Looking For Alaska Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Looking For Alaska - Research Paper Example In the novel, Looking for Alaska by John Green, a girl named Alaska mysteriously dies, and her friends must go on a  journey to figure out what exactly happened to her. Not only do the readers follow them on their journey, but they are also given a look into the suffering of Alaska and her own quest to find the end to hers. Although many people suffer and may consider suicide as their solution. It is essential that they find their own way to end their suffering and escape the Labyrinth, and to do so they need to realize that life has so much to offer, people are there to help them, and with hard work anything is possible. Although many people suffer and may consider suicide as their solution, it is vital that they find their own way to end their suffering and escape the Labyrinth, and to do, so they need to realize life has so much to offer, people are there to help them, and with hard work anything is possible. John Green was born in 1977, in Alabama. John Green is inspired by aut hors like Laurie Halse Anderson and Walter Dean Myers. He began writing his writing career while working at Booklist. In the book looking for Alaska, john green uses his native birth place as the setting for the novel. John Green grew-up in Orlando Florida and attended Kenyon College. In 2007, John and his brother Hank made a pact to cease communication  through texting and only communicate via YouTube video posts. They video posted each other every day. The two brothers named this Project brotherhood 2.0 (Nicholas, 2011). The decision to use YouTube to communicate to each other, inspired ‘nerd fighters’ an online community, who fight for intellectualism and try to reduce by large the level of suck worldwide. This attempt has received thousands of dollars through donations from various charities (Nerdfighters, 2012). We are all born with hope and desire to fulfill and have a purpose in life. The finding of this purpose is beneficial to individuals. The effort to find this purpose is all left to an individual. Looking for Alaska is a story about finding that purpose in an individual’s life. Miles describes  the labyrinth suffering  as the greater perhaps in life and quotes from Francois Rabelais (Green, p.5). In looking for Alaska, John Green uses his characters to demonstrate the search for this purpose in life. He says, â€Å""Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia. (...) You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you'll escape it one day, and how fearsome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present."(Green 30) The distractive lifestyles of the teenagers, dabbles in sex and drugs and the pranks, this is all an attempt to find their purpose in life. As one is trying to find their purpose in life, they meet obstacles and suffer  along the way. How  a  person  deals or perceives this suffering is notable as it will help how one tackles with them. The paper discusses the different answers that the characters in looking for Alaska give after searching themselves. Alaska’s last words were â€Å"how do I get out of this labyrinth of suffering?† this word taunted her classmates as well as those that she told. They all try to find an answer to this question. Throughout the book, this question is answered. To some they thought that the only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is through death. Miles and Alaska are out to find the

Career development Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words - 3

Career development - Essay Example A large number of studies have shown that there is strong relationship between academic performance and self-efficacy beliefs of an individual. Self-efficacy reflects in every action of a student including their activities, extent of hard work, performance, behavior and determination during tough times. Thus, this paper aims to enhance and investigate the extent of self-efficacy and for this purpose, a few exercises have been provided including action plan for improving self-efficacy as well as psychometric tests. Having high self-efficacy allows a student to make reasonable success in academics whereas low self-efficacy causes a student to avoid tasks. It has been argued that individuals having high self-efficacy work harder, accept challenges, and stay determined during complex situations. Prior mentioned personal development plan has been created in order to improve self-efficacy in the areas of self-confidence, academic performance, and employability skills. It must be borne in mind that these three elements play a vital role in enhancing and expanding self-efficacy. Therefore, a few activities have been provided for each of the element in order to enhance overall self-efficacy of an individual. First, for making some improvements in academics, one has to plan how to handle varying courses so as to take good grades in each one of them. If there is an option to select courses on our own, then course selection must be balanced. For instance, a couple of complex courses can be taken with two or three easy courses. Apart from courses, a student needs to participate in seminars, debates, and presentation in order to get the snapshot of real world scenarios and to stay in touch with current events. Students also need to improve their reading and writing skills as well as keep a daily schedule of everyday studies. Building self-confidence is another important field. Self-confidence can be enhanced

The Impact of Human Resource Development Programs on Employee Essay

The Impact of Human Resource Development Programs on Employee Performance - Essay Example In this research, primary data was gathered through the use of a survey questionnaire and interviews administered to two sample groups, namely managers and rank-and-file employees of ARAMCO. The 100 respondents were selected through stratified random sampling, comprising 80 rank-and-file employees and 20 managerial employees. Secondary data were gathered from existing literature on ARAMCO, particularly its annual report and documents existing in the public domain. The study determined that Saudi ARAMCO employs a best-fit approach to its human resources management, allowing for the gradual and continuous development of HRD policies and practices in the areas of motivation, rewards management, and performance management and appraisal. There are a number of gaps that exist between management and employee perceptions on these sensitive aspects of HRM; however, there are also a number of areas where the two parties commonly agree. The study concludes that a more effective HRM strategy may be arrived at by a refinement of the policies and practices currently evolving in the different internal environments of ARAMCO’s vast structure.SAUDI ARAMCO officially titled the ‘Saudi Arabian Oil Company’, is a unique organization on the global business landscape. It is the world’s singularly most valuable company, with assets currently valued (in 2010) at between $2.2 - $7 trillion. This value is likely to increase, however, as the company also presides over the world’s largest known oil reserves, an increasingly important commodity and the single most important driving factor for global business.

Incorporate Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Incorporate - Essay Example This price that the option is offered is referred to as a â€Å"grant† price. This â€Å"grant† price is usually the market value of the shares at the time the employees are granted that opportunity to receive the stock option. Those employees that have received the grant hope that the market value of the shares will later increase and thus benefit from the grant. This program is perceived as a flexible way of sharing the company’s ownership with employees. This thus calls for high performance of employees as they feel attached to the company they are working for. It also attracts and retains a motivated workforce. However the option is not a strategy that would work for a company that its future is not certain as members and staff off the company would take that opportunity to sell their shares to avoid total loss of their investment. This can be valued by using the information of the company’s annual report. Using HP as our case study we begin by valuing the employee stock options using the black-Scholes option pricing method. To calculate the black-Scholes value, we combine the information with our estimates of the following

Developmental Biology Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Developmental Biology - Research Paper Example Epigenetic factors refer to changes other than the changes at the level of DNA that lead to changes in heredity. These include DNA methylation which is present in all known vertebrates. This paper aims to study recent literature and studies that have been produced in order to find out the factors that affect aging. For this purpose, literature dated after 2006 has been used in order to ensure that the information is as recent as possible. This study will be useful in developing a better understanding of a vital part of developmental biology that is aging. INTRODUCTION Human race has always been fascinated by the idea of eternal youthfulness and functionality. The physiological and psychological changes that occur with age have always haunted humans and as a result, a lot of time, money and effort have gone into discovering the reasons behind aging in order to avoid the effects of growing age. With the advent of newer technologies, scientists have come to see aging as a process that o ccurs at the molecular level that eventually shows its effect at the level of the organ and later the whole organism. Some of the physiological changes that occur with age include decreased activity of neurotransmitters, a fall in sensory acuity and perception and a reduction in circulatory capacity. These changes lead to the loss of functionality that is associated with aging at the level of an organism. At the level of the organ, these changes occur due to the inability of the existing cells to replace the dying or damaged cells in order to maintain function. Thus, we see several diseases that pertain to specific organs and are closely related to increasing age. The inability to replace the older cells with new ones is a loss of functionality at the cellular level. The biochemical machinery within a cell enables the cell to replicate adequately so that the number of functional cells is always enough to maintain the health of an organ. However, with age, changes within this machine ry shift the balance such that the process slows down gradually affecting the organ hence the organism (Morimoto and Cuervo). Therefore, the real key to unlocking the secret behind aging lies in the factors that affect the cellular machinery. Whether it is the change in DNA, a change in gene expression or a change in the environment of the organism which eventually penetrates his system that regulates aging and to what extent is a question that has been investigated extensively in recent past. This research paper takes a detailed look at such investigations in an attempt to understand how aging is affected by genetic, epigenetic or environmental factors. Aging: effect of genes, epigenetics and environment Genes and aging The field of biological aging has been exploring the effect of genes on aging with a view of not only attaining the capability to slow or stop the process of aging but also to stop the development of several disease that have very strong links with increasing age. H owever, most of these investigations have been carried out on worms, rodents and drosophila on the basis that not only are they easily accessible but also because certain studies suggest that worms, yeast and people have common genes for aging (Callaway). In 2008, scientists from Eovtos Lorand University, Hungary, conducted a research on nematodes, Caenorhabditis elegans, that were deficient

Negative brand 4Ps analysis Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Negative brand 4Ps analysis - Assignment Example The company’s strategy for succeeding in the market has been selling its products at a lower cost and for years, its culture has been operating on the assumption that keeping costs under control will sustain the company in the competitive global PC marketplace. Things have however changed in recent years and Acer has been constantly failing in the market. In 2012, the company was a position down in terms of worldwide PC sales, since it occupied a fourth place (Barker, businessinsider.com). In an effort to satisfy its users and customers and maintain a competitive position in the PC market, Acer has been changing its look. Acer group named this as its multi-brand strategy (Acer Group, acer-group.com). The implementation of the multi-brand strategy has been done by making Acer’s range of products different aesthetically, as well as fully featured and innovative. For desktops, their conventional design had been changed, while notebooks have been made slimmer and longer lasting. For desktops, Acer has come up with stylish LCD’s and for notebooks, their weight has been significantly reduced making them lighter and their battery life lengthened for more convenience and freedom (Acer Group, acer-group.com). People like having their needs and desires met without too many complications and Acer’s goal has been to satisfy its customers. Product: In terms of reliability, Acer laptop brands occupy 9% among all laptop brands worldwide (Egan, pcadvisor.co.uk). After being used for a while, it has been noted that the speed of Acer laptops reduces, while booting seems to take longer and webcams have problems. These negative factors make Acer fail as a product in the market place. Price: The cost of Acer PC products in comparison to other PC products is relatively low. This has been the case for years. The company has maintained the

Lebanon Annotated Bibliography Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Lebanon - Annotated Bibliography Example Within the context of the stated, allegiance to Lebanon is subsumed by family and blood and this is the real source of the country's division and problems. Cerulo examines the phenomenon of identity in this article. As he explains, each and every individual has multiple identities. Amongst these are primordial identity, optionalist identity and collectivist identities. A person is identified in terms of his family, his social class, his educational status, his religion, his ethnicities and his nationality, to name but a handful. None of these identities cross out or negate the other but, instead, supposedly co-exist. The real question is which of these identities dominates as the dominant identity is usually that which directs behaviour and actions. Cerulo believes that the dominant identity is a negotiated identity, one that has been constructed on the based of all the identities particular to the individual. Farour, a political sociologist, argues that Lebanon's youth are confronting an identity crisis. Not only do they have to contend with the multiple identities which are thrust upon them by the very fact that they happened to be born in a country in which familial and ethnic identities dominate over others but with the East versus West tension. They are expected to be Easterners, Arabs whose identity is defined in traditional Arab-centric cultural terms. Yet, due to their unprecedented exposure to the outside world and to Western culture, they are unable to unquestioningly accept the traditional Arab/Eastern identity. They are trapped between Eastern and Western identities and are a product of the interaction between the two. Faour believes that the country's youth is engaged in the negotiation of an identity which would draw the East and the West together. Salibi, K. (1988) A house of many mansions: The history of Lebanon reconsidered. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Salibi engages in a historical investigation of the roots of Lebanon's identity problem. As he presents it, over the past centuries Lebanon was exposed to numerous cultures, each and every one of which attempted to impose itself on the country. The Arabs tried to Arabize Lebanon, the Ottomans tried to Ottomize and the French to Frenchify it to name but a few examples. Throughout its history, Lebanon has moved from one identity to the other. The ultimate outcome was that the country was not given the opportunity to develop its own national identity, culminating in division between multiple identities. This, according to Salibi, is Lebanon's