Comparing Virginia Woolfs Mrs. Dalloway and Emily Brontes Wuthering H

Comparing Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway and Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights share similarities in many aspects, perhaps most plainly seen in the plots: just as Clarissa marries Richard rather than Peter Walsh in order to secure a comfortable life for herself, Catherine chooses Edgar Linton over Heathcliff in an attempt to wrest both herself and Heathcliff from the squalid lifestyle of Wuthering Heights. However, these two novels also overlap in thematic elements in that both are concerned with the opposing forces of civilization or order and chaos or madness. The recurring image of the house is an important symbol used to illustrate both authors’ order versus chaos themes. Though Woolf and Bronte use the house as a symbol in very different ways, the existing similarities create striking resonances between the two novels at certain critical scenes. In Mrs. Dalloway, Clarissa Dalloway undergoes an internal struggle between her love for society and life and a combined affinity for and fear of death. Her practical marriage to Richard serves its purpose of providing her with an involved social life of gatherings and parties that others may find frivolous but Clarissa sees as â€Å"an offering† to the life she loves so well. Throughout the novel she grapples with the prospect of growing old and approaching death, which after the joys of her life seems â€Å"unbelievable†¦ that it must end; and no one in the whole world would know how she had loved it all; how, every instant†¦Ã¢â‚¬  At the same time, she is drawn to the very idea of dying, a theme which is most obviously exposed through her reaction to the news of Septimus Smith’s suicide. However, this crucial scene r... ...ng the juxtaposition of order and chaos. The roles that the houses of both stories play in this theme bring to light interesting similarities between the characters and thematic elements as well as revealing differences. Both Woolf and Bronte use the open window as a symbol for the opportunity to see beyond the physical, the ordered, into something less controllable by civilization. However, Catherine seems to be trapped in an unnatural and dangerous cycle of passion and madness that only dissipates after Heathcliff’s death, whereas Clarissa continues with life in society despite her attraction to death and to Septimus. The resonances between the window scenes of these two novels, though simultaneously similar and disparate, shed light on the nature of Clarissa’s and Catherine’s characters as well as on the two authors’ use of the civilization versus wildness theme.

Privacy and Security Risks for the Electronic Health Record Essays

In most cases privacy and security risks apply to both paper and electronic records. With the growing demand for the electronic health record (EHR) system, the transfer from paper to electronic can be risky. For this project we were asked to compare and contrast the security issues between maintenance of paper medical records and the EHR system, also we were asked to discuss what requirements and issues need to be considered when doing a conversion to an EHR. Inappropriate access is one of the most common ways a patient’s record is at risk. In paper records the risk could happen by a non-authorized person achieving access to record storage areas or finding records left wide open on a counter. Other ways of inappropriate access is files left in exam rooms, in a copy machines or faxes that get misdirected (What are the privacy and security risks of electronic V. paper health records?, n.d.). Wither the inappropriate access is accidental or intentional; files need to be protected at all cost. There are simple steps that the facility can take to ensure that their paper records are being protected. First and foremost the protection of any medical record is not just the responsibility of one person, but the entire facility. Every facility should have a policy that protects the patient records from ending up in the wrong hands. Some of the steps could include â€Å"segregating records into separate locked storage areas, having a recording sign in and sign out procedures, and maintaining records handling training and other similar procedures† (What are the privacy and security risks of electronic V. paper health records?, n.d.). Althought nothing can garenatee 100% protection, having a policy in the facility can lessen the risk of inapp... ...ment consulting: http://www.hayesmanagement.com/media/newsletters/2009_December_article4.php Nelson, MS, R. (2010, May 20). Successful ways to implement a practice management system and EHR. Retrieved from MGMA e-newsletter and Publications: http://www.mgma.com/blog/Successful-ways-to-implement-a-practice-management-system-and-EHR/ Thakkar, M., & Dacis, P. ,. (2006, August 14). Risks, Barriers, and Benefits of EHR systems: A Comparative Study Based on Size of hospital. Retrieved from AHIMA: http://library.ahima.org/xpedio/groups/public/documents/ahima/bok1_031779.html What are the pricacy and security risks of electronic V. paper health records? (n.d.). Retrieved from U.S. Department of HEalth and human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration: http://www.hrsa.gov/healthit/toolbox/HealthITAdoptiontoolbox/PrivacyandSecurity/securityrisks.html

Macbeth a Victim of Choice not Fate :: essays research papers

The three witches told Macbeth of his fate. Did the events in Macbeth?s life occur because of the witches? prophesy or was it because of the choices he made? Could there possibly be some of both? What caused Macbeth to fall? Was it his fate or his free will? To begin, we look at the first prediction of the witches. They call him by the names of ?Thane of Glamis?, which he already is, ?Thane of Cawdor? (a title he does not know he has been given), and "King hereafter." As a result, the first two things the witches tell him aren?t prophesies because they have already happened. Look at the third and most important prophecy. The witches tell Macbeth that he will become ?King Hereafter?, there?s knowledge that this actually happened. ?If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me.? (1 3) Did it happen because of fate or did Macbeth make it happen? The witches tempted Macbeth to kill the King, however, it was his own ambition that led him to do that terrible thing. Macbeth, even though he was uneasy, he chose to kill King Duncan and ascend to the throne of Scotland. ?Nothing is but what is not.? (1 3) Look at the second set of prophesies. The witches tell Macbeth to beware of Macduff. They tell him that "no one born of a woman shall harm Macbeth." The witches are being sneaky here to give Macbeth the illusion that he cannot be harmed. Macduff eventually kills Macduff. Does Macduff, who is not born of woman, (his mother passed before he was born) kill Macbeth because of fate? Maybe he does but why does Macduff want to kill Macbeth anyway? Macbeth killed the king and took the throne, so there is an apparent reason that it was Macbeth?s choice. Finally, the witches tell him that he will not fall until ?Birnam Woods meets Dunsinane Hill.? Well, Birnam Wood meets Dunsinane Hill and Macbeth is defeated. This again is partially Macbeth?s fault. If he hadn?t killed the King, Malcolm?s forces would never have attacked him and made the prophesy true.

Parent and Child Relationships Essay

â€Å"I Am Sam† is a powerfully touching film that tells the story of a parent and child’s love for one another. It shows that love is pure, and that no matter how great the mind is, love is even greater. The film’s protagonist is Sam, a mentally-challenged adult with a mental age of 7. Sam has a daughter, Lucy, with a prostitute who left them. Sam works at the local Starbucks to support Lucy, and everything is going along well until Lucy turned 7, because she already surpassed her father’s mental abilities. This creates problems, because early on we see that Lucy is precocious and inquisitive, and she is no longer satisfied with her father’s nonsense answers to her questions. When she starts wanting to read more difficult books than what Sam reads to her, she fakes having difficulty reading so as not to offend her father and make him feel inferior. On Sam’s part, even when he sees that Lucy is already growing up, he tries his best to support her the best way he knows how. Lucy does not see this yet because she is still a child, but she understands that her father is different, but she loves him because he is a very loving father who takes her out to the park and to eat pancakes and generally takes good care of her. Later in the film she is embarrassed when her classmates tease her that her father is a retard that she denies him and tells them that she is adopted. The authorities take her away from Sam, and later on sent to a foster home. When the authorities take Lucy away from him, he does everything he could to get her back. He even gets the fearsome lawyer Rita to help his cause. Rita, a successful and stringent lawyer who values winning more than anything, decides to take Sam’s case just to prove that she is not as selfish as she looks. Through the course of helping Sam, she realizes that Sam is a good father, that Sam’s mental inadequacy has not hampered his ability to love and care for his daughter at all. That in fact, he is a better parent than she is. When at first she sought to win Sam’s case because she did not want to lose, eventually Rita sympathizes with Sam’s cause. Sam visits Lucy regularly, and Lucy realizes that she wants her father back, and that she is going to fight back just to be with him, even if she is smarter than him, even if the world laughs at her for having a retard for a father. At this moment, Lucy has matured, and although she is just 7, she has taken responsibility not only of her own actions, but also decided that she will take care of her father when he could no longer take care of her, that she needs to be smart and capable and strong for the both of them. She saw just how much her father loves her and how he does not give up on her even when she denied him. However, even with Rita’s help, Sam loses the custody battle at court. Sam breaks down as he is convinced that he cannot take care of his own daughter. All this time, he was doing everything he could, enlisting the help of his friends and employers and colleagues to prove that he has what it takes to raise his daughter, but he finally accepts the fact that he is mentally inadequate to give her needs. If he really loves his daughter, he would do what is best for her even if it means letting go of her so that she could be the best that she could be. And Sam does that. He accepts that he cannot take care of Lucy, but even when he concedes, he does not give up on being a father to her. He moves in to an apartment just to be nearer to Lucy, so that even if he cannot raise her at least he could be there for her whenever she needed him, and so that he could watch her grow up. Lucy is hurt that she cannot be with her father, but she takes matters on her own hands, Late at night she sneaks out of her foster home to be with her father. Her foster parents find her out, and she does not deny that she longs to be with her father, even if they think that they can be better parents than him. Eventually, the foster parents let her go back to Sam, for Sam to have custody of her. The film tells us that love is great driving force that cannot be measured by financial success, or by intellectual achievements. Society may look at Sam as a retarded, inadequate man, but he fought for his daughter against all odds, when Lucy’s own mother simply walked out and left them. Lucy was smarter than Sam, but she learned about love from her father because he showered her with it. That is why even when she was presented with a better future with a â€Å"better† set of parents, she still chooses to go back to Sam, because she knows that her father loves her and she loves him. At the end, the film teaches us what a parent can give best to his child, and what a child needs most from a parent – love. And that is something that cannot be bought or substituted with material things, because children will always know if their parents have shown them enough love.

Managing Overtime Worked in the Workplace

In the following report, I will be give illustrations and possible solutions for an overburdening problem that exists in the U.S. Postal service Operations throughout the country. Overtime is an age-old problem that has gone long overdue without someone or a group paying serious attention to correcting this problem. The United States Postal Service is a large organization with many facets of operations; I will be concentrating on what we call the Field Operation or Area Office. This is where the public comes into personal contact with the Postal Service either by way of the individual letter carrier (mailman) or the window clerk who assists with business transacted at the post office. Every community across America has a Post Office. We are one of the most visible employers in the world. The U.S. Postal Service employs approximately 750 thousand diverse people. Many different cultures and nationalities come together to combine as an efficient workforce that gets the job done. The pay is moderate, so it would be pretty difficult to become independently wealthy working for the Postal Service. But, there are some employees that believe if they work, as much overtime as possible, maybe they can become rich. Unfortunately, this poses a daily obstacle to overcome for most managers in the U.S. Postal Service. The U.S. Postal Service is a production driven outfit therefore; everything is based on production verses cost ratio. The average workday for a postal employee is eight hours. It does not take a genius to figure out that the longer it takes to do the job, the more money is made. So, the employee that desires more money would be motivated to take longer to complete his or her assigned task(s). Historically, the Postal Service has been plagued with managers that were not diligent in doing their jobs with regard to overtime management. Because of this clusters of employees became accustomed to a Carte Blanche style of working. Employees were in effect managing the overtime and work production. During my career as a letter carrier, I completed my assigned tasks within my eight-hour shift working overtime only when deemed necessary by my manger. When I became a manager, I expected everyone who worked for me to have the same work ethics that I had. If this was not case, I attempted to force them to work as hard as I did. I later found out that this was not a good management approach. In fact, this was the easiest way to harvest disgruntle employees. Here was my dilemma; I was the new young manager who expected an honest day†s work, for an honest day's pay, paired with a staff that had been allowed to do whatever they wanted for the past ten years. The office of my first management assignment had 90 percent of the employees working an average of 10-16 hours of overtime per week. My performance as a manager as well as well as the production performance for our office was based on the amount of manpower hours used to deliver the total volume of mail. I will present information about the systems put in place that worked as a check and balance format. These systems enabled me to demonstrate to my employees that my requests were not unfair or unreasonable. I will discuss the areas that the employees were able to assist in helping to aleve the excessive use of overtime. I will also discuss in detail areas that contributed to the excessive use of overtime that did not involve my employees. With implementation of the new systems, my office has reduced its overtime to 14 percent.    While controlling overtime may seem as easy as just making an announcement â€Å"that no one is allowed to work overtime†; this is very far from true in the U.S. Postal Service area offices. There are many variables that come into play, the first of which is staffing. In order to do a good job; the office must be properly staffed. We have percentage breakdowns that factor in amounts of carrier routes; amounts of deliveries per zip code that derives to an employee complement. Each office has a number that satisfies their complement. If for any reason a particular office is operating under their complement that makes the task a more difficult. Any office can be fine one week and short the next, due to retirement, injuries, or details to name a few. If any of the aforementioned were to occur a manager could request replacement for these employees, whether they will be granted or not is another story. Then we have the day-in day-out mystery of who will call in on sick leave. Having any of these instances to take place in a given day can simply cripple an operation. If we take a carrier operation anywhere in the world that has 35 city carrier routes and 4 carriers call in sick on a Monday, that manager now has to scramble to get coverage for those four vacant routes. It is not like other organizations where your work can carry over by one day; the mail must be delivered daily without exception. This makes it difficult to get the work done in an eight–hour day for the remaining employees. The first thing the manager must do is to telephone four employees who would normally have the day off and ask them to come in and work their day off. Bare in mind that the U.S. Postal Service has something called an Overtime Desired List, a voluntary list of employees who wish to work overtime on assignments. When the manager telephones employees to come in on their day off, he must first call those on the Overtime Desired List. If the manager does not get four employees from the list, he may then exercise the option to call employees not on the Overtime Desired List. The only alternative to this situation is to have employees already present complete their assignments and pitch in to help deliver the vacant assignments. The advantage of this situation is that it allows you to minimize your overtime usage for the day. If the manager was able to get four employees from the Overtime Desired List to come he has automatically used 32 hours of overtime for that day. By having employees already present work additional hours, you are able to use far less overtime for that day. This is an area I feel managers need to stress to their bosses so that all efforts are exhausted in hiring more employees for offices to operate under their complement. The earlier mentioned example could have been avoided had that office been properly staffed. A fully complemented office would have unassigned employees who would have been given those assignments for the day avoiding the need for overtime. In order to be a successful office you must be fully complemented. When I was finally able to get my office fully complemented my overtime was reduced by 10% – 30% as shown in the graph below. The U.S. Postal Service has another formula that we use to gauge an employee†s production. There is a standard based on demonstrated ability. We can not hold Carrier A to Carrier B†s standards. This formula is for sorting letters and flats (magazines, newspapers, etc.). The formula allows 1 hour to sort 2 feet of letter mail. This is 2 linear feet, 2 linear feet equals 454 pieces of letter mail or 230 pieces of flat mail. So in order to standardize an employee the manager must count out 2 feet of mail, letters or flats, and calculate the amount of time it takes the employee to sort this mail. The average carrier has no problem at all meeting this quota, but there are those who attempt to outsmart their managers. If the manager is not focused on them during the sorting period there are those carriers who have the tendency to leave their areas to socialize among their coworkers, or â€Å"slow sort† their mail. The longer it takes a carrier to sort his mail, the longer it takes that carrier to get out of the office on the street to deliver this mail, making this same carrier late in returning from his assignment guaranteeing this carrier overtime for the day. You multiply this by several carriers in one office daily and you come up with an unaccountable amount of overtime usage as a manager. This affects your production numbers for the office as a whole. This where a manager has to jump in and approach the individual carriers immediately. As a manager I that this has happen to, I have approached the individual and asked some very basic questions to make certain that there are no health or personal issues going on with the carrier affecting their productivity. If nothing out of the ordinary exists, I point out that they are not meeting their productivity quota and make certain suggestions to assist them in meeting their quota. There are those times when you are challenged as a manager to verify your findings. When those situations arise, I go out and measure, with the carrier present, the actual number of feet of mail for them to sort and time them sorting this mail. Once you demonstrate to your employees that you are only expecting from them what is minimally required, and that you will hold them accountable for just that you run into this type of problem less and less. Another major contributor to overtime usage is the actual mail flow itself. Most days this is not a problem, but when it is a problem it is usually a big problem. In Northern Virginia we have two mail distribution centers, one in Merrifield and one in Dulles. For the Falls Church Post Offices, we receive our mail from Merrifield. Each morning we receive 3 dispatches of mail from 6:00 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. When these dispatches are on time everything runs smoothly, but when these dispatches are late an office goes from running smoothly to being hectic. One of the main reasons for a delayed dispatch is the mechanical failure of a mail-processing machine in Merrifield. In preparing itself for the new millenium, the U.S. Postal Service Distribution Centers are equipped with high-tech automated mail processing machines that do the job of ten employees sorting mail. In the event of a mechanical failure, one of our dispatches can be delayed by 1 – 2 hours. This 1 – 2 hour delay is passed along to my operation in 1 – 2 hours of down time for my carriers while they are waiting for their mail to deliver. That equals approximately 1 –2 hours of unforeseen overtime per employee that day. As demonstrated in the graph below this is a large usage of overtime for an entire office when calculated. The combination of mail volume and properly scheduled mail dispatches is critical in minimizing overtime. In closing, I would suggest that as we approach a new millenium the U.S. Postal Service would be better served by doing away with some of the older ways of thinking. The Overtime Desired List should be dismantled. This forces managers to go outside of the employees already present for work as a first solution to a vacant assignment list. To me this encourages overtime usage. I would also suggest for offices receiving mail dispatches late at least 3 times a week to move their scheduled time for mail receipt back and bring their carriers in a little later to accommodate for the dispatch schedules. For example if an office has consistently been receiving their dispatches an hour late, instead of having the carriers report to work at 6:30 a.m. they would move the carriers reporting times up to 7:30 a.m. instead eliminating that hour of downtime per person that they are losing.

Checking the purity of water by boiling Essay

Therefore it is noticed that the samples of water we took are not pure but not too impure. The water obtained from the cooler (blue star) is the purest of them all with a boiling of 101Â °C which is very close to the boiling point of pure water which is 99.98Â °C. Therefore it is safe to consume this water. The other types of water are not consumed therefore it does not have an adverse effect on human lifestyle; the experiment was carried out only for comparison basis. It can be argued that the water used for washing the utensils is not pure so if people eat food via that utensil, germs could enter their system. But as a safety measure our school canteen uses a disinfectant known as Surf Excel as obtained from the survey conducted by our ESS group. Hence further purification of the tap water is not really required. It can also be inferred from the readings above that after boiling the water it becomes more pure, but the boiling point of the water obtained from the cooler does not change because boiling it is too small a method to make it purer since it is already very pure. Different methods need to be taken up to make it purer which will include the addition of chemicals which is not too good for the humans anyway. The reason the tap water is already so pure is because the water is obtained from a tank fitted on the top of the school which uses purification methods such as a sand filter (to remove the dust particles) and UV lights to kill the germs as stated in the ESS survey. Initially we conducted the experiment on the water used to keep the food warm is because it is known that if water is impure then it takes more time to heat it up hence the energy required to heat it up is also higher. So it was thought that if the water is made purer then the amount of energy required in heating the water would have been lesser and so energy would be conserved. After the experiment it was noticed that the difference in the boiling point between this water and pure water was too less (4Â °C) and that making the water pure would not have as significant an effect in conserving energy. Therefore the water section of the canteen does not cause any harm to the students as shown by this experiment and the survey conducted, hence it is not required to make changes in this sector. In theory if we were to apply this experiment on a large scale for the entire school, we would put large, more powerful solar panels on the roof of the building to boil the water. The experiment was conducted on a smaller scale. We managed to heat water through a solar panel. The concept thus applies when heating water on a large scale. We would use the solar panels to boil the water. This is a way of using a renewable resource, making Ecole Mondiale World School one step closer to becoming a ‘Green School’.

A Reflection of Faith Essay

A Reflection of Faith As I reflect upon my faith journey, I realize that like so many other â€Å"cradle Catholics,† I had become complacent. I was raised in a predominantly Catholic nation, by an Anglican mother and Catholic father. After being dutifully baptized into the church, I was set upon my path as any ‘good Catholic† should. Even though I attended Catholic girls’ school, my early days of catechesis consisted of Mass and Sunday school more as a ritual than an integral part of living my faith. I performed the rites of First Holy Communion and confession with no real understanding of my commitment and responsibilities. Confirmation was a spiritual fiasco, from which I almost did not recover. My parents did their best to provide a religious foundation for my siblings and me. In retrospect, they were probably ill-equipped to do so. My higher education and pursuit of my vocation have sometimes made it difficult for me to accept and conform to some simple dogmas of the church. I hold many strong personal views on many issues and have had considerable challenges applying the dogma to my personal life. I have always believed that God has a purpose for us all; my purpose was rather hazy until about seven or eight years ago. The illness and death of my mother at age 56, was a tremendous catalyst in my faith journey. I realized that in my vocational quest, I was not following Christ’s plan, moreover, I was trying to fit Christ into my plans. Consequently, my fervent observation of the Holy Days, abstinence form meat of Fridays in the early days, and unending serviced to my parish in the form of Eucharistic minister, Sacristan, and Catechist, were spiritually void. Once I truly succumbed to Christ and sought His path, my commitment to discipleship was fortified. When God provided me the privilege to serve at St. John, He facilitated a means for me to further enhance my own faith, and to impact that of students on a daily basis. This quote from 1 Timothy 4:12 â€Å"Let no one look down on your youthfulness, but rather in speech, conduct, love, faith and purity, show yourself an example of those who believe;† allowed me to embrace my vocation and truly see its gifts. I am called to live out my vocation in the classroom and positively communicate the doctrines of our faith. This, as well as additional Catechesis has taken my understanding of the â€Å"universal† church to new levels. I love each and every one of my students for his or her uniqueness and ability to motivate me to be the best example of Christ that I am able. I no longer focus on my personal flaws or on the â€Å"flaws† I once perceived in the dogma; but on each minor success I gain in the Christian values of my students. Now that my role in Catholic education has come full circle, I feel very blessed to be part of such a rich tradition of faith and discipleship. I passionately believe in my purpose as a Catechist and I know that God will continue to strengthen me as I continue to walk His path.