The Rise and Fall of Alexandria Essay Example

The Rise and Fall of Alexandria Essay How the modern world was actually established is often overlooked and attributed to the powers and domination of Athens and Rome. What authors Justin Pollard and Howard Reid urge readers to understand, however, is the significance that the city of Alexandria had on Western Civilization. Both authors have worked in British and American television, and are accomplished in the film/documentary industry.Reid has also previously written five other books. In their narrative book, The Rise and Fall of Alexandria, they seek to emphasize just how important this little city was to the foundation of the modern world through accounts of history. Alexandria was built on the foundation of knowledge and intellect, with some of the greatest minds in the fields of Philosophy and Astronomy behind the operation. Alexandria was the birthplace of some of history’s most influential people and the ideas that accompanied them.The ideas of these influential people, such as Herophilus and his discovery of the human organs, and Aristarchus with his idea of a heliocentric universe, have been carried down for centuries and will never be forgotten. Alexandria was home to the incredible library and museum where some of the world’s greatest thinkers pondered and hypothesized the abstracts and ideas that were foreign to their time. Along with all of these historical facts about Alexandria, the city also houses one of the Seven Wonders of the World—the magnificent lighthouse, the Pharos.Alexandria, one of the most influential cities in the foundation of the modern world and a city whose â€Å"unique soul† (p. 1) has been overlooked by history. But, through The Rise and Fall of Alexandria, readers are able to experience the climb to knowledge and intellect, as well as the rise and fall of this â€Å"most extraordinary city on earth† (p. 176). Alexander founded the city of Alexandria in 331 BC. Alexandria was in a prime location for a provincial capital with its â€Å"access to Egypt’s wealth and connections on to the Red Sea† (p. 7). He wanted Egypt as part of his growing empire.Not long after in 323 BC, however, Alexander died and left this newly established city to his half brother and baby son. Alexander’s childhood friend, Ptolemy, soon came to rule over the city and Alexandria began rising. Ptolemy had plans for the city and began building innovative roads and two sea harbors. With these new developments, authors note, the â€Å"fundamental plan of the greatest city in the ancient world was complete. † Houses, slaves, cattle, and taxpayers were being taken from surrounding villages and given to the capital city of Alexandria.When Ptolemy’s son and successor (Ptolemy II) began his rule on the city, he, too, threw himself into developing Alexandria and created a currency that could be used to sell and trade. Structures were built, such as temples and the lighthouse, and Alexandria was becoming known a s â€Å"the light of the world† (p. 92). Along with the furthering of physical growth to the city of Alexandria, there was also growth politically and religiously. Ptolemy wished to fuse ancient thinking with the modern thinking of the Greeks, so he devised a plan and created a cult through a fusion of two gods: the god of the dead and the living bull.And this Greco-Egyptian cult was created and called Serapis. Through this newly founded religion and the constant furthering of the city’s buildings and technology, Alexandria began to rise. One of the main and most important themes found in the history of Alexandria is how much the city and that period in time contributed to the knowledge of the world. Some of the most brilliant people influenced that particular time, including the great philosophers, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, as well as others such as Euclid of Alexandria, Herophilus, Aristarchus, and Eratosthenes.Alexandria was rich in knowledge because of the gr eat minds that utilized and contributed to the city’s institutions, such as the library and the lighthouse, to hypothesize theories and concepts. For example, Eratosthenes observed ships on the horizon from atop the lighthouse in Alexandria and eventually was the first to compass the world and describe the globe. Aristotle, being the private tutor of Alexander, could be credited for laying the intellectual foundation for the city of Alexandria. He, too, contributed to the Library of the city.Behind the brilliance of Aristotle, one can find the influences of the great philosophers that preceded him: Socrates and Plato. Because of its saturation of intellects and the availability of resources (the library and museum), Alexandria was a city thriving with knowledge and new schools of thought. Alexandria was the birthplace of the modern world, â€Å"not led by legions of soldiers, but by dynasties of scholars navigating on a sea of books† (p. 1). Alexander was considered to be a living god by the Egyptians for over 3,000 years, but the Greeks, however, did not so easily accept this notion.At the death of Alexander, dispute over who should rule over the largest empire on earth was in play. Finally, Alexander’s childhood friend, Ptolemy who looked like an Egyptian and spoke like a Greek, became Pharaoh. The reign of Ptolemy, including his heirs, was one that lasted for five generations. As even the beginning of the Alexandria Empire showed a trend of a constant power struggle among kings and pharaohs, so it continued this way until its fall. With rulers coming in and out of power, Alexandria was under a constant power struggle.Since Alexander’s death, â€Å"the eastern Mediterranean had been involved in an almost continuous struggle among the descendants of his heirs for control over† Alexandria (p. 156). A power that was becoming stronger and more threatening was that of Rome. Whether it was the grain that attracted the Romans to A lexandria, or the hunger for a place in history with the greatest conqueror, Alexander, the Romans were drawn to Alexandria. While under the rule of Cleopatra, the city of Alexandria was invaded by the Romans and the city was set in flames.The great Library of Alexandria lost some 4,000 papyrus scrolls, which although was not the end of the library, was the symbol of the city falling as the heart of it had been burned. In the spring of 30 BC, Alexandria was again invaded by Octavian and his army, and on August 1, â€Å"the Ptolemaic kingdom came to an end† (p. 172). Alexandria became a city in which it was dangerous to express one’s religious beliefs or opinions. In the middle of this dangerous time, the last scientist who worked in the library was a woman named Hypatia.The fact that she was a woman and that she was friends with the Roman governor made the Archbishop of Alexandria, Cyril, hate her. Hypatia was killed, and soon after, the Library was destroyed. The hear t and mind, the central being, the core of Alexandria was destroyed with the Library, and â€Å"with the death of Hypatia, her city also began to die (p. 280). The streets were filled with religious extremism and violence and with ethnic tension; the customs were changing and even the language was transforming as influenced by the Egyptians (p. 80). Eventually the great city of Alexandria was torn down by the Muslim general and the place that had once flourished with civilization and knowledge became nothing but ruins covered in flour and grain—and so was the fall of Alexandria. Alexandria was a city that started out strong and promising, with its dedicated rulers and the plans they had to nurture and expand the empire. It was the center of knowledge and wisdom, a magnet for those with great minds and ideas about the world.The heart of the city was its beloved library. Intellects swarmed this great city to teach, to learn, to ponder, and to discover. Aristarchus â€Å"put t he earth in heavens in motion† (p. 108) when he proposed a model of the solar system; Eratosthenes found the solution to the â€Å"Delian Problem† (p. 122); Archimedes figured out how to calculate the volume of a sphere: all these discoveries out of the city in Egypt. As I read through this book, I felt as though I was in the middle of it all.It felt like I was watching the birth of a baby as the city was founded, the hard life of growing up as the city underwent so many changes, and eventually the death of a legacy as the city was torn down. The city of Alexandria served its purpose of facilitating the minds of philosophical geniuses and an important chunk of history in our world. Through this book, Justin Pollard and Howard Reid were able to bring to life a long-lost empire that rose and fell, but will never be forgotten. Pollard, Justin and Howard Reid. The Rise and Fall of Alexandria: Birthplace of the Modern World. New York: Penguin Books, 2006.

Vietnam Essay

Vietnam Essay Free Online Research Papers From the beginning of John Kennedys Administration into this fifth year of Lyndon Johnsons presidency, substantially the same small groups of men have presided over the destiny of the United States. In that time they have carried the country from a limited involvement in Vietnam into a war that is brutal, probably unsinkable, and, to an increasing body of opinion, calamitous and immoral. How could it happen? Many in government or close to it will read the following article with the shock of recognition. Those less familiar with the processes of power can read it with the assurance that the author had a firsthand opportunity to watch the slide down the slippery slope during five years (1961-1966) of service in the White House and Department of State. Mr. Thomson is an East Asia specialist and an assistant professor of history at Harvard. As a case study in the making of foreign policy, the Vietnam War will fascinate historians and social scientists for many decades to come. One question that will certainly be asked: How did men of superior ability, sound training, and high ideals American policy-makers of the 1960s create such costly and divisive policy? As one who watched the decision-making process in Washington from 1961 to 1966 under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, I can suggest a preliminary answer. I can do so by briefly listing some of the factors that seemed to me to shape our Vietnam policy during my years as an East Asia specialist at the State Department and the White House. I shall deal largely with Washington as I saw or sensed it, and not with Saigon, where I have spent but a scant three days, in the entourage of the Vice President, or with other decision centers, the capitals of interested parties. Nor will I deal with other important parts of the record: Vietnams history prior to 1961, for instance, or the overall course of Americas relations with Vietnam. Yet a first and central ingredient in these years of Vietnam decisions does involve history. The ingredient was the legacy of the 1950s by which I mean the so-called loss of China, the Korean War, and the Far East policy of Secretary of State Dulles. This legacy had an institutional by-product for the Kennedy Administration: in 1961 the U.S. governments East Asian establishment was undoubtedly the most rigid and doctrinaire of Washingtons regional divisions in foreign affairs. This was especially true at the Department of State, where the incoming Administration found the Bureau of Far Eastern Affairs the hardest nut to crack. It was a bureau that had been purged of its best China expertise, and of farsighted, dispassionate men, as a result of McCarthyism. Its members were generally committed to one policy line: the close containment and isolation of mainland China, the harassment of neutralist nations which sought to avoid alignment with either Washington or Peking and the maintenance of a network of alliances with anti-Communist client states on Chinas periphery. Another aspect of the legacy was the special vulnerability and sensitivity of the new Democratic Administration on Far East policy issues. The memory of the McCarthy era was still very sharp, and Kennedys margin of victory was too thin. The 1960 Offshore Islands TV debate between Kennedy and Nixon had shown the President-elect the perils of fresh thinking. The Administration was inherently leery of moving too fast on Asia. As a result, the Far East Bureau (now the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs) was the last one to be overhauled. Not until Averell Harriman was brought in as Assistant Secretary in December 1961, were significant personnel changes attempted, and it took Harriman several months to make a deep imprint on the bureau because of his necessary preoccupation with the Laos settlement. Once he did so, there was virtually no effort to bring back the purged or exiled East Asia experts. There were other important by-products of this legacy of the fifties: The new Administration inherited and somewhat shared a general perception of China-on-the-march a sense of Chinas vastness, its numbers, its belligerence ; a revived sense, perhaps, of the Golden Horde. This was a perception fed by Chinese intervention in the Korean War (an intervention actually based on appallingly bad communications and mutual miscalculation on the part of Washington and Peking; but the careful unraveling of that tragedy, which scholars have accomplished, had not yet become part of the conventional wisdom). The new Administration inherited and briefly accepted a monolithic conception of the Communist bloc. Despite much earlier predictions and reports by outside analysts, policy-makers did not begin to accept the reality and possible finality of the Sino-Soviet split until the first weeks of 1962. The inevitably corrosive impact of competing nationalisms on Communism was largely ignored. The new Administration inherited and to some extent shared the domino theory about Asia. This theory resulted from profound ignorance of Asian history and hence ignorance of the radical differences among Asian nations and societies. It resulted from a blindness to the power and resilience of Asian nationalisms. (It may also have resulted from a subconscious sense that, since all Asians look alike, all Asian nations will act alike.) As a theory, the domino fallacy was not merely inaccurate but also insulting to Asian nations; yet it has continued to this day to beguile men who should know better. Finally, the legacy of the fifties was apparently compounded by an uneasy sense of a worldwide Communist challenge to the new Administration after the Bay of Pigs fiasco. A first manifestation was the Presidents traumatic Vienna meeting with Khrushchev in June 1961; then came the Berlin crisis of the summer. All this created an atmosphere in which President Kennedy undoubtedly felt under special pressure to show his nations mettle in Vietnam if the Vietnamese, unlike the people of Laos, were willing to fight. In general, the legacy of the fifties shaped such early moves of the new Administration as the decisions to maintain a high-visibility SEATO (by sending the Secretary of State himself instead of some underlying to its first meeting in 1961), to back away from diplomatic recognition of Mongolia in the summer of 1961, and most important, to expand U.S. military assistance to South Vietnam that winter on the basis of the much more tentative Eisenhower commitment. It should be added that the increased commitment to Vietnam was also fueled by a new breed of military strategists and academic social scientists (some of whom had entered the new Administration) who had developed theories of counter-guerrilla warfare and were eager to see them put to the test. To some, counterinsurgency seemed a new panacea for coping with the worlds instability. SO MUCH for the legacy and the history. Any new Administration inherits both complicated problems and simplistic views of the world. But surely among the policy-makers of the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, there were men who would warn of the dangers of an open-ended commitment to the Vietnam quagmire? This raises a central question, at the heart of the policy process: Where were the experts, the doubters, and the dissenters? Were they there at all, and if so, what happened to them? The answer is complex but instructive. In the first place, the American government was sorely lacking in real Vietnam or Indochina expertise. Originally treated as an adjunct of Embassy Paris, our Saigon embassy and the Vietnam Desk at State were largely staffed from 1954 onward by French-speaking Foreign Service personnel of narrowly European experience. Such diplomats were even more closely restricted than the normal embassy officer by the cast of mind as well as the language to contacts with Vietnams French-speaking urban elites. For instance, Foreign Service linguists in Portugal are able to speak with the peasantry if they get out of Lisbon and choose to do so; not so the French speakers of Embassy Saigon. In addition, the shadow of the loss of China distorted Vietnam reporting. Career officers in the Department, and especially those in the field, had not forgotten the fate of their World War II colleagues who wrote in frankness from China and were later pilloried by Senate co mmittees for critical comments on the Chinese Nationalists. Candid reporting on the strengths of the Viet Cong and the weaknesses of the Diem government was inhibited by the memory. It was also inhibited by some higher officials, notably Ambassador Nolting in Saigon, who refused to sign off on such cables. In due course, to be sure, some Vietnam talent was discovered or developed. But a recurrent and increasingly important factor in the decision-making process was the banishment of real expertise. Here the underlying cause was the closed politics of policy-making as issues become hot: the more sensitive the issue, and the higher it rises in the bureaucracy, the more completely the experts are excluded while the harassed senior generalists take over (that is, the Secretaries, Undersecretaries, and Presidential Assistants). The frantic skimming of briefing papers in the back seats of limousines is no substitute for the presence of specialists; furthermore, in times of crisis, such papers are deemed too sensitive even for review by the specialists. Another underlying cause of this banishment, as Vietnam became more critical, was the replacement of the experts, who were generally and increasingly pessimistic, by men described as can-do guys, loyal and energetic fixers unsoured by expertise. In early 1965, when I confided my growing policy doubts to an older colleague on the NSC staff, he assured me that the smartest thing both of us could do was to steer clear of the whole Vietnam mess; the gentleman in question had the misfortune to be a can-do guy, however, and is now highly placed in Vietnam, under orders to solve the mess. Despite the banishment of the experts, internal doubters and dissenters did indeed appear and persist. Yet as I watched the process, such men were effectively neutralized by a subtle dynamic: the domestication of dissenters. Such domestication arose out of a two-fold cubbish need: on the one hand, the dissenters desire to stay aboard; and on the other hand, the no dissenter’s conscience. Simply stated, dissent, when recognized, was made to feel at home. On the lowest possible scale of importance, I must confess my own considerable sense of dignity and acceptance (both vital) when my senior White House employer would refer to me as his favorite dove. Far more significant was the case of the former Undersecretary of State, George Ball. Once Mr. Ball began to express doubts, he was warmly institutionalized: he was encouraged to become the in-house devils advocate on Vietnam. The upshot was inevitable: the process of escalation allowed for periodic requests to Mr. Ball to speak his piece; Ball felt good, I assume (he had fought for righteousness); the others felt good (they had given a full hearing to the dovish option), and there was minimal unpleasantness. The club remained intact, and it is, of course, possible that matters would have gotten worse faster if Mr. Ball had kept silent, or left before his final departure in the fall of 1966. There was also, of course, the case of the last institutionalized doubter, Bill Moyers. The President is said to have greeted his arrival at meetings with an affectionate, Well, here comes Mr. Stop-the-Bombing. Here again, the dynamics of domesticated dissent sustained the relationship for a while. A related point and crucial, I suppose, to the government at all times was the effectiveness trap, the trap that keeps men from speaking out, as clearly or often as they might, within the government. And it is the trap that keeps men from resigning in protest and airing their dissent outside the government. The most important asset that a man brings to bureaucratic life is his effectiveness, a mysterious combination of training, style, and connections. The most ominous complaint that can be whispered of a bureaucrat is: Im afraid Charlies beginning to lose his effectiveness. To preserve your effectiveness, you must decide where and when to fight the mainstream of policy; the opportunities range from pillow talk with your wife to private drinks with your friends to meetings with the Secretary of State or the President. The inclination to remain silent or to acquiesce in the presence of the great men to live to fight another day, to give on this issue so that you can be effective on later issues is overwhelming. Nor is it the tendency of youth alone; some of our most senior officials, men of wealth and fame, whose place in history is secure, have remained silent lest their connection with power is terminated. As for the disinclination to resign in protest: while not necessarily a Washington or even American specialty, it seems truer of a government in which ministers have no parliamentary backbench to which to retreat. In the absence of such a refuge, it is easy to rationalize the decision to stay aboard. By doing so, one may be able to prevent a few bad things from happening and perhaps even make a few good things happen. To exit is to lose even those marginal chances for effectiveness. Another factor must be noted: as the Vietnam controversy escalated at home, there developed a preoccupation with Vietnam public relations as opposed to Vietnam policy-making. And here, ironically, internal doubters and dissenters were heavily employed. For such men, by virtue of their own doubts, were often deemed best able to massage the doubting intelligentsia. My senior East Asia colleague at the White House, a brilliant and humane doubter who had dealt with Indochina since 1954, spent three quarters o f his working days on Vietnam public relations: drafting presidential responses to letters from important critics, writing conciliatory language for presidential speeches, and meeting quite interminably with delegations of outraged Quakers, clergymen, academics, and housewives. His regular callers were the late A. J. Muste and Norman Thomas; mine were members of the Womens Strike for Peace. Our orders from above: keep them off the backs of busy policy-makers (who usually happened to be no doubters). Incidentally, my most discouraging assignment in the realm of public relations was the preparation of a White House pamphlet entitled Why Vietnam, in September 1965; in a gesture toward my conscience, I fought and lost a battle to have the title followed by a question mark. THROUGH a variety of procedures, both institutional and personal, doubt, dissent, and expertise were effectively neutralized in the making of policy. But what can be said of the men in charge? It is patently absurd to suggest that they produced such tragedy by intention and calculation. But it is neither absurd nor difficult to discern certain forces at work that caused decent and honorable men to do great harm. Here I would stress the paramount role of executive fatigue. No factor seems to be more crucial and underrated in the making of foreign policy. The physical and emotional toll of executive responsibility in State, the Pentagon, the White House, and other executive agencies is enormous; that toll is of course compounded by extended service. Many of todays Vietnam policy-makers have been on the job for from four to seven years. Complaints may be few, and physical health may remain unimpaired, though emotional health is far harder to gauge. But what is most seriously eroded in the deadening process of fatigue is the freshness of thought, imagination, a sense of possibility, a sense of priorities and perspective those rare assets of a new Administration in its first year or two of office. The tired policy-maker becomes a prisoner of his own narrowed view of the world and his own clichà ©d rhetoric. He becomes irritable and defensive short on sleep, short on family ties, short on patience. Such men make bad policy and then compound it. They have neither the time nor the temperament for new ideas or preventive diplomacy. Below the level of the fatigued executives in the making of Vietnam policy was a widespread phenomenon: the curator mentality in the Department of State. By this, I mean the collective inertia produced by the bureaucrats view of his job. At State, the average desk officer inherits from his predecessor our policy toward Country X; he regards it as his function to keep that policy intact under glass, untampered with, and dusted so that he may pass it on in two to four years to his successor. And such curatorial service generally merits promotion within the system. (Maintain the status quo, and you will stay out of trouble.) In some circumstances, the inertia bred by such an outlook can act as a brake against rash innovation. But on many issues, this inertia sustains the momentum of bad policy and unwise commitments momentum that might otherwise have been resisted within the ranks. Clearly, Vietnam is such an issue. To fatigue and inertia must be added the factor of internal confusio n. Even among the architects of our Vietnam commitment, there has been persistent confusion as to what type of war we were fighting and, as a direct consequence, confusion as to how to end that war. (The credibility gap is, in part, a reflection of such internal confusion.) Was it, for instance, a civil war, in which case counterinsurgency might suffice? Or was it a war of international aggression? (This might invoke SEATO or UN commitment. ) Who were the aggressor and the real enemy? The Viet Cong? Hanoi? Peking? Moscow? International Communism? Or maybe Asian Communism? Differing enemies dictated differing strategies and tactics. And confused throughout, in like fashion, was the question of American objectives; your objectives depended on whom you were fighting and why. I shall not forget my assignment from an Assistant Secretary of State in March 1964: to draft a speech for Secretary McNamara which would, inter alia, once and for all dispose of the canard that the Vietnam conflict was a civil war. But in some ways, of course, I mused, it is a civil war. Dont play word games with me! snapped the Assistant Secretary. Similar confusion beset the concept of negotiations anathema to much of official Washington from 1961 to 1965. Not until April 1965, did unconditional discussions become respectable, via a presidential speech; even then the Secretary of State stressed privately to newsmen that nothing had changed, since discussions were by no means the same as negotiations. Months later that issue was resolved. But it took even longer to obtain a fragile internal agreement that negotiations might include the Viet Cong as something other than an appendage to Hanois delegation. Given such confusion as to the who’s and whys of our Vietnam commitment , it is not surprising, as Theodore Draper has written, that policy-makers find it so difficult to agree on how to end the war. Of course, one force a constant in the vortex of commitment was that of wishful thinking. I partook of it myself at many times. I did so especially during Washingtons struggle with Diem in the autumn of 1963 when some of us at State believed that for once, in dealing with a difficult client state, the U.S. government could use the leverage of our economic and military assistance to make good things happen, instead of being led around by the nose by men like Chiang Kai-shek and Syngman Rhee (and, in that particular instance, by Diem). If we could prove that point, I thought, and move into a new day, with or without Diem, and then Vietnam was well worth the effort. Later came the wishful thinking of the air- strike planners in the late autumn of 1964; there were those who actually thought that after six weeks of air strikes, the North Vietnamese would come crawling to us to ask for peace talks. And what, someone asked in one of the meetings of the time, if they dont? The answer was that we would bomb for another four weeks, and that would do the trick. And a few weeks later came one instance of wishful thinking that was symptomatic of good men misled: in January 1965, I encountered one of the very highest figures in the Administration at a dinner, drew him aside, and told him of my worries about the air-strike option. He told me that I really shouldnt worry; it was his conviction that before any such plans could be put into effect, a neutralist government would come to power in Saigon that would politely invite us out. And finally, there was the recurrent wishful thinking that sustained many of us through the trying months of 1965-1966 after the air strikes had begun: that surely, somehow, one way or another, we would be in a conference in six months, and the escalatory spiral would be suspended. The basis of our hope: It simply cant go on. AS A further influence on policy-makers I would cite the factor of bureaucratic detachment. By this I mean what at best might be termed the professional callousness of the surgeon (and indeed, medical lingo the surgical strike for instance seemed to crop up in the euphemisms of the times). In Washington, the semantics of the military muted the reality of war for the civilian policy-makers. In quiet, air-conditioned, thick-carpeted rooms, such terms as systema tic pressure, armed reconnaissance, targets of opportunity, and even body count seemed to breed a sort of games-theory detachment. Most memorable to me was a moment in the late 1964 target planning when the question under discussion was how heavy our bombing should be, and how extensive our strafing, at some midpoint in the projected pattern of systematic pressure. An Assistant Secretary of State resolved the point in the following words: It seems to me that our orchestration should be mainly violins, but with periodic touches of brass. Perhaps the biggest shock of my return to Cambridge, Massachusetts, was the realization that the young men, the flesh and blood I taught and saw on these university streets, were potentially some of the numbers on the charts of those faraway planners. In a curious sense, Cambridge is closer to this war than Washington. There is an unprovable factor that relates to bureaucratic detachment: the ingredient of crypto-racism. I do not mean to imply any conscious contempt for Asian loss of life on the part of Washington officials. But I do mean to imply that bureaucratic detachment may well be compounded by a traditional Western sense that there are so many Asians, after all; that Asians have a fatalism about life and a disregard for its loss; that they are cruel and barbaric to their own people; and that they are very different from us (and all look alike?). And I do mean to imply that the upshot of such subliminal views is a subliminal question whether Asians, and particularly Asian peasants, and most particularly Asian Communists, are real people like you and me. To put the matter another way: would we have pursued quite such policies and quite such military tactics if the Vietnamese were white? It is impossible to write of Vietnam decision-making without writing about language. Throughout the conflict, words have been of paramount importance. I refer here to the impact of rhetorical escalation and to the problem of overselling. In an important sense, Vietnam has become of crucial significance to us because we have said that it is of crucial significance. (The issue obviously relates to the public relations preoccupation described earlier.) The key here is domestic politics: the need to sell the American people, press, and Congress on support for an unpopular and costly war in which the objectives themselves have been in flux. To se ll means to persuade, and to persuade means rhetoric. As the difficulties and costs have mounted, so has the definition of the stakes. This is not to say that rhetorical escalation is an orderly process; executive prose is the product of many writers, and some concepts North Vietnamese infiltration, Americas national honor, Red China as the chief enemy have entered the rhetoric only gradually and even sporadically. But there is an upward spiral nonetheless. And once you have said that the American Experiment itself stands or falls on the Vietnam outcome, you have thereby created a national stake far beyond any earlier stakes. Crucial throughout the process of Vietnam decision-making was a conviction among many policy-makers: that Vietnam posed a fundamental test of Americas national will. Time and again I was told by men reared in the tradition of Henry L. Stimson that all we needed was the will, and we would then prevail. Implicit in such a view, it seemed to me, was a curious assumption that Asians lacked will, or at least that in a contest between Asian and Anglo-Saxon wills, the non-Asians must prevail. A corollary to the persistent belief in a will was a fascination with power and awe in the face of the power America possessed as no nation or civilization ever before. Those who doubted our role in Vietnam were said to shrink from the burdens of power, the obligations of power, the uses of power, the responsibility of power. By implication, such men were soft-headed and effete. Finally, no discussion of the factors and forces at work on Vietnam policymakers can ignore the central fact of human ego investment. Men who have participated in a decision to develop a stake in that decision. As they participate in further, related decisions, their stake increases. It might have been possible to dissuade a man of strong self-confidence at an early stage of the ladder of a decision, but it is infinitely harder at later stages since a change of mind there usually involves an implicit or explicit repudiation of a chain of previous decisions. To put it bluntly: at the heart of the Vietnam calamity is a group of able, dedicated men who have been regularly and repeatedly wrong and whose standing with their contemporaries, and more important, with history, depends, as they see it, on being proven right. These are not men who can be asked to extricate themselves from error. THE various ingredients I have cited in the making of Vietnam policy have created a variety of results, most of them fairly obvious. Here are some that seem to me most central: Throughout the conflict, there has been persistent and repeated miscalculation by virtually all the actors, in high echelons and low, whether dove, hawk, or something else. To cite one simple example among many: in late 1964 and early 1965, some peace-seeking planners at State who strongly opposed the projected bombing of the North urged that, instead, American ground forces be sent to South Vietnam; this would, they said, increase our bargaining leverage against the North our chips and would give us something to negotiate about (the withdrawal of our forces) at an early peace conference. Simultaneously, the air-strike option was urged by many in the military who were dead set against American participation in another land war in Asia; they were joined by other civilian peace-seekers who wanted to bomb Hanoi into early negotiations. By late 1965, we had ended up with the worst of all worlds: ineffective and costly air strikes against the North, spiraling ground forces in the South, and no negotiations in sight. Throughout the conflict as well, there has been a steady give-in to pressures for a military solution and only minimal and sporadic efforts at a diplomatic and political solution. In part, this resulted from the confusion (earlier cited) among the civilians confusion regarding objectives and strategy. And in part, this resulted from the self-enlarging nature of the military investment. Once air strikes and particularly ground forces were introduced, our investment itself had transformed the original stakes. More air power was needed to protect the ground forces, and then more ground forces to protect the ground forces. And needless to say, the military mind develops its own momentum in the absence of clear guidelines from the civilians. Once asked to save South Vietnam, rather than to advise it, the American military could not but press for escalation. In addition, sad to report, assorted military constituencies, once involved in Vietnam, have had a series of cases to prove: for instance, the utility not only of air power (the Air Force) but of supercarrier-based air power (the Navy). Also, Vietnam policy has suffered from one ironic byproduct of Secretary Mc Namaras establishment of civilian control at the Pentagon: in the face of such control, an interservice rivalry has given way to a united front among the military reflected in the new but recurrent phenomenon of JCS unanimity. In conjunction with traditional congressional allies (mostly Southern senators and representatives) such a united front would pose a formidable problem for any President. Throughout the conflict, there have been missed opportunities, large and small, to disengage ourselves from Vietnam on increasingly unpleasant but still acceptable terms. Of the many moments from 1961 onward, I shall cite only one, the last and most important opportunity that was lost: in the summer of 1964 the President instructed his chief advisers to prepare for him as wide a range of Vietnam options as possible for postelection consideration and decision. He explicitly asked that all options be laid out. What happened next was, in effect, Lyndon Johnsons slow-motion Bay of Pigs. For the advisers so effectively converged on one single option juxtaposed against two other, phony options (in effect, blowing up the world, or scuttle-and-run) that the President was confronted with unanimity for bombing the North from all his trusted counselors. Had he been more confident in foreign affairs, had he been deeply informed on Vietnam and Southeast Asia, and had he raised some hard questions that unanimity had submerged, this President could have used the largest electoral mandate in history to de-escalate in Vietnam, in the clear expectation that at the worst a neutralist government would come to power in Saigon and politely invite us out. Today, many lives and dollars later, such an alternative has become an elusive and infinitely more expensive possibility. In the course of these years, another result of Vietnam decision-making has been the abuse and distortion of history. Vietnamese, Southeast Asian, and Far Eastern history has been rewritten by our policy-makers, and their spokesmen, to conform to the alleged necessity of our presence in Vietnam. Highly dubious analogies from our experience elsewhere the Munich sellout and containment from Europe, the Malayan insurgency and the Korean War from Asia have been imported in order to justify our actions. And more recent events have been fitted to the Procrustean bed of Vietnam. Most notably, the change of power in Indonesia in 1965-1966 has been ascribed to our Vietnam presence; and virtually all progress in the Pacific region the rise of regionalism, new forms of cooperation, and mounting growth rates has been similarly explained. The Indonesian allegation is undoubtedly false (I tried to prove it, during six months of careful investigation at the White House, and had to confess failu re); the regional allegation is patently unprovable in either direction (except, of course, for the clear fact that the economies of both Japan and Korea have profited enormously from our Vietnam-related procurement in these countries; but that is a costly and highly dubious form of foreign aid). There is a final result of Vietnam policy I would cite that holds potential danger for the future of American foreign policy: the rise of a new breed of American ideologues who see Vietnam as the ultimate test of their doctrine. I have in mind those men in Washington who have given a new life to the missionary impulse in American foreign relations: who believe that this nation, in this era, has received a threefold endowment that can transform the world. As they see it, that endowment is composed of, first, our unsurpassed military might; second, our clear technological supremacy; and third, our allegedly invincible benevolence (our altruism, our affluence, our lack of territorial aspirations). Together, it is argued, this threefold endowment provides us with the opportunity and the obligation to ease the nations of the earth toward modernization and stability: toward a full-fledged Pax Americana Technocratic. In reaching toward this goal, Vietnam is viewed as the last and crucial test. Once we have succeeded there, the road ahead is clear. In a sense, these men are our counterpart to the visionaries of Communisms radical left: they are technocracys own Maoists. They do not govern Washington today. But their doctrine rides high. Long before I went into government, I was told a story about Henry L. Stimson that seemed to me pertinent during the years that I watched the Vietnam tragedy unfold and participated in that tragedy. It seems to me more pertinent than ever as we move toward the election of 1968. In his waning years Stimson was asked by an anxious questioner, Mr. Secretary, how on earth can we ever bring peace to the world? Stimson is said to have answered: You begin by bringing to Washington a small handful of able men who believe that the achievement of peace is possible. Research Papers on Vietnam EssayMr. Obama and IranInflation TargetingGlobal Distributive Justice is UtopianCombating Human TraffickingBooker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells-BarnettAmerican Central Banking and OilHas the British Welfare System beenDefinition of Export QuotasInternational PaperThe Equal Rights Amendment

National Security Affairs of Iraq Research Paper

National Security Affairs of Iraq - Research Paper Example This conflict has greatly divided the national purpose of Iraq. The Iraq’s National Security Affairs can be termed as having a complex framework characterized by burdensome issues associated with untangling and security issues connected to terrorist groups. The country has also been linked to most of the criminal events in the Middle East. Despite the above situation, the Iraq’s political scene is trying its level best to keep afloat through associating with other nations such as the United States. Its internal security is under complete control by its army following the withdrawal of American troops. The government has however admitted that it has along way to go in terms of attaining a stable national security especially in relation to technical issues in its intelligence apparatus. The Iraq’s army is not yet qualified to maintain peace and order in the country as it is still unsuited for such duties. In relation to the international community especially other Arab Spring countries, its foreign policy has not yet been fully established and this has led to fluid situations in such Arab countries preventing Iraq from attaining a stable approach with regards to its foreign policy. Cases like those witnessed in Syria have resulted to a sectarian dimension that has resulted to an acute effect on Iraq following its diverse sectarian composition. Despite the American withdrawal from Iraq, the two countries have maintained a close tie especially when it comes to Iraq’s National Security with America in full support of her security affairs. IDEOLOGY The Ideology of Iraq stems from the radical Islamists who are pursuing a vision that they believed to be universalists with regards to Sharia Law. They came out strongly seeking the interpretation of this law with regards to the war. According to the Sharia Law, the people’s voice had no position in any political system that obey the rules made by God (Ali 2009). This conflicting position left the mood of the public to be variable yet the law was external. The war against liberalism believed to be waged by the al-Qaeda as well as its affiliates represents a political manifestation of the mindset that resisted Westernization and globalization. The al-Qaeda had a number of complains with regards to American culture and the impact it had on the Iraq people. The American culture was looked at as to be resulting in immorality, hypocrisy and polytheism among the Iraq people Iraq had been closely associated with the Activities of Osama Bin Laden and that led to most of the international countries to declare war on Iraq with the USA being on the fore front. The United States under President Bush was against the democracy principles employed in the country at that time as well as all the leaders who were out to enact it. The International community was agitating for democratic elections to be held which would ensure that the existing government as well as the popular soverei gnty was eliminated now that the two had led to deviation and infidelity to the true desirable path (Ali 2009). Consequently the international community was ready to fight any person or force that was after malicious ideology and referred to such forces as infidels.

Theory of Knowledge Essay (Psychology) Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Theory of Knowledge (Psychology) - Essay Example Some studies have been carried out to establish how knowledge is gained, how it can be used, when can knowledge be said to be knowledge indeed, should truth be factored in knowledge etc. These factors considered in the study of knowledge consists a branch of philosophy called Theory of Knowledge (ToK). ToK as Bertrand Russell (1926) puts it is a product of doubt. He further asserts that only when you subject facts, concepts etc into sufficient doubt then you can know whether the facts, concepts etc can be said to be true and thus become knowledge. In other words knowledge is not knowledge if it isn’t true and facts, concepts, principles etc graduate to knowledge once they reach the threshold of truth. Therefore ToK ventures into four ways of knowing i.e. through emotion, language, perception (use of senses) and through reason. It also features the areas of knowledge such as Science, Arts, Mathematics, history etc while investigating how students, the actors of knowledge, gain knowledge. This paper seeks to discuss the fact that an area of knowledge is not necessarily a collection of facts. An area of knowledge, be it science or mathematics, is not a mere collection of facts even though collection of facts constitute an area of knowledge (Lehrer, 2000). Science is dependent on facts that can be ascertained to be true. A number of facts describe science. The philosophy of science entails two parts. The first part is about the process of acquiring scientific knowledge (Scientific in the sense that it can be tested and ascertained scientifically) and the second part is about the purpose, implications and uses of the scientific knowledge acquired. One most important thing to note is the fact that the facts that make up science should have a way to be tested. Therefore, an accumulation of facts alone do not make science but if the facts can be tested scientifically and ascertained, then they qualify to constitute

Evaluation and comparison of PepsiCo and the Coca-cola company

Evaluation and comparison of PepsiCo and the Coca-cola company Today Pepsi is a huge international and multibillion dollar soft-drink and snack food company second only to Coca Cola. It is hardly what Caleb Bradley had in mind when he created a soft drink formula in his North Carolina pharmacy store in 1898. In its early days Bradley sold only the syrup needed to make the Pepsi drink. Today we have countless choices of drinks and snacks all under the Pepsi name. Caleb Bradley patented his formula in 1902 and started making and selling it out of his pharmacy. He had great success with it, and production increased almost exponentially. During World War I sugar began to be rationed and prices rose over 500%. Caleb had no choice but to declare bankruptcy and sell his business to Roy C. Megargel, and investment banker, in 1928. But Megargel had very little luck with the company as well and in 1931, just three years later declares bankruptcy himself. A company by the name of Loft Inc. purchases most of the Pepsi shares and becomes a major shareholder of the corporation. After reorganizing, Pepsi begins to advertise on a massive scale. With the depression in full swing at the time Pepsi begins to sell 12 oz bottles of its product for just 5 cents compared to its competitor selling 6 oz bottle at the same price. It becomes known as the poor mans drink. It began to aggressively look to the international market, especially in Canada and Mexico. In 1934 Pepsi was finally able to open its first distribution center in an international market, Canada. From that point on the drink and the name had nowhere to go but up. New products were added to its list such as Diet Pepsi, Pepsi Free, etc. In 1965 Pepsi joined forces with a large snake food industry know as Frito Lay. Thanks to this merger the company was able to make for the first time $1 billion in sales, its first but certainly not its last. Pepsi also become purchasing fast food restaurants such as Taco Bell, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Pizza Hut. But in 1997 it spun off these fast food chains into another company. Today Pepsi make over $40 billion a year and this number is increasing every year. The brand name alone is worth over $12 billion which puts it in the top 20 most valuable names in the world. There seems to be no stopping this giant in the soft drink industry, but every company has a rival and Pepsi has some very powerful ones. PepsiCo and The Coca Cola Company Performance Ratio Comparisons: PepsiCo Inc Fiscal Year 2009 Profitability Growth Cash Flow Financial Health Efficiency Ratios Ratio Comparisons: The Coca Cola Company Ratio Comparisons Profitability Growth Cash Flow Financial Health Efficiency Ratios Stock Charts: PepsiCo Inc 3 month stock chart 6 month stock chart 1 year stock chart Stock Charts: The Coca Cola Company 3 month stock chart 6 month stock chart 1 year stock chart Stock Prices: PepsiCo Inc Stock Prices: The Coca Cola Company Development: PepsiCo Inc Product Add more than 200 product variations a year to keep up with changes in consumer taste New Age beverages SoBe No Fear (energy drink) SoBe Synergy (targeted to school-aged children) SoBe Fuerte (Hispanic market) Propel Fitness Water Obesity concerns Low-carb Doritos, Cheetos, and Tostitos Health concerns Natural and organic chips Hispanic markets Popular brands from a Mexican subsidiary (Sabritones Chile and Lime puffed wheat snacks) Culture Pepsi Refresh Project Pepsi is awarding grants from $5,000 to $250,000 to consumer-generated ideas that will make a positive impact in the world. The program launched on January 13, 2010 and will award more than $20 million in 2010 to move communities forward. Aug 27, 2010 CVS Pharmacy and Boundless Playgrounds Join the Refresh Challenge to Support Children of All Abilities Current Developments Aug. 4, 2010 PepsiCo announces company is investing USD $3 million over next three years to create Agricultural Development Center of Peru (CEDAP), which will develop new varieties of potatoes and other tubers and roots. This is meant to develop new and healthier products and to encourage commercial cultivation of these species in ways that preserve biodiversity Aug 16, 2010 PepsiCo announces plan to invest USD $250 million in Vietnam over next three years. New investment includes increasing manufacturing capacity, adding marketplace equipment, further strengthening brands, and broadening companys product portfolio via innovation Market Differentiation Strategy Industry-leading Nutrition Goals Reduce the average saturated fat per serving in key global food brands in key markets by 15% by 2020 Reduce the average added sugar per serving in key global beverage brands in key markets by 25% by 2020 Reduce the average sodium serving in key global food brands in key markets by 25% by 2020 Increase whole grains, fruits and vegetables, nuts, seeds, and low-fat dairy in its product portfolio Environmental Goals Provide access to safe water to three million people in developing countries by the end of 2015 Reduce packaging weight by 350 million pounds by 2012 Work to eliminate all solid waste to landfills from PepsiCos production facilities Commit to an absolute reduction in greenhouse gas emissions across global operations Future Pepsico hopes to revive Quaker with new products Pepsi plans to cut sodium by one-fourth in key brands in five years, and cut sugar per serving in drinks by 25 percent in the next 10 years. Development: The Coca Cola Company Product Calorie concerns 2006 Enviga, negative calorie green tea drink 2007 Glaceau (Vitamin Water) 2009 90-calorie mini can (7.5 fl oz) Culture Live Positively Cokes project to help make a positive difference in the world through sustainability with focuses on climate protection, balanced living, education, and community Give It Back Recycling Program Coca Cola is asking for its consumers to return the cans and plastic bottles of Coke they buy in order to make backpacks, t-shirts, rugs, etc. Aug 24, 2010 Coca-Cola workers strike in Bellevue Sept 1, 2010 Strike announced at Edmonton Coca Cola factory Current Developments Sept 7, 2010 Coca Cola Enterprises plans to sell its North American business to Coca Cola Co in the fourth quarter Aug 30, 2010 Coca-Cola West (Japan) to buy vegetable juice maker Qsai for $421 million Coca Cola Freestyle A touch screen soda fountain with over 100 different Coca-Cola beverage products and custom flavors. Market Differentiation Strategy Future Coca Cola drinks in Japan made from Kale, a nutrition but not very tasty vegetable, may turn up in stores Coca Cola buys major Russian juice producer Nidan Company Comparison In PepsiCos 2009 Annual Report to shareholders, it identifies a plethora of competitors. Notable competitors include Dr. Pepper Snapple Group, Inc., Nestlà ©, and Kellogg. However, no rivalry is longer or larger than the one between PepsiCo and Coca-Cola. Not only are these two the first and second largest food and beverage companies in the world, these two have a vested interest in keeping the competition alive. In this industry, where margins and market share determine profitability, marketing plays a vital role in bringing in creating new loyal customers and maintaining the old ones. And both of these companies have benefited from the marketing of the other. Product Comparison Its easy to compare these two companies given the similarity in their products. Both have well-known brands for soda, sports drinks, juices, and water. They both also see the benefit in vertically integrating their supply chain. While PepsiCo chose to purchase its two largest bottlers, The Coca-Cola Company has continued to hold a large share in their bottling companies. These companies compete on a product by product basis as is detailed in the chart below. It is important to note that one key line is not included, popular snacks. PepsiCo has acquired a multitude of brand named snack companies including Frito-Lay while Coca-Cola while having over 3,000 different beverages sells only that, beverages. This has helped PepsiCo diversify and increase its sales and market compared to Coca-Cola. PepsiCo The Coca-Cola Company Bottling Acquired Pepsi Bottling Group and PepsiAmericas Owns 34% share of Coca-Cola Enterprises and 32% share of Coca-Cola FEMSA Soda Pepsi, Mountain Dew, and Mug Coca-Cola, Fanta, and Sprite Sports Drink Gatorade Powerade Orange Juice Tropicana Minute Maid Water Aquafina Dasani and Evian Size and Profitability Comparison As much as PepsiCo tries to compete on the same grounds as The Coca-Cola Company, for the time being Coca-Cola is still the leader in many ways financially. For one, PepsiCo is significantly smaller than The Coca-Cola Company. In 2009, PepsiCos Market Capitalization was only 80% of Coca-Colas. Furthermore, the Coca-Cola Company has continued to sell more efficiently than PepsiCo. In 2009, all of Coca-Colas profit ratios were significantly greater than PepsiCos. Perhaps this is partially explained by the greater number of employees PepsiCo employees. PepsiCo is winning out on top line growth however, with more than $10B in sales last year alone. PepsiCo The Coca-Cola Company Stock Ticker PEP KO Headquarters Purchase, NY Atlanta, GA 2009 Number of Employees 203,000 92,800 2009 Market Capitalization $103 B $130 B 2009 Sales $43.2 B $31.0 B 2009 Gross Profit Margin 53.5% 64.2% 2009 Operating Margin 18.6% 26.6% 2009 Net Profit Margin 13.8% 22% Investment Comparison At first glance, PepsiCo and Coca-Cola may seem like they are about equal when it comes to what stockholders are looking at. Shareholders want a maximum return on their investment either through an increased stock price or dividends. Given that PepsiCo and Coca-Cola are both seen as value stocks by most investors, the amount they provide in dividends is of significant importance. Given PepsiCos higher Dividends per Share in this category regardless of how small is worth noting. (2009) PepsiCo The Coca-Cola Company Dividends per Share $1.77 $1.64 EPS $3.86 $3.18 P/E 16.61 17.66 Qualitative Comparison But a company is more than just its numbers. A companys qualitative features like its core values and growth plans for the future are of equal importance. Both PepsiCo and Coca-Cola are interested in expressing a commitment to health, but they do it in significantly different ways. PepsiCos interest in health is centered around sustainability. They highlight their three commitments to human, environmental, and talent sustainability whereas Coca-Cola takes a more human centric view on health. It is specifically trying to promote a healthy lifestyle through education, nutrition information, and exercise. Both are trying to fight the obesity epidemic and offer healthier choices, but their ways vary. The Decision to Invest Industry Analysis Before deciding whether or not to invest in PepsiCo, one must investigate if now is the time to investigate in its industry. The difficulty in studying PepsiCos industry is that it falls into a couple of industries. The Business Company Resource Center returned eight possible industries, but the most salient one and the one PepsiCo aligns most with is the Bottled Canned Soft Drinks Industry. The good news for PepsiCo is that the soft drinks industry is now and is projected to remain extremely concentrated. PepsiCo, along with Coca-Cola, are either the cause or effect of this trend and have helped lead the United States to be the number producer and consumer of soft drinks. But this market is heavily saturated, and the regions projected to be able to offer the most growth in the next decade are the Asian and South America markets. By targeting these groups and catering to their cultural expectations, significant returns can still be made. The biggest challenge for the industry going forward is addressing the growing concern that soft drinks are causing an obesity epidemic. By offering healthier alternatives, or perceived healthier alternatives such as diet colas, juices, and bottled water, this can be overcome. The significant investment that Pepsi has made in its campaign to promote a healthier lifestyle will also not go unnoticed. The number one ingredient in soft drinks may become more difficult to obtain. The supply of water, the largest ingredient in almost all of Pepsis products, could become more strained as pollution and droughts continue to plague the resource. Developing a plan to share and conserve this resource and addressing all the growing concerns over its supply will be important for Pepsi. Management Analysis No company can be successful long term without the right management team. PepsiCos committed CEO has been with the company for almost two decades in a variety of strategic and operational leadership positions. She has a firm understanding of the industry as well the growth strategy that she has been implementing for years. Perhaps more important than what PepsiCos leadership is known for, is what they arent known for. No member has gained public attention for unethical financial decisions or misdoings. What else should be included here? Expert Opinions February 20, 2008 While many companies saw business decline in the fourth quarter, PepsiCo met expectations even after investing heavily abroad for growth. It posted a 17% gain in revenue and an 11% increase in operating profit as core brands came through. The company had double-digit growth in snacks and drinks in emerging markets. (article from 2008) http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/CompanyFocus/WhyPepsiCoStockIsABuyNow.aspx April 14, 2010 Coke or Pepsi: Which stock to buy? The ability to leverage sales across a wider variety of products will be a powerful driver for PepsiCo here and overseas. This is referring to PepsiCo and snack items http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/learn-how-to-invest/coke-or-pepsi-which-stock-to-buy.aspx Summary

Original Writing Coursework – My Typical Work Experience Day

My first day of Work Experience began on 30th June, 2008. I woke up on that morning at 7am, feeling nervous and excited at the same time. My room was quite messy when I got up. I got out of bed, tidied up my bed and room, and went for my early morning shower. The shower was relaxing and refreshing as I stood under it and gathered my thoughts. It was a cool, windy day. I like windy days at times: It eases my nervousness and builds up excitement: at long last it was the much awaited first day at work. Soon enough, I was dressed. I took time as I did not know what to wear since I wanted to make a good impression on my first day at work. I was not wearing my school uniform (which I was used to wearing without thinking! ). I needed to be creative! Creativity first thing in the morning was not something I was used to! After throwing a few shirts and trousers randomly on my bed, I finally picked up a dark blue shirt with a pair of light blue trousers: blue being my favourite and lucky colour and of course socks which complimented my shoes. I think I looked reasonable: not too formal, not too casual: casual smart as the saying goes! I had cereal and waited anxiously for the bus. I became too anxious as I gave worried glances at the clock. The bus normally comes to pick me up at 7:50am. When 7:50am came and went, I panicked. I thought the bus wouldn't come. I did not wish to be late on my first day for work experience! It never gives a good impression, I had heard somewhere! It was a relief when at 8:10am the bus indeed came to pick me up. The journey from my home to school was calm and pleasant. The bus went through the busy and crowded Northern Approach motorway into the greenery, peaceful and lovely Victoria Park filled with trees, lakes and small cafes and benches. As I was going to school, I have been thinking about what it would feel to have a real job once my education was complete. I suddenly thought about the future. I did not know what job I will have in the future but I know what I will be working on: either in the Science industry or in the ICT industry. I had also, partly, been thinking what to do during the Summer Holidays, as it was getting nearer by the hour and in what way I could make use of this time which may be useful in my future career. I finally reached my workplace, which incidentally, was my own school. The school, where I was working, was called Oaklands and it was an international secondary school with many international students and staff. Oaklands is situated in Old Bethnal Green Road in Bethnal Green. As there are two buildings in the school, there was a long, green and white bridge which connected these buildings. One building is an old one and the other, recently built. It was very colourful and clean inside the building: many international flags were put up to make the students feel at ease in school. There were about 600 students and about 60 or 70 staff in the school that was supposed to be my work place for a week. The reception area is usually quiet as there are not many people coming to reception everyday. Angela's office is situated at the back of the main reception beside the waiting area. I reached my office and saw my supervisor, Angela. The office was quite disorganised as there were post-it notes, pictures and files all over the place. The room was as small as a pigeon hole: it could only fit two or three people. It gets crowded when more than three people come in. It was cold inside as there was an Air Conditioner on. Normally I would come to school as a student by 8:45am but I reached my workplace quite later than usual, at around 9:30am, as a member of staff at Oaklands School. Angela normally comes around 10am – 10:30am, but she came early at around 9:30am on that day to help me settle on the first day of work. We signed the work experience contract which was kept in my Work Experience record book. I had to bring the book every single day to work. Apart from signing the Work Experience contract, I had to fill in pages of records which were about how your first day went and how your other days went and what you had to do during the week. After the initial paperwork, I began my first day at work. Most of the time during Work Experience, I had to work on a computer to work on the school's newsletter, the Oak, updating and editing as I went along. Using Microsoft Publisher and Word, I started to add some pictures and notes on to the school's newsletter. Staff came by and went to check on Angela and me. Staff also checked on my progress with the newsletter, complimented my work and told me to keep going, which was encouraging. I was asked to take pictures and take small interviews about the new Year 7's joining Oaklands. When I was asked, I was frozen as ice. At home, I tried my hand on cameras and often ended up taking fuzzy pictures. Being asked to take photographs at work was a totally different ball game and I never really expected that. I declined the project because I felt that I needed more practice on taking photographs. My hands moved constantly and that is certainly not a good sign for a professional photographer! I wondered whether my declining would adversely affect the impression of my supervisor about my confidence level in trying or attempting something of a challenge. But then I thought that I would rather say yes to something that I felt comfortable in doing, especially on my first day at work. Angela had to label the envelopes for the letters she was going to send. I helped her labelling the envelopes which took a while (it took roughly about an hour to complete it) but I managed to finish it on time. I then had to go to the staff office to get the envelopes franked with First-Class postage. Later, I helped Angela out with cutting our school year's pictures and sticking them for the staff that needed them. There were about 120 students in our year. That also took a while to complete. The morning was almost over. It taught me already that tasks needed to be prioritised, tasks needed to be completed on time and with concentration. There was no time to be wasted or for fooling around. It was a professional atmosphere and one needed to be professional. Finally, I had my lunch at school. Usually I have lunch at home since I do half-day schools but by the time I finished the day, I was so hungry, I decided to have a big lunch that would fill my appetite. I could smell all the good food being cooked in the kitchen. I was feeling that I was getting distracted and perhaps it was a good idea to take a break or call it a day since I was supposed to do half days at work anyway. The food looked colourful and matched my instant imagination! The cafeteria was crowded because many students and staff (not just me), were starving. It was funny to think of myself as staff! I noticed that there had been changes in the cafeteria since the last time I was there. Near the windows, there are high seats and tables around the room thereby adding more seats. There is now a tray clearer in the cafeteria where we can put our finished lunches. I looked at the place and it all seemed different than usual! Perhaps it was because I was there not as a student but as an employee for the week. On my journey back home that day, I was immersed in thoughts: I always wondered how professionals have worked on their first day of their career whether in the corporate world, legal world, medical world, creative world or in the world of academia. I wondered how, after education and training, when a person finally becomes a professional, how does he or she feel on their first assignment or first piece of work or first day at work. When I look back at my Work Experience and think about these professionals, I can somewhat get a glimpse of the level of excitement and anticipation they must feel on their first day! I also think that one can only excel and do well in any field provided one is interested to learn and is dedicated to explore the subjects that are close to ones heart. For me a journey had started. I had a long way to go.

Lessons from the Locker Room Essay

A new chapter began in my life on the first day of ninth grade. That day, I went to my first day of freshman football practice. Although I knew a little about the game, I had never played football before, so I was somewhat apprehensive about what might happen. The coaches guided us through a series of tests designed to place us into the appropriate positions, although most of the guys already knew where they would be playing. I did everything the best I could, and was soon assigned to Coach Green and the linemen. Through that year I never got to start a game, but the things that happened both on and off the field with the other players made me very interested in what would come in the future. The experiences of that year set the stage for my entrance into varsity high school football, an experience which would shape much of my life. Before anyone can join the varsity football team, he must complete a series of tests. However, these tests are not like those at many schools. Coach has a philosophy that anyone who is willing to â€Å"pay the price† should be allowed to be on the team. Based on that philosophy, numerous criteria are presented to all the would-be players at the beginning of preparation for the season. When I first saw these criteria, I thought that they sounded very simple. They consisted of such things as getting into bed by a specified time each night, eating healthy, coming to five workouts in the summer, and not missing a practice for any reason other than family emergency. Little did I know, they would, in the end, be much more costly than I originally thought. After our freshman season was over, some of the players on the team were given the opportunity to â€Å"move up† to the varsity team for the playoffs. I took advantage of the opportunity, and quickly found myself in the middle of a close-knit family. At that point, I understood very little of what was happening. However, I knew for sure that I wanted to learn more. That season ended at our rival’s field in defeat on a cold night in late November. In the locker room after the game, most of us cried as we realized what this meant for the seniors of that year and for that team. For the first time, I watched guys cry and hug each other as they used their love for each other to pull themselves through the feelings of disappointment. Coach called together those of us who would comprise the team of the following year, and  told us to prepare for plenty of hard work in the off season. The first day back in January, I had my first official test. This test would be the benchmark by which each player would judge his progress in the off season. The test tested our speed and strength, but the workouts would test our heart and our commitment. The next day, we had our first official workout. We spent the first week with coaches giving us demonstrations on proper technique in weight lifting. Within two weeks though, we had begun in earnest. Fridays were reserved for â€Å"special† workouts. I still remember my first one. It was supposed to be an upper body lifting day, and the youngest of us were rather confused when we were told to leave the upper body room and go into the locker room. We all dreaded what might be waiting for us. All we actually did through the whole thirty minute workout was what seemed like a thousand pushups, but that day began a special bonding process. Within five minutes of beginning, most of us were already extremely tired and ready to quit . I am not sure that I ever knew who was speaking, but all that I can remember was intensly painful muscle cramps and the encouragement being shouted by my teammates. At that moment when failure seemed just one more pushup away, we began to develop a sense of responsibility to one another. All that I knew was that we had to work together if we were going to have a chance to be what we could be. The one voice I can remember was a teammate of mine. I remember him lying three guys over, sweating and straining as he struggled to keep his body off the ground. At the moment when I felt that I could not go on any longer his eyes met mine. He quietly told me to never give up and to fight as long as I had the chance. I merely nodded to him and decided that I had to make it through. After several more torturous minutes, Coach told us to â€Å"get in our half mile† before we leave. As I jogged around the track, I thought to myself about how difficult varsity football was going to be. As the workout ended I thought to myself, â€Å"just bury me right here.† I decided, however, that I would be able to make it through with the help of my teammates. We had several more â€Å"special† days, but whenever I would think that I could not go any longer, I would remember my teammates going through the same thing and be strengthened. Very quickly, the summer was upon us. At first I thought that the summer workouts would be a carbon copy of the ones which we had during school, but I would  soon find I was wrong. The first thing that I noticed was that attendance at summer workouts was optional. However, this proved to be more beneficial. Because people were not required to come everyday, most days only people who wanted to be there would come. There were always some guys who could be counted on to be there. These guys were the ones who eventually formed the core of our team. Friday was once again reserved as a day for a different kind of workout. The first Friday of that summer I was introduced to a superset. In a superset, Coach would decide on a series of exercises, and we would go through the circuit as many times as possible in the time available. These undoubtedly were seen as something of a competition to see who could do the most, but eventually we would all get tired and slow down. Coach noticed our slowing pace and our fatigue, and he asked us why we had been slowing down. Of course he knew the answer, and he quickly asked us another question. His next question though, was much more difficult. He brought up a hypothetical situation in which we had reached the fourth quarter of a game and were all very tired. Coach asked us if, when the fourth quarter came, we were going to quit and take the easy way out. Of course we all answered that we would play with everything that we had. Then he made a very simple statement. Coach told us that if planned on being able to give things our all in a game, we had to practice fighting past the pain. According to him, to do anything less would be selling ourselves short of the potential that we had. From that time on, we gave all that we had in every opportunity we had. We fought through the summer workouts together, and gradually became more and more dependent on each other. We began to realize that we would have to put together everything that we had learned and practiced all summer if we were to survive the last two weeks before school started. The last two weeks before school started is known as Camp. Camp is the last hurdle to be cleared before someone is an official team member. We practiced from one till nine for two weeks that year. By the end of the two weeks, we were all strained physically, mentally, and emotionally. Each night, I would come home, shower off, and slump into bed. Then, I would proceed to coat my legs in a layer of Flex-All. While there were moments when some of us likely  wondered if the end of Camp would even come, it did eventually arrive. However, eventually the end of the two weeks came. I vividly remember the last night of Camp. We practiced until our regular time, but then a team meeting was called at the fifty-yard line. Coach congratulated us for making it through and told us it was time for story time. We spent the next twenty minutes running from coach to coach at different places on the field, and listening to stories about something that had happened on that spot of the field. All of the stories told were based on â€Å"what it means to be a part of the team.† Through these stories, the coaches painted vivid portraits of past team members who had been willing to go beyond the call of duty for the team. I do not remember the details of many of the stories very well, but I do remember the story told by another coach. He told the story of a guy from a team several years removed who had really shown what it meant to be a mustang. According to the story, the quarterback had thrown an interception when the team was already down by a touchdown in the fourth quarter. One of the quarterback’s teammates, a guy who had never really been a standout player, was not willing to let the opposing team score as a result of the interception. He ran from the opposite side of the field and was able to tackle the guy ten yards short of the goal line. Coach claimed the player had never run as fast as he did on that night. Spurred on by the effort of their teammate, the defense made a strong stand, and the team fought back to win that game. I expected to hear a lesson about giving it all you had, but instead, Coach had something different in mind. He told us about the importance of picking up the slack for everyone else. He reminded us that in the time we would spend together, not everyone would be perfect on every play, but that we would still be alright if we all did the best we could. This year has been a very interesting one. As a senior captain on the team, I have had a responsibility all year long to help lead the team. During the workouts, I would often find myself shouting encouragement to the younger players as they struggled. Many of the seniors have gone beyond their responsibilities for the sake of the team. But these lessons do not stay confined to the field and the locker room, for I often find them having an  effect on me outside of the football environment. Coach has taught us that we are examples everywhere that we go. Any time there is a decision that I must make, my thoughts inevitably bring me to the question, â€Å"Is this something worthy of a Mustang football player?† I believe that my experiences in football were critical to me successfully overseeing a class day as junior class president while I was short handed. I think I would have been tempted in the past to just give up. I was so intent on not giving up and on doing everything I could possibly do for the â€Å"team† (in this case, the class) though that I knew I had to depend on some other people and, with their help, work everything out.