Lost and Found Essay Example for Free

Lost and Found Essay It’s a story that many people have lived through, from one side or the other. You’re a child in a busy department store, tethered to your mother’s side by her firm grip on your hand, your eyes constantly drawn left and right by the colorful displays. She lets go to grab something or talk to a salesperson, and you see an exciting toy or stuffed animal and run to it. After playing with it for a few minutes you try to walk back, but your mother is gone. First a wave of confusion hits you, but it is quickly overcome by dread. You are alone and lost in a sea of noise and people. When great philosophers or authors talk or write of being â€Å"lost† they can mean all sorts of things, but few are as visceral as the feeling of being lost that a child in a situation like that can experience. Even if there’s a good chance the child is in no danger at all, the feeling of dread that accompanies feeling alone and lost in a crowded department store can be terrifying. Most people will have their first feeling of being lost as being literally, physically lost as children, whether it is in a department store, or in a large park, or simply down the next street. It makes sense, then, to start defining what it means to be â€Å"lost† with the experience of a child. What about that deep, philosophical â€Å"lost,† though? When people say they feel lost (as opposed to being physically lost) they often are referring to alienation of some sort. One way that people address alienation that serves as a good comparison is religion. People who believe strongly in their religion will often feel like they are spiritually â€Å"in place.† On the other hand, if some tragedy or crisis of identity strikes, they might suddenly feel spiritually lost. The same dread that a child who can’t find his mother feels in the department store can be felt by an adult who experiences a tragic accident and loses their belief in their religion. These definitions of lost could apply five hundred years ago just as easily as they apply today. I believe, though, that every era has challenges that are unique to it, and the information age is no exception. The â€Å"information age† really is aptly named, because in today’s fast-paced world we are hit with more information than any humans have ever faced. As modern people, we are constantly inundated with a flood of information everywhere we turn. Magazines and newspapers and books and nutrition labels and billboards and television programs – they’re all feeding us new information every waking moment. All these mediums pale in comparison to the true information mother lode though: the internet. With computers, people gain access to the vast majority of the world’s information at their fingertips. With the increasing popularity of internet-connected smart phones and tablet computers, though, this information is not only at our fingertips but alwa ys at our fingertips. What does the internet have to do with alienation and being lost? The sensory overload that Wikipedia and Youtube provide can be great for keeping people entertained, but it can also be all too easy to get lost in. Many people know the feeling of logging onto a computer or smart phone with a single goal in mind – sending an email, perhaps, or checking the weather next week – and spending not five minutes but an hour and a half, as the myriad attractions of the digital age distract them. Just like the child in the department store, people can be drawn to the colorful displays of the internet, and realize only when it is too late that they are lost. So, then, we can define (at least) three different ways that people can be lost. There is the physical â€Å"lost† – not knowing where you are physically. There is also the spiritual â€Å"lost† – not feeling at peace with your own existence. Finally, there is the information age â€Å"lost† – being trapped, pinned beneath ever-growing piles of information that your mind will never have time to process all of. All three of these forms of being lost have something in common: they feel bad, but are actually ultimately helpful. Since it’s been established previously that being lost is connected to being alienated, it might seem contradictory that it is actually a good thing. After all, those feelings associated with being lost – hopelessness, dread, despondence – are all quite uncomfortable and even painful to feel. Nobody likes to feel like they don’t know where they are in life, like they are out of place. No child likes the feeling of separation from their loved ones. And certainly nobody likes to look up and realize they’ve just wasted three hours of their lives they’ll never get back watching funny videos about cats on the internet. Overall, all the emotions that being lost makes people feel are negative – but all the negativity serves a purpose. Without darkness, there’s no light, and without being lost, there’s no being found. There’s an old stereotype that people who are on a bad path in life will never be able to clean up their act until they hit the lowest possible point, and in a way getting lost can be like that. Realizing that they are lost can be the ultimate wake up call. It’s easy to demonstrate how getting lost once or twice in a physical way can help someone. Going back to the example of the child in the department store, what is most likely to happen is that the child will have a harmless scare for a while and then be re-united with its mother. While in the short-term both the child and its parents will be scared, in the long-term the child will hopefully learn not to stray far from its parents in an unfamiliar place. If the person getting physically lost is an adult instead of a child, they may learn the value of being more prepared (by bringing a map on a road trip, perhaps) or even the value of asking other people for directions. Spiritual periods of being lost can be similarly helpful to a person’s growth and development. Someone who’s faith has never been tested may continue to go on acting as they do while life is easy, but if things get harder they won’t know what to do. On the other hand, if someone experiences a tragedy or unexpected twist in their life their faith might be challenged and tested. Even though they may feel horribly lost during this period, they may emerge from it with a new, stronger faith in their beliefs. On the other hand, if they find their beliefs to be lacking, they may instead have new personal revelations and growth that will lead them to a belief system that they more truly support. Getting lost in the information age is less easy to define than the more traditional ways people get lost. In many cases, people embrace the information overload and dive right in. Every day, people’s jobs and education can require them to submerse themselves in the sea of information that is the internet. It is hard to say what the consequences of people being inundated with so much information will be. The easy access (and unavoidable flood) of information is a relatively new thing, that has only been around to this degree for at most a bit over a decade, so the implications have yet to be seen. What is it to be lost? There are at least a handful of answers to this question, but in the broadest terms possible, being lost is being alienated from one’s surroundings. Everybody gets lost from time to time in one way or another, and that will likely never change. Getting lost can be uncomfortable and scary, but getting lost is an important part of life. Through getting lost and then finding themselves again, people can grow and learn more about themselves and their surroundings. So what is it to be lost? To be lost is to be in a state of change: to be lost is to be down, but coming back up, to be in trouble but in hope of being found again.

Chapters 1- 6 of To Kill A Mockingbird :: To Kill a Mockingbird Essays

The first five chapters of To Kill a Mockingbird introduce the setting, atmosphere, theme, and many different characters, who have unique characteristics. The theme of prejudice is also developed in this introductory section. The Finch family and some of their neighbours are introduced as well, along with important elements such as the Radley house.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The Radley house is an important element of mystery in the beginning chapters. As Scout was describing the setting, she described the mysterious house by saying, â€Å"The Radley Place was inhabited by an unknown entity the mere description of whom was enough to make us behave for days on end,† (Lee 6). Dill, who was from Meridian, Mississippi, was fascinated with the Radley house, and would stare at it for long periods of time. The house had darkened to the colour of the slate-gray yard around it. Johnson grass and rabbit-tobacco grew in abundance on the front yard. Inside of the house, people said there lived a â€Å"malevolent phantom† named Boo Radley (Lee 8). He supposedly went out at night and peeped into other people’s windows. Scout also mentions, â€Å"When people’s azaleas froze in a cold snap, it was because he had breathed on them.† (Lee 9) Tall pecan trees shook their fruit into the schoolyard, from the Radley chicke nyard. However, the nuts would lay untouched by the children, as it was said that Radley pecans would kill anyone who ate them (Lee 9).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Different types of prejudice are evident in this chapter. For instance, Scout refers to Walter as a â€Å"Cunningham†, and this automatically places him in the poor class (Lee 20). Miss Caroline displays prejudice towards Scout because she can read. Scout is singled out after she reads to the class, and Miss Caroline accuses her of her father teaching her how to read (Lee 17). It seems as though more serious types and instances of prejudice will develop as the story progresses.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Atticus Finch is a respectable man and an example of his nature can be seen when Walter Cunningham is invited over to eat dinner. Atticus treated him with the same respect he would treat anyone else, even though Walter is poor (Lee 24). Another notable characteristic of Atticus is shown when he says to Scout, â€Å"We couldn’t operate a single day without Cal, have you ever thought of that? You think about how much Cal does for you, and you mind her, you hear?

Praying for Sheetrock: A Work of Nonfiction Essay

So emphatic is Melissa Fay Greene that Praying for Sheetrock is a work of nonfiction that she includes the phrase as a part of the title. Perhaps she feared that her use of novelistic techniques might lead the reader astray into believing that the stories she tells, the history she recounts, are imagined or distorted. Without resorting to journalese, she employs some of the reporter’s tricks to make her work more immediate: background stories, anecdotes of local color, repetition, and just enough narrative tension to push her tale forward. Consciously or subconsciously, she absorbs and uses to great effect some of the techniques Truman Capote developed for In Cold Blood (1966). She re-creates conversations without unnecessary asides and, more important, in the language she heard in McIntosh County. This skillful use of dialect establishes character in ways that expository description could not. Her own narrative voice is distinctive, assured, often poetic, as in her introduction to the place about which she writes: â€Å"McIntosh County, on the flowery coast of Georgia-small, isolated, lovely.† She never forgets that it is home to the men and women, black and white who help tell her story. She says, â€Å"If the Messiah were to arrive today, this cloudless, radiant county would be magnificent enough to receive Him.† Its beauty, however, is deceptive. The grinding poverty of its residents is all too real and ugly, and, until recently, the corruption so pervasive that the county’s name was synonymous in the state with good-old-boy political chicanery. For example, one of the effective ploys to keep the black citizenry in line was to allow them to plunder wrecked transport trucks on busy U.S. 17. From the aftermath of just such a wreck, the book gets its title, and for a people as dependent on miracles as on the economy to get by, God took on the epithet of â€Å"Sheetrock- Deliverer.† Finally one man, a disabled black boilermaker named Thurnell Alston, decided his community could no longer depend on the whims of God or the vagaries of white men for justice. The men and women of McIntosh County had lived so long under a time- honored, not always benevolent despotism that, at least on this local level, Alston was revolutionary in thinking that law could be impartial and that each man and woman deserved a voice in deciding how he or she would be governed. If  McIntosh County resembled a feudal realm, it was because the sheriff, Tom Poppell, had made himself lord and master, and under him certain whites and one or two chosen blacks as his nobles. Poor blacks and whites were, pure and simple, the serfs, destined to await the largesse of Sheriff Poppell and the other elec ted white officials. Yet, as the author describes the place, it was peaceful for the inhabitants, if not for the unlucky transients who stopped enroute to Florida: â€Å"For most of this century, there was a strange racial calm in the county, consisting in part of good manners, in part of intimidation, and in part because the Sheriff cared less about the colors black and white than he did about the color green, and the sound it made shuffled, dealt out and redealt, folded and pocketed beside the wrecked trucks and inside the local truckstop, prostitution houses, clip joints, and warehouse sheds after hours.† It was a place, then, where everyone knew what was going on and, in general, accepted it, a place where problems for the old were taken to the church and for the young to the juke joint. Greene emphasizes that special local circumstances, at least particularly Southern ones, dictated that â€Å"when angry groups of blacks and whites faced each other, everyone would know everyone else’s names and addresses, and know their mamas.† They would also all be armed to the teeth, a dangerous stalemate that ironically forestalled violence. The confrontation came when a white deputy, annoyed by the drunken bantering of courtship, shot a black man in the mouth and threw him in jail without medical attention. The black community, abuzz with the news, came together in protest, and the Civil Rights movement in McIntosh County was born. Its undisputed leader was Thurnell Alston, who along with Sammie Pinkney, a retired policeofficer, and Nathaniel Grovner, a preacher, brought the tactics of protest and confrontation to bear on a system of patronage controlled by Sheriff Poppell. He had actually employed black deputies and had â€Å"allowed† blacks to register to vote in the past. He depended on their voting in a bloc for his hand- picked candidates after 1966. Until that time, he manipulated the process so that no black man or woman could have been elected to the county commission, but he was a wily and astute politician who thought that he could control the shape of the inevitable  changes he saw elsewhere when they came to â€Å"his† county. In that year, his black candidate, a 78-year-old man, was elected to the commission so that federal minority participation guidelines were satisfied. Poppell guaranteed federal funding of county projects, and although he was never indicted for any crime, some of those funds are said to have lined his and his relatives’ pockets. Sheriff Poppell already had, therefore, a respected black churchman, Deacon Thorpe, on the commission, and when Thurnell Alston ran against him the year after the shooting, the at-large voters returned the sheriff’s yes-man to office. Once again, Poppell proved his clout. Among other things he controlled in the county was the selection of grand juries, and soon after the first election Alston lost, these white men exercised what they thought would be a routine bit of county business by appointing the brother of the county grand jury’s foreman to the county board of education. â€Å"And to create that opening, they displaced Chatham Jones, the only black member of the board of education. Thus, operating out of a system of patronage and nepotism, the all-white grand jury created in its own likeness the all-white school board to preside over the majority-black public schools.† The grand jury also had the responsibility of selecting trial juries, and in such fashion, the system took vengeance on blacks who had demonstrated a raw, as-yet undisciplined, power after the shooting. The black community organized, and its leaders contacted lawyers with the state’s legal-aid network, the Georgia Legal Services Program. These â€Å"young, upper-middle-class, mostly urban, mostly Yankee lawyers,† most of whom were white and nearly all of whom shared the messianic idealism of early 1970’s radicalism, were eager to help once they realized that enfranchised blacks-the county had roughly 44 percent of its blacks registered to vote-could effectively be cut out of local politics even when they constituted a majority of the population. With help from the legal-aid attorneys, the black community eventually won a series of suits that by 1979 stipulated a random, nondiscriminatory jury selection process and that divided Darien, the county seat, into two wards, one of which is majority black, and McIntosh County into four districts, two of which are majority black. To achieve these ends, the black community transformed itself into an activist, cohesive bloc not at all reluctant to use tactics of confrontation, including boycotts, that had been successful elsewhere. They had a charismatic leader in Thurnell Alston, who appeared to relish the challenge. He became the first independent black man, untethered to the Poppell political machine, to be elected to the county commission. Greene’s description of that long, hot election day in August, 1978, combines levity with suspense to emphasize the historic nature of the occasion. She says that the celebration that night, one she recounts in vivid, you-are-there prose, was over a principle, hardfought and won, â€Å"the principle that if a person is freezing to death in the winter, she shouldn’t have to pray for sheetrock. Municipal services ought to provide her with some. â€Å"Equally momentous for this backwater of Georgia-and, probably, Greene does not give it the weight it deserves in her chronology-was the opening of the final stretch of Interstate 95 through the county. Along U.S. 17, the no-tell motels, the clip joints, the gambling dens, the rough bars dried up from lack of business and went away, and, suddenly, it was less necessary, less profitable, to control county politics in order to assure that highway robbery remained legal. Or, as Greene puts it more poetically, â€Å"The old highway became a long, hot daydream of Florida.†Meanwhile, Alston annoyed his fellow commissioners by pushing a social program while they wrangled over attracting industry, paving roads, and promoting business. His accomplishments may appear small compared to changes elsewhere, but for the rural, isolated county, they were extraordinary. In his decade in office, ignoring, defying the sheriff at every turn, taking the issues to the public, he oversaw the creation of a hospital authority and a physician-staffed medical building deep in the county. He brought plumbing and water to settlements where people used outhouses and wells. He arranged for renovation assistance programs that aided homeowners in adding bathrooms to their cabins. He saw that a multipurpose building was built for the antebellum black community on Sapelo Island. He attracted a grant to build a mental facility out in the county. He did all these things without help or hindrance from the sheriff, who was too smart not to read the writing on the wall. Local politics in Georgia are notoriously byzantine in their good-old-boy machinations, and so in a peculiar twist of fate, Thurnell Alston, in his capacity as county commissioner, served as a pallbearer at Poppell’s funeral in 1979. It is fitting death-of-an-era symbolism, especially seen against the interstate’s eclipsing of commerce, legal and otherwise, along the busiest road through the county. Had the story ended here, Praying for Sheetrock would have been a compelling study of current events, one that could be universalized to what was happening across the South. Unfortunately, the story has a coda, one equally relevant to what is happening all across the country. Thurnell Alston and his wife, Rebecca, lost a child in a mindless accident. They drifted apart, and Alston became embittered, indifferent, and eventually, careless. A local spokesman against drugs, he was nevertheless nabbed in a sting operation and sentenced to five years in prison for conspiracy to possess cocaine with intent to distribute and for using a telephone to facilitate the sale of drugs. In spite of what some in the county saw as ultimate treason to his own people, Thurnell Alston had helped effect great changes in McIntosh County. In 1992, two members of the McIntosh county commission were black, the chairman, elected on an at-large basis, was white. Two members of Darien’s city council were black; the mayor, again elected at-large, was white. Half of the county’s deputy sheriffs were black, as was half of Darien’s police force. In 1989, two black women were elected in at-large countywide elections to positions as superintendent of schools and tax commissioner. Praying for Sheetrock, among other honors, was nominee for one of the National Book Awards. It is worthy of all the critical and popular praise it has received. Beautifully written, perfectly paced, and authentic in voice and action, the book is a model history, one less gifted writers will have  trouble emulating. Its greatest success is in dramatizing one small chapter of important, very human, history. McIntosh County’s people, for the most part, are still desperately poor, and in spite of the well-deserved attention stirred by this book, the county is still an economic wasteland. Yet its people, true to their traditions, still pray for help to a busy God. More practically, they have learned that they have the United States Constitution on their side as well. references Atlantic Journal Constitution. September 22, 1991, p. N8. Chicago Tribune. December 1, 1991, VI, p. 3. The Christian Science Monitor. December 2, 1991, p. 13. Commonweal. CXVIII, December 6, 1991, p. 722. Library Journal. CXVI, October 15, 1991, p. 106. Los Angeles Times Book Review. December 15, 1991, p. 1. The Nation. CCLIII, December 23, 1991, p. 821. The New York Times Book Review. XCVI, November 3, 1991, p. 7. Publishers Weekly. CCXXXVIII, August 16, 1991, p. 40. The Washington Post Book World. XXI, November 24, 1991, p. 3.

THE PROCESSES OF BUSINESS MANAGEMENT

Sample details Pages: 5 Words: 1641 Downloads: 1 Date added: 2017/06/26 Category Business Essay Type Research paper Did you like this example? Introduction Here we understand what research is?; it is another word for gathering information or facts or data. The more information, facts, or data we have is helpful to solve the problem and make our own good decisions. Business Research subject end result is action and implement the advance knowledge we gained by contributing to our own challenging life or future business aspects. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "THE PROCESSES OF BUSINESS MANAGEMENT | Reflection" essay for you Create order We interact with everyday people of ordinary people and extra ordinary people such as teachers, students, scientists, professors, scholars, business owners, librarians, book keepers, politicians and many more which was the result of advance knowledge created in the past to gather information. Accordance, to the three year degree program and final year first semester one subject; business research helpful students to be aware of their surroundings and accommodating to answers to the business related questions. Subsequently, we have learnt about how research contributes to management, identification of the research process such as; discovering the management questions and research questions, research proposal, research design, data collection and preparation, data analysis and interpretation, report writing and etc. Also, how to use the secondary data to answer management questions, identify and apply appropriate designs for conducting specific business research, how sampling is acc omplished in survey research and the difference between probability and non-probability sampling and formulate testable research hypothesis based on management questions. Learning Experiences 2.1 Learning Experiences of Business Research Learning is all about gaining knowledge of or skill in by study, experience or being taught. Learning experience is observing and reflecting on the consequences of an action in a situation. Concrete experience Testing implications of Observations and reflections concepts in new situations Formation of abstract concepts and generations Figure 1. The experimental Learning Model Learning has considered as a four-stage cycle. Gradual experience is the basis for observation and reflection. Today, successful manager or administrator is differentiating from each other by not having the knowledge or skills by their capability if adopt and familiarizing the changing demands of their job and career by using the learning skills. There is a mortal about learning such as one learns or he/ she does not. More explains mortal about learning is deficient of accepting the learning process. 2.2 Learning processes of Business Research Coventry University in United Kingdom provides with vast opportunities and links for the career path of a business student. Academic career gives the opportunity to select the career path in chosen and pretend field. Combination of academic and business link provides the authority for both educational and the corporate sector experiences. Most of the research standards in the reality of business as most of the theories are ratify in real world of business. Research simply means a search of facts solutions to problems and it is systematic and methodical investigation. In addition, it is an organized inquiry and increases knowledge. In the environment, there are different issues such as socio-economic, health problems, human relations, marketing, production, finance etc and research provides answers to those problems taking place in the society, industry and trade. A research project allows students to apply theory to, and or analyze more issues that are general. It offers student s an opportunity to identify and select a research problem and investigate it independently. In Business research we learn about research concepts which explains definition and application of research and formulating and clarifying the research topic, literature review which conduct how to do a literature search and critically review and analyze the literature, the research proposal, research design, data gathering sampling and questionnaires such as identifying the population sampling procedure, advantages; data gathering questionnaires as different source of data collection, data gathering interviews and alternatives, reflective journal writing and reporting results by written format and by presentations. Accordance to the Business Research all ten topics are interesting and effective. But the most interesting topic was data gathering, sampling and questionnaires; which is a vast area of business research subject. Business Research methods or techniques vary from size of the compa ny and information required. For an example, customer research might engage with customer feelings or experiences about utilizing a product or service by using customer satisfaction methods such as questionnaires, seminars or interviews. When researching public information, business statistics on financial and educational information in relates to product usage, customer demographics and hours of television viewed by customers in a one geographic area will be available as a end result of the research. Sampling help us to overcome constrains and to carryout, our work effectively and make our judgment accurately. Besides, it helps limit the item selection in a suitable manner without making unnecessary expenses with budgetary requirements. Sampling procedure, which contains with nine topics, was new to learn in business research subject. It helps in decision making. Learning reasons of Business Research Business Research is important within the organization or outside the environment issues to be solve and find the solutions. Research helps to solve existing decision-making problems, which makes the organization more profitable and solve problems of immediate concern. Most organizations put much effort to gather information before they make decisions. Research has need of effort, time, and money to have data collection to make good decisions. Business Research consists of a program which tells and show how appropriate the collected and scrutinized information that always supportive for good decision making. When the research and analysis are completed, the result is communed to management. This is why business research is important as it provides information; concerning critical issues that have an influence on the target market and marketing mix. In addition, business research is corporate to modify the market and solve the organization uncorrected or wrong data to remote regi ons at affordable cost and business to earn more profits. Business fail to continue in resourceful way without business research and it is vital for every field of business. Therefore, we cannot run our businesses without business research. When learning about the business research, it helps us to conduct our own research to benefit our business and future. From time to time, good blueprint of instructions helps with the research process. Learning Experience in relation to academic development I have been involved in Business Research by identifying and classifying dissimilar diversity learning methods and the end result of it. The intension of this research of this business research is to recognize unusual methods have been taught and implement to solve organizations problems and to identify the learning styles and suitable learning modes which is available and to improve with the design of learning experiences. There are two goals of academic development; such as particular detailed subject matter and learning about strengths and weaknesses as a learner. Understanding on the subject matter and strengths and weaknesses helps and support a framework for continuing learning on the job. Learning experience is not restricted to the classroom but also turn out to be an essential and unambiguous work. On the job experience; becomes a focus for testing and exploring new ideas. Learning Experience in relation to Professional Development In Business Research studies practical professional development of statistical power is important as; planning of sample sizes prior to gathering data used to evaluate statistical hypotheses. This helps to conclude apposite sample size; has important limitations in actual business research studies. More important relative to research proposal and main report in sample size approach is available with statistical testing of multiple hypotheses using different testing methodologies. Therefore, dissimilar hypotheses need to be involve with; correlation or regression analysis, the use of structural equation modeling, analysis of variance. As a result, the employ of the sample size strength of mind in decision making and in the main report most such studies and at work. In addition, this subjects directions for future business too. It helps for my research goals such as; product or service I want to sell or to determine potential market, size of the competition or to test the effectivene ss and the market position of the product and service of my future intend business. Learning Experience in relation to personal development Own personal development plan is a key fundamental part of our career journey. During the three year degree program thorough knowledge about the subject, diversity of skills that we develop is essential to become an independent researcher in everyday life. We need to understand and identify the starting point and where you want to be to sequence to plan well-organized, resourceful and competent direction to obtain where we want to be in future or in a business position. Therefore, business research program has been helpful to indentify my current skills and in order to proceed with all the design took to track the career journey. In addition, I have learnt; a range of social research methods techniques and skills and how they has been used to address particular research questions in management and business settings, survey design and analysis, a range of qualitative research methods, a range of quantitative methods of analysis, project planning and development, ethical problems and issues related to social research and management research in particular and how research in various management specialism have developed. Conclusion In business, environment research is a essential key our everyday decision making. It helps to find out the wrong information and save money and time. Research is significant success as acquiring day to day life challenges and decision making. Research plus action will assume a successful researcher. Research aim is to resolve the business or everyday life issues or problems, which occurred before or present with profitable or immediate concern. This helps to understand how research impact on our everyday and business decision making. Most people do not put much effort to collect or back up information or data. Only few do back them up. There is a risk or cost of making important decisions without gathering information for evidence for future reference.