In the free evening you sit comfortably in your armchair and read an exciting book. Suddenly the clock strikes ten and you listen carefully to every strike of it. It seems like these are the last seconds of your life passing by and a strange feeling appears deep down in your gutter, but you are not able to define what is it. The feeling appears when you think of death. So, what is the truth? What do you feel to that moment that is going to come eventually?
Many researches have been done in psychology to define the most common feeling towards death. According to the majority of the scholars, it is fear. Only in one term paper outline of a student there was another feeling mentioned. It was indifference. We can determine what the feeling depends on. Certainly, it depends on a personality and his/her outlook. Those who haven’t accomplished everything that was planned think that they should live until they do what they were destined to in this life. People are afraid of death when they imagine the way they die. Will it hurt? What will I feel? Fear to die makes them outsiders, for they are convinced that communication will bring a lot of severe maladies and close themselves in their little worlds. Love can also be a factor. You will not agree to shorten your life if you know that there is somebody who loves you more than anything and will not agree to leave this person. And finally, when it comes to those who are willing to die and desperately want it to happen very fast, a couple of factors can also be found. This can be also a nice term paper idea. Psychology is very interested in motivations of actions of people.
Why are people ready to say good bye to life? We can find several reasons. If a person is tragically unhappy and there is nothing in his/her life that can satisfy, he/she will commit suicide. This is a trait of an extremely weak personality and if found they should be closely watched over by relatives and friends. A person can decide to commit suicide because of extreme circumstances. Once a person is in the corner and there is no way out, he/she can give up and leave this world for the situation is absolutely unbearable. When one has experienced a big loss, he/she is also ready to commit suicide. This is the easiest way to kill the pain inside and join whomever they have lost. People, who are mentally sick, are also able to commit suicide. They don’t think about what they leave behind because their brain functions are out of order. At times of clear conscience they decide to relief themselves out of misery their ill mind creates. Those who already know that they don’t have much time left can also be close to suicidal thoughts, though some of them can cherish every second left over anything a common human can imagine. Suicide is an awful sin and nobody has the right to commit it, for we were given a life and are not to waist it, even if some problems appear. Those, who are brave, openhearted, and successful, are not afraid to death and are always ready to look her into the eye. Those who don’t think of it are indifferent and those who are stressed out and think of it all the time will eventually be afraid. It is better to accept the future and not to try to fool yourself. You are going to die one day. Isn’t it better to die a happy person?
Good bye Moby Dick! Farewell Crime and Punishment! Adios National Geographic and Readers Digest!
PowerPoint and the generation of the 7th Millennium rules.
If you’re a “Baby Boomer”, PowerPoint will likely not appeal to you. Perhaps you will even feel it is evil. But I’ll give you two good reasons you ought to understand and appreciate PowerPoint. Your children and grandchildren.
PowerPoint is the way the Generation of the 7th Millennium and beyond will cope in this fast-paced, frenetic world of iPods, search engines and micro-minute attention spans. (If man came on to the scene in the year 4026 BCE then 1975 would mark the beginning of the seventh Millennium
Yes, if you were a teen in ’75, you remember reading novels and composing essays for your teachers and professors. On the weekends, you caught movies like Dog Day Afternoon, Mahogany, The Man Who Would Be King, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Love Story, The Stepford Wives, Three Days of the Condor and Monty Python and the Holy Grail (“Sir, by what name be ye known?” …reply? “Some call me Tim?”)
A good plot, drama, and wit (ok, we weren’t perfect then either) ruled the big screen.
But times have evolved. What was a “New York Minute” back then is a New York milli-second today.
The big screen stars born in that notable year include Drew Barrymore, Angelina Jolie, Charlize Theron, and Kate Winslet.
In ’75, there were five notable deaths — Marjorie Main (Ma Kettle), Susan Hayward, The Three Stooges’ Larry Fine and Moe Howard. The fifth death at the birth of the 7th Millennium was not noted for almost 20 years.
The death of which I am speaking is the death of reading and comprehension skills.
Many college professors trace the decline of student reading and retention to 1975, or the beginning of the 7th Millennium.
This is manifested by students who take no notes, wear stylish headsets that re-play lectures which were recorded by professors.
Look at how many professors today use PowerPoint presentations and give copies of the slides to their students to use as a study guide.
Do you really think students have time to read when the Internet furnishes information in lightning-quick fashion?
Why are newspapers folding, libraries closing and reader’s club subscriptions falling? Perhaps the biggest indictment is the Internet. Yes, the industrial age has died and the information age is alive and well. That is, if you like looking at pictures in shades of PowerPoint blue.
Delivering and receiving information has changed. There are a new set of rules for writing and reading on the web.
One sentence paragraphs are acceptable. None are longer than three sentences. On the better sites, articles are generally no longer than 750 words. That’s because reading is done by scanning.
To engage a reader (or scanner as the case may be), psychological tricks like connectives are used to tie one paragraph to the next.
There are two kinds of copy on the Internet. One appeals to traditional readers, the other to the newer generation of the 7th Millennium.
The key to educating 7th Millennium students is PowerPoint. The challenge facing educators, speakers and presenters is creating a lecture that can stand on its own merit, utilizing Power Point as a visual aid rather than making Power Point the presentation.
The generation of the 7th Millennium becomes easily bored. Stimulating students’ grey matter neurons requires using our own little grey box of tricks, using word illustrations and probing questions to elevate thinking. Power Point presentations combined with effective speaking tactics are a dynamic one-two punch in the lecture hall.
The future will remember non-predictions of the past as was the case with Jules Vern’s novel conception of a facsimile machine several decades before its creation.
Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and The Max Headroom Story will be ‘novel’ predictions of the future.
Moving forward, we will no longer look for 15 minutes of fame. No more New York minutes. On the web, things happen in seconds. Our future will soon become our past.
Perhaps the best we can hope for is that everybody will be somebody for 27 seconds. In a world of sound bites, images flashing before our eyes and action movies, the reality is that 27 seconds is an eternity on the net.
Capturing the attention of the generation of the 7th Millennium requires pictures, images, and attention-grabbing devices. PowerPoint is the solution. It is the salvation of tomorrow’s classroom.
May we use Power Point Presentations wisely.
Members of Congress on the House committee on education have come up with an absolute bonehead idea: to publish a “watch list” of schools that have increased tuition at rates higher than inflation.
I am surprised when members of the House speak of reigning in college costs with measures such as this, when they fail to do the same for health care. I am sure the list of hospitals that have raised charges beyond inflation would be longer than the number of bad-behaving colleges.
What will a watch list do? It will not put colleges and universities on-notice because Congress cannot regulate their business practice, but it will embarrass their presidents and possibly force them to submit paperwork or public testimony to explain their pricing decisions. If the federal government publicizes such a list, it may also scare prospective applicants away from institutions that need students, even if the school is in a position to offer considerable financial aid.
This is one scenario where it is better for Congress to butt-out. State governments are already taking their own steps to regulate tuition increases for the institutions that are under their control. The voters, including parents and students, have a stronger voice with their state government than they do with the federal government. Placing state-supported schools on a watch list would serve to show that some states have less commitment to higher education than other states. I doubt that any member of Congress wants to embarrass the governor of the state in which they reside.
Private institutions, like public ones, can prepare parents and students by publishing their annual tuition rates (670 have already agreed to do this, thanks to the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities) and they can make their own decisions. This is one time that parents do not need Congress to be a nanny for them.
However, Congress should do the opposite, which is also something it is good at: rewarding the good schools, irrespective of their tuition charges.
Therefore, I have an alternate proposal. Congress should create an “honor roll” of colleges — the colleges that do the best at retaining and graduating their students. In a previous piece, I wrote that approximately 260 four-year colleges have retained 85 percent of their freshman class and graduated 65 percent of their entering first-year classes within six years. There is a good mix of schools to set an example for the rest.
It makes far more sense to recognize the most successful schools and use them to help their peers. While colleges have varied missions, their primary task is to help their students receive degrees. Every college wants to do that better, and every college president already knows that some schools do that better.
The honor roll could be more than a list; it could be an exchange of ideas to help schools get better. Unlike other markets, college presidents do not want their competition to fail; it is an embarrassment to all schools when a single one closes. The success of a college not only depends on its ability to manage student costs, but also the academics, student services and physical plant. The honor roll could also be a motivational tool with college employees; they do not receive the same incentives as private sector workers.
A public honor roll would also be noticed by employers. They want to recruit the best and the brightest; not all of them go to the schools that are considered prestigious today. However, inclusion on the honor roll elevates the prestige of many institutions for a very positive accomplishment. The honor can only help their students in their job search; it certainly cannot hurt.
Even better, Congress might not need to fund the honor roll after a year or two. The same corporations that support intercollegiate athletics or aggressively hire entry-level employees can be drawn in to support a national honor society based on student achievement, or maybe one of the ranking sources would like to make the investment. There are no scholarships or stipends attached, only the costs of ceremony and publicity.
Are there negatives? Yes. Schools might be tempted to fudge graduation rates or let students slide in order to be included on a list, but then, the honor roll would be important enough to be worth the effort—including all of the paper work that might otherwise be expended on a watch list.
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