Autobiography †original writing Essay

I had five months to sort out my work experience placement and thought that I had more than enough time in which to do so. Before long, however, I was called to Mr Williams’s office, the man in charge of finalising the work experience. I had just found out that I had overnight to get a placement somewhere, otherwise I’ll be stuck in school with year 9 for the week. My ideal placement would be something to do with sports because that’s my favourite subject in school but I knew I couldn’t find somewhere and get a reply all in one night. The only placement I knew I could go without having to wait for a reply was with my mother! My mother works at Cardiff University in the Biochemistry Unit. I’m still not sure exactly what she does, but I think it’s something along the lines of teaching and researching into cells. Before I knew it work experience had almost arrived. It was very tense around the house; I suppose I was excited because I didn’t have a clue what I was going to be doing and also a little scared for the same reason. The first morning was pretty easy because I had no dress code, and as my mother is her own boss, I had no strict hours either. Also I didn’t have to be polite around my mother, so I could just be my self. I was sort of expecting it to be boring working with my mother but nothing could prepare me for what I did on my first day. My first chore of the day was to fill, empty, sterilise and prepare bottles for other people. This wasn’t very challenging, so I got bored quickly. In the afternoon my mum noticed I was bored, so let me do the jobs she hates. Firstly, she made me sort out the bookshelves in her office. This included sorting out a 6ft long shelf full of catalogues, into alphabetical order and to date. The earliest being from 1992. After finishing that, she put my keyboard skills to good use by making me type out the register on the computer for four of her classes. At the end of my first day I was disappointed for not having had a fun day. I also felt worried in case my whole week would be this boring. The second day was a little bit more challenging. In the morning I had to draw pictures on a computer for my mother’s poster. This was irritating because nothing was perfect enough for her. She kept on making me change the smallest details, and I realised that day that she was the fussiest person I knew, but the finished product managed to satisfy her. In the afternoon I worked with my mother’s friend, Mike Turner, who works in the Electro Microscopy Unit in the university. This is where they take pictures with really big powerful microscopes. At first I was quite shy because I’ve never met him before. I suppose I was expecting him to be a shy brainy man that wouldn’t really talk to me. On the contrary, he would not stop talking and make jokes. I felt like I could talk to him easy and that made me feel comfortable beeing there. He sat me down by one of the microscopes and made me look at bugs and flowers through it. This was different and I enjoyed it more than my mother’s office, although it got boring after a while sitting in front of a screen just looking at bugs. On the third day, I met another of my mother’s friends, Guy Pitt. He is a photographer and developer in the university. I wasn’t that nervous because my older sister did the same for her work experience and told me he was the best man to work with, and he was by far the best person who looked after me that week because he thought about what I might like to do. He gave me an expensive camera and sent me around town to take photos of anything. I took pictures of Cardiff Castle and animals like birds and squirrels. In the afternoon I met Mike Turner again and took pictures of cells with his microscope camera. Although he was enthusiastic about the cells I didn’t find them that interesting and just pretended to like the pictures I took. The fourth day was the best day of the week. I was in Guy’s hands for the day. I met him in the morning and he gave me the camera with a new film and sent me to town again and told me to return at two o’clock. In town I met a lot of my friends and went shopping and took pictures of a burnt building that was in ruins. When I returned we changed the films into negatives in the dark room by using all sorts of chemicals, and let them dry for Friday. On Friday, Guy and I changed the negatives into real pictures. He was very impressed with the pictures I took of the burnt building and asked if he could keep some. This made me feel good of my self and made me consider a career in photography, maybe sport photography. We finished by eleven o’clock so he gave me the afternoon off and I went home. I enjoyed the experience despite having doubts about it at the beginning of the week. The best part of the week was working with Guy, he really made me think about my career.

Strategic Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Strategic - Essay Example Porter argues that strategy is about ‘positioning’ – not about ‘operational effectiveness’. This essay is a critical discussion of this view. It also offers a comparison between Porter’s views and other perspectives such as those of Mazzucato’s, Mintzberg, Waters and Grant. Porter (1996 p. 62) attributes lack of sustainable profitability in an organization to the inability of management to differentiate between strategy and operational effectiveness. Under such circumstances, the tools for management such as benchmarking, outsourcing, and total quality management among others usually displace strategy, which lowers the chances of improving organizational performance through strategy. The operational effectiveness and strategy are significant for the organizational performance, but according to Porter, they are supposed to be treated differently as they operate in diverse ways. In his view, position accompanied by pattern, plan and standpoint are core to strategy. Porter’s dissatisfaction with the management that focuses on operational effectiveness rather than strategic positioning is represented in figure 1.0, whereby the total of all the available best practices within the organization or the value generated by the organization at a certain charge, available machinery, expertise, management practices, and procured inputs is represented by the productivity frontier (p. 63). This curve indicates that an improvement in the operational effectiveness leads to the advancement of the organization in the direction of the frontier. The frontier on the other hand is continuously budges outward as the company acquires new skills and machinery. In order to maintain this shift of the frontier, managers largely invest in organizational learning, career development and such activities that enhance organizational improvement. Organizational competitiveness is not

Banking Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Banking - Case Study Example The Trust is governed by the terms of the trust document which are usually written and in a deed form. It can be said that trusts continues to play a significant contribution in all common law systems all over the world. In the United Kingdom, there are five main kinds of trust which come into being along side the transition with respect to laws and court cases. Among them are Interest in Possession trusts, the Accumulation and Maintenance trust, the Discretionary trust, the Bare trust and the Charitable trust. Amidst these transition and improvement of the legal system, in general, a trust necessitates for the following: There must be a clear intention to create a trust; the subject matter must be unmistakably identified; and the beneficiaries of the trust must be evidently identified or at least ascertainable. Aside from the foregoing, there are additional formality required in express trusts as provided for in the Wills Act of 1837 which provides that all testamentary trusts must be in writing, signed by the testator or by someone in his presence and by his direction and be attested by two witnesses. The Law of Property Act of 1925 provides that a declaration of trust regarding any land or any in terest therein must be manifested and proved in writing signed by some person who is able to declare such trust or by his will and with respect to shares of stock, the Companies Act of 1985 in general states that a share transfer from must be executed and delivered with the share certificates followed by entry of the name of the new owner in the company books. Aside from the foregoing, it is also noteworthy to generally discuss the concept of Constructive trust. This type of trust is not created by an agreement as mentioned before. A constructive trust is made obligatory by the law as an equitable remedy. A Constructive trust takes place for the reason of some wrongdoing, where the wrong doer get hold of the legal title to property and cannot be allowed to stand benefited from it. It is essentially a legal fiction, which arises by operation of law as a rejoinder to certain occurrences. The Case of BCCI Overseas and ICIC Overseas v. Akindele (2000) In the case of Bank of Credit and Commerce International (Overseas) LTD (BCCI Overseas for brevity) and International Credit Investment Company (Overseas) LTD (ICIC Overseas for brevity) v. Chief Labode Onadimaki Akindele (Akindele for brevity) is a claim of liquidators under the knowing assistance and knowing receipts of a constructive trust. The main issue of the instant case is whether or not there is Akindele was liable to BCCI Overseas and ICIC Overseas for the amount of US $ 6,679,226.33 plus interest as a constructive trustee and alternatively by way of damages for conspiracy to defraud. The transaction has to do with an investment of Akindele of US$ 10 million through ICIC Overseas in the purchase of 250,000 shares of BCCI Holdings of the fully paid up value of US$10 each, made in 1985. Claimants BCCI and ICIC Overseas alleged that both the

Must complete a summary post at the end of the discussion reflecting Essay

Must complete a summary post at the end of the discussion reflecting on your learning - Essay Example For instance, in a huge economy such as the UK, marketers need to properly budget for marketing research so that they can obtain the much needed information to design effective strategies in their operations. Various strategies can be implemented in order to obtain information from different sources. For instance, the marketers can implement the interactive strategy with the targeted audiences in order to get their views about their needs and interests with regards to products offered. In the same vein, organizations can also seek information from their suppliers to help them make informed business decisions. Marketing research can be carried out in order to obtain this kind of information. Unit 6 also covers the concepts of Product and Price. Essentially, all businesses are primarily concerned with satisfying the needs of the targeted consumers in a profitable way. This means that a product or service offered by the organization should be clearly defined and the price should also be set in accordance with the market forces obtaining at a particular period in order to attract many buyers. Through the use of the marketing mix involving the product, price, place and promotion, the marketers are in a better position to determine all the factors that can help improve the offering to the targeted customers. The strategy can be implemented in both B2C and B2B marketing. The organization’s capability to define its product and to price it correctly plays a pivotal role in determining its success or failure in its operations. The other important element that should be taken into consideration when determining the price of a particular product is its life cycle. Pricing m echanisms are usually determined by the life cycle of the product mainly comprised of four stages namely: introduction, growth, maturity and decline. The growth and maturity stages often attract high prices for the product since many customers would be interested in

Reflection of knowledge Acquired in Cross-cultural Management Assignment

Reflection of knowledge Acquired in Cross-cultural Management - Assignment Example From this discussion it is clear that managers that operate in their countries too often find themselves in conditions where they have to interact with clients, suppliers or employees originating from different countries with varying cultural practices and beliefs. Above these challenges, the modern organizations are increasingly consisting of people from diverse cultural backgrounds, making them multicultural organizations. It is therefore not enough to only seek and acquire traditional knowledge or training, but it is essential to be equipped with knowledge of surviving through cross-cultural organization systems. Managers therefore need the complex skills of operating through the multicultural settings of organizations to succeed internationally.This study discusses that every life aspect gets influenced by culture and this is dictated by the perspective someone adopts to view the   world and give direction to what is ethically tolerable in terms of behaviour. The definition of culture can be broadly said to be mutual interpretations, shared values or motives, identities and beliefs and, these factors are the outcomes of shared by members of a society and are passed over across generations. Society is a distinguishing factor that denotes a communal mind training of people mind from other people of a diverse class.  Today, managers are confronted with an array of cultural challenges with the increased international businesses across borders and diversified workforce emanating from different backgrounds.

PARLIAMENT, POLITICS AND POLICY MAKING Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words - 1

PARLIAMENT, POLITICS AND POLICY MAKING - Essay Example The government Bills are customarily introduced in the House of Commons, with approved drafts going to the House of Lords and then to Monarch for the subsequent assent. While such a procedure creates necessary checks and balances system in order to prevent the possible implementation of hastily approved Bills, it still limits the powers of popularly elected MPs in favour of non-elected governmental bodies, The time limits on the readings of the Bills in one session represent a significant deficiency of the present system of lawmaking as well. As the sessions of Parliament are closed by the act of prorogation, each Bill that fails to be carried through all necessary legislative steps is considered lapsed, and its authors have to go through this very process of legislative enquiry anew (Keenan and Smith 53). This has a significant adverse effect on the tempo of lawmaking and obstructs the efforts of lawmakers. Nevertheless, the legislative procedure of British House of Commons has its own positive features as well. ... The modernisation agenda of Blaire’s government affected both Houses of the Parliament, leading to many changes in its procedural rules and other structural elements. One of most significant of these policy moves was a thorough reform of the House of Lords, which lost its traditional character of the representative body of hereditary aristocracy after the House of Lords Act of 1999 provided for abolition of all but 92 hereditary peerages (Strickland and Cracknell 3). The modernisation of the House of the Commons proceeded rather unevenly, being somewhat stalled and timid in 1997-2001 and increasing in pace after 2001 (Cowley 20). Under Richard Cook, the Labour Party’s Leader of the House of Commons in 2001-2003, such important reforms were undertaken as the provision for more even resources allocation to select committees, the introduction of more topical Parliamentary Questions, and establishment of payment system for heads of select committees, so that the latter migh t wield an influence comparable to that of the Ministers (Cowley and Stuart 29). The tenure of Jack Straw as the Leader of the House (after 2006) was marked by important changes in standing committees process, with the result that the powers of standing committees were broadened so that they might receive both oral and written evidence before scrutinising the Bills under consideration (Cowley 21). Nevertheless, the other reforms to Parliament introduced by New Labour had mostly detrimental effect on its standing. For instance, the introduction of automatic timetabling of legislation served to make each Bill going through pre-arranged sequence of the debates, which narrowed the chances of Opposition to

Simple and Compound Interest Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Simple and Compound Interest - Essay Example Simple interest is interest expressed as a percentage of principal or the original amount borrowed or lent, for the entire period of borrowing. The interest will be the income received with regard to the lending or the price paid for the utilization of borrowed amount.   Simple interest happens to be the fastest as well as easiest approach of computing the interest on amount borrowed or lend. A car loan is a very popular example of simple interest, with which interest is charged only on the principal or original amount borrowed or lent. Below is the formula utilized in calculating interest owed in simple interest: Compound interest is interest expressed as a percentage of the revised principle.   In other words, compound interest may be referred to as interest added to the principal amount of a loan or deposit in order for the interest added to also earn interest onwards. In this approach, interest earned within the prior periods is added to the initial amount/principal: this inc reases the amount, on which the next period’s interest will be charged. The summing up of the principal amount and the interest is referred to as compounding. In this case, interest has to be paid on principal amount as well as interest accumulated during the deposit or loan term. It happens to be normal for banks to pay interest on semi -annually basis. Financial institutions, on the other hand, have a guiding principle of paying interest on quarterly basis. It is important to understand to how to calculate compound interest.