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Parental Snooping

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Parental Snooping

Social media and digital technology have taken over the world of teenagers today. We live in a world where Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and the internet are the in thing. Anyone can access any information they want on the internet. This has brought a myriad of problems to parenthood. Many parents are baffled by the question of how far is too far when it comes to protecting your child privacy. Where do we draw the line between ensuring that our kids are safe and not crossing the line and invading their privacy?

To start with, parents should understand that there is a direct relationship between the amount of privacy that a child is allowed to have and how consistent, honest and responsible the child is. In order to understand how much privacy should be accorded to any child, parents need to grasp a clear understanding of how kids develop and how much privacy should be accorded at each particular stage of development.

When a child is young, there is a close bond between the child and the parent or the caregiver. Parents will feel the need to be close to their children and vice versa. They will want to cuddle and embrace each other for a better part of the day. Psychology describes this as ‘attachment parenting (Hawk, pg. 443-458). As the child grows and develops, a healthy and natural separation begins to occur. The child will become more sensitive to privacy issues. You will find that a child will start to close the bathroom door and will become embarrassed if someone comes in. The child will now prefer to spend more time with their peers playing and socialising. The line of separation becomes clearer and bolder when the child gets to adolescent.

During adolescents, the kid will feel the need to be recognised as an individual. At this stage kids want to be independent. At this point in life many parents will start to fight with their kids over the issue of independence and privacy. Parents need to know that it is necessary to accord the child the prerequisite amount of privacy but within set boundaries. Allow the kid to have their own room and to close the door when they want. This will allow the kid to have some alone time and learn to do things independently.

The term ‘spying’ comes in when a parent starts to go through the kid’s stuff. You will find some parents going through their kid’s phone, drawer, diary, closet and the backpack. The word spying is used here to denote a term that the modern day parent understands otherwise it has a negative connotation.

When it comes to the issue of protection and privacy, parents need to understand the personality of the kid they are dealing with. If you are dealing with a teenager who is obedient, respectful towards you and other people then accord that child the kind of respect that they deserve but within set boundaries since you are the parent and you don’t want to abandon your primary role of a parent. Caution should be taken since some teenagers are good at faking. They can pretend to be all good but in the real sense they are engaging in fishy business.

The game changes when you know you are dealing with an irresponsible and disobedient child. This is the kind of teenager who does not give you the respect you deserve. If you discover that your child is engaging in suspicious activities or you find anything incriminating against your child then you need to take the necessary action (Kerr, pg. 39-64). At this point, many parents find themselves in a dilemma. Parents often wonder how far is too far when it comes to the child’s right. The term ‘right’ has been overrated in this modern world. I believe that as long as the child is under your roof and you are paying the bills then you need to do your parental duties without hesitation. Instead of referring to the child’s right, it is better to talk about accountability and responsibility (Youn, pg. 362-388). If you have any suspicion as to whether your child is taking drugs or engaging in any risky behaviour, put the term privacy aside and go through anything and everything connected to that child.

Parents need to take the issue of privacy seriously. It is always good to monitor what the kid is doing but at the same time allow them some level of privacy. The required dose of privacy will help them gain independence and develop their characters and personalities as individuals. Parents are encouraged to actively monitor the activities of their child when using computers, phones, emails and messaging apps. Many children have fallen victims of cyber-bullying and other threats because of lack of guidance and online protection from their parents.

Communication is an important key in parenthood. Parents need to constantly communicate with their kids and spend adequate time with them. This will enable them develop a close relationship with their kids and they will get to learn of their behaviour. In case a child develops any queer behaviour then the parent will be able to pick it up and know how to deal with it. Every child has a right to privacy but it should be accorded within set boundaries that gives the child 100% protection and at the same time allows them to develop independence and their personal characters.

Work Cited

Hawk, Skyler T., Andrik Becht, and Susan Branje. ““Snooping” as a Distinct Parental Monitoring Strategy: Comparisons With Overt Solicitation and Control.” Journal of Research on Adolescence 26.3 (2016): 443-458.

Kerr, Margaret, Håkan Stattin, and William J. Burk. “A reinterpretation of parental monitoring in longitudinal perspective.” Journal of Research on Adolescence 20.1 (2010): 39-64.

Youn, Seounmi. “Parental influence and teens’ attitude toward online privacy protection.” Journal of Consumer Affairs 42.3 (2008): 362-388.

Part I Milgram Obedience.

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Part I: Milgram: Obedience.

In his book, Obedience to Authority, Milgram gives his perspective of how obedience and authority have changed with the division of labor. I agree with Milgram’s views about obedience and authority due to the clips that support his ideas. When a person can see the whole picture, they can think about their actions and the resulting consequences and then decide whether to do something. With the division of labor, individuals have learned to play their role in any undertaking and then leave the rest to other concerned parties. In this way, people rarely think of the result or the bigger picture. This is precisely what happens in the clip. The teachers, in this case, are alienated from their actions. They know that shocking their learners causes pain. However, because the experimenter absolves them of all responsibility, the teachers feel emboldened to do whatever they want. They yield to authority and dissociate themselves from their actions.

Milgram’s experiment is an excellent example of using sociological imagination. Sociological imagination involves putting individual actions and situations in the context of the larger society, and the experiment achieves this. The teachers in the experiment yield to the authority of the experimenter even though they know the electric shock causes distress to the learners. In society, people tend to yield blindly to authority figures, especially when they are not responsible for their individual actions. For example, people will willingly do whatever a government agent asks them to because the agent is an authority figure, and this agent will bear responsibility for whatever happens. If the person is told that their actions serve a purpose in a larger scheme, this assurance persuades the individual and allows them to escape responsibility for their actions. Milgram has placed the teachers and experimenter’s actions in the context of the wider society, which is the very definition of sociological imagination.

Reasons for Joining the Nursing Program

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Reasons for Joining the Nursing Program

I have chosen the nursing career because of the vast fulfillment and the challenge it offers. I regard nursing as a career that offers never-ending training due to the myriad of challenges that arise in the healthcare profession. From my personal and work experience, nursing offers immense fulfillment due to the core values it promotes in its practice: caring for the most vulnerable and for human life. Working at the Tower Health Reading Hospital and the Albright College Gable Health Center has exposed me to various professions in Health Care but I am convinced that Nursing is the career for me since it offers the highest level of human interaction. The nursing career is also one of the few careers that have perks such as providing an opportunity to make a real difference in the world, offers a work-life balance, job security, career diversity, flexibility, provides room to grow, and high salary packages. Therefore, nursing does not only resonate deeply with my own personal interests it also resonates with my career goals.

I believe I make a good fit for this Nursing Program because I am dedicated, hardworking, and passionate in all my endeavors. I also have solid communication and interpersonal skills and I am highly empathetic. I have a keen sense of detail and not to mention, some experience in Public Health. With time and experience, I have learned to work well under stress and pressure and to be flexible. My GPA is also commendable. However, I do not attribute my academic success to grade-fixation or innate intelligence, but to the fact that I believe in hard work and that I enjoy new learning experiences that come my way.

Recognition and Reversal

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Recognition and Reversal

Oedipus is the main character in the Oedipus plays, and his character, as well as others, experience many recognitions and reversals. An example of recognition and reversal comes when Creon returns from the oracle with news that the solution to Thebes’ pestilence is finding Laius’ killer. Oedipus vows to find out who murdered the late king, and he succeeds. However, he turns out to have killed the late king Laius. The plot is reversed in that he had vowed to drive out the murdered, but he himself is the current king of Thebes. What is he to do?

The second instance of recognition and reversal comes when the shepherd from Corinth ascertains that Oedipus was indeed the child of King Laius and his wife. Jocasta, the widow of the late king and the current queen, realizes that the reveal means that she married her own son. She tries her best to dissuade Oedipus from further pursuing his investigation of who his birth parents were. Jocasta fulfilled the prophecy that Oedipus would marry his mother. When Oedipus realizes that he indeed married his own mother, he is shocked because he thought that he was from Corinth. Jocasta tried to keep the truth from him. Will the queen protect her son or avenge the killer of her late husband?

The third instance of recognition and reversal for Oedipus’ character comes when the messenger from Corinth arrives with the News that Polybus, the king of Corinth, is dead. Long before, the oracle had given Oedipus the prophecy that he would kill his father. The news that Polybus had died naturally brought him joy that he managed to run away from the prophecy. However, it soon comes to light that Polybus was not Oedipus father, and this leads Oedipus to probe further for the truth. He finds out that he did not escape the prophecy but killed Laius, his birth father.

Works Cited

Sophocles, E. A. Oedipus the king. Classic Productions, 1994.

Reflection Essay of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

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Reflection Essay of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

In the non-fiction book by Rebecca Skloot ‘The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,’ it shows how the writer writes about a woman of title whose cells were harvested from her tumor. The book displays how the harvest was done without her consent while she was alive. It is a true story based on the life of a young farmer who died aged 31 in the year 1952. The Southern-African American tobacco farmer had died from cervical cancer and in modern history, the cells that were harvested from her body have become an important tool in modern-day medicine. This story was filled with success and anguish despite it being filled with issues of morality and ethics. The legal parts were also developed as it portrays the apparent nature of biasness in the American health care system. The story at john Hopkins hospital displays despicable and annoying values of the nurses and other staffs who work there. The doctors demonstrated a pure lack of care for Henrietta when she was literarily burning to c crisp but the doctors wrote indicated that she seemed fine in their reports. Due to the life of poverty of Henrietta, the doctors evidently disregarded her in a case where they valued treating the more powerful and rich whites than the blacks, thus by the American standards subjecting Henrietta to in inhumane treatment that denied her full treatment.

In matters of life and death, it is despicable that doctors ignored Henrietta by not according her the best efforts to save her. This clearly shows how the doctors do not value when Henrietta was dying and was not given the best attention to save her. Even though it was a common practice to harvest cells from a dead person, it is unethical to do so without their consent while alive. As this act may be the worst part of her treatment, the disregard doctors had to her was way worse. It cannot be precise and certain that Henrica being poor and black is the reason why she was treated poorly with disregard but in her lifetime the trends that were demonstrated made it appear as though the things that mattered the most were ethnicity and class.it was evident from the plot that Henrietta’s doctors were not valuing her as much as doctors are expected to value other patients. The book’s setting and storyline demonstrate the negligence of doctors to many of their patients especial of black origin in the mid-1900s. it shows a time where people were made to suffer more than they ought to and a complete disregard of the well-being of others is represented.

In the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks they got fewer pain medications and had higher mortality rates” (Skloot, pg. 64) showed that blacks besides suffering more pain they died frequently, which is a passage that is used to show that many blacks just like Henrietta were significantly treated worse than whites due to their poverty and race. Thus being given semi and low-quality care. The cells harvested in from Henrietta’s dead body have been used for science success as the have served advancements in research and development in the medical field thus becoming immortal. The setting occurred in a time when segregation in America was at peek and despite being a success for the medical development it was a sorrowful moment for the family of Henrietta.

The story shows of ho modern growing of living cells were kick-started through Henrietta’s sample tumor that was harvested and grown in the lab calling her cells ‘Hela’ that was taken at the John Hopkins Hospital. The main point of reading the book was the highlights presented in the book into modern advances in medicine. With success agony and sorrows the story presents multiple lines of anguish and injustice that Henrietta suffered and the sorrows of her family especially the daughter Oprah. There are also the aspects of lack of consent, segregation and racism, the unethical profiting of the biotech industry from the unknowing donation of a poor black woman. Se states “They keep trying to push us off the earth, but God won’t let them.” (Skloot, pg.72) In this statement Skloot is telling Courtney how a black community Turner Station had been pushed out as it was no longer available on the maps. Taking into consideration the life of Henrietta and the injustices she faced one can easily burst into outrage. But through proper analysis of the book, I was able to realize that the unjust aspects of the story to Henrietta were not just extraordinary but rather a day to day related to the racism that most people face when seeking for care.

Lack of consent is a major theme expressed by the story as Henrietta was never told or asked if her cells would be used for a research and the misleading factor whereby her family members were brought in for checking on the basis that it was for their own good but in the real sense it was for their own benefit whereby they were to check and detect if the Hela cells are genetic related. In contemporary health care system harvesting of cells for the purpose of developing medical research has become a common practice, however, there is a need for consent from the patient whose cells are to be used or even her family.

The Hella cell line eventually became a commercial patented line that generated massive revenue for a number of biotech companies as the family of Henrietta languishes in poverty with economic depression. The unjust nature of this information is surprising as according to the ethical obligations, legally the family would be entitled to a share of the biotech firms profits. Legal proceedings that followed were more surprising when court ruling ruled against Moore whose cancer cells were patented for commercial use stating that once the cells were exercised out of his body, he was not entitled to its financial benefits. The 2003 legal precedents of no rights considered the scenarios where sample tissues were freely donated. Ignoring the fact that there was the issue of informed consent in the case of Henrietta and misleading upon testing.

After reading the chapters in the book I have often viewed the world in a different way with a possibility of other more complex and greater injustices carried in the medical industry that are underlying the themes and other concerning issues presented by the chapter. The structures and chapters I covered in the book had shown several injustices that are projected against Henrietta Lacks and exposure of unethical practices in the medical fields. The possibilities raised to me is that these injustices may have been a distraction from greater injustices. The structural background of racism was quite rather different from the questions of finance and other benefits interests raised through the features of biotech companies registering massive revenue through the use of these cells. The story may have other concerns that were much bigger but were not accurately presented as major themes like the under looking of lack of education access and employment opportunities that are the core cause of these themes. With proper educations, the characters would be able to make informed decisions and give out consent to the doctors. Employment is portrayed through the fact that Henrietta Lacks was a farmer and precisely stated to be poor thus giving rise to the lack of care by the doctors. The lack of health care systems is also portrayed in the story in that it was until Henrietta’s tumor was fully developed and she would feel it herself that she went to seek treatment. Thus the rise for an urge to developed health care systems for early detection that was lacking in the story.

It is not precise but I can say the level and standard of care given to Henrietta Lacks was inadequate and it was an unethical practice for the John Hopkins hospital to harvest her cells without her consent or consent of her family. The remaining family of Lacks had a right to be given proper information and be enlightened of the tests that were carried upon then rather than the hospital misinforming them that it was for their own good in the detection of cancer while in real sense it was for their benefit. The system until now has consistently failed Henrietta’s family many of whom continue to suffer from chronic illness physically and mentally. Even the end-user result of these extraordinary cells from Henrietta fueled a biotechnology revolution, the underlying injustices to Lacks should not go unnoticed. And because of the true storyline presented by Skloot, we ought to continue talking of these underlying injustices.

Work Cited

Skloot, Rebecca. The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks. Broadway Books, 2017.

Research Methods

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Research Methods

When doing research, a person can either employ quantitative or qualitative methods. Each of these methods is useful in different situations. Quantitative research methods present data collected in the form of numbers or figures. Qualitative research methods, on the other hand, are descriptive, meaning that it is used in cases where the phenomenon can be observed but not measured (Lampard & Pole 22). For example, if a person counts the number of people aged between twenty and thirty years old in a room, this is an example of quantitative research method. If the researcher were to ask the same group of people which political party they belong to, this would be qualitative research. Examples of qualitative methods are interviews, focus groups, and observation, while quantitative methods involve the measurement of different things.

There are many differences between the two methods of research that make them useful in particular situations. The first difference is that in qualitative methods, the researcher collects data from observations of the information and interviews while in quantitative methods, the researcher measures things such as distance, temperature, numbers, quantities and others. The second difference is that for qualitative research, the phenomena under investigation will be reported in the language used by the informant while in quantitative methods, the data is reported in statistical figures. Another difference between the two methods comes in analyzing the information that has been collected. For qualitative research, the data is classified based on themes while in quantitative research, the data is classified based on statistical analysis. For example, in the use of a qualitative method, people could be grouped based on religious beliefs while quantitative research will find the number of people who belong to each religious group and then analyze the data.

Both qualitative and quantitative research methods have their advantages and disadvantages. The first advantage of qualitative methods is that it is very flexible. One example of flexibility is that when collecting information, the researcher can ask more questions or change the setting so that they can get the responses they need. The second advantage is that qualitative methods are quite targeted. The researcher identifies the particular group they would like to investigate, which makes the process speedy and cheap. Disadvantages are the sample size may not be representative of the entire population, and there is a lot of bias. Advantages of quantitative methods are that data is more reliable and allows for straightforward analysis using appropriate statistical tests (Wincup 13). Some disadvantages of quantitative methods are that creating a research model can be challenging and it gives a false focus on numbers while disregarding other relationships.

Quantitative and qualitative research methods are applied to different situations in criminal justice. For example, qualitative methods will be used in a study to find out how many juvenile offenders have been confined in adult prisons with the past five years. Qualitative methods will be useful in learning about the life experiences of drug offenders serving sentences (Wright & Bouffard 128). For example, a researcher would conduct face to face interviews with the offenders to ask them why they went into a life of dealing drugs. The researcher can ask many types of questions to find answers to this question. From these examples, researchers choose either qualitative or quantitative methods depending on the goals of their study and also the phenomena to be measured. In finding the number of cars that pass through a certain point, a qualitative method would hardly be efficient. Both research methods have their advantages and disadvantages; thus a researcher has to look into this before making their choice. None of the methods is superior over the other, as many would assume quantitative to be better than qualitative methods.

Works Cited

Lampard, Richard, and Christopher Pole. Practical social investigation: Qualitative and quantitative methods in social research. Routledge, 2015.

Wincup, Emma. Criminological research: Understanding qualitative methods. Sage, 2017.

Wright, Kevin A., and Leana A. Bouffard. “Capturing crime: The qualitative analysis of individual cases for advancing criminological knowledge.” International journal of offender therapy and comparative criminology 60.2 (2016): 123-145.

Rhetorical Analysis of New Literacy

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Rhetorical Analysis of New Literacy

“New Literacy” by Clive Thompson talks about how computers have changed our lives in today’s age. I this article Thompson talks of how the new world of technology has revolutionized so much including helping people write essays, how use of the internet is quite similar to ancient Greece and the good teachings that come with the use of technology. Clive points out the various views that may arise when debates on technology come up such as how technology has incapacitated the children’s ability to write yet other people will argue how technology has revolutionized both writing and literacy. In passing his points, Thompson uses emotional appeal to his audience, appeal to reason as well as an ethical appeal.

In the article, Thomson evokes emotions towards the readers. He wants to resonate with them at level where they will be able to understand the message that he is passing across. Thompson states that, “be ready to hear teachers getting upset once again about how kids are unable to write and this is blamed on technology” (Thompson, par, 1 ). In this context, the author evokes an element of both pity and concern over the use of technology. He is keen to point it that as some professors may want to blame technology on the children’s inability to write, this may not be true as technology has had a huge influence on increased literacy. His diction in the entire the text can be felt by the use of words such as “killing”, “stunning”, “brevity” and “enormously. Her purpose in utilizing these carefully chosen words is to resonate with the audience on the matter that technology does the opposite of what everyone states

Thomson also uses ethos by giving credibility to his article. He includes statistics including how 38% of students who took part in writing in Stanford did it outside of classroom. Thompson is trying to point out that writing should not only be based on academics but even the twitter updates and a person’s ability to write something about themselves counts. He also points out how students reading 15000-word video game tutorial have been able to write essays that are much longer and provoking. In using these statistics, Thompson is able to give his work credibility. By building the credibility of his work, a reader may be able to understand where he is coming from and agree with his point of view.

Thompson uses logos in his writing to appeal to the logic of his audience. He gets the audience to think of the effect technology has had pointing out how important it has been improving the literacy and writing skills of the new generation. People of this generation are writing longer and more complex essay than people from the previous generation “young people today write far more than any other generation before them” (Thompson par. 4); and this could be due to the technologies. He compares how technology has improved writing with how the Greek used writing in conveying arguments and opinions. The logic that Thompson is trying to put forward is that technology has introduced a new concept of writing where students are able to effectively communicate in writing.

Thompson is able to bring out his argument on how technology has given a rise to “literacy revolution”. He successfully utilizes logos, pathos and ethos to put his points across and to be able to resonate with his audience making a compelling argument. It is for a fact that educators need to realize the impact of technology in developing writing skills so that they can employ it instead of demonizing it.

Work Cited

Thompson, Clive. Smarter than you think: How technology is changing our minds for the better. Penguin, 2013.

Compares the views of Turner and Limerick about the American frontier

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American Frontier

‘The American frontier’ is a historical concept that gives a detailed explanation of the movement of European settlers in America and the formation of the American culture during the colonial and post-colonial period, through wanderlust, grit, war and diplomacy (Turner 45). Fredrick Jackson Turner’s Frontier thesis submitted in 1893 to the American Historical Association offers one of the most influential versions of the frontier. More recently, in the 1980s, scholars developed new, different versions of the frontier. In the volume Trails: Toward a New Western History, Patricia Limerick describes the characteristics of the American Frontier. Although Limerick agrees with Turner’s view about the source of western expansion, she rejects most of the views advanced by Turner and comes up with new features of the frontier. The paper compares the views of Turner and Limerick about the American frontier.

Discussion

According to Turner, the American frontier started during the colonial period, with the massive movement of white settlers from Europe to America. Turner came up with several definitions of the term ‘frontier.’ To him, the term did not have a clear-cut definition. On one hand, he defined the frontier as “the zones on the peripheries of regions having a population density (of settlers) of two or more people per squire mile” (Rose and Davis 24). In this definition, Turner referred to the strips of land that were largely uninhabited by the indigenous Indians. In 1962, during the period of civil war, American government passed the U.S. Congress of the Homestead Act, which allowed the European settlers to own free land. The settlers were required to settle on the land offered and mark it up, regardless of ownership claims by the indigenous population. However, Turner did not perceive frontier as a specific place. Rather, he considered it as moving zone. In his thesis, Turner argued that the European settlers landed initially on the East side of America. With time, they moved towards the west. Precisely, Turner argued that the frontier was in the Atlantic coast in the early days of settlement. In the 1980s, the settlers had pushed the frontier beyond Mississippi. It had already moved to the region with Great Lakes. By the 1980s, the frontier had moved further to the west, into the Great Plains.

Secondly, turner perceived the frontier as a process of encounter. He perceived it as “the meeting point between savagery and civilization” (Rose and Davis 25). In other words, Turner perceived the frontier as the meeting point between the settler and the indigenous Indian. As the settlers moved westward, they interacted with more indigenous Indians, who had a unique culture. The Europeans moved to America mainly to expand their business ventures. Most of the white settlers were groups of wealthy merchants who sought raw materials for their industries. Although their main aim was to expand their business ventures, they brought civilization to America. According to Turner, the frontier was characterized by intensive social reformation and devolution. As they interacted with more Indians, the white settlers were stripped off their European identities. They were reborn into new social forms, traditions and values. The settlers reduced their intellectual and economic dependence on Europe. For instance, the settlers reduced their reliance on machines for cultivation and started using a sharp stick. In addition, the settlers from Britain stopped focusing on the textile industry and started plowing the Indian cone. As well, the settlers acquired new intellectual traits, such as inquisitiveness and acuteness, strength and coarseness, high speed in finding expedients and masterful grasp of material things. In the view of Turner, the settlers could not resist the natural force that led to the change. Eventually, the settlers developed new identities, which are uniquely American (Rose and Davis 26). In other words, the frontier marked the line of Americanization.

Unlike the borders in Europe, which marked areas where different groups of people with different social identities lived, the borders of the frontier marked areas where people from different social and cultural backgrounds interacted and transformed to form a single culture. In other words, the white settlers from different European nations such as Britain, Germany and Finland interacted with the indigenous population within the American frontier boundaries and transformed from British-Americans, German-Americans and Finnish-Americans into Americans. The new American culture was less conscious, less authoritarian and more democratic (Rose and Davis 27). By the time when Turner submitted his thesis in 1893, he stated that the frontier had already ended.

Limerick’s version supports Turner’s idea that the American frontier started during the colonial period and that it was steered by the white settlers from Europe. In addition, Limerick supported Turner’s perspective that the frontier started from the Atlantic coast. However, Limerick rejects the use of the word frontier. According to Limerick, the term frontier is too ethnocentric, ‘racist’ and ‘nationalistic’ to be useful. Limerick focuses on the west as a distinct place, unlike Turner, who viewed the frontier as a moving line of encounter (Hyser and Arndt 314). According to Limerick, the west is the region between the Pacific and Mississippi. Unlike Turner who argued that the American Frontier ended in the 1890s, Limerick argues that there is no such discontinuity. According to Limerick, the west has always been a distinctive region. Limerick is interested in understanding the impact that the frontier had on indigenous populations and other immigrants, such as the Indians, blacks, Chinese and Hispanics. As such, Limerick’s approach contrasts the Turner’s approach that only focused on the impact of the frontier on the white settlers and the generic Indians only. Further, Limerick is interested in looking at the environment as a component that changes as people interact, and not as a barrier to the Western expansion. On top of the impact of human interaction, Limerick argues that ecological factors such as climate, as well as the interaction between human beings and the natural environment, influenced the development of the western culture (Hyser and Arndt 314). Unlike Turner, Limerick examines the negative impacts of the Western expansion, such as disappointments and difficulties of the settler’s lives, massacres and displacements of the indigenous populations, the ambiguities and destruction of the environment (Hyser and Arndt 314).

Conclusion

In conclusion, both Turner and Limerick give important explanations of the American frontier, although they take different approaches. Turner’s perspective helps to understand how the frontier paved way to the formation of a composite nationality in America. In addition, his perspectives explain the source of the complex society, individualism and democracy in America. On the other hand, Limerick’s perspective helps to understand the negative impacts that the western expansion has on human beings and the natural environment. Although the two authors have some differences in their approach, their perspectives influence the contemporary understanding of the development of the America as a nation. For instance, the Little House on the Prairie is a recent story of a pioneer family that was trying to build a new home in America in the 1870s. The story describes the hardships that the family went through, including the lack of building facilities, encountering dangers of the untamed wilderness and being forced out of their land by government decree (Rose and Davis 52).

References

Hyser, Raymond and J. Arndt . Voices of the American Past: Documents in U.S. History, Volume

2. New York: Cengage Learning, 2007. Print.

Rose, Deborah and Bird Richard Davis. Dislocating the Frontier: Essaying the Mystique of theOutback. The Australian National University: ANU E Press, 2005. Print.

Turner, Frederick J. The Frontier in American History. Erscheinungsort: BoD – Books onDemand, 2006. Print.

Complete the map template ( I completed).

Leadership Studies

Student’s Name

Institution

To qualify for an A: Complete the map template ( I completed). Additionally, describe one goal for each of the five levels and prioritize these, beginning with the most important ones first For each goal listed

Team Goals

I will volunteer for committees in the local organizations in Saudi Arabia and find out how I can get on the social list of influential persons in my community.

I intend to create a Vision and mission statement for my team by 2014

I will outline the actions necessary to accomplish team results and attain them in spite of external circumstances by 2015

I intend to be creative by assuming a more proactive and active part in the team by 2016

I also intend to evaluate our team portfolio in order to know exactly what I know and what I do not know by 2017

Augment on the quality of work as I work in San Antonio’s VA hospital by 2018

Community Goals

I will deliberately build a network of individuals that I know at a personal level. I will also be predisposed to this network through checking out with every individual at least once in a month.

Engage in the organization of USA Mosque religious plans and events by the year 2014

Ensure that people back home including by parents can have an improved access to preventive and fundamental health care by the year 2015

Ensure that education programs in health and wellness preventive services are improved by the year 2016

Ensure that individuals and families in a disaster are stabilized while ensuring that their capacity to attain self sufficiency is improved by the year 2017

Ensure that the youth in Saudi Arabia are supported both in their academics and their social lives to enable them to not only learn life skills, but also graduate from school and become marketable in the job market by 2018

Family Goals

I will avoid doing tasks that tend to be too structured and that are likely to suppress my quest for variety. If given a number of tasks I will indulge my quest for flexibility by being creative to make the tasks extra fun in a number of ways.

Ensure that I have quality time with my nuclear family through doubling the time we have for recreation in order to be more close and in touch with them by the year 2014

Get one more kid and spend two hours of quality time with my children on a daily basis by the year 2015

Assist my parents attain their objectives and dreams by 2016

Ensure that my family has a will and an estate plan by 2017

Take my wife to Paris for our tenth anniversary celebrations by 2018

Professional Goals

I will look to people who are more strategic and have a strong focus for planning so that they may help me attain my long term professional goals.

Graduate from both San Antonio’s VA hospital and St. Mary University by 2014

Get a Job that is in tandem with my knowledge and interests as well as my strengths in Saudi Arabia by 2015; If I get a Job that is in tandem with my knowledge and interests as well as my strengths in Saudi Arabia in 2015 I will be able to buy a house and a car and invest in my own business. I will meet this goal through networking with family and friends. I will have to stop wasting time on the television and start making job applications in order to meet this goal. I will know I have attained this goal once am employed by one of the dream companies in which I intend to make applications.

Gain experience in various fields and augment my income by 20% through consulting on a part time basis particularly in the evenings by 2016

Start making business investments by 2017

Enroll in one of South Arabian University’s PhD programs by 2018

Personal Goals

Driven by my talents I believe that life will turn out to be good if I take my time to think about how I will react to situations in the future. This is because forethought assists in adjusting to unexpected challenges.

Strategize on how to achieve all the above goals as early as 2014

Visit the US during holidays while making efforts to improve my spoken English in 2015

Move back to Saudi Arabia and ensure am in the right social ladder in 2016

Ensure I enroll with a health insurance company in Saudi Arabia by 2017

Buy a house and two cars in Saudi Arabia by 2018

Strategies for Meeting the Above Goals

I will capitalize on the fact that I am a fun magnet to reach out to friends, new and former classmates, family friends, coworkers and team mates. This is because am capable of making circumstances enjoyable for individuals through bubbling with enthusiasm and energy. I will thus at any given point welcome opportunities to be happy. The fact that I have a nark for making new friends will befit me in achieving these goals. Many are the times I find myself asking questions that are certain to motivate discussions with people I get acquainted with for the first time. I will capitalize on this to ensure it assists me achieve the above goals.

How to Measure and Monitor My Progress for Each Goal

Through participating in animated give and take sessions I would be able to gauge whether I have attained each of these goals or not by making comparisons of my status and those of my peers. Given that I participate in classes, conferences and seminars where ideas are exchanged on how things can be made better, I will be in a position to judge myself against these standards and find out what I have done so far, what still needs to be done and what needs to be improved in order to ensure that all my goals are attained within the given time frame.

Community and Professional Networks

To further develop and enhance my self confidence, as well as interpersonal and professional skills I will need a number of community and professional networks that would provide me with support and feedback. These would include: friends of my family, former and current class mates, team mates and coworkers.

References

Rath Tom, (2012). Now Discover Your Strength: Strengths Finder. Gall Up Inc: New York

Component of the Pre-departure Training

Human Resource Management

Affiliation

Student’s Name

Component of the Pre-departure Training

The pre-departure training should have the following components for it to be helpful to the employees in their foreign work environments;

The training should compose inter-cultural aspects that will help the employees adjust to the new foreign environment where they are to be posted. The foreign environments have different cultural environments from the one that the employees are currently working. Employees need to be trained on how they should quickly adapt to the new environment and act in accordance to the new cultural environment with little difficult (Johnson, 2009).

The pre-departure training should be composed of the basics of the language that is spoken in the foreign environment where the employee is to be posted. Language is key since it is the backbone of all communication in any given work environment. The pre-departure training should incorporate the language skills that will ensure that employees will not have any difficulties in handling and delegating their assignments in their new work environment (Tung, 1981).

The pre-departure training should incorporate psychological aspects that will be tailored to help the employees to easily and quickly adapt to the foreign work environment. The employees will certainly be away from their families and friends and they will be in a completely new environment. They need to be advised on how they will psychologically adjust to the new environment away from their friends and families without their adjusting affect their working and daily operations.

The pre-departure training should incorporate environmental aspects and characteristics of the foreign environments where the employees are to be posted. This way, employees will be aware of what they expect in the new environments and how they should prepare themselves about the new environment. Environmental aspects could be a barrier to adjustment to the new environment and it would make it hard for employees to be comfortable in the new environment especially if the environment conflicts with the general well being of an individual (Tung, 1981).

The pre-departure training should incorporate aspects of the roles and responsibilities that are likely to change in the new work environment and be alerted in advance whether their roles and responsibilities are to change through increment or reduction. This prepares their psychology and lets them know what is required of them. This is of great importance since it helps the employee adjust easily and quickly to fill in the gap that is in the firm in the foreign environment. Notification of the roles and responsibilities assignees are required to play helps employee know why they are to be sent to delegate their roles and responsibilities at the international level (Tung, 1981).

Criteria for Employee Assessment

Employees in the foreign countries have to have their distinct assessment criteria. The assessment is different because the work environments vary from one country or region to another. The management would apply the following assessment criteria for their employees in foreign countries;

The assessment of employees working in foreign work places should be highly based on the quality of work that the employee delivers compared to what the employee is expected to deliver in a given time period. The quality of work can be measured through different ways and it can be done by assessing the amount of work that an employee has done that requires to be done again could be due to errors and mistakes. It could also be done on the basis of the amount of work by an employee that is not accepted or is rejected. This way, it would be easy to assess whether the employee is delivering high, poor and average quality work. The better the quality of work is done, the greater the level of efficiency and, the better the levels of customer satisfaction and subsequent total performance and output by the organization.

The manner in which employees working in foreign work stations are able to complete tasks assigned to them in terms of timeliness could be used as a criteria for assessment. Employees are assigned different tasks and usually, there are timelines when a task should have been handled. The employees could be assessed whether they are able to delegate and have done their roles and responsibilities in the expected time frames. An employee should be assessed whether they are capable of having things done when they are supposed to be done. Timeliness in handling tasks and assignments ensures that much amount work is covered and there are few carry forwards in terms of work and assignments (Ulrich, 1997).

The degree which an employee is able to follow the set rules and regulations and adhere to the set policies in foreign workplaces is an important criterion for assessment for employees working in foreign workplaces. In the new environment, the rules and policies are definitely far much different compared to those in the previous workplace. Determination of how well they are able to comply with the set principles would help determine whether they are adapting well to the new work environment. The adaptability to policies set determines the output, cooperativeness, performance and productivity of employees. Compliance with the policies enhances the performance and productivity of employees.

Recruiting and Selection Strategy

In offering international assignments, the following recruiting strategies should be followed by the management;

The technical ability of an individual is one of the strategies and criterion that the firm should consider in selecting employees for international assignments. In the international work stations, there are specific assignments that selected employees are required to fulfill. The individuals selected for international assignments should be those who are able and possess the required skills to delegate their international assignments. The technical ability of an individual determines whether an individual can be relied on to conduct themselves without supervision and guidance (Tung, 1981).

In recruiting and selecting individuals for international assignments, the management should consider the ability of an employee to easily understand and subsequently apply the local language in communication and in dispensing duties and roles effectively. The personnel to be selected should be those who are easily compatible with the locally spoken language. This way, the employees will be able to adjust quickly and easily to the new environment and be able to relate with customers in the new environment easily and much quickly (Bruce, 2003).

The management would consider applying the strategy of issuing selection tests among employees. Through these tests, the management can be able to assess the personality and characteristics of an individual. The most desirable personality traits are then identified and matched with those of individual employees. The employee with the most suitable personality traits and characteristics is then selected for the international assignment (Tung, 1981).

Staffing alternatives

The two staffing alternatives are part time members of the staff who operate on part time throughout in place of permanent employees but provide similar services to those that other members of the permanent staff would provide. The other is members of staffs who are there or exist to provide assistance to certain members of staff before they full adjust and get to fully know the work activities and environment (Johnson, 2009).

The best fit staffing alternative for foreign operations at the firm is the staffing alternative that helps new members of staff to fully acquaint themselves with different work activities. This staffing alternative reduces on costs of hiring a part time employee who could even charge higher than other members of staff. Once the permanent or full time member of staff fully gets to know what is required of them, they are likely to easily become better and more efficient to part time members of staff whose reliance and availability at the work place is dependent on their availability and convenience (Ulrich, 1997).

Mentoring System

The provision of a high quality mentoring system is of great importance for international assignees. The mentoring system would play an integral part in ensuring that employees are made to easily and quickly catch up and adjust to the new working environment as they get to delegate their assigned international assignments. The mentoring system acts as guidance on what should be done in what way and at what time. Guiding the employees would be of great importance especially because they might feel out of place in new work environments and end up doing the wrong thing despite knowing or being aware of what should and requires to be done (Bruce, 2003).

A quality mentoring system would be of great importance in ensuring that employees do not make many mistakes or errors as they delegate their roles and duties in the international assignments. In a new work environment, the assignees are very likely to make mistakes and errors in delegating their assignments. The mentoring system should act as guidance to the employees to ensure that they guide them and through guidance, the probability that one could make an error in delegating their roles and assignments is relatively low.

Measuring Returns on Investment (ROI)

Measuring Returns on Investment for international assignments is of great importance because it indicates whether the presence of new employees and their subsequent assignment of their different roles and responsibilities has added value in the work produced and the impact it has had on the welfare of the firm. In measuring the Return on Investment for international assignments, the following would be done;

To begin with, the measurement of the Returns on investment must be done within a defined and a given time frame or a given time period. The measurement would consider the improvements and enhancement in efficiency, productivity and performance. International assignees should have added value to the firm where they are sent for assignments in terms of enhancing efficiency and increasing productivity and subsequent performance of tasks. If there is a positive change and improvement impacted by sending the international assignees, then there is a positive return on Investment on these assignees. If there is zero change and improvement in terms of efficiency, performance and productivity of the firm, then there is zero impact and Return on Investment of the employees assigned the different roles and responsibilities at the international scene (Bruce, 2003).

References

Bruce, J. (2003). Investment Performance Measurement. New York: Wiley & Sons.

Conaty, B. (2010). The talent masters : why smart leaders put people before numbers. New York: Crown Business.

Johnson, P. (2009). HRM in changing organizational contexts. London: Routledge.

Riley, J. (1980). Management and ideology : the legacy of the international management movement. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Tung, R. (1981). ‘Selection and Training of Personnel for Overseas Assignments’,. Columbia Journal of World Business , 68–78.

Ulrich, D. (1997). Human resource champions : the next agenda for adding value and delivering results. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.