth into the world, students are already behind as they go forth. How can they not feel under pressure throughout college to prepare for this day of reckoning? Women at Yale are under even more pressure than men to justify their expensive education to themselves, their parents, and society. For although they leave college superbly equipped to bring fresh leadership to traditionally male jobs, society hasn't yet caught up with this fact. Along with economic pressure goes parental pressure. Inevitably, the two are deeply intertwined. I see students taking premedical courses with joyless determination. They go off to their labs as if they were going to the dentist. It saddens me because I know them in other corners of their life as cheerful people. â€Å"Do you want to go to medical school? † I ask them. â€Å"I guess so,† they say, without conviction, or, â€Å"Not really. †    â€Å"Then why are you going? † â€Å"My parents want me to be a doctor. They're paying all this money and †¦ †   Ã‚   Peer pressure and self-induced pressure are also intertwined, and they begin from the very start of freshman year. I had a freshman student I'll call Linda,† one instructor told me, â€Å"who came in and said she was under terrible pressure because her roommate, Barbara, was much brighter and studied all the time. I couldn't tell her that Barbara had come in two hours earlier to say the same thing about Linda. † The story is almost funny — except that it's not . It's a symptom of all the pressures put together. When every student thinks every other student is working harder and doing better, the only solution is to study harder still. I see students going off to the library every night after dinner and coming back when it closes at midnight. I wish they could sometimes forget about their peers and go to a movie. I hear the rattling of typewriters in the hours before dawn. I see the tension in their eyes when exams are approaching and papers are due: â€Å"Will I get everything done? †   Ã‚  Ã‚   Probably they won't. They will get sick. They will sleep. They will oversleep. They will bug out. I've painted too grim a portrait of today's students, making them seem too solemn. That's only half of their story; the other half is that these students are nice people, and easy to like. They're quick to laugh and to offer friendship. They're more considerate of one another than any student generation I've ever known. If I've described them primarily as driven creatures who largely ignore the joyful side of life, it's because that's where the problem is — not only at Yale but throughout American education. It's why I think we should all be worried about the values that are nurturing a generation so fearful of risk and so goal-obsessed at such an early age. I tell students that there is no one â€Å"right† way to get ahead — that each of them is a different person, starting from a different point and bound for a different destination. I tell them that change is healthy and that people don't have to fit into pre-arranged slots. One of my ways of telling them is to invite men and women who have achieved success outside the academic world to come and talk informally with my students during the year. I invite heads of companies, editors of magazines, politicians, Broadway producers, artists, writers, economists, photographers, scientists, historians — a mixed bag of achievers. I ask them to say a few words about how they got started. The students always assume that they started in their present profession and knew all along that it was what they wanted to do. But in fact, most of them got where they are by a circuitous route, after many side trips. The students are startled. They can hardly conceive of a career that was not preplanned. They can hardly imagine allowing the hand of God or chance to lead them down some unforeseen trail. College Pressures by William Zinsser( , ) , , , Dear Carlos: I desperately need a dean's excuse for my chem midterm which will begin in about 1 hour. All I can say is that I totally blew it this week. I've fallen incredibly, inconceivably behind. Carlos: Help! I'm anxious to hear from you. I'll be in my room and won't leave it until I hear from you. Tomorrow is the last day for †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦. Carlos: I left town because I started bugging out again. I stayed up all night to finish a take-home make-up exam and am typing it to hand in on the 10th. It was due on the 5th. P. S. I'm going to the dentist. Pain is pretty bad. Carlos: Probably by Friday I'll be able to get back to my studies. Right now I'm going to take a long walk. This whole thing has taken a lot out of me. Carlos: I'm really up the proverbial creek. The problem is I really bombed the history final. Since I need that course for my major I †¦. Carlos: Here follows a tale of woe. I went home this weekend, had to help my Mom, and caught a fever so didn't have much time to study. My professor †¦.. Carlos: Aargh!! Trouble. Nothing original but everything's piling up at once. To be brief, my job interview †¦.. Hey Carlos, good news! I've got mononucleosis. Who are these wretched supplicants, scribbling notes so laden with anxiety, seeking such miracles of postponement and balm? They are men and women who belong to Branford College, one of the twelve residential colleges at Yale University, and the messages are just a few of the hundreds that they left for their dean, Carlos Hortas — often slipped under his door at 4 a. m. — last year. But students like the ones who wrote those notes can also be found on campuses from coast to coast — especially in New England, and at many other private colleges across the country that have high academic standards and highly motivated students. Nobody could doubt that the notes are real. In their urgency and their gallows humor they are authentic voices of a generation that is panicky to succeed. My own connection with the message writers is that I am master of Branford College. I live in its Gothic quadrangle and know the students well. (We have 485 of them. ) I am privy to their hopes and fears — and also to their stereo music and their piercing cries in the dead of night (â€Å"Does anybody ca-a-are? â€Å"). If they went to Carlos to ask how to get through tomorrow, they come to me to ask how to get through the rest of their lives. Mainly I try to remind them that the road ahead is a long one and that it will have more unexpected turns than they think. There will be plenty of time to change jobs, change careers, change whole attitudes and approaches. They don't want to hear such liberating news. They want a map — right now — that they can follow unswervingly to career security, financial security, social security and, presumably, a prepaid grave. What I wish for all students is some release from the clammy grip of the future. I wish them a chance to savor each segment of their education as an experience in itself and not as a grim preparation for the next step. I wish them the right to experiment, to trip and fall, to learn that defeat is as instructive as victory and is not the end of the world. My wish, of course, is naive. One of the few rights that America does not proclaim is the right to fail. Achievement is the national god, venerated in our media — the million dollar athlete, the wealthy executive — and the glorified in our praise of possessions. In the presence of such a potent state religion, the young are growing up old. I see four kinds of pressure working on college students today: economic pressure, parental pressure, peer pressure, and self-induced pressure. It is easy to look around for villians — to blame the colleges for charging too much money, the professors for assigning too much work, the parents for pushing their children too far, the students for driving themselves too hard. But there are are no villians, only victims. â€Å"In the late 1960's,† one dean told me, â€Å"the typical question that I got from students was, ‘Why is there so much suffering in the world? ‘ or ‘How can I make a contribution? ‘ Today it's, ‘Do you think it would look better for getting into law school if I did a double major in history and political science, or just majored in one of them? Many other deans confirmed this pattern. One said, â€Å"They're trying to find an edge — the intangible something that will look better on paper if two students are about equal. † Note the emphasis on looking better. The transcript has become a sacred document, the passport to security. How one appears on pape r is more important than how one appears in person. A is for Admirable and B is for Borderline, even though, in Yale's official system of grading, A means â€Å"excellent† and B means â€Å"very good. † Today, looking very good is no longer enough, especially for students who hope to go on to law school or medical school. They know that entrance into the better schools will be an entrance into the better law firms and better medical practices where they will make a lot of money. They also know that the odds are harsh, Yale Law School, for instance, matriculates 170 students from an applicant pool of 3,700; Harvard enrolls 550 from a pool of 7,000. It's all very well for those of us who write letters of recommendation for our students to stress the qualities of humanity that will make them good lawyers or doctors. And it's nice to think that admission officers are really reading our letters and looking for the extra dimension of commitment or concern. Still, it would be hard for a student not to visualize these officers shuffling so many transcripts studded with A's that they regard a B as positively shameful. The pressure is almost as heavy on students who just want to graduate and get a job. Long gone are the days of the â€Å"gentlemen's C,† when students journeyed through college with a certain relaxation, sampling a wide variety of courses — music, art, philosophy, classics, anthropology, poetry, religion — that would send them out as liberally educated men and women. If I were an employer I would employ graduates who have this range and curiousity rather than those who narrowly purused safe subjects and high grades. I know countless students whose inquiring minds exhilarate me. I like to hear the play of their ideas. I don't know if they are getting A's or C's, and I don't care. I also like them as people. The country needs them, and they will find satisfying jobs. I tell them to relax. They can't. Nor can I blame them. They live in a brutal economy. Tuition, room, and board at most private colleges now comes to at least $7,000, not counting books and fees. This might seem to suggest that the colleges are getting rich. But they are equally battered by inflation. Tuition covers only 60% of what it costs to educate a student, and ordinarily the remainder comes from what colleges receive in endowments, grants, and gifts. Now the remainder keeps being swallowed by the cruel costs higher every year, of just opening the doors. Heating oil is up. Insurance is up. Postage is up. Health premium costs are up. Everything is up. Deficits are up. We are witnessing in America the creation of a brotherhood of paupers — colleges, parents and students, joined by the common bond of debt. Today it is not unusual for a student, even if he works part-time at college and full-time during the summer, to accrue $5,000 in loans after four years — loans that he must start to repay within one year after graduation. Exhorted at commencement to go forth into the world, he is already behind as he goes forth. How could he not feel under pressure throughout college to prepare for this day of reckoning? I have used â€Å"he,† incidentally, only for brevity. Women at Yale are under no less pressure to justify their expensive education to themsleves, their parents, and society. In fact, they are probably under more pressure. For although they leave college superbly equipped to bring fresh leadership to traditionally male jobs, society hasn't yet caught up with that fact. Along with economic pressure goes parental pressure. Inevitably, the two are deeply intertwined. I see many students taking pre-medical courses with joyless tenacity. They go off to their labs as if they were going to the dentist. It saddens me because I know them in other corners of their life as cheerful people. â€Å"Do you want to go to medical school? I ask them. â€Å"I guess so,† they say, without conviction, or â€Å"Not really. † â€Å"Then why are you going? † â€Å"Well, my parents want me to be a doctor. They're paying all this money and †¦ † Poor students, poor parents. They are caught in one of the oldest webs of love and duty and guilt. The parents mean well; they are trying to steer their sons and daughters toward a secure future. But the so ns and daughters want to major in history or classics or philosophy — subjects with no â€Å"practical† value. Where's the payoff on the humanities? It's not easy to persuade such loving parents that the humanities do, indeed, pay off. The intellectual faculties developed by studying subjects like history and classics — an ability to synthesize and relate, to weigh cause and effect, to see events in perspective — are just the faculties that make creative leaders in business or almost any general field. Still, many thaters would rather put their money on courses that point toward a specific profession — courses that are pre-law, pre-medical, pre-business, or as I sometimes put it, â€Å"pre-rich. † But the pressure on students is severe. They are truly torn. One part of them feels obligated to fulfill their parents' expectations; after all, their parents are older and presumably wiser. Another part tells them that the expectations that are right for their parents are not right for them. I know a student who wants to be an artist. She is very obviously an artist and will be a good one — she has already had several modest local exhibits. Meanwhile she is growing as a well-rounded person and taking humanistic subjects that will enrich the inner resources out of which her art will grow. But her father is strongly opposed. He thinks that an artist is a â€Å"dumb† thing to be. The student vacillates and tries to please everybody. She keeps up with her art somewhat furtively and takes some of the â€Å"dumb† courses her father wants her to take — at least they are dumb courses for her. She is a free spirit on a campus of tense students — no small achievement in itself — she deserves to follow her muse. Peer pressure and self-induced pressure are also intertwined, and they begin almost at the beginning of freshman year. I had a freshman student I'll call Linda, † one dean told me, â€Å"who came in and said she was under terrible pressure because her roommate, Barbara, was much brighter and studied all the time. I couldn't tell her that Barabra had come in two hours earlier to say the same thing about Linda. † The story is almost funny — except that it's not. It's symptomatic of all the pressures put together. When every student thinks every other student is working harder and doing better, the only solution is to study harder still. I see students going off to the library every night after dinner and coming back when it closes at midnight. I wish they would sometimes forget about their peers and go to a movie. I hear the clack of typewriters in the hours before dawn. I see the tension in their eyes when exams are approaching and papers are due : â€Å"Will I get everything done? † Probably they won't. They will get sick. They will get â€Å"blocked†. They will sleep. They will oversleep. They will bug out. Hey Carlos, Help! Part of the problem is that they do more than they are expected to do. A professor will assign five-page papers. Several students will start writing ten-page papers, and a few will raise the ante to fifteen. Pity the poor student who is still just doing the assignment. â€Å"Once you have twenty or thirty percent of the student population deliberately overexerting,† one dean points out, â€Å"it's just bad for everybody. When a teacher gets more and more effort from his class, the student who is doing normal work can be perceived as not doing well. The tactic works, psychologically. † Why can't the professor just cut back and not accept longer papers? He can and he probably will. But by then the term will be half over and the damage done. Grade fever is highly contagious and not easily reversed. Besides, the professor's main concern is with his course. He knows his students only in relation to the course and doesn't know that they are also overexerting in their other courses. Nor is it really his business. He didn't sign up for dealing with the student as a whole person and with all the emotional baggage the student brought from home. That's what deans, masters, chaplains, and psychiatrists are for. To some extent this is nothing new: a certain number of professors have always been self-contained islands of scholarship and shyness, more comfortable with books than with people. But the new pauperism has widened the gap still further, for professors who actually like to spend time with students don't have as much time to spend. They also are overexerting. If they are young, they are busy trying to publish in order not to perish, hanging by their fingernails onto a shrinking profession. If they are old and tenured, they are buried under the duties of administering departments — as departmental chairmen or members of committees — that have been thinned out by the budgetary axe. Ultimately it will be the student's own business to break the circles in which they are trapped. They are too young to be prisoners of their parents' dreams and their classmates' fears. They must be jolted into believing in themselves as unique men and women who have the power to shape their own future. â€Å"Violence is being done to the undergraduate experience,† says Carlos Horta. â€Å"College should be open-ended; at the end it should open many, many roads. Instead, students are choosing their goal in advance, and their choices narrow as they go along, it's almost as if they think that the country has been codified in the type of jobs that exist — that they've got to fit into certain slots. Therefore, fit into the best-paying slot. † â€Å"They ought to take chances. Not taking chances will lead to a life of colorless mediocrity. They'll be comfortable. But something in the spirit will be missing. † I have painted too drab a portrait of today's students, making them seem a solemn lot. That is only half of their story: if they were so dreary I wouldn't so thoroughly enjoy their company. The other half is that they are easy to like. They are quick to laugh and to offer friendship. They are not introverts. They are unusually kind and are more considerate of one another than any student generation I have known. Nor are they so obsessed with their studies that they avoid sports and extra-curricular activities. On the contrary, they juggle their crowded hours to play on a variety of teams, peform with musical and dramatic groups, and write for campus publications. But this in turn is one more cause of anxiety. There are too many choices. Academically, they have 1,300 courses to select from; outside class they have to decide how much spare time they can spare and how to spend it. This means that they engage in fewer extracurricular pursuits than their predecessors did. If they want to row on the crew and play in the symphony they will eliminate one; in the '60's they would have done both. They also tend to choose activities that are self-limiting. Drama, for instance, is flourishing in all twelve of Yale's residential colleges as it never has before. Students hurl themselves into these productions — as actors, directors, carpenters, and technicians — with a dedication to create the best possible play, knowing that the day will come when the run will end and they can get back to their studies. They also can't afford to be the willing slave for organizations like the Yale Daily News. Last spring at the one hundredth anniversary banquet of that paper whose past chairmen include such once and future kings as Potter Stewart, Kingman Brewster, and William F. Buckley, Jr. — much was made of the fact that the editorial staff used to be small and totally committed and that â€Å"newsies† routinely worked fifty hours a week. In effect they belonged to a club; Newsies is how they defined themselves at Yale. Today's student will write one or two articles a week, when he can, and he defines himself as a student. I've never heard the word Newsie except at the banquet. If I have described the modern undergraduate primarily as a driven creature who is largely ignoring the blithe spirit inside who keeps trying to come out and play, it's because that's where the crunch is, not only at Yale but throughout American education. It's why I think we should all be worried about the values that are nurturing a generation so fearful of risk and so goal-obsessed at such an early age. I tell students that there is no one â€Å"right† way to get ahead — that each of them is a different person, starting from a different point and bound for a different destination. I tell them that change is a tonic and that all the slots are not codified nor the frontiers closed. One of my ways of telling them is to invite men and women who have achieved success outside the academic world to come and talk informally with my students during the year. They are heads of companies or ad agencies, editors of magazines, politicians, public officials, television magnates, labor leaders, business executives, Broadway producers, artists, writers, economists, photographers, scientists, historians — a mixed bag of achievers. I ask them to say a few words about how they got started. The students assume that they started in their present profession and knew all along that it was what they wanted to do. Luckily for me, most of them got into their field by a circuitious route, to their surprise, after many detours. The students are startled. They can hardly conceive of a career that was not pre-planned. They can hardly imagine allowing the hand of God or chance to nudge them down some unforeseen trail.

Poem and Short Story Essay

Mill of the Gods (Estrella Alfon) Among us who lived in Espeleta – that street that I love, about whose people I keep telling tales – among us, I say, there was one named Martha, and she was the daughter of Pio and Engracia. To all of us, life must seem like a road given us to travel, and it is up to Fate, that convenient blunderer, whether, that road be broad and unwinding, or whether it shall be a tortuous lane, its path a hard and twisted mat of dust and stones. And each road, whether lane or avenue, shall have its own landmarks, that only the traveller soul shall recognize and remember, and remembering, continue the journey again. To Martha, the gods gave this for a first memory: a first scar. She was a girl of twelve, and in every way she was but a child. A rather dull child, who always lagged behind the others of her age, whether in study or in play. Life had been so far a question of staying more years in a grade than the others, of being told she would have to apply herself a little harder if she didn’t want the infants catching up with her. But that was so dismal thing. She had gotten a little bit used to being always behind. To always being the biggest girl in her class. Even in play there was some part of her that never managed to take too great a part – she was so content if they always made her â€Å"it† in a game of tag, if only they would let her play. And when she had dolls, she was eager to lend them to other girls, if they would only include her in the fascinating games she could not play alone. This was she, then. Her hair hung in pigtails each side of her face, and already it irked a little to have her dresses too short. She could not help in her mother’s kitchen, and could be trusted to keep her room clean, but she was not ready for the thing her mother told her one night when she was awakened from sleep. It was a sleep untroubled by dreams, then all of a sudden there was an uproar in the house, and she could hear her mother’s frenzied sobbing, and it was not sobbing that held as much of sorrow as it did of anger. She lay still for a while, thinking perhaps she was dreaming, until she could hear her father’s grunted answers to the half – understood things her mother was mouthing at him. Then there were sounds that was clearly the sound of two bodies struggling in terrible fury with each other. She stood up, and like a child, cried into the night. Mother? She wailed the word, in her panic finding a little relief in her own wailing, Mother? And she heard her mother’s voice call her, panting out, saying, Martha, come quickly, come into this room! Martha got up and stood at the door of the room, hesitating about opening it, until her mother, the part of a terrible grasp, said Martha! So Martha pushed in the door, and found her mother and her father locked in an embrace n which both of them struggled and panted and had almost no breath left for words. Martha stood wide – eyed and frightened, not knowing what to do, just standing there, even though she had seen what it was they struggled for. A kitchen knife, blade held upwards in her mother’s hand. Her arms were pinioned to her sides by her husband, but her wild eyes, the frenzy with which she stamped her feet on his feet, and kicked him in the shins, and tried to bite him with her teeth, these were more terrible than the glint of that shining blade. It was her father who spoke to her saying urgently, Martha, reach for her knife, take it away. Yet Martha stood there and did not comprehend until her mother spoke, saying No, no; Martha, your father deserves to be killed. Then it was Martha who realized what she was to do, and slowly, hesitantly, she went near them, her fear of both of them in this terrible anger they now presented making her almost too afraid to reach up for the knife. But reach up she did, and with her child’s fingers, put her mother’s away from the weapon. And when she had it in her hands she did not know what to do with it, except look at it. It wasn’t a very sharp knife, but its blade was clean, and its hilt firm. And so she looked at it, until her father said. Throw it out of the window, Martha and without thinking, she went to a window, opened a casement and threw it away. Then her father released her mother, and once her mother had gotten her arms free, she swung back her hand, and wordlessly, slapped him; slapped him once, twice, three times, alternating with her hands, on alternate cheeks, until her father said. That’s enough, Engracia. And saying so, he took her hands in his, led her resisting to the bed, and made her sit down. And Martha was too young to wonder that her father, who was a big man, should have surrendered to the repeated slapping from her mother who was a very small frail woman. Her father said, â€Å"Aren’t you ashamed now Martha has seen? † And immediately her mother screamed to him, â€Å"Ashamed? Me, ashamed? I’ll tell Martha about you! † Her father looked at Martha still standing dumbly by the window out of which she had thrown the knife, and said, â€Å"No, Aciang, she is just a child. † And to her: â€Å"Martha, go back to bed. † But now her mother jumped up from the bed, and clutched at Martha, and brought her to bed with her. And deliberately without looking at Martha’s father, she said, Martha you are not too young to know. And so, the words falling from her lips with a terrible quiet, she told Martha. The words that were strange to her ears, Martha heard them, and listened to them, and looked from her mother to her father, and without knowing it, wetting her cheeks with her tears that fell. And then her mother stopped talking, and looking at her husband, she spat on him, and Martha saw the saliva spatter on the front of the dark shirt he wore. She watched while her father strode over them, and slowly, also deliberately, slapped her mother on the cheek. Martha watched his open palm as he did it, and felt the blow as though it had been she who had been hit. Then her father strode out of the room, saying nothing, leaving them alone. When her father had gone, Martha’s mother began to cry, saying brokenly to Martha, â€Å"It is that woman, that woman! † And making excuses to Martha for her father, saying it was never completely the man’s fault. And Martha listened bewildered, because this was so different from the venomous words her mother had told her while her father was in the room. And then her mother, still weeping, directed her to look for her father and Martha went out of the room. Her father was not in the house. The night was very dark as she peered out of the windows to see is she could find him outside, but he was nowhere. So she went back to her mother, and told her she could not find her father. Her mother cried silently, the tears coursing down her cheeks, and her sobs tearing through her throat. Martha cried with her, and caressed her mother’s back with her hands, but she had no words to offer, nothing to say. When her mother at last was able to talk again, she told Martha to go back to bed. But it wasn’t the child that entered who went out of that room. And yet the terror of that night was not so great because it was only a terror half – understood. It wasn’t until she was eighteen, that the hurt of that night was invested with its full measure. For when she was eighteen, she fell in love. She was a girl of placid appearance, in her eyes the dreaming stolid night of the unawakened. She still was slow to learn, still not prone to brilliance. And when she fell in love she chose the brightest boy of her limited acquaintance to fall in love with. He was slightly older than herself, a little too handsome, a trifle too given to laughter. Espeleta did not like him; he was too different from the other young me n on the street. But Martha loved him. You could see that in the way she looked at him, the way she listened to him. Martha’s pigtails had lengthened. She now wore her braids coiled on the top of her head like a coronet, and it went well with the placid features, the rather full figure. She was easily one of our prettier maidens. It was well that she was not too brilliant. That she did not have any too modern ideas. The air of shyness, the awkward lack of sparkling conversation suited her Madonna – like face and calm. And her seriousness with love was also part of the calm waiting nature. It did not enter her head that there are such things as play, and a game. And a man’s eagerness for sport. And so when she noticed that his attentions seemed to be wandering, even after he had admitted to a lot of people that they were engaged, she asked him, with the eager desperation of the inexperienced, about their marriage. He laughed at her. Laughed gently, teasingly, saying they could not get married for a long time yet; he must repay his parents first for all that they had done for him. He must first be sure to be able to afford the things she deserved. Well turned phrases he said his excuses with. Charming little evasions. And if she did not see through them while he spoke them, his frequent absences, where his visits had been as a habit; his excuses to stay away when once no amount of sending him off could make him stay away; these but made her see. And understand. And then the way neighbours will, they tried to be kind to her. For they could see her heart was breaking and they tried to say sweet things to her, things like her being far too good for him. And then they heard that he had married. Another girl. And they saw her grief, and thought it strange that a girl should grieve over an undeserving lover or so. She lost a little of the plumpness that was one of her charms. And into her eyes crept a hurt look to replace the dreaming. And Espeleta, with all the good people, strove to be even kinder to her. Watched her grief and pitied her. And told her that whatever mistakes she had committed to make her grieve so, to make her suffer so, they understood and forgave. And they did not blame her. But now that she had learned her lesson, she must beware. She knew her own father as much as they knew about him. And it was in the Fates that his sins must be paid for. If not by himself, then by whom but she who was begotten by him? So, didn’t she see? How careful she should be? Because you could, they said it to her gently, kindly, cruelly, because she could if she were careful, turn aside the vengeance of the implacable fates. And she believed them kind although she hated their suspicions. She believed them kind, and so she started, then, to hate her father. And that night long ago came back to her, and she wished she had not thrown that knife away. Espeleta saw Martha turn religious. More religious than Iya Andia and Iya Nesia, who were old and saw death coming close, and wanted to be assured of the easing of the gates of heaven. Espeleta approved. Because Espeleta did not know what she prayed for. Because they saw only the downcast eyes under the light veil, the coil of shining hair as it bowed over the communion rail. Yet Martha’s mother and father still lived together. They never had separated. Even after that night, when she was twelve years old and frightened, and she had called for him and looked for him and not found him. The next day he had come back, and between her mother and him there was a silence. They slept in the same bed, and spent the nights in the same room, and yet Martha and Espeleta knew he had another bed, another chamber. Espeleta praised Martha’s mother for being so patient. After Martha had fallen in love, when she began hating her father truly then also she began despising her mother. You did not know it to look at Martha. For her coil of braided hair was still there, and the shy way of speaking, and the charming awkwardness at conversation. And Martha made up her earlier lack of lustre by shining in her class now. She was eighteen and not through high school yet. But she made up for it by graduating with high honours. Espeleta clapped its hands when she graduated. Gave her flowers. Her mother and father were there, too. And they were proud. And to look at Martha, you would think she was proud too, if a little too shy still. Martha studied nursing. And started having visitors in her mother’s house again. Doctors this time. Older men, to whom her gravity of manner appealed, and the innate good sense that seemed so patient in her quiet demeanour. Espeleta was now rather proud of Martha. She seemed everything a girl should be, and they cited her as an example of what religion could do. Lift you out of the shadow of your inheritance. For look at Martha. See how different she is from what should be her father’s daughter. But what they did not know was that all of these doctors Martha had to choose someone slightly older than the rest. And where the girl of eighteen that she had been almost a child unschooled, now she was a woman wise and wary. Where the other nurses knew this doctor only as someone who did not like their dances as much as the younger ones, who did not speak as lightly, as flippantly of love as the younger ones, Martha knew why he didn’t. Between the two of them there had been, form the very start, a quick lifting of the pulse, an immediate quickening of the breath. From the very start. And where he could have concealed the secrets of life, he chose the very first time they were able to talk to each other, to tell her that he was not free. He had a wife, and whether he loved her or not, whether she was unfaithful to him or not, which she was, there had been the irrevocable ceremony to bind them, to always make his love for any other woman, if he ever fell in love again, something that must be hidden, something that might not see light. She was a woman now, Martha was. Wise and wary. But there is no wisdom, no weariness against love. Not the kind of deep love she knew she bore him. And as even she him, she found within herself the old deep – abiding secret hate. Against her father. Against the laws of man and church. Against the very fates that seemed rejoiced in making her pay for a sin she had not committed. She now learned of bitterness. Because she could not help thinking of that night, long ago, when her mother had sat on the bed, and in deliberate words told her just what kind of a father she had. It had been as though her mother had shifted on to her unwilling, unready shoulders the burden of the sorrows, the goad of the grief. Espeleta, that was so quick to censure, and to condemn; even Espeleta had taken the situation in Martha’s house as something that could not be helped. And as long as there was no open strife, Espeleta made excuses for a thing that, they said, had been designed by Fate. Martha’s father came home. Acted, on the surface, the good husband. And since he was married to Martha’s mother, so must Martha’s mother bear it, and welcome him home again. Because she would rather he came home, then went to the other one, wouldn’t she? Espeleta cited heavenly rewards. For Martha’s mother. And Martha went to church regularly, and was a good nurse. And still called her father, Father. You have heard that one of course, about the mill of the gods, how they â€Å"grind exceedingly fine, and grind exceedingly slow. † Espeleta hadn’t heard that one, nor had Martha. But Espeleta of course would have a more winded version of it. Anyhow, one day at the hospital, Martha was attendant nurse at an emergency case. A man had been shot. There were three bullets through his chest, but he was still alive. Martha laughed queerly to herself, saying I must be dreaming, I am imagining that man has my father’s face. It was the doctor she loved who was in charge. With a queer dreaming feeling, she raised her eyes to meet his, and was shocked to see him drop his gaze, and over his face steal a twist as of pain, as of pity. They were instantly their efficient selves again, cloaking themselves in the impersonal masks of physician and nurse. It was as if he who lay there beneath their instruments and their probing fingers was any man, the way it could be any man. Not her father. But all while, training and discipline unavailing. Martha said to herself, but it is my father. He died on the table. He never gained consciousness. Martha drew the sheet over his face and form. And watched as they wheeled him out of the room. She still had the instruments to put away and the room to put in order. But this did not take long and when she went out into the corridor, she found her mother weeping beside the shrouded form on the wheeled table. There was a policeman beside her awkwardly trying with gruff words to console the little woman over her loss. Beside the policeman stood also the doctor, who passed an arm around the shoulder of Martha’s mother, saying simply, we tried to save him. Martha joined them, knowing that she should be in tears, yet finding that she had none to shed. It would ease the tightness within her, would loosen the hard knot in her heart to cry. But you cannot summon tears when you feel no grief, and the pain you feel is not of sorrow but of the cruel justness of things. She could not even put her arms around her weeping mother. When the doctor told her that she would be excused from duty the rest of the day, that he would arrange it for her, she did not thank him. She did not say anything for indeed she no longer had any words, nor any emotions that required speech. Or should be given speech. For one cannot say, how right! How just! When one’s father has just died. Her mother and she took a taxi together to accompany the hearse that took her father home. There was a crowd awaiting them. Espeleta in tears. Espeleta crying condolence and opprobrium in the same breath. It was from them – their good neighbours, their kind neighbours – that Martha learned how â€Å"God’s justice had overtaken the sinner. † Colon is not as intimate as Espeleta. For it is a long street and broad street. But where the railroad crosses it, the houses group together in intimate warmth and neighbourly closeness and its families live each other’s lives almost as meddlingly as Espeleta does. And is as avid for scandals as Espeleta is. Among the people in Martha’s house were some from Colon. And it was they who supplied the grimmer details, the more lucid picture. In that other woman’s house – and Martha did not even know the other woman’s name there had existed the stalemate state of affairs that had existed in Martha’s house. Only where in Martha’s house it had been a wife who was patient, in that other woman’s house it had been the husband who had bided his time. And yet the neighbours had thought he had not cared. For indeed he had seemed like a man blind and deaf, and if he raised his voice against his wife, it was not so they could hear it. Yet today, he had come home, after he had said he was going away somewhere. And had come upon Martha’s father in the house, and had, without saying anything, taken out his revolver, and shot at him. Martha heard all these. And thought you know often life seems like an old – fashioned melodrama, guns and all. And yet the gun had not gone off. It had jammed, and Martha’s father had been able to run. And running, even as he seemed far enough from the house to be safe, the gun in the husband’s hand had come right again. The man had gone out in the street, aimed at the fleeing figure. That explained why the bullets had gone in through his back and out through his chest. They said that the street was spattered with blood and where he fell, there was a pool of gory red. The killer had surrendered himself at once. But everyone knew he would not pay with his life he had taken. For the woman was his wife and he had come upon them in his own home. Martha stayed with the kind condolers only a while. She left her mother for them to comfort as best as they could. They would have praises like â€Å"The good God knows best;† they would have words like, â€Å"Your grief is ended, let your other grief commence. † She went to look at her father lying well arranged now in his bier. Already in spite of the manner of his death, there were flowers for him. Death had left no glare in the eyes that the doctor at the hospital had mercifully closed, over the features lingered no evidence of pain. And Martha said, Death was kind to you. In Martha’s room there hung a crucifix. Upon the crossed wood was the agonized Christ, His eyes soft and deep and tender, even in his agony. But as Martha knelt, and lighted her candles, and prayed, in her eyes was no softness, and on her lips no words appealing for pity for him who had died. There was only the glitter of a justice meted out at last, and the thankfulness for a punishment fulfilled. So she gave thanks, very fervent thanks. For now, she hoped, she would cease to pay.