Wednesday, August 26, 2020

Introduction to Stress Management-

Questions: 1.What is the subject of the Research? 2.What are the discoveries from your Research? 3.What are your Recommendations? Answers: 1.The subject of the accompanying exploration is pressure the executives. Stress the executives alludes to the different psychotherapies and methods that endeavor to control the degrees of stress that are experienced by someone in particular because of the motivation behind the improvement of the day by day working of the concerned individual. The worry in this setting for the most part alludes to the interminable worry of the concerned individual. The pressure for the most part alludes to the pain, or a sort of stress that has negative results of a noteworthy sum. 2.According to Babatunde, (2013), work pressure, otherwise called word related pressure can't be characterized in a bound together way because of the way that one single unmistakable methodology will most likely be unable to envelop the wonder in the entirety of its totality. Babatunde further contends that there has been various definitions throughout the years that depict worry to be either an upgrade, or as a reaction to some improvement. Stress may likewise have been characterized as the mix of the improvement and the reaction to the concerned upgrade. The value-based relationship that exists between the concerned people and the general condition of the individual may likewise be characterized as pressure. Stress when characterized as an upgrade may involve the qualities of the general condition that might be upsetting for the person who is presented to the concerned components of the environmental factors. The responsive meaning of pressure alludes to the pressure that has its u nderlying foundations in the mental response of the concerned individual towards the stressors that have been having their influence in the production of the pressure. McVicar et al (2013) contends that there are various literary works dependent on the pressure uncover the difficulties that are looked by the individuals because of the pressure that they face at their work environments. The significant issues bringing about the development of the pressure of a representative are the outstanding task at hand of the concerned individual, the absence of weightiness of the work relegated, the exorbitantly quick pace of work, the bringing down of the self-rule at work, the harmful frameworks of work and different unsettling influences that emerge at the work environment. The most widely recognized explanation of the worry among the individuals at their particular work environments result from the contentions coming about because of the uncertainty of the jobs that are alloted to the concerned individual. As per Ackfeldt and Malhotra, (2013), job strife, one of the significant explanations behind the job pressure happens when there is contradiction and incongruency among the requests of the activity and the desires for the business from the workers of the worry. 3.There might be different number of approaches to deal with the pressure that happens at the working environments. The concerned representatives ought to be permitted to take parts from the job needing to be done. A brief break of at some point may assist the worker with applying new viewpoints to their current task. The representatives might be urged to draw in themselves in certain exercises that may end up being gainful for both the psychological and the physical strength of the concerned worker. The earth of the work place must advance an euphoric encounter for the representatives. This is turn encourages the representatives to de-worry from their every day work schedule. So as to alleviate the pressure, a worker may likewise counsel the pressure issue with his associates or seniors so as to get an answer for the pressure that he is confronting. Reflection may likewise end up being one of the pressure relievers if there should be an occurrence of hierarchical pressure. References Ackfeldt, A. L., Malhotra, N. (2013). Returning to the job pressure responsibility relationship: can administrative intercessions help?.European diary of marketing,47(3/4), 353-374. Babatunde, A. (2013). Word related Stress: A Review on Conceptualisations, Causes and Cure.Economic Insights-Trends Challenges,65(3). McVicar, A., Munn-Giddings, C., Seebohm, P. (2013). Working environment stress mediations utilizing participatory activity research designs.International Journal of Workplace Health Management,6(1), 18-37.

Saturday, August 22, 2020

Separation of Powers in the Uk

This article will look to break down the precept of the partition of forces and the significance of its essence inside a constitution. Specific accentuation will be put on recognizing how this thought is fused into the United Kingdom’s (UK) constitution and the impact that ongoing advancements of established change, for example, the presentation of the UK Supreme Court instead of the House of Lords has had. The regulation of the division of forces is a thought that can be found in works as far back as the hour of Aristotle. This idea expresses that any constitution depends on the ‘three mainstays of state’ which are the official, authoritative and legal executive. Montesquieu figured this idea in the eighteenth century and in ‘L’Esprit des Lois’ composed; â€Å"All would be lost if a similar man or a similar group of guideline of men, both of nobles, or of the individuals, practiced these three powers: that of making laws, that of executing open goals, and that of passing judgment on the violations or the debates of people. Montesquieu’s reviewing wholes that if in any constitution at once, more than one of these forces are constrained by the equivalent ‘man’ or ‘body of men’ then the force incited gets self-assertive and to impact a tyranny. These three forces can be seen inside the UK’s constitution, the Government (official), Parliament (council) and the Courts (legal executive). The UK has been reprimanded recommending that th ere is no detachment of forces inside our constitution because of its un-systematized and in this manner hazy nature making it difficult to set up three free bodies. This was the situation for various reasons; right off the bat inside the UK there are covers between the alleged ‘powers of state’ a case of this is the set-up of government. Individuals from the Prime Ministers Cabinet are additionally Members of Parliament who have official powers aside having the option to cast a ballot in parliament, that thus makes an immediate cover among official and authoritative forces. This can be viewed as of late as this year with individuals from the Cabinet like Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg having official forces while having the option to cast a ballot in Parliament on the Tuition Fees Bill 2010. The courts likewise seem to practice administrative capacities alongside their legal jobs through methods for the precedent-based law. Judges for quite a long time have been making and changing laws as they see fit and still right up 'til the present time have the ability to make restricting points of reference. Be that as it may, the situation of Lord Chancellor was routinely reprimanded as it held nearness in every one of the three of the ‘pillars of state’. It would show up from this that undoubtedly the United Kingdom doesn't practice the idea of detachment of forces. In February 2004 the House of Lords acquainted what was in the end with be The Constitutional Reform Act 2005 . This demonstration hoped to handle two of the apparent principle reactions of the UK constitution in particular the job of Lord Chancellor and to acquire a Supreme Court to assume control over the job of the redrafting panel of the House of Lords in the legal executive as before this individuals from the House of Lords were individuals from both the lawmaking body and the legal executive. The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom was along these lines opened in 2009 nonetheless; it would seem flawed with respect to whether it has truly brought around a partition of forces. On the off chance that an intelligent methodology is taken, at that point this presentation of another chamber has rolled out a major improvement to the constitution as no longer would it be workable for law masters to sit in the legal executive and vote in parliament nonetheless, in the event that we take an elective view, at that point the Supreme Court has not so much transformed anything inside the UK’s constitution. Because of the unwritten arrangement of our constitution it is realized that numerous laws and methodology that nations, for example, the USA (who have a composed constitution) have sponsored up by the archived constitution itself, we particularly depend on the job of show, propensity and convention to keep the three powers within proper limits. It has especially been show that from under the steady gaze of 2006 the law masters that sit in the redrafting council of the House of Lords shun sitting in political issues while; individuals from the Lords who practice political capacities don't take an interest with any issues of the legal executive. Valid, the presentation of the Supreme Court has made it unimaginable for the administrative and legal forces to be melded as individuals delegated inside the Supreme Court will never again be individuals from the House of Lords along these lines making this place of Parliament exclusively authoritative. Maybe an increasingly significant advancement is that future individuals from the Supreme Court need not be peers which could in time cut off any connection between the two chambers. The demonstration likewise positioned limitations on the job of the Lord Chancellor that have met a similar inclination as that of the Supreme Court, while yes these progressions are certain, the inquiry remains would they say they were vital? The presentation of the UK Supreme Court is a positive advance to join increasingly composed sources to the constitution as well as towards appropriately building up a detachment of forces inside the UK. In any case, it very well may be proposed that an increasingly proper advance to chieving this objective is approach various issues and ones that don’t have imperatives, for example, being represented by show, that keep on neutralizing any positive advances taken to set up a partition of forces inside the state. The way that Cabinet individuals can cast a ba llot in parliament is an immediate cover between two of the forces and possibly change of this territory ought to be considered also. Maybe the entire set up of our nations elective framework needs change as any gathering that orders a lion's share could adequately pass any bill they like without resistance. Tony Blair as the leader of the Labor government in 1997 delighted in such control of parliament. The utilization of the Royal Prerogative has been depicted as ‘unconstitutional’ and went under examination when Tony Blair upheld the USA in the Iraq War and sent British troopers to war. These lion's share governments have been portrayed as ‘elective dictatorships’, and these are nevertheless a couple of instances of numerous things that neutralize our nation ever having a valid and complete partition of forces. The foundation of the Supreme Court in October 2009 and the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 seems to have started eagerness for change. This could be found in the 2010 General Election where clear accentuation was put on protected change by each significant gathering, to make reference to however one is the Liberal Democrats vow to endeavor to evacuate the first past the post casting a ballot framework to be supplanted by relative portrayal. The Con-Lib alliance administration of 2010 has as of late made a multi year fixed term parliament which puts the following general political decision on the primary Thursday of May 2015. These are on the whole changes that will in the long run add to making a partition of forces and to emphatically change the constitution. It very well may be seen from this that the presentation of the new Supreme Court has made a major advance towards achieving a genuine division of forces in the UK. Notwithstanding the shows that the House of Lords and redrafting advisory group followed, the Supreme Court has cut off any connection between the legal executive and parliament. This is especially significant in present occasions as the ascent in cases of legal audit require a totally unprejudiced court so as to empower the legal executive to keep check of the authoritative and official parts of state and to maintain established equity. It is additionally certain that there is, best case scenario an incomplete detachment of intensity in the UK which is critical to hold however it couldn't be said that we have fused this idea completely and substantially more will be done after some time to set up a progressively steady constitution for future governments. Established change in itself is anything but a straightforward undertaking and instances of this can be found in nations, for example, Bosnia who are at present battling with reorganizations, which truly highlights the hugeness of making a Supreme Court and re-recognizing the legal part of the UK. While there is as of now just a halfway division of forces in the UK for the present, this might be beginning to change. 1491 Words. Reference index †¢Neil Parpworth, Constitutional and Administrative Law (sixth Edition, Oxford University Press, 2010). †¢Anthony King, The British Constitution (Oxford University Press, 2007). †¢Jeffrey Jowell and Dawn Oliver, The Changing Constitution (sixth Edition, Oxford University Press, 2007). †¢Vernon Bogdanor, The New British Constitution (Hart Publishing, 2009). †¢http://www. energyobserver. com/tekst-e. php? lang=2&ID=1072 got to 07/01/2011 14:07. †¢ got to 07/01/2011 15:36.

Friday, August 21, 2020

Advice youve heard before and a story you havent

Advice you’ve heard before and a story you haven’t There are going to be a lot of people eager to give you advice on how to survive college and maybe even leave with a degree and some shreds of self respect. At least thats the way it was with me. Something that I heard over and over again from mouths of all shapes and sizes was Go to class. Go to class. Go to class. But thats for dumb kids who couldnt figure things out on their own. By second semester freshman year I attended at most one class per subject per week. I skipped all 18.03 (Differential Equations) lectures except the first, went to no recitations other than the ones immediately preceding exams. 8.022 (E+M) had lecture notes online by a previous lecturer, and it was not long after I discovered them that I stopped going to 8.022 as well. 6.001 (computer science) lectures were optional through an online lecture experiment so that was excusable. The only class to which I dragged myself on a semi-regular basis was my mandatory-attendance HASS class. The advantages? I got to sleep in later. I got to save time that would otherwise have been spent in class. I got to stay warm and cozy in my (over)heated room while it whistled and roared in wintry fury outside. I got to brag about not going to class and still doing fine. How did I go about this? Homework. Everything I learned that semester came from doing homework assignments. I would read the lecture notes from that week as I went along problem by problem, learning only the parts of the material necessary to hand in a completed assignment the next day. When the tests rolled around, I would attend the review sessions held immediately preceding to fill in the gaps between the problems. Of course, this schedule meant that I slept until noon every day and had to stay up until 6 or 7am on many occasions to not only finish a whole problem set the night before but also learn the material beforehand. But thats okay, since that extra time would have been spent in class anyways. And since I can learn faster than the lecturer talks, Im still saving time, right? It made sense, of course, until you tried to account for the extra time I should have saved. Where did that go? In a single week, I would end up sleeping 4 hours or less on at least 2 or 3 occasions. I would skip meals reasoning that Id got up late, so I didnt need breakfast, reasoning that Im hungry, but its 4am already and Im going to bed soon, anyways, as soon as I finish this last problem This wasnt a big deal for me, then. I was still healthy. Its at this point in the tale that the wise and weathered story-teller would learn his lesson. And I failed all my classes and got put on academic probation and then I shaped up and never missed another lecture and made straight As from then on. Well, correct me if Im wrong but life doesnt usually work like that. Truth is, I did just fine. I got As in 8.022 and 18.03 and Bs in 6.001 and 4.301. I even passed my astronomy seminar (P/F) 12.409 (which I highly recommend by the way). Another piece of universal advice came into mind at that point, If it works, stick with it. This one I followed. I sleepwalked through first semester sophomore year. Unified (engineering) started at 9am which made it easy to skip on a daily basis. Not to mention all equations and little theory which made it easy to pick up the night before a test or Monday night before the problem sets were due. Out of the 10 hours of lectures and recitations every week, I was present for maybe 2 or 3. My other classes didnt fare too much better (2 physics and a HASS class). Once you start skipping one class its hard to bring yourself to go to the others. I fell into the same pattern as the semester before. But there was one big difference. I was taking five classes, not four. Its easy to say that youll read the lecture notes for the class you just skipped, its even easy to believe that you will, and sometimes I would. But more often, I put it off. I fell behind. And its an awful feeling, being behind in a class. An awful pattern even, because, it requires you to correct for it all at once. I cant go to lecture if I havent learned any of the material of the past 2 weeks, it would be a waste of time, I wouldnt have any idea what was being said. I guess Ill just stay home and try to start from the beginning. And now Im missing yet another class. Im even farther behind. To be able to keep up with problem sets in all your MIT classes, eventually, you will have to fall into a pattern. Math on monday nights, maybe physics tuesdays and wednesdays, bio on thursdays, essays on sundays and you will feel like every minute of every day is filled. Where is the time to catch up on material that youve missed? Well, Im not a slow worker and Im not a fast worker. Im not brilliant and Im not dumb. And with 5 classes I didnt have much. Psets started taking me longer to do, and I found myself playing catchup into the wee hours of the morning. The sun came up over my unfinished work, and I hadnt slept. And it was the 3rd time this week. So my schedule was a little hectic, so what? I was still pulling As. Red flag #1. I overslept the second Fluid dynamics test in Unified. By 45 minutes. With only 15 minutes left in the test, I staggered into 33-225, my heart still racing from the shock. Professor Drela gave me the full hour to take it. This was less than halfway through the semester. A little after this, I started getting sick. I lost weight. Which, for me, a 105 pound girl, was a pretty big deal. One day, while we were getting chinese food at Kendall food court, my friend Jesse noticed that I wasnt eating much. Im full, I said. 3/4 of the little styrofoam lunch box was still filled with orange chicken and tofu. What he didnt know was at this point, a lunch box could fill me up three times over. But more than that, I was unhappy. I was cranky and skinny and disliked my classes and despised my work. My stomach hurt when it was full, hurt when it was empty, I got headaches that didnt go away like headaches should. You hear it a lot. College is about learning to take care of yourself. Well, as much as I hate to prove cliches correct, thats where I failed. Mommy and Daddy werent there to cook dinner for me when I had too much work to go out or do it myself. They werent there to remind me to take my vitamins. They werent around to say, You look overworked, youve gotten skinnier, pay attention to the warning signs. Well, it finally did catch my attention. I overslept the second exam in 8.033 (Relativity) by 45 minutes. Again, the professor gave me the full allotted time. I was in college once, too, he said. Now I dont want to give the wrong impression. Compassion isnt a prerequisite to becoming a professor at this school. Itd be a big mistake to confuse luck with law, and assume that I deserved anything but an F on both those two tests. But all that aside it was the jolt I needed I think, and in a way it wrenched me from the nightmare in which Id been a living character and I took a look around. This was the second time Id overslept something very important. Something I set 2 alarms for. Also, the exam was at 2pm. You might be wondering at the moral of this story. Is it grades? Had my gpa plummetted? No, when the dust settled on my science subjects last term, Id come away with 2 As and 2 Bs. But I was unhappy and the success of a semester is not measured in grades alone. Some people might say that this shows that students are dumb and should listen to their elders when they say go to class. But I think thats bull. Everyone learns differently. If you learn best by going to every lecture, taking meticulous notes, and if that makes you feel good, then absolutely that is what you should do. But if you learn better from readings and homework assignments, theres nothing wrong with that either. If it pleases you to lock yourself in your room- except to sneak out late at night in a trenchcoat to turn in your problem sets- and not say a single word of english to anyone, youll find good company here. Telling students they have to learn a certain way is crappy. Everyone deserves to find out for himself. Instead of saying, go to class, I think my advice will be as follows: pick classes that youll want to go to. And dont fall behind. I changed my major. I dont believe in the policy that you have to suffer in life before you get to have any fun. Truth is I didnt enjoy my engineering classes. While my other classmates were trudging through the work willingly, I felt like I was being dragged along in something I didnt want to do. Does this mean Im not interested in Aero/Astro? I dont know, but I dont think so. I think I will simply have to find a different path to reach my career goals. Im young, there are tons of open doors. These are the classes Im taking this semester: Quantum Physics 8.04 Statistical Physics 8.044 Abstract Algebra 18.703 Biology 7.013 Writing (Autobiographical) 21W.731 As of right now, I really like the selection and variety. I have more work than ever (I have an essay due more or less every week in writing class- dont take writing if you dont want to work) but Im getting 6-8 hours of sleep a night and eating half a pizza again and the pink is coming back into my cheeks. I go to every class. I have generally great lecturers this term and I like to have a face explaining things to me and I like to have the little words in between steps that illuminate everything which, sadly, are often omitted in textbooks and lecture notes. I work on problem sets by myself: I find that I learn best that way. And then I check answers with other students and offer and receive help on difficulties. I go to office hours whenever I can, because sometimes just talking a problem out is enough to offer new insights on it. I cook dinners and lunches and sometimes even a pancake and eggs breakfast with Mike (08) every day. I go grocery shopping every weekend. Heres another p iece of advice, find a cooking buddy. Mutual encouragement and motivation will keep you fed (and cheaply!) every day. If its a friend, you can snack in the lounges watching tv, if its a boyfriend/girlfriend, dim the lights and light a couple of candles. Either way, its a good time and usually a good break from problem sets. I spend maybe $40-50 a week on groceries, eat 2-3 meals every day, fancier on the weekends. Its a good deal, and cooking isnt that hard. Even you can learn. Here, I will throw in a couple of pictures. Since that is my job. These are some of the CCD images that I (yes, thats right, me) took (w/ my partner) using a 8 telescope for my freshman year astronomy seminar that I talked about. For 3 hours a week we froze our butts off on the roof of building 37 each at our little telescopes looking at stars, planets, and galaxies. Making LIFESIZE sketches and taking pictures. Actually, the first is a page from my lab notebook with some sketches of saturn. These are the images. This one is saturn. It looked a lot better in the telescope. Look, we werent using hubble, you have to lower your expectations a bit. A globular cluster. (First ever in the class!) I was still pretty psyched to get these. This is the moon: And lastly, the orion nebula. Anyways. Its time to end my big ol ranting entry. In conclusion, do I think I will get straight As this year? Hardly. Im taking much harder classes. But do I think this will be my best semester yet at MIT? You bet. OKAY THANKS FOR YOUR TIME -Lulu

Advice youve heard before and a story you havent

Advice you’ve heard before and a story you haven’t There are going to be a lot of people eager to give you advice on how to survive college and maybe even leave with a degree and some shreds of self respect. At least thats the way it was with me. Something that I heard over and over again from mouths of all shapes and sizes was Go to class. Go to class. Go to class. But thats for dumb kids who couldnt figure things out on their own. By second semester freshman year I attended at most one class per subject per week. I skipped all 18.03 (Differential Equations) lectures except the first, went to no recitations other than the ones immediately preceding exams. 8.022 (E+M) had lecture notes online by a previous lecturer, and it was not long after I discovered them that I stopped going to 8.022 as well. 6.001 (computer science) lectures were optional through an online lecture experiment so that was excusable. The only class to which I dragged myself on a semi-regular basis was my mandatory-attendance HASS class. The advantages? I got to sleep in later. I got to save time that would otherwise have been spent in class. I got to stay warm and cozy in my (over)heated room while it whistled and roared in wintry fury outside. I got to brag about not going to class and still doing fine. How did I go about this? Homework. Everything I learned that semester came from doing homework assignments. I would read the lecture notes from that week as I went along problem by problem, learning only the parts of the material necessary to hand in a completed assignment the next day. When the tests rolled around, I would attend the review sessions held immediately preceding to fill in the gaps between the problems. Of course, this schedule meant that I slept until noon every day and had to stay up until 6 or 7am on many occasions to not only finish a whole problem set the night before but also learn the material beforehand. But thats okay, since that extra time would have been spent in class anyways. And since I can learn faster than the lecturer talks, Im still saving time, right? It made sense, of course, until you tried to account for the extra time I should have saved. Where did that go? In a single week, I would end up sleeping 4 hours or less on at least 2 or 3 occasions. I would skip meals reasoning that Id got up late, so I didnt need breakfast, reasoning that Im hungry, but its 4am already and Im going to bed soon, anyways, as soon as I finish this last problem This wasnt a big deal for me, then. I was still healthy. Its at this point in the tale that the wise and weathered story-teller would learn his lesson. And I failed all my classes and got put on academic probation and then I shaped up and never missed another lecture and made straight As from then on. Well, correct me if Im wrong but life doesnt usually work like that. Truth is, I did just fine. I got As in 8.022 and 18.03 and Bs in 6.001 and 4.301. I even passed my astronomy seminar (P/F) 12.409 (which I highly recommend by the way). Another piece of universal advice came into mind at that point, If it works, stick with it. This one I followed. I sleepwalked through first semester sophomore year. Unified (engineering) started at 9am which made it easy to skip on a daily basis. Not to mention all equations and little theory which made it easy to pick up the night before a test or Monday night before the problem sets were due. Out of the 10 hours of lectures and recitations every week, I was present for maybe 2 or 3. My other classes didnt fare too much better (2 physics and a HASS class). Once you start skipping one class its hard to bring yourself to go to the others. I fell into the same pattern as the semester before. But there was one big difference. I was taking five classes, not four. Its easy to say that youll read the lecture notes for the class you just skipped, its even easy to believe that you will, and sometimes I would. But more often, I put it off. I fell behind. And its an awful feeling, being behind in a class. An awful pattern even, because, it requires you to correct for it all at once. I cant go to lecture if I havent learned any of the material of the past 2 weeks, it would be a waste of time, I wouldnt have any idea what was being said. I guess Ill just stay home and try to start from the beginning. And now Im missing yet another class. Im even farther behind. To be able to keep up with problem sets in all your MIT classes, eventually, you will have to fall into a pattern. Math on monday nights, maybe physics tuesdays and wednesdays, bio on thursdays, essays on sundays and you will feel like every minute of every day is filled. Where is the time to catch up on material that youve missed? Well, Im not a slow worker and Im not a fast worker. Im not brilliant and Im not dumb. And with 5 classes I didnt have much. Psets started taking me longer to do, and I found myself playing catchup into the wee hours of the morning. The sun came up over my unfinished work, and I hadnt slept. And it was the 3rd time this week. So my schedule was a little hectic, so what? I was still pulling As. Red flag #1. I overslept the second Fluid dynamics test in Unified. By 45 minutes. With only 15 minutes left in the test, I staggered into 33-225, my heart still racing from the shock. Professor Drela gave me the full hour to take it. This was less than halfway through the semester. A little after this, I started getting sick. I lost weight. Which, for me, a 105 pound girl, was a pretty big deal. One day, while we were getting chinese food at Kendall food court, my friend Jesse noticed that I wasnt eating much. Im full, I said. 3/4 of the little styrofoam lunch box was still filled with orange chicken and tofu. What he didnt know was at this point, a lunch box could fill me up three times over. But more than that, I was unhappy. I was cranky and skinny and disliked my classes and despised my work. My stomach hurt when it was full, hurt when it was empty, I got headaches that didnt go away like headaches should. You hear it a lot. College is about learning to take care of yourself. Well, as much as I hate to prove cliches correct, thats where I failed. Mommy and Daddy werent there to cook dinner for me when I had too much work to go out or do it myself. They werent there to remind me to take my vitamins. They werent around to say, You look overworked, youve gotten skinnier, pay attention to the warning signs. Well, it finally did catch my attention. I overslept the second exam in 8.033 (Relativity) by 45 minutes. Again, the professor gave me the full allotted time. I was in college once, too, he said. Now I dont want to give the wrong impression. Compassion isnt a prerequisite to becoming a professor at this school. Itd be a big mistake to confuse luck with law, and assume that I deserved anything but an F on both those two tests. But all that aside it was the jolt I needed I think, and in a way it wrenched me from the nightmare in which Id been a living character and I took a look around. This was the second time Id overslept something very important. Something I set 2 alarms for. Also, the exam was at 2pm. You might be wondering at the moral of this story. Is it grades? Had my gpa plummetted? No, when the dust settled on my science subjects last term, Id come away with 2 As and 2 Bs. But I was unhappy and the success of a semester is not measured in grades alone. Some people might say that this shows that students are dumb and should listen to their elders when they say go to class. But I think thats bull. Everyone learns differently. If you learn best by going to every lecture, taking meticulous notes, and if that makes you feel good, then absolutely that is what you should do. But if you learn better from readings and homework assignments, theres nothing wrong with that either. If it pleases you to lock yourself in your room- except to sneak out late at night in a trenchcoat to turn in your problem sets- and not say a single word of english to anyone, youll find good company here. Telling students they have to learn a certain way is crappy. Everyone deserves to find out for himself. Instead of saying, go to class, I think my advice will be as follows: pick classes that youll want to go to. And dont fall behind. I changed my major. I dont believe in the policy that you have to suffer in life before you get to have any fun. Truth is I didnt enjoy my engineering classes. While my other classmates were trudging through the work willingly, I felt like I was being dragged along in something I didnt want to do. Does this mean Im not interested in Aero/Astro? I dont know, but I dont think so. I think I will simply have to find a different path to reach my career goals. Im young, there are tons of open doors. These are the classes Im taking this semester: Quantum Physics 8.04 Statistical Physics 8.044 Abstract Algebra 18.703 Biology 7.013 Writing (Autobiographical) 21W.731 As of right now, I really like the selection and variety. I have more work than ever (I have an essay due more or less every week in writing class- dont take writing if you dont want to work) but Im getting 6-8 hours of sleep a night and eating half a pizza again and the pink is coming back into my cheeks. I go to every class. I have generally great lecturers this term and I like to have a face explaining things to me and I like to have the little words in between steps that illuminate everything which, sadly, are often omitted in textbooks and lecture notes. I work on problem sets by myself: I find that I learn best that way. And then I check answers with other students and offer and receive help on difficulties. I go to office hours whenever I can, because sometimes just talking a problem out is enough to offer new insights on it. I cook dinners and lunches and sometimes even a pancake and eggs breakfast with Mike (08) every day. I go grocery shopping every weekend. Heres another p iece of advice, find a cooking buddy. Mutual encouragement and motivation will keep you fed (and cheaply!) every day. If its a friend, you can snack in the lounges watching tv, if its a boyfriend/girlfriend, dim the lights and light a couple of candles. Either way, its a good time and usually a good break from problem sets. I spend maybe $40-50 a week on groceries, eat 2-3 meals every day, fancier on the weekends. Its a good deal, and cooking isnt that hard. Even you can learn. Here, I will throw in a couple of pictures. Since that is my job. These are some of the CCD images that I (yes, thats right, me) took (w/ my partner) using a 8 telescope for my freshman year astronomy seminar that I talked about. For 3 hours a week we froze our butts off on the roof of building 37 each at our little telescopes looking at stars, planets, and galaxies. Making LIFESIZE sketches and taking pictures. Actually, the first is a page from my lab notebook with some sketches of saturn. These are the images. This one is saturn. It looked a lot better in the telescope. Look, we werent using hubble, you have to lower your expectations a bit. A globular cluster. (First ever in the class!) I was still pretty psyched to get these. This is the moon: And lastly, the orion nebula. Anyways. Its time to end my big ol ranting entry. In conclusion, do I think I will get straight As this year? Hardly. Im taking much harder classes. But do I think this will be my best semester yet at MIT? You bet. OKAY THANKS FOR YOUR TIME -Lulu