study or work essay

Essays About Work: 7 Examples and 8 Prompts

If you want to write well-researched essays about work, check out our guide of helpful essay examples and writing prompts for this topic.

Whether employed or self-employed, we all need to work to earn a living. Work could provide a source of purpose for some but also stress for many. The causes of stress could be an unmanageable workload, low pay, slow career development, an incompetent boss, and companies that do not care about your well-being.  Essays about work  can help us understand how to achieve a work/life balance for long-term happiness.

Work can still be a happy place to develop essential skills such as leadership and teamwork. If we adopt the right mindset, we can focus on situations we can improve and avoid stressing ourselves over situations we have no control over. We should also be free to speak up against workplace issues and abuses to defend our labor rights. Check out our  essay writing topics  for more.

5 Examples of Essays About Work

1.  when the future of work means always looking for your next job by bruce horovitz, 2. ‘quiet quitting’ isn’t the solution for burnout by rebecca vidra, 3. the science of why we burn out and don’t have to by joe robinson , 4. how to manage your career in a vuca world by murali murthy, 5. the challenges of regulating the labor market in developing countries by gordon betcherman, 6. creating the best workplace on earth by rob goffee and gareth jones, 7. employees seek personal value and purpose at work. be prepared to deliver by jordan turner, 8 writing prompts on essays about work, 1. a dream work environment, 2. how is school preparing you for work, 3. the importance of teamwork at work, 4. a guide to find work for new graduates, 5. finding happiness at work, 6. motivating people at work, 7. advantages and disadvantages of working from home, 8. critical qualities you need to thrive at work.

“For a host of reasons—some for a higher salary, others for improved benefits, and many in search of better company culture—America’s workforce is constantly looking for its next gig.”

A perennial search for a job that fulfills your sense of purpose has been an emerging trend in the work landscape in recent years. Yet, as human resource managers scramble to minimize employee turnover, some still believe there will still be workers who can exit a company through a happy retirement. You might also be interested in these  essays about unemployment .

“…[L]et’s creatively collaborate on ways to re-establish our own sense of value in our institutions while saying yes only to invitations that nourish us instead of sucking up more of our energy.”

Quiet quitting signals more profound issues underlying work, such as burnout or the bosses themselves. It is undesirable in any workplace, but to have it in school, among faculty members, spells doom as the future of the next generation is put at stake. In this essay, a teacher learns how to keep from burnout and rebuild a sense of community that drew her into the job in the first place.

“We don’t think about managing the demands that are pushing our buttons, we just keep reacting to them on autopilot on a route I call the burnout treadmill. Just keep going until the paramedics arrive.”

Studies have shown the detrimental health effects of stress on our mind, emotions and body. Yet we still willingly take on the treadmill to stress, forgetting our boundaries and wellness. It is time to normalize seeking help from our superiors to resolve burnout and refuse overtime and heavy workloads.

“As we start to emerge from the pandemic, today’s workplace demands a different kind of VUCA career growth. One that’s Versatile, Uplifting, Choice-filled and Active.”

The only thing constant in work is change. However, recent decades have witnessed greater work volatility where tech-oriented people and creative minds flourish the most. The essay provides tips for applying at work daily to survive and even thrive in the VUCA world. You might also be interested in these  essays about motivation .

“Ultimately, the biggest challenge in regulating labor markets in developing countries is what to do about the hundreds of millions of workers (or even more) who are beyond the reach of formal labor market rules and social protections.”

The challenge in regulating work is balancing the interest of employees to have dignified work conditions and for employers to operate at the most reasonable cost. But in developing countries, the difficulties loom larger, with issues going beyond equal pay to universal social protection coverage and monitoring employers’ compliance.

“Suppose you want to design the best company on earth to work for. What would it be like? For three years, we’ve been investigating this question by asking hundreds of executives in surveys and in seminars all over the world to describe their ideal organization.”

If you’ve ever wondered what would make the best workplace, you’re not alone. In this essay, Jones looks at how employers can create a better workplace for employees by using surveys and interviews. The writer found that individuality and a sense of support are key to creating positive workplace environments where employees are comfortable.

“Bottom line: People seek purpose in their lives — and that includes work. The more an employer limits those things that create this sense of purpose, the less likely employees will stay at their positions.”

In this essay, Turner looks at how employees seek value in the workplace. This essay dives into how, as humans, we all need a purpose. If we can find purpose in our work, our overall happiness increases. So, a value and purpose-driven job role can create a positive and fruitful work environment for both workers and employers.

In this essay, talk about how you envision yourself as a professional in the future. You can be as creative as to describe your workplace, your position, and your colleagues’ perception of you. Next, explain why this is the line of work you dream of and what you can contribute to society through this work. Finally, add what learning programs you’ve signed up for to prepare your skills for your dream job. For more, check out our list of simple essays topics for intermediate writers .

For your essay, look deeply into how your school prepares the young generation to be competitive in the future workforce. If you want to go the extra mile, you can interview students who have graduated from your school and are now professionals. Ask them about the programs or practices in your school that they believe have helped mold them better at their current jobs.

In a workplace where colleagues compete against each other, leaders could find it challenging to cultivate a sense of cooperation and teamwork. So, find out what creative activities companies can undertake to encourage teamwork across teams and divisions. For example, regular team-building activities help strengthen professional bonds while assisting workers to recharge their minds.

Finding a job after receiving your undergraduate diploma can be full of stress, pressure, and hard work. Write an essay that handholds graduate students in drafting their resumes and preparing for an interview. You may also recommend the top job market platforms that match them with their dream work. You may also ask recruitment experts for tips on how graduates can make a positive impression in job interviews.

Creating a fun and happy workplace may seem impossible. But there has been a flurry of efforts in the corporate world to keep workers happy. Why? To make them more productive. So, for your essay, gather research on what practices companies and policy-makers should adopt to help workers find meaning in their jobs. For example, how often should salary increases occur? You may also focus on what drives people to quit jobs that raise money. If it’s not the financial package that makes them satisfied, what does? Discuss these questions with your readers for a compelling essay.

Motivation could scale up workers’ productivity, efficiency, and ambition for higher positions and a longer tenure in your company. Knowing which method of motivation best suits your employees requires direct managers to know their people and find their potential source of intrinsic motivation. For example, managers should be able to tell whether employees are having difficulties with their tasks to the point of discouragement or find the task too easy to boredom.

A handful of managers have been worried about working from home for fears of lowering productivity and discouraging collaborative work. Meanwhile, those who embrace work-from-home arrangements are beginning to see the greater value and benefits of giving employees greater flexibility on when and where to work. So first, draw up the pros and cons of working from home. You can also interview professionals working or currently working at home. Finally, provide a conclusion on whether working from home can harm work output or boost it.

Identifying critical skills at work could depend on the work applied. However, there are inherent values and behavioral competencies that recruiters demand highly from employees. List the top five qualities a professional should possess to contribute significantly to the workplace. For example, being proactive is a valuable skill because workers have the initiative to produce without waiting for the boss to prod them.

If you need help with grammar, our guide to  grammar and syntax  is a good start to learning more. We also recommend taking the time to  improve the readability score  of your essays before publishing or submitting them.

Meet Rachael, the editor at Become a Writer Today. With years of experience in the field, she is passionate about language and dedicated to producing high-quality content that engages and informs readers. When she's not editing or writing, you can find her exploring the great outdoors, finding inspiration for her next project.

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Studying vs Working? What Is Better for You?

• What are the advantages and disadvantages of furthering your education before applying for a job?
• What are the advantages and disadvantages of getting a job after basic graduation?

Although this is a very debatable topic, through this article, we will try and give an unbiased view from both angles that will help you make a wiser decision.

After completing your graduation, you are often confronted with the thought- higher education or job, which one should you go in for?

Though one particular answer may not be the right one for everyone, it depends on your priorities that define the answer. Let us look at both the cases and then try and conclude a possible definite answer.

While some would argue that educational qualification is directly proportional to the level of job you get, others would say that education has least to do with your job. It is only the experience you have that ultimately matters.

Higher Education Before a Job

1. Higher Education Is Closely Related to Higher Incomes

Here the argument stands that the higher the education, the higher the income.

A survey conducted by the National Centre for Education Statistics stated that for 25- to 34-year-olds who worked full time, year-round, higher educational attainment was associated with higher median earnings; this pattern was consistent from 2000 through 2018.

For example, in 2018, the median earnings of those with a master’s or higher degree were $65,000, some 19 percent higher than those with a bachelor’s degree ($54,700).

In the same year, the median earnings of those with a bachelor’s degree were 57 percent higher than the earnings of high school completers ($34,900), and the median earnings of high school completers were 25 percent higher than the earnings of those who did not complete high school ($27,900).

This pattern of higher incomes associated with higher levels of educational attainment also held for both males and females and for those who were White, Black, Hispanic, and Asian.

According to a research article published in May 2020 by The U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics , states that Education leads to higher wages and lower unemployment.

The data collected showed that those possessing a doctoral degree earned more than a person holding a professional degree who earned more than a master’s degree holder and so on.

2. Great Performance Leads to Better Academic Qualifications

Great scores in high school or graduate level can allow you to apply for scholarships and other financial aid.

3. Better Education Leads to Lower Rates of Unemployment

Education most definitely leads to employment. Without education, employees will not be in a position to fill vacancies with skilled manpower.

Therefore, the more education, the fewer chances of unemployment.

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4. Higher Education Is Important for Careers Initially

In the argument working Vs. Studying, the ones supporting studying state that the higher your education is, the better chances of a great start in your career.

They argue that getting a  job in the first place is a tough task. People get jobs based on their qualifications.

Keeping a job and climbing up the corporate ladder may depend on your output and your experience, but getting the job in the first place depends on your level of education.

The more you study, the better you are prepared for the future. Research conducted by the Association of American colleges and Universities states 80% of employers believe that it is important to have a college education.

When it comes to answering the question of higher education or job, some people say that higher education prepares you for the skills required in the future . Many times theory teaches you what your experience can not.

5. Eliminates Training Period

Many argue that when it comes to Studying Vs. Working, people who study and then apply for a job can be absorbed on the job without spending much time on training for the job.

This saves the employer the time and effort of training.

Why Opt for A Job?

They argue that when it comes to deciding between a job or higher education, one must definitely opt for a job.

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1. Internships Completed While Studying Count as Work Experience

Those who are for working more than studying say that internships , projects, and assignments completed during the college days are also considered as work experiences.

Employers look at all these work experiences before hiring a prospective professional. Apart from degrees of education, employers look at work experience while studying.

In an article published in The Chronicle of Higher Education and written by George D Kuh , he states that experience can be the best teacher .

He further states that “research suggests that working during college is related to acquiring such employer-preferred skills as teamwork and time management .”

2. Degrees Have Nothing to Do with The Level of Output

The best example is that of Steve Job, Co-founder of Apple inc. Apparently, Steve Jobs had not finished any formal degree of education.

In fact, he dropped out of college after one semester, and his highest qualification was high school.  Therefore, it is evident that the level of education has nothing to do with your capabilities.

3. A Degree Lapses with Time

Many argue that degrees attained almost 20 to 30 years ago are irrelevant today because of the fast-changing technology.

It is the work experience that matters today. They state that in the debate Working vs. Studying, it is advisable to always choose to work because work experience is what will get your career soaring.

4. Loss of Time

Every year spent furthering your education is a year of experience lost. Some believe that you can further your education at any point in time, even while working, through certificate courses and online channels.

Spending a lot of time on higher education instead of working will result in a lot of time waste.

5. While Working Your Earn Money

The best part about starting to work early is that you earn a good amount of money. Higher studies involve expenses for courses and other expenses.

However, starting to work means you get to earn good money early on.

The bottom line when it comes to choosing between higher education or a job is that a mix of both would be ideal.

A good degree that shows employers you have the educational qualifications and a few internships completed while studying will make a perfect balance.

While looking for a job, employers look at both educational qualifications and work experience.

Educational qualifications let the employer know that you have the skill and technical know-how to perform.

In contrast work experience eliminates the time and money , an employer may have to spend on training a candidate.

In conclusion, we can say that working Vs. studying both have their pros and cons. Determining what suits you is more important.

Sometimes financial constraints can drive one to take the decision to work rather than to study further. Or an economic slowdown can make a student study further rather than look for a job.

So whatever you choose to do definitely depends on the circumstances you are in. Ultimately, both education and work experience go hand in hand when it comes to brighter career prospects.

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Sat / act prep online guides and tips, how to write an a+ argumentative essay.

Miscellaneous

You'll no doubt have to write a number of argumentative essays in both high school and college, but what, exactly, is an argumentative essay and how do you write the best one possible? Let's take a look.

A great argumentative essay always combines the same basic elements: approaching an argument from a rational perspective, researching sources, supporting your claims using facts rather than opinion, and articulating your reasoning into the most cogent and reasoned points. Argumentative essays are great building blocks for all sorts of research and rhetoric, so your teachers will expect you to master the technique before long.

But if this sounds daunting, never fear! We'll show how an argumentative essay differs from other kinds of papers, how to research and write them, how to pick an argumentative essay topic, and where to find example essays. So let's get started.

What Is an Argumentative Essay? How Is it Different from Other Kinds of Essays?

There are two basic requirements for any and all essays: to state a claim (a thesis statement) and to support that claim with evidence.

Though every essay is founded on these two ideas, there are several different types of essays, differentiated by the style of the writing, how the writer presents the thesis, and the types of evidence used to support the thesis statement.

Essays can be roughly divided into four different types:

#1: Argumentative #2: Persuasive #3: Expository #4: Analytical

So let's look at each type and what the differences are between them before we focus the rest of our time to argumentative essays.

Argumentative Essay

Argumentative essays are what this article is all about, so let's talk about them first.

An argumentative essay attempts to convince a reader to agree with a particular argument (the writer's thesis statement). The writer takes a firm stand one way or another on a topic and then uses hard evidence to support that stance.

An argumentative essay seeks to prove to the reader that one argument —the writer's argument— is the factually and logically correct one. This means that an argumentative essay must use only evidence-based support to back up a claim , rather than emotional or philosophical reasoning (which is often allowed in other types of essays). Thus, an argumentative essay has a burden of substantiated proof and sources , whereas some other types of essays (namely persuasive essays) do not.

You can write an argumentative essay on any topic, so long as there's room for argument. Generally, you can use the same topics for both a persuasive essay or an argumentative one, so long as you support the argumentative essay with hard evidence.

Example topics of an argumentative essay:

• "Should farmers be allowed to shoot wolves if those wolves injure or kill farm animals?"
• "Should the drinking age be lowered in the United States?"
• "Are alternatives to democracy effective and/or feasible to implement?"

The next three types of essays are not argumentative essays, but you may have written them in school. We're going to cover them so you know what not to do for your argumentative essay.

Persuasive Essay

Persuasive essays are similar to argumentative essays, so it can be easy to get them confused. But knowing what makes an argumentative essay different than a persuasive essay can often mean the difference between an excellent grade and an average one.

Persuasive essays seek to persuade a reader to agree with the point of view of the writer, whether that point of view is based on factual evidence or not. The writer has much more flexibility in the evidence they can use, with the ability to use moral, cultural, or opinion-based reasoning as well as factual reasoning to persuade the reader to agree the writer's side of a given issue.

Instead of being forced to use "pure" reason as one would in an argumentative essay, the writer of a persuasive essay can manipulate or appeal to the reader's emotions. So long as the writer attempts to steer the readers into agreeing with the thesis statement, the writer doesn't necessarily need hard evidence in favor of the argument.

Often, you can use the same topics for both a persuasive essay or an argumentative one—the difference is all in the approach and the evidence you present.

Example topics of a persuasive essay:

• "Should children be responsible for their parents' debts?"
• "Should cheating on a test be automatic grounds for expulsion?"
• "How much should sports leagues be held accountable for player injuries and the long-term consequences of those injuries?"

Expository Essay

An expository essay is typically a short essay in which the writer explains an idea, issue, or theme , or discusses the history of a person, place, or idea.

This is typically a fact-forward essay with little argument or opinion one way or the other.

Example topics of an expository essay:

• "The History of the Philadelphia Liberty Bell"
• "The Reasons I Always Wanted to be a Doctor"
• "The Meaning Behind the Colloquialism ‘People in Glass Houses Shouldn't Throw Stones'"

Analytical Essay

An analytical essay seeks to delve into the deeper meaning of a text or work of art, or unpack a complicated idea . These kinds of essays closely interpret a source and look into its meaning by analyzing it at both a macro and micro level.

This type of analysis can be augmented by historical context or other expert or widely-regarded opinions on the subject, but is mainly supported directly through the original source (the piece or art or text being analyzed) .

Example topics of an analytical essay:

• "Victory Gin in Place of Water: The Symbolism Behind Gin as the Only Potable Substance in George Orwell's 1984"
• "Amarna Period Art: The Meaning Behind the Shift from Rigid to Fluid Poses"
• "Adultery During WWII, as Told Through a Series of Letters to and from Soldiers"

There are many different types of essay and, over time, you'll be able to master them all.

A Typical Argumentative Essay Assignment

The average argumentative essay is between three to five pages, and will require at least three or four separate sources with which to back your claims . As for the essay topic , you'll most often be asked to write an argumentative essay in an English class on a "general" topic of your choice, ranging the gamut from science, to history, to literature.

But while the topics of an argumentative essay can span several different fields, the structure of an argumentative essay is always the same: you must support a claim—a claim that can reasonably have multiple sides—using multiple sources and using a standard essay format (which we'll talk about later on).

This is why many argumentative essay topics begin with the word "should," as in:

• "Should all students be required to learn chemistry in high school?"
• "Should children be required to learn a second language?"
• "Should schools or governments be allowed to ban books?"

These topics all have at least two sides of the argument: Yes or no. And you must support the side you choose with evidence as to why your side is the correct one.

But there are also plenty of other ways to frame an argumentative essay as well:

• "Does using social media do more to benefit or harm people?"
• "Does the legal status of artwork or its creators—graffiti and vandalism, pirated media, a creator who's in jail—have an impact on the art itself?"
• "Is or should anyone ever be ‘above the law?'"

Though these are worded differently than the first three, you're still essentially forced to pick between two sides of an issue: yes or no, for or against, benefit or detriment. Though your argument might not fall entirely into one side of the divide or another—for instance, you could claim that social media has positively impacted some aspects of modern life while being a detriment to others—your essay should still support one side of the argument above all. Your final stance would be that overall , social media is beneficial or overall , social media is harmful.

If your argument is one that is mostly text-based or backed by a single source (e.g., "How does Salinger show that Holden Caulfield is an unreliable narrator?" or "Does Gatsby personify the American Dream?"), then it's an analytical essay, rather than an argumentative essay. An argumentative essay will always be focused on more general topics so that you can use multiple sources to back up your claims.

Good Argumentative Essay Topics

So you know the basic idea behind an argumentative essay, but what topic should you write about?

Again, almost always, you'll be asked to write an argumentative essay on a free topic of your choice, or you'll be asked to select between a few given topics . If you're given complete free reign of topics, then it'll be up to you to find an essay topic that no only appeals to you, but that you can turn into an A+ argumentative essay.

What makes a "good" argumentative essay topic depends on both the subject matter and your personal interest —it can be hard to give your best effort on something that bores you to tears! But it can also be near impossible to write an argumentative essay on a topic that has no room for debate.

As we said earlier, a good argumentative essay topic will be one that has the potential to reasonably go in at least two directions—for or against, yes or no, and why . For example, it's pretty hard to write an argumentative essay on whether or not people should be allowed to murder one another—not a whole lot of debate there for most people!—but writing an essay for or against the death penalty has a lot more wiggle room for evidence and argument.

A good topic is also one that can be substantiated through hard evidence and relevant sources . So be sure to pick a topic that other people have studied (or at least studied elements of) so that you can use their data in your argument. For example, if you're arguing that it should be mandatory for all middle school children to play a sport, you might have to apply smaller scientific data points to the larger picture you're trying to justify. There are probably several studies you could cite on the benefits of physical activity and the positive effect structure and teamwork has on young minds, but there's probably no study you could use where a group of scientists put all middle-schoolers in one jurisdiction into a mandatory sports program (since that's probably never happened). So long as your evidence is relevant to your point and you can extrapolate from it to form a larger whole, you can use it as a part of your resource material.

And if you need ideas on where to get started, or just want to see sample argumentative essay topics, then check out these links for hundreds of potential argumentative essay topics.

101 Persuasive (or Argumentative) Essay and Speech Topics

301 Prompts for Argumentative Writing

Top 50 Ideas for Argumentative/Persuasive Essay Writing

[Note: some of these say "persuasive essay topics," but just remember that the same topic can often be used for both a persuasive essay and an argumentative essay; the difference is in your writing style and the evidence you use to support your claims.]

KO! Find that one argumentative essay topic you can absolutely conquer.

Argumentative Essay Format

Argumentative Essays are composed of four main elements:

• A position (your argument)
• Your reasons
• Supporting evidence for those reasons (from reliable sources)
• Counterargument(s) (possible opposing arguments and reasons why those arguments are incorrect)

If you're familiar with essay writing in general, then you're also probably familiar with the five paragraph essay structure . This structure is a simple tool to show how one outlines an essay and breaks it down into its component parts, although it can be expanded into as many paragraphs as you want beyond the core five.

The standard argumentative essay is often 3-5 pages, which will usually mean a lot more than five paragraphs, but your overall structure will look the same as a much shorter essay.

An argumentative essay at its simplest structure will look like:

Paragraph 1: Intro

• Set up the story/problem/issue
• Thesis/claim

Paragraph 2: Support

• Reason #1 claim is correct
• Supporting evidence with sources

Paragraph 3: Support

• Reason #2 claim is correct

Paragraph 4: Counterargument

• Explanation of argument for the other side
• Refutation of opposing argument with supporting evidence

Paragraph 5: Conclusion

• Re-state claim
• Sum up reasons and support of claim from the essay to prove claim is correct

Now let's unpack each of these paragraph types to see how they work (with examples!), what goes into them, and why.

Paragraph 1—Set Up and Claim

Your first task is to introduce the reader to the topic at hand so they'll be prepared for your claim. Give a little background information, set the scene, and give the reader some stakes so that they care about the issue you're going to discuss.

Next, you absolutely must have a position on an argument and make that position clear to the readers. It's not an argumentative essay unless you're arguing for a specific claim, and this claim will be your thesis statement.

Your thesis CANNOT be a mere statement of fact (e.g., "Washington DC is the capital of the United States"). Your thesis must instead be an opinion which can be backed up with evidence and has the potential to be argued against (e.g., "New York should be the capital of the United States").

Paragraphs 2 and 3—Your Evidence

These are your body paragraphs in which you give the reasons why your argument is the best one and back up this reasoning with concrete evidence .

The argument supporting the thesis of an argumentative essay should be one that can be supported by facts and evidence, rather than personal opinion or cultural or religious mores.

For example, if you're arguing that New York should be the new capital of the US, you would have to back up that fact by discussing the factual contrasts between New York and DC in terms of location, population, revenue, and laws. You would then have to talk about the precedents for what makes for a good capital city and why New York fits the bill more than DC does.

Your argument can't simply be that a lot of people think New York is the best city ever and that you agree.

In addition to using concrete evidence, you always want to keep the tone of your essay passionate, but impersonal . Even though you're writing your argument from a single opinion, don't use first person language—"I think," "I feel," "I believe,"—to present your claims. Doing so is repetitive, since by writing the essay you're already telling the audience what you feel, and using first person language weakens your writing voice.

For example,

"I think that Washington DC is no longer suited to be the capital city of the United States."

"Washington DC is no longer suited to be the capital city of the United States."

The second statement sounds far stronger and more analytical.

Paragraph 4—Argument for the Other Side and Refutation

Even without a counter argument, you can make a pretty persuasive claim, but a counterargument will round out your essay into one that is much more persuasive and substantial.

By anticipating an argument against your claim and taking the initiative to counter it, you're allowing yourself to get ahead of the game. This way, you show that you've given great thought to all sides of the issue before choosing your position, and you demonstrate in multiple ways how yours is the more reasoned and supported side.

Paragraph 5—Conclusion

This paragraph is where you re-state your argument and summarize why it's the best claim.

Briefly touch on your supporting evidence and voila! A finished argumentative essay.

Your essay should have just as awesome a skeleton as this plesiosaur does. (In other words: a ridiculously awesome skeleton)

Argumentative Essay Example: 5-Paragraph Style

It always helps to have an example to learn from. I've written a full 5-paragraph argumentative essay here. Look at how I state my thesis in paragraph 1, give supporting evidence in paragraphs 2 and 3, address a counterargument in paragraph 4, and conclude in paragraph 5.

Topic: Is it possible to maintain conflicting loyalties?

Paragraph 1

It is almost impossible to go through life without encountering a situation where your loyalties to different people or causes come into conflict with each other. Maybe you have a loving relationship with your sister, but she disagrees with your decision to join the army, or you find yourself torn between your cultural beliefs and your scientific ones. These conflicting loyalties can often be maintained for a time, but as examples from both history and psychological theory illustrate, sooner or later, people have to make a choice between competing loyalties, as no one can maintain a conflicting loyalty or belief system forever.

The first two sentences set the scene and give some hypothetical examples and stakes for the reader to care about.

The third sentence finishes off the intro with the thesis statement, making very clear how the author stands on the issue ("people have to make a choice between competing loyalties, as no one can maintain a conflicting loyalty or belief system forever." )

Paragraphs 2 and 3

Psychological theory states that human beings are not equipped to maintain conflicting loyalties indefinitely and that attempting to do so leads to a state called "cognitive dissonance." Cognitive dissonance theory is the psychological idea that people undergo tremendous mental stress or anxiety when holding contradictory beliefs, values, or loyalties (Festinger, 1957). Even if human beings initially hold a conflicting loyalty, they will do their best to find a mental equilibrium by making a choice between those loyalties—stay stalwart to a belief system or change their beliefs. One of the earliest formal examples of cognitive dissonance theory comes from Leon Festinger's When Prophesy Fails . Members of an apocalyptic cult are told that the end of the world will occur on a specific date and that they alone will be spared the Earth's destruction. When that day comes and goes with no apocalypse, the cult members face a cognitive dissonance between what they see and what they've been led to believe (Festinger, 1956). Some choose to believe that the cult's beliefs are still correct, but that the Earth was simply spared from destruction by mercy, while others choose to believe that they were lied to and that the cult was fraudulent all along. Both beliefs cannot be correct at the same time, and so the cult members are forced to make their choice.

But even when conflicting loyalties can lead to potentially physical, rather than just mental, consequences, people will always make a choice to fall on one side or other of a dividing line. Take, for instance, Nicolaus Copernicus, a man born and raised in Catholic Poland (and educated in Catholic Italy). Though the Catholic church dictated specific scientific teachings, Copernicus' loyalty to his own observations and scientific evidence won out over his loyalty to his country's government and belief system. When he published his heliocentric model of the solar system--in opposition to the geocentric model that had been widely accepted for hundreds of years (Hannam, 2011)-- Copernicus was making a choice between his loyalties. In an attempt t o maintain his fealty both to the established system and to what he believed, h e sat on his findings for a number of years (Fantoli, 1994). But, ultimately, Copernicus made the choice to side with his beliefs and observations above all and published his work for the world to see (even though, in doing so, he risked both his reputation and personal freedoms).

These two paragraphs provide the reasons why the author supports the main argument and uses substantiated sources to back those reasons.

The paragraph on cognitive dissonance theory gives both broad supporting evidence and more narrow, detailed supporting evidence to show why the thesis statement is correct not just anecdotally but also scientifically and psychologically. First, we see why people in general have a difficult time accepting conflicting loyalties and desires and then how this applies to individuals through the example of the cult members from the Dr. Festinger's research.

The next paragraph continues to use more detailed examples from history to provide further evidence of why the thesis that people cannot indefinitely maintain conflicting loyalties is true.

Paragraph 4

Some will claim that it is possible to maintain conflicting beliefs or loyalties permanently, but this is often more a matter of people deluding themselves and still making a choice for one side or the other, rather than truly maintaining loyalty to both sides equally. For example, Lancelot du Lac typifies a person who claims to maintain a balanced loyalty between to two parties, but his attempt to do so fails (as all attempts to permanently maintain conflicting loyalties must). Lancelot tells himself and others that he is equally devoted to both King Arthur and his court and to being Queen Guinevere's knight (Malory, 2008). But he can neither be in two places at once to protect both the king and queen, nor can he help but let his romantic feelings for the queen to interfere with his duties to the king and the kingdom. Ultimately, he and Queen Guinevere give into their feelings for one another and Lancelot—though he denies it—chooses his loyalty to her over his loyalty to Arthur. This decision plunges the kingdom into a civil war, ages Lancelot prematurely, and ultimately leads to Camelot's ruin (Raabe, 1987). Though Lancelot claimed to have been loyal to both the king and the queen, this loyalty was ultimately in conflict, and he could not maintain it.

Here we have the acknowledgement of a potential counter-argument and the evidence as to why it isn't true.

The argument is that some people (or literary characters) have asserted that they give equal weight to their conflicting loyalties. The refutation is that, though some may claim to be able to maintain conflicting loyalties, they're either lying to others or deceiving themselves. The paragraph shows why this is true by providing an example of this in action.

Paragraph 5

Whether it be through literature or history, time and time again, people demonstrate the challenges of trying to manage conflicting loyalties and the inevitable consequences of doing so. Though belief systems are malleable and will often change over time, it is not possible to maintain two mutually exclusive loyalties or beliefs at once. In the end, people always make a choice, and loyalty for one party or one side of an issue will always trump loyalty to the other.

The concluding paragraph summarizes the essay, touches on the evidence presented, and re-states the thesis statement.

How to Write an Argumentative Essay: 8 Steps

Writing the best argumentative essay is all about the preparation, so let's talk steps:

#1: Preliminary Research

If you have the option to pick your own argumentative essay topic (which you most likely will), then choose one or two topics you find the most intriguing or that you have a vested interest in and do some preliminary research on both sides of the debate.

Do an open internet search just to see what the general chatter is on the topic and what the research trends are.

Did your preliminary reading influence you to pick a side or change your side? Without diving into all the scholarly articles at length, do you believe there's enough evidence to support your claim? Have there been scientific studies? Experiments? Does a noted scholar in the field agree with you? If not, you may need to pick another topic or side of the argument to support.

#2: Pick Your Side and Form Your Thesis

Now's the time to pick the side of the argument you feel you can support the best and summarize your main point into your thesis statement.

Your thesis will be the basis of your entire essay, so make sure you know which side you're on, that you've stated it clearly, and that you stick by your argument throughout the entire essay .

#3: Heavy-Duty Research Time

You've taken a gander at what the internet at large has to say on your argument, but now's the time to actually read those sources and take notes.

Check scholarly journals online at Google Scholar , the Directory of Open Access Journals , or JStor . You can also search individual university or school libraries and websites to see what kinds of academic articles you can access for free. Keep track of your important quotes and page numbers and put them somewhere that's easy to find later.

And don't forget to check your school or local libraries as well!

#4: Outline

Follow the five-paragraph outline structure from the previous section.

Fill in your topic, your reasons, and your supporting evidence into each of the categories.

Before you begin to flesh out the essay, take a look at what you've got. Is your thesis statement in the first paragraph? Is it clear? Is your argument logical? Does your supporting evidence support your reasoning?

By outlining your essay, you streamline your process and take care of any logic gaps before you dive headfirst into the writing. This will save you a lot of grief later on if you need to change your sources or your structure, so don't get too trigger-happy and skip this step.

Now that you've laid out exactly what you'll need for your essay and where, it's time to fill in all the gaps by writing it out.

Take it one step at a time and expand your ideas into complete sentences and substantiated claims. It may feel daunting to turn an outline into a complete draft, but just remember that you've already laid out all the groundwork; now you're just filling in the gaps.

If you have the time before deadline, give yourself a day or two (or even just an hour!) away from your essay . Looking it over with fresh eyes will allow you to see errors, both minor and major, that you likely would have missed had you tried to edit when it was still raw.

Take a first pass over the entire essay and try your best to ignore any minor spelling or grammar mistakes—you're just looking at the big picture right now. Does it make sense as a whole? Did the essay succeed in making an argument and backing that argument up logically? (Do you feel persuaded?)

If not, go back and make notes so that you can fix it for your final draft.

Once you've made your revisions to the overall structure, mark all your small errors and grammar problems so you can fix them in the next draft.

#7: Final Draft

Use the notes you made on the rough draft and go in and hack and smooth away until you're satisfied with the final result.

A checklist for your final draft:

• Formatting is correct according to your teacher's standards
• No errors in spelling, grammar, and punctuation
• Essay is the right length and size for the assignment
• The argument is present, consistent, and concise
• Each reason is supported by relevant evidence
• The essay makes sense overall

#8: Celebrate!

Once you've brought that final draft to a perfect polish and turned in your assignment, you're done! Go you!

Be prepared and ♪ you'll never go hungry again ♪, *cough*, or struggle with your argumentative essay-writing again. (Walt Disney Studios)

Good Examples of Argumentative Essays Online

Theory is all well and good, but examples are key. Just to get you started on what a fully-fleshed out argumentative essay looks like, let's see some examples in action.

Check out these two argumentative essay examples on the use of landmines and freons (and note the excellent use of concrete sources to back up their arguments!).

The Use of Landmines

A Shattered Sky

The Take-Aways: Keys to Writing an Argumentative Essay

At first, writing an argumentative essay may seem like a monstrous hurdle to overcome, but with the proper preparation and understanding, you'll be able to knock yours out of the park.

Remember the differences between a persuasive essay and an argumentative one, make sure your thesis is clear, and double-check that your supporting evidence is both relevant to your point and well-sourced . Pick your topic, do your research, make your outline, and fill in the gaps. Before you know it, you'll have yourself an A+ argumentative essay there, my friend.

What's Next?

Now you know the ins and outs of an argumentative essay, but how comfortable are you writing in other styles? Learn more about the four writing styles and when it makes sense to use each .

Understand how to make an argument, but still having trouble organizing your thoughts? Check out our guide to three popular essay formats and choose which one is right for you.

Ready to make your case, but not sure what to write about? We've created a list of 50 potential argumentative essay topics to spark your imagination.

Courtney scored in the 99th percentile on the SAT in high school and went on to graduate from Stanford University with a degree in Cultural and Social Anthropology. She is passionate about bringing education and the tools to succeed to students from all backgrounds and walks of life, as she believes open education is one of the great societal equalizers. She has years of tutoring experience and writes creative works in her free time.

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Essay Exams

What this handout is about.

At some time in your undergraduate career, you’re going to have to write an essay exam. This thought can inspire a fair amount of fear: we struggle enough with essays when they aren’t timed events based on unknown questions. The goal of this handout is to give you some easy and effective strategies that will help you take control of the situation and do your best.

Why do instructors give essay exams?

Essay exams are a useful tool for finding out if you can sort through a large body of information, figure out what is important, and explain why it is important. Essay exams challenge you to come up with key course ideas and put them in your own words and to use the interpretive or analytical skills you’ve practiced in the course. Instructors want to see whether:

• You understand concepts that provide the basis for the course
• You can use those concepts to interpret specific materials
• You can make connections, see relationships, draw comparisons and contrasts
• You can synthesize diverse information in support of an original assertion
• You can justify your own evaluations based on appropriate criteria
• You can argue your own opinions with convincing evidence
• You can think critically and analytically about a subject

What essay questions require

Exam questions can reach pretty far into the course materials, so you cannot hope to do well on them if you do not keep up with the readings and assignments from the beginning of the course. The most successful essay exam takers are prepared for anything reasonable, and they probably have some intelligent guesses about the content of the exam before they take it. How can you be a prepared exam taker? Try some of the following suggestions during the semester:

• Do the reading as the syllabus dictates; keeping up with the reading while the related concepts are being discussed in class saves you double the effort later.
• Go to lectures (and put away your phone, the newspaper, and that crossword puzzle!).
• Take careful notes that you’ll understand months later. If this is not your strong suit or the conventions for a particular discipline are different from what you are used to, ask your TA or the Learning Center for advice.
• Participate in your discussion sections; this will help you absorb the material better so you don’t have to study as hard.
• Organize small study groups with classmates to explore and review course materials throughout the semester. Others will catch things you might miss even when paying attention. This is not cheating. As long as what you write on the essay is your own work, formulating ideas and sharing notes is okay. In fact, it is a big part of the learning process.
• As an exam approaches, find out what you can about the form it will take. This will help you forecast the questions that will be on the exam, and prepare for them.

These suggestions will save you lots of time and misery later. Remember that you can’t cram weeks of information into a single day or night of study. So why put yourself in that position?

Now let’s focus on studying for the exam. You’ll notice the following suggestions are all based on organizing your study materials into manageable chunks of related material. If you have a plan of attack, you’ll feel more confident and your answers will be more clear. Here are some tips: 

• Don’t just memorize aimlessly; clarify the important issues of the course and use these issues to focus your understanding of specific facts and particular readings.
• Try to organize and prioritize the information into a thematic pattern. Look at what you’ve studied and find a way to put things into related groups. Find the fundamental ideas that have been emphasized throughout the course and organize your notes into broad categories. Think about how different categories relate to each other.
• Find out what you don’t know, but need to know, by making up test questions and trying to answer them. Studying in groups helps as well.

Taking the exam

Read the exam carefully.

• If you are given the entire exam at once and can determine your approach on your own, read the entire exam before you get started.
• Look at how many points each part earns you, and find hints for how long your answers should be.
• Figure out how much time you have and how best to use it. Write down the actual clock time that you expect to take in each section, and stick to it. This will help you avoid spending all your time on only one section. One strategy is to divide the available time according to percentage worth of the question. You don’t want to spend half of your time on something that is only worth one tenth of the total points.
• As you read, make tentative choices of the questions you will answer (if you have a choice). Don’t just answer the first essay question you encounter. Instead, read through all of the options. Jot down really brief ideas for each question before deciding.
• Remember that the easiest-looking question is not always as easy as it looks. Focus your attention on questions for which you can explain your answer most thoroughly, rather than settle on questions where you know the answer but can’t say why.

Analyze the questions

• Decide what you are being asked to do. If you skim the question to find the main “topic” and then rush to grasp any related ideas you can recall, you may become flustered, lose concentration, and even go blank. Try looking closely at what the question is directing you to do, and try to understand the sort of writing that will be required.
• Focus on what you do know about the question, not on what you don’t.
• Look at the active verbs in the assignment—they tell you what you should be doing. We’ve included some of these below, with some suggestions on what they might mean. (For help with this sort of detective work, see the Writing Center handout titled Reading Assignments.)

Information words, such as who, what, when, where, how, and why ask you to demonstrate what you know about the subject. Information words may include:

• define—give the subject’s meaning (according to someone or something). Sometimes you have to give more than one view on the subject’s meaning.
• explain why/how—give reasons why or examples of how something happened.
• illustrate—give descriptive examples of the subject and show how each is connected with the subject.
• summarize—briefly cover the important ideas you learned about the subject.
• trace—outline how something has changed or developed from an earlier time to its current form.
• research—gather material from outside sources about the subject, often with the implication or requirement that you will analyze what you’ve found.

Relation words ask you to demonstrate how things are connected. Relation words may include:

• compare—show how two or more things are similar (and, sometimes, different).
• contrast—show how two or more things are dissimilar.
• apply—use details that you’ve been given to demonstrate how an idea, theory, or concept works in a particular situation.
• cause—show how one event or series of events made something else happen.
• relate—show or describe the connections between things.

Interpretation words ask you to defend ideas of your own about the subject. Don’t see these words as requesting opinion alone (unless the assignment specifically says so), but as requiring opinion that is supported by concrete evidence. Remember examples, principles, definitions, or concepts from class or research and use them in your interpretation. Interpretation words may include:

• prove, justify—give reasons or examples to demonstrate how or why something is the truth.
• evaluate, respond, assess—state your opinion of the subject as good, bad, or some combination of the two, with examples and reasons (you may want to compare your subject to something else).
• support—give reasons or evidence for something you believe (be sure to state clearly what it is that you believe).
• synthesize—put two or more things together that haven’t been put together before; don’t just summarize one and then the other, and say that they are similar or different—you must provide a reason for putting them together (as opposed to compare and contrast—see above).
• analyze—look closely at the components of something to figure out how it works, what it might mean, or why it is important.
• argue—take a side and defend it (with proof) against the other side.

Plan your answers

Think about your time again. How much planning time you should take depends on how much time you have for each question and how many points each question is worth. Here are some general guidelines: 

• For short-answer definitions and identifications, just take a few seconds. Skip over any you don’t recognize fairly quickly, and come back to them when another question jogs your memory.
• For answers that require a paragraph or two, jot down several important ideas or specific examples that help to focus your thoughts.
• For longer answers, you will need to develop a much more definite strategy of organization. You only have time for one draft, so allow a reasonable amount of time—as much as a quarter of the time you’ve allotted for the question—for making notes, determining a thesis, and developing an outline.
• For questions with several parts (different requests or directions, a sequence of questions), make a list of the parts so that you do not miss or minimize one part. One way to be sure you answer them all is to number them in the question and in your outline.
• You may have to try two or three outlines or clusters before you hit on a workable plan. But be realistic—you want a plan you can develop within the limited time allotted for your answer. Your outline will have to be selective—not everything you know, but what you know that you can state clearly and keep to the point in the time available.

Again, focus on what you do know about the question, not on what you don’t.

Writing your answers

As with planning, your strategy for writing depends on the length of your answer:

• For short identifications and definitions, it is usually best to start with a general identifying statement and then move on to describe specific applications or explanations. Two sentences will almost always suffice, but make sure they are complete sentences. Find out whether the instructor wants definition alone, or definition and significance. Why is the identification term or object important?
• For longer answers, begin by stating your forecasting statement or thesis clearly and explicitly. Strive for focus, simplicity, and clarity. In stating your point and developing your answers, you may want to use important course vocabulary words from the question. For example, if the question is, “How does wisteria function as a representation of memory in Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom?” you may want to use the words wisteria, representation, memory, and Faulkner) in your thesis statement and answer. Use these important words or concepts throughout the answer.
• If you have devised a promising outline for your answer, then you will be able to forecast your overall plan and its subpoints in your opening sentence. Forecasting impresses readers and has the very practical advantage of making your answer easier to read. Also, if you don’t finish writing, it tells your reader what you would have said if you had finished (and may get you partial points).
• You might want to use briefer paragraphs than you ordinarily do and signal clear relations between paragraphs with transition phrases or sentences.
• As you move ahead with the writing, you may think of new subpoints or ideas to include in the essay. Stop briefly to make a note of these on your original outline. If they are most appropriately inserted in a section you’ve already written, write them neatly in the margin, at the top of the page, or on the last page, with arrows or marks to alert the reader to where they fit in your answer. Be as neat and clear as possible.
• Don’t pad your answer with irrelevancies and repetitions just to fill up space. Within the time available, write a comprehensive, specific answer.
• Watch the clock carefully to ensure that you do not spend too much time on one answer. You must be realistic about the time constraints of an essay exam. If you write one dazzling answer on an exam with three equally-weighted required questions, you earn only 33 points—not enough to pass at most colleges. This may seem unfair, but keep in mind that instructors plan exams to be reasonably comprehensive. They want you to write about the course materials in two or three or more ways, not just one way. Hint: if you finish a half-hour essay in 10 minutes, you may need to develop some of your ideas more fully.
• If you run out of time when you are writing an answer, jot down the remaining main ideas from your outline, just to show that you know the material and with more time could have continued your exposition.
• Double-space to leave room for additions, and strike through errors or changes with one straight line (avoid erasing or scribbling over). Keep things as clean as possible. You never know what will earn you partial credit.
• Write legibly and proofread. Remember that your instructor will likely be reading a large pile of exams. The more difficult they are to read, the more exasperated the instructor might become. Your instructor also cannot give you credit for what they cannot understand. A few minutes of careful proofreading can improve your grade.

Perhaps the most important thing to keep in mind in writing essay exams is that you have a limited amount of time and space in which to get across the knowledge you have acquired and your ability to use it. Essay exams are not the place to be subtle or vague. It’s okay to have an obvious structure, even the five-paragraph essay format you may have been taught in high school. Introduce your main idea, have several paragraphs of support—each with a single point defended by specific examples, and conclude with a restatement of your main point and its significance.

Some physiological tips

Just think—we expect athletes to practice constantly and use everything in their abilities and situations in order to achieve success. Yet, somehow many students are convinced that one day’s worth of studying, no sleep, and some well-placed compliments (“Gee, Dr. So-and-so, I really enjoyed your last lecture”) are good preparation for a test. Essay exams are like any other testing situation in life: you’ll do best if you are prepared for what is expected of you, have practiced doing it before, and have arrived in the best shape to do it. You may not want to believe this, but it’s true: a good night’s sleep and a relaxed mind and body can do as much or more for you as any last-minute cram session. Colleges abound with tales of woe about students who slept through exams because they stayed up all night, wrote an essay on the wrong topic, forgot everything they studied, or freaked out in the exam and hyperventilated. If you are rested, breathing normally, and have brought along some healthy, energy-boosting snacks that you can eat or drink quietly, you are in a much better position to do a good job on the test. You aren’t going to write a good essay on something you figured out at 4 a.m. that morning. If you prepare yourself well throughout the semester, you don’t risk your whole grade on an overloaded, undernourished brain.

If for some reason you get yourself into this situation, take a minute every once in a while during the test to breathe deeply, stretch, and clear your brain. You need to be especially aware of the likelihood of errors, so check your essays thoroughly before you hand them in to make sure they answer the right questions and don’t have big oversights or mistakes (like saying “Hitler” when you really mean “Churchill”).

If you tend to go blank during exams, try studying in the same classroom in which the test will be given. Some research suggests that people attach ideas to their surroundings, so it might jog your memory to see the same things you were looking at while you studied.

Try good luck charms. Bring in something you associate with success or the support of your loved ones, and use it as a psychological boost.

Take all of the time you’ve been allotted. Reread, rework, and rethink your answers if you have extra time at the end, rather than giving up and handing the exam in the minute you’ve written your last sentence. Use every advantage you are given.

Remember that instructors do not want to see you trip up—they want to see you do well. With this in mind, try to relax and just do the best you can. The more you panic, the more mistakes you are liable to make. Put the test in perspective: will you die from a poor performance? Will you lose all of your friends? Will your entire future be destroyed? Remember: it’s just a test.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Axelrod, Rise B., and Charles R. Cooper. 2016. The St. Martin’s Guide to Writing , 11th ed. Boston: Bedford/St Martin’s.

Fowler, Ramsay H., and Jane E. Aaron. 2016. The Little, Brown Handbook , 13th ed. Boston: Pearson.

Gefvert, Constance J. 1988. The Confident Writer: A Norton Handbook , 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton and Company.

Kirszner, Laurie G. 1988. Writing: A College Rhetoric , 2nd ed. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.

Lunsford, Andrea A. 2015. The St. Martin’s Handbook , 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St Martin’s.

Woodman, Leonara, and Thomas P. Adler. 1988. The Writer’s Choices , 2nd ed. Northbrook, Illinois: Scott Foresman.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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Studying and Working Balance Essay

Following the changing business environment and the demands at work place, the need for cash when one is at school is currently compelling people to work and at the same time they are doing/taking some courses. Balancing studies while at the same time one is in school is not an easy task; it requires one to sit down and plan his or her time so as to have sufficient time for both causes. One should be aware that the two have targets that have to be obtained for success. This paper gives an analysis of how I have managed to allocate time for working and studying; it will aim at assisting my fellow students to know the considerations that they need to make when making such a decision.

Before one decides to go back to class, he should make the decision without underestimating his capabilities; what one can do should be well interpolated so as to venture in the area that one is capable of doing. If one wants to go back to school alongside his job, then he should start by having a vision of what he want to attain after the completion. Then choose a course that will lead him to the destiny that he aims to reach. If it is the case of a student, then he should be able to know the available jobs that are in line with what he can offer in terms of experience, interests, and the time that is available. The period that the study will take should be analyzed in making the decision as well as the third parties that will be affected by the decision. If for example you have realized that you have some potential in accounting; it will be more affordable if you go and start a course in accounting (Fink, p. 32).

The fact that a person has decided to go back to school doesn’t make the day any longer; what will be important is to “create time” this means that the individual prioritizes the activities that he has to do in such a way that he can have extra time that he can then devote to either studies or part time job. There are some things that we may not be able to change and thus we will analyze the situation knowing that there are some hours that are already dictated. This is done by understanding the work or study schedule. The start point that I took was having the institute’s time table and the job time table then I analyzed the time that I was likely to be free. When terming a certain hour/time as free, I also allocated time for domestic attention. If there is something that can be done to schedule the time tables to fit ones need then it should be done. For example there are some days that I am supposed to work in an afternoon shift,-the same time that lessons are taking place, however it is possible to talk to my supervisor to allocate me morning shifts instead.

This is more felt when one is making a decision of going back to school; he should be sure that he will raise the fees required over the entire period of study. Talking to people who have prior experience in the area of study or work is important so one can understand how demanding the job/studies are. Other than finances, there is the issue of materials that are required for the course (Harris, p. 72). Before making the decision, it’s important to be sure that the material that may be required in future will be available. We always think that we can stop doing this or that so we can have extra coins or some time; however it isn’t always as easy as it is to say. After we have created the finances and time by sacrificing something, individual efforts should be made to ensure that one lives to the promise that he has made to himself. Self discipline and self leadership is required. Those parties that you think are time wasters or money wasters are important in life but can hold as one takes a different course to education or work. Managing time is all about managing oneself, before I decided to take an extra course, there are some social activities that I left, they include playing golf an supporting an England football league team -Arsenal. This requires hard work, determination and self discipline.

One may be willing to do something but may be out of reach, in terms of distance/ accessibility. With technology there is the advantage of distance learning and thus though as much as distance may not be a big issue, however it comes with its challenges. For example, when I decided to double deal studies and work, I ensured that my locality had power and network to access the internet any time I wanted to (Durand, p. 10).

Life changes in terms of technology and social factors and before one takes a long term decision, there is the need to interpolate the effect that the decision will have for the current, medium, and long term life of the decision maker for example if a bachelor who undertakes classes until 9.00 at night, that will last for five years; what will be the effect of the decision if he decides to get married only three months into the program?, the result may not be favourable for the man. The above example illustrates the need to think of the future when making the decision. When planning the time that I had, I thought of when I’m expecting to get married, this is because marriage comes with responsibilities, thus I chose a course that won’t extend past the marriage date.

Works Cited

• Fink, Philip R. “Education Savings Planning Guide, Including 529 Plans.” The Tax Adviser 36.6 (2005): 366. Academic OneFile.
• Harris, John M. “Financial planning for major initiatives a framework for success.” hfm (Healthcare Financial Management) 61.11 (2007): 72. MasterFILE Premier. EBSCO.
• Durand, Dave. “Self-Discipline.” Personal Excellence 14.1 (2009): 10. Business Source Complete. EBSCO.
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IvyPanda. (2021, December 26). Studying and Working Balance. https://ivypanda.com/essays/studying-and-working-balance/

"Studying and Working Balance." IvyPanda , 26 Dec. 2021, ivypanda.com/essays/studying-and-working-balance/.

IvyPanda . (2021) 'Studying and Working Balance'. 26 December.

IvyPanda . 2021. "Studying and Working Balance." December 26, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/studying-and-working-balance/.

1. IvyPanda . "Studying and Working Balance." December 26, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/studying-and-working-balance/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Studying and Working Balance." December 26, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/studying-and-working-balance/.

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Studying 101: Study Smarter Not Harder

Do you ever feel like your study habits simply aren’t cutting it? Do you wonder what you could be doing to perform better in class and on exams? Many students realize that their high school study habits aren’t very effective in college. This is understandable, as college is quite different from high school. The professors are less personally involved, classes are bigger, exams are worth more, reading is more intense, and classes are much more rigorous. That doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you; it just means you need to learn some more effective study skills. Fortunately, there are many active, effective study strategies that are shown to be effective in college classes.

This handout offers several tips on effective studying. Implementing these tips into your regular study routine will help you to efficiently and effectively learn course material. Experiment with them and find some that work for you.

Reading is not studying

Simply reading and re-reading texts or notes is not actively engaging in the material. It is simply re-reading your notes. Only ‘doing’ the readings for class is not studying. It is simply doing the reading for class. Re-reading leads to quick forgetting.

Think of reading as an important part of pre-studying, but learning information requires actively engaging in the material (Edwards, 2014). Active engagement is the process of constructing meaning from text that involves making connections to lectures, forming examples, and regulating your own learning (Davis, 2007). Active studying does not mean highlighting or underlining text, re-reading, or rote memorization. Though these activities may help to keep you engaged in the task, they are not considered active studying techniques and are weakly related to improved learning (Mackenzie, 1994).

Ideas for active studying include:

• Create a study guide by topic. Formulate questions and problems and write complete answers. Create your own quiz.
• Become a teacher. Say the information aloud in your own words as if you are the instructor and teaching the concepts to a class.
• Derive examples that relate to your own experiences.
• Create concept maps or diagrams that explain the material.
• Develop symbols that represent concepts.
• For non-technical classes (e.g., English, History, Psychology), figure out the big ideas so you can explain, contrast, and re-evaluate them.
• For technical classes, work the problems and explain the steps and why they work.
• Study in terms of question, evidence, and conclusion: What is the question posed by the instructor/author? What is the evidence that they present? What is the conclusion?

Organization and planning will help you to actively study for your courses. When studying for a test, organize your materials first and then begin your active reviewing by topic (Newport, 2007). Often professors provide subtopics on the syllabi. Use them as a guide to help organize your materials. For example, gather all of the materials for one topic (e.g., PowerPoint notes, text book notes, articles, homework, etc.) and put them together in a pile. Label each pile with the topic and study by topics.

For more information on the principle behind active studying, check out our tipsheet on metacognition .

Understand the Study Cycle

The Study Cycle , developed by Frank Christ, breaks down the different parts of studying: previewing, attending class, reviewing, studying, and checking your understanding. Although each step may seem obvious at a glance, all too often students try to take shortcuts and miss opportunities for good learning. For example, you may skip a reading before class because the professor covers the same material in class; doing so misses a key opportunity to learn in different modes (reading and listening) and to benefit from the repetition and distributed practice (see #3 below) that you’ll get from both reading ahead and attending class. Understanding the importance of all stages of this cycle will help make sure you don’t miss opportunities to learn effectively.

Spacing out is good

One of the most impactful learning strategies is “distributed practice”—spacing out your studying over several short periods of time over several days and weeks (Newport, 2007). The most effective practice is to work a short time on each class every day. The total amount of time spent studying will be the same (or less) than one or two marathon library sessions, but you will learn the information more deeply and retain much more for the long term—which will help get you an A on the final. The important thing is how you use your study time, not how long you study. Long study sessions lead to a lack of concentration and thus a lack of learning and retention.

In order to spread out studying over short periods of time across several days and weeks, you need control over your schedule . Keeping a list of tasks to complete on a daily basis will help you to include regular active studying sessions for each class. Try to do something for each class each day. Be specific and realistic regarding how long you plan to spend on each task—you should not have more tasks on your list than you can reasonably complete during the day.

For example, you may do a few problems per day in math rather than all of them the hour before class. In history, you can spend 15-20 minutes each day actively studying your class notes. Thus, your studying time may still be the same length, but rather than only preparing for one class, you will be preparing for all of your classes in short stretches. This will help focus, stay on top of your work, and retain information.

In addition to learning the material more deeply, spacing out your work helps stave off procrastination. Rather than having to face the dreaded project for four hours on Monday, you can face the dreaded project for 30 minutes each day. The shorter, more consistent time to work on a dreaded project is likely to be more acceptable and less likely to be delayed to the last minute. Finally, if you have to memorize material for class (names, dates, formulas), it is best to make flashcards for this material and review periodically throughout the day rather than one long, memorization session (Wissman and Rawson, 2012). See our handout on memorization strategies to learn more.

It’s good to be intense

Not all studying is equal. You will accomplish more if you study intensively. Intensive study sessions are short and will allow you to get work done with minimal wasted effort. Shorter, intensive study times are more effective than drawn out studying.

In fact, one of the most impactful study strategies is distributing studying over multiple sessions (Newport, 2007). Intensive study sessions can last 30 or 45-minute sessions and include active studying strategies. For example, self-testing is an active study strategy that improves the intensity of studying and efficiency of learning. However, planning to spend hours on end self-testing is likely to cause you to become distracted and lose your attention.

On the other hand, if you plan to quiz yourself on the course material for 45 minutes and then take a break, you are much more likely to maintain your attention and retain the information. Furthermore, the shorter, more intense sessions will likely put the pressure on that is needed to prevent procrastination.

Silence isn’t golden

Know where you study best. The silence of a library may not be the best place for you. It’s important to consider what noise environment works best for you. You might find that you concentrate better with some background noise. Some people find that listening to classical music while studying helps them concentrate, while others find this highly distracting. The point is that the silence of the library may be just as distracting (or more) than the noise of a gymnasium. Thus, if silence is distracting, but you prefer to study in the library, try the first or second floors where there is more background ‘buzz.’

Keep in mind that active studying is rarely silent as it often requires saying the material aloud.

Problems are your friend

Working and re-working problems is important for technical courses (e.g., math, economics). Be able to explain the steps of the problems and why they work.

In technical courses, it is usually more important to work problems than read the text (Newport, 2007). In class, write down in detail the practice problems demonstrated by the professor. Annotate each step and ask questions if you are confused. At the very least, record the question and the answer (even if you miss the steps).

When preparing for tests, put together a large list of problems from the course materials and lectures. Work the problems and explain the steps and why they work (Carrier, 2003).

Reconsider multitasking

A significant amount of research indicates that multi-tasking does not improve efficiency and actually negatively affects results (Junco, 2012).

In order to study smarter, not harder, you will need to eliminate distractions during your study sessions. Social media, web browsing, game playing, texting, etc. will severely affect the intensity of your study sessions if you allow them! Research is clear that multi-tasking (e.g., responding to texts, while studying), increases the amount of time needed to learn material and decreases the quality of the learning (Junco, 2012).

Eliminating the distractions will allow you to fully engage during your study sessions. If you don’t need your computer for homework, then don’t use it. Use apps to help you set limits on the amount of time you can spend at certain sites during the day. Turn your phone off. Reward intensive studying with a social-media break (but make sure you time your break!) See our handout on managing technology for more tips and strategies.

Switch up your setting

Find several places to study in and around campus and change up your space if you find that it is no longer a working space for you.

Know when and where you study best. It may be that your focus at 10:00 PM. is not as sharp as at 10:00 AM. Perhaps you are more productive at a coffee shop with background noise, or in the study lounge in your residence hall. Perhaps when you study on your bed, you fall asleep.

Have a variety of places in and around campus that are good study environments for you. That way wherever you are, you can find your perfect study spot. After a while, you might find that your spot is too comfortable and no longer is a good place to study, so it’s time to hop to a new spot!

Become a teacher

Try to explain the material in your own words, as if you are the teacher. You can do this in a study group, with a study partner, or on your own. Saying the material aloud will point out where you are confused and need more information and will help you retain the information. As you are explaining the material, use examples and make connections between concepts (just as a teacher does). It is okay (even encouraged) to do this with your notes in your hands. At first you may need to rely on your notes to explain the material, but eventually you’ll be able to teach it without your notes.

Creating a quiz for yourself will help you to think like your professor. What does your professor want you to know? Quizzing yourself is a highly effective study technique. Make a study guide and carry it with you so you can review the questions and answers periodically throughout the day and across several days. Identify the questions that you don’t know and quiz yourself on only those questions. Say your answers aloud. This will help you to retain the information and make corrections where they are needed. For technical courses, do the sample problems and explain how you got from the question to the answer. Re-do the problems that give you trouble. Learning the material in this way actively engages your brain and will significantly improve your memory (Craik, 1975).

Take control of your calendar

Controlling your schedule and your distractions will help you to accomplish your goals.

If you are in control of your calendar, you will be able to complete your assignments and stay on top of your coursework. The following are steps to getting control of your calendar:

• On the same day each week, (perhaps Sunday nights or Saturday mornings) plan out your schedule for the week.
• Go through each class and write down what you’d like to get completed for each class that week.
• Look at your calendar and determine how many hours you have to complete your work.
• Determine whether your list can be completed in the amount of time that you have available. (You may want to put the amount of time expected to complete each assignment.) Make adjustments as needed. For example, if you find that it will take more hours to complete your work than you have available, you will likely need to triage your readings. Completing all of the readings is a luxury. You will need to make decisions about your readings based on what is covered in class. You should read and take notes on all of the assignments from the favored class source (the one that is used a lot in the class). This may be the textbook or a reading that directly addresses the topic for the day. You can likely skim supplemental readings.
• Pencil into your calendar when you plan to get assignments completed.
• Before going to bed each night, make your plan for the next day. Waking up with a plan will make you more productive.

See our handout on calendars and college for more tips on using calendars as time management.

Use downtime to your advantage

Beware of ‘easy’ weeks. This is the calm before the storm. Lighter work weeks are a great time to get ahead on work or to start long projects. Use the extra hours to get ahead on assignments or start big projects or papers. You should plan to work on every class every week even if you don’t have anything due. In fact, it is preferable to do some work for each of your classes every day. Spending 30 minutes per class each day will add up to three hours per week, but spreading this time out over six days is more effective than cramming it all in during one long three-hour session. If you have completed all of the work for a particular class, then use the 30 minutes to get ahead or start a longer project.

Use all your resources

Remember that you can make an appointment with an academic coach to work on implementing any of the strategies suggested in this handout.

Works consulted

Carrier, L. M. (2003). College students’ choices of study strategies. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 96 (1), 54-56.

Craik, F. I., & Tulving, E. (1975). Depth of processing and the retention of words in episodic memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 104 (3), 268.

Davis, S. G., & Gray, E. S. (2007). Going beyond test-taking strategies: Building self-regulated students and teachers. Journal of Curriculum and Instruction, 1 (1), 31-47.

Edwards, A. J., Weinstein, C. E., Goetz, E. T., & Alexander, P. A. (2014). Learning and study strategies: Issues in assessment, instruction, and evaluation. Elsevier.

Junco, R., & Cotten, S. R. (2012). No A 4 U: The relationship between multitasking and academic performance. Computers & Education, 59 (2), 505-514.

Mackenzie, A. M. (1994). Examination preparation, anxiety and examination performance in a group of adult students. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 13 (5), 373-388.

McGuire, S.Y. & McGuire, S. (2016). Teach Students How to Learn: Strategies You Can Incorporate in Any Course to Improve Student Metacognition, Study Skills, and Motivation. Stylus Publishing, LLC.

Newport, C. (2006). How to become a straight-a student: the unconventional strategies real college students use to score high while studying less. Three Rivers Press.

Paul, K. (1996). Study smarter, not harder. Self Counsel Press.

Robinson, A. (1993). What smart students know: maximum grades, optimum learning, minimum time. Crown trade paperbacks.

Wissman, K. T., Rawson, K. A., & Pyc, M. A. (2012). How and when do students use flashcards? Memory, 20, 568-579.

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How to Balance Studies With Work

In the present world, managing work, study and family is a serious issue among many individuals. When studies come along the way of work or family, life gets more hectic. We should be able to spend time for study, work as well as family. Effectively balancing studies with work and other important activities of our life including family time, sports, hobbies etc requires efficient management of time and activities. Time is the most precious factor here and for many, there is too much to do within a small time. This essay inspects some steps that can be taken to create a balance between study, work and family.

How to balance studies with work and/or family demand?

Effectively balancing studies with work and other important activities of our life including family time, sports, hobbies etc requires efficient management of time and activities. Making a perfect model of study – work – family is almost impossible. Each individual has his/her own set of responsibilities. Time is the most precious factor here and for many, there is too much to do within a small time. Targeting for a perfect balance between studies and life may not be possible but it is the best if we can plan our life accordingly, so that activities which require high priority are given adequate attention.

Balancing studies with work and life involves realizing the right philosophy of life. The balance depends on how we want to live our life – whether to have a busy schedule with all work and no studies, or to live our life the fullest with family. Our ambitions on a career or studies should never be impaired by work or family. For that, the first step is to set goals for our life. We should review our life from time to time to see how much closer we are approaching to the goal. We should assess what is important and what is not. Some matters may appear urgent to us. A proper assessment on whether it is actually important is the factor for balancing life.

Priorities of life should be set with the goals. As a full time working single mother of two children, my most important priority will be my children. Raising them as good responsible citizens must be my top priority like any other mother. For me my family is thus the most important thing in life. But at times, work priorities may take more of the family and study time than intended.

In order to balance studies with family, focus should be on spending quality time with the family members. It is the quality of the time spent that is considered than the quantity. Family members will appreciate us more if we could attend to them when they are in need like for attending meetings in children’s schools or taking the kids out for their birthday.

When studies come along the way of work or family, life gets more hectic. We should be able to spend time for study, work as well as family. The first step is to talk to the family about the nature of our study and the requirements like time, quietness etc. Without the support of the family members, one will not be able to study or work. Family members should be convinced about the need to study and should be supportive and cooperative. This can act as a great confidence booster for the study. Also one should have a clear cut focus on the topic of study and its purpose. The pros and cons of studying a subject should be analyzed.

The next step is to choose the most suitable work. If the present work timings do not provide ample time for studies and family, it will be better to find a job that is more flexible with the time schedule. The nature of the work and the character of the colleagues and employers should be considered before attempting to start studying. A person with a hectic and tiring job schedule will end up being more tired at the end of the day leaving no time for study or family. Late hour working and over time works should be avoided completely to strike a balance between work and study. It is better to adopt target oriented work which allows flextime working schedules so that studying in between is possible.

Setting up a timetable for each day of the week and following it religiously will impart good results in studying. The timetable should consider immediate needs as well as not so essential needs. An important factor to bear in mind while constructing the time table is to make it as realistic as possible. Motivating ourselves is an inevitable step that should be taken to avoid conflicts between study and work. The biggest challenge that will be faced is to concentrate on the studies after a day’s work. Work issues will creep into the minds when studying making it impossible to study properly. Work issues for the day have to be settled before studying.

Keeping a track of deadlines and important dates at work, study and family is strongly advised. “Try to plan ahead. If you know a busy time is coming up on your course or at your place of work, plan ahead as much as possible and try to move things around to create a balance.” (Combining Work and Study, 1). Seeking advice and support from the tutor will help to solve problems at study better and will reduce frustration.

Finding time for relaxation can actually boost the quality of time spent for studies or work. Relaxing with the family members and getting their support and care can make studying worriless.

Finally, balancing between study and work or family is a matter of practice than theory. Implementing these theories in life requires great effort. Self motivation and mental strength are the most important requirements to balance study with work and family.

Works Cited

Combining Work and Study . University of Bath Students Union. 2009. Web.

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The bright future of working from home

There seems to be an endless tide of depressing news in this era of COVID-19. But one silver lining is the long-run explosion of working from home. Since March I have been talking to dozens of CEOs, senior managers, policymakers and journalists about the future of working from home. This has built on my own personal experience from running surveys about working from home and  an experiment  published in 2015 which saw a 13 percent increase in productivity by employees at a Chinese travel company called Ctrip who worked from home.

So here a few key themes that can hopefully make for some good news:

Mass working from home is here to stay

Once the COVID-19 pandemic passes, rates of people working from home will explode. In 2018, the Bureau of Labor Statistics  figures show  that 8 percent of all employees worked from home at least one day a week.

I see these numbers more than doubling in a post-pandemic world.  I suspect almost all employees who can work from home —  which is estimated  at about 40 percent of employees ­— will be allowed to work from home at least one day a week.

Why? Consider these three reasons

Fear of crowds.

Even if COVID-19 passes, the fear of future pandemics will motivate people to move away from urban centers and avoid public transport. So firms will struggle to get their employees back to the office on a daily basis. With the pandemic, working from home has become a standard perk, like sick-leave or health insurance.

Investments in telecommuting technology

By now, we have plenty of experience working from home. We’ve become adept at video conferencing. We’ve fine-tuned our home offices and rescheduled our days. Similarly, offices have tried out, improved and refined life for home-based work forces. In short, we have all paid the startup cost for learning how to work from home, making it far easier to continue.

The end of stigma

Finally, the stigma of working from home has evaporated. Before COVID-19, I frequently heard comments like, “working from home is shirking from home,” or “working remotely is remotely working.” I remember Boris Johnson, who was Mayor of London in 2012 when the London Olympics closed the city down for three weeks, saying working from home was “a skivers paradise.” No longer. All of us have now tried this and we understand we can potentially work effectively — if you have your own room and no kids — at home.

Of course, working from home was already trending up due to improved technology and remote monitoring. It is relatively cheap and easy to buy a top-end laptop and connect it to broadband internet service. This technology also makes it easier to monitor employees at home. Indeed, one senior manager recently told me: “We already track our employees — we know how many emails they send, meetings they attend or documents they write using our office management system. So monitoring them at home is really no different from monitoring them in the office. I see how they are doing and what they are doing whether they are at home or in the office.”

This is not only good news for firms in terms of boosting employee morale while improving productivity, but can also free up significant office space. In our China experiment, Ctrip calculated it increased profits by $2,000 per employee who worked from home.

Best practices in working from home post pandemic

Many of us are currently working from home full-time, with kids in the house, often in shared rooms, bedrooms or even bathrooms. So if working from home is going to continue and even increase once the pandemic is over, there are a few lessons we’ve learned to make telecommuting more effective. Let’s take a look:

Working from home should be part-time

I think the ideal schedule is Monday, Wednesday and Friday in the office and Tuesday and Thursday at home. Most of us need time in the office to stay motivated and creative. Face-to-face meetings are important for spurring and developing new ideas, and at least personally I find it hard to stay focused day after day at home. But we also need peaceful time at home to concentrate, undertake longer-term thinking and often to catch-up on tedious paperwork. And spending the same regular three days in the office each week means we can schedule meetings, lunches, coffees, etc., around that, and plan our “concentration work” during our two days at home.

The choice of Tuesday and Thursday at home comes from talking to managers who are often fearful that a work-from-home day — particularly if attached to a weekend — will turn into a beach day. So Tuesday and Thursday at home avoids creating a big block of days that the boss and the boss of the boss may fear employees may use for unauthorized mini-breaks.

Working from home should be a choice

I found in the Ctrip experiment that many people did not want to work from home. Of the 1,000 employees we asked, only 50 percent volunteered to work from home four days a week for a nine-month stretch. Those who took the offer were typically older married employees with kids. For many younger workers, the office is a core part of their social life, and like the Chinese employees, would happily commute in and out of work each day to see their colleagues. Indeed,  surveys in the U.S.  suggest up to one-third of us meet our future spouses at work.

Working from home should be flexible

After the end of the 9-month Ctrip experiment, we asked all volunteers if they wanted to continue working from home. Surprisingly, 50 percent of them opted to return to the office. The saying is “the three great enemies of working from home are the fridge, the bed and the TV,” and many of them fell victim to one of them. They told us it was hard to predict in advance, but after a couple of months working from home they figured out if it worked for them or not. And after we let the less-successful home-based employees return to the office, those remaining had a 25 percent higher rate of productivity.

Working from home is a privilege

Working from home for employees should be a perk. In our Ctrip experiment, home-based workers increased their productivity by 13 percent. So on average were being highly productive. But there is always the fear that one or two employees may abuse the system. So those whose performance drops at home should be warned, and if necessary recalled into the office for a couple of months before they are given a second chance.

There are two other impacts of working from home that should be addressed

The first deals with the decline in prices for urban commercial and residential spaces. The impact of a massive roll-out in working from home is likely to be falling demand for both housing and office space in the center of cities like New York and San Francisco. Ever since the 1980s, the centers of large U.S. cities have become denser and more expensive. Younger graduate workers in particular have flocked to city centers and pushed up housing and office prices. This 40-year year bull run  has ended .

If prices fell back to their levels in say the 1990s or 2000s this would lead to massive drops of 50 percent or more in city-center apartment and office prices. In reverse, the suburbs may be staging a comeback. If COVID-19 pushed people to part-time working from home and part-time commuting by car, the suburbs are the natural place to locate these smaller drivable offices. The upside to this is the affordability crisis of apartments in city centers could be coming to an end as property prices drop.

The second impact I see is a risk of increased political polarization. In the 1950s, Americans all watched the same media, often lived in similar areas and attended similar schools. By the 2020s, media has become fragmented, residential segregation by income has  increased dramatically , and even our schools are starting to fragment with the rise of charter schools.

The one constant equalizer — until recently — was the workplace. We all have to come into work and talk to our colleagues. Hence, those on the extreme left or right are forced to confront others over lunch and in breaks, hopefully moderating their views. If we end up increasing our time at home — particularly during the COVID lock-down — I worry about an explosion of radical political views.

But with an understanding of these risks and some forethought for how to mitigate them, a future with more of us working from home can certainly work well.

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Why study social work (personal statement)

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In applying for social work, you will need to write a social work personal statement that explains why you want to study social work . 

In this article, I have appended my own personal statement below. This was the personal statement I submitted that eventually helped me to get a place in the University of Nottingham (UK). I hope it gives you an example to learn from.

Also, I wanted to add some tips that helped me write a personal statement. 

1. Set a deadline for your personal statement. 

No work will ever be perfect. Yet we often fall into the fallacy of writing and rewriting, editing and re-editing. We think we can make the perfect personal statement that will land us in social work. 

We can’t make it perfect. Before you start writing, you need to know when you have to stop and submit. There is a saying in Chinese that goes, 画蛇添足 (painting legs onto a snake). It tells the story of an art competition. During that competition, an artist, in his quest for perfection, ended up adding legs to his painting of a snake. Naturally, he lost. 

The moral of the story is that there will never be a perfect picture, or perfect personal statement. What matters is that you have tried.  

2. Start writing your personal statement. 

Often, our quest for perfection or plain procrastination stops us from writing. Frequently, we try planning in detail, without actually writing. In my experience, I was pushed for time. I had been awarded a scholarship, but no university place offered to me. Due to the urgency of the matter, I had to write quickly. I had to submit. 

There was no time to think. 

Similarly, rather than spending too much time thinking, simply start writing. Writing has a magical way of sorting out your thoughts. Later, you can always come back to edit it. 

3. Include real-life examples of why you want to study social work. 

As you can see below, I included examples from my own experiences being helped by a social worker and helping others as a volunteer. The truth is: facts tell, stories sell. Stories give the applications panel another side to you. They make you real. 

In writing your stories, be clear about what your role was. What did you contribute? What did you do? What was your impact? Did anyone praise you?

Secondly, link it to the wider motivation for social work. What did your experience teach you? How did it push you to decide on a career in social work? 

Lastly, you need to clarify. Why does social work matter to you?

4. Edit your personal statement. 

Grammatical and spelling mistakes are a no-no. They show that you have not spent as much effort as you should have on your personal statement. When editing, print out a copy of your personal statement, and then read it out loud. 

Secondly, reading it out aloud helps you to hear the arguments. It lets you see if the arguments make sense, flow well, and are cogently linked together. 

This advice, from Cal Newport’s book, How To Be A Straight A Student, helped greatly. You can read it if you would like to get your first too!

5. Give your personal statement to someone else to read. 

Fortunately, I had a friend who was a social worker. She agreed to read my personal statement. From that reading, she gave me valuable feedback on what I could improve on. 

Having someone else to read removes our blind spots. Having interacted so much with your personal statement, you might be too emotionally invested in it to remove parts that are not as good. Therefore, having someone else helps to make your essay much better. 

I hope the advice here helps you to write a better personal statement on ‘why study social work?’

Example of personal statement

This was the personal statement I wrote that eventually allowed me to be accepted into the University of Nottingham’s BA Social Work course.

Winston Churchill once said, “We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.” Indeed, I have come to see how a life well-lived is one through which we give out of the largesse of our hearts. With a desire to engender positive change in the society around me, contributing to the community that has nurtured me, studying social work develops the expertise needed to aid the communities around me. 

My desire to study social work stems from a wish to help people deal with the befuddling complexities of life, for which there is often no proper problem-solving method, and certainly no correct answer. What piqued my interest in social work was a first-hand encounter with social workers, who inspired me to take up social work myself.

In college, I remembered seeing my mother bent over the toilet bowl, vomiting out the remains of her previous meal. Days later, she was stripped of her once lustrous, beautiful hair. Watching my mother buried under blankets, trying to keep warm, I was overcome by a sense of helplessness. My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer in June. The months after were a harrowing experience. 

So often used to the pillar of strength my mother represented, to see her reduced to such a state, ravaged by the destruction of cancer, terrified and frightened me. As the eldest in the family, I had to take on additional responsibilities at home on top of my academic workload. It was arduous juggling the various obligations. There were times when exhaustion overtook me, causing me to fall asleep in my uniform, waking up only to fight another day. 

However, I was fortunate to have the guidance of a social worker, who helped me regain emotional balance. She enabled me to stand on my own two feet again, anchoring myself in the midst of the changes that were happening around me. Just as I have been so helped, I desire to offer lifebuoys of aid to others, assisting them in finding greater emotional stability and eventually soaring towards a more fulfilling life.

Intrigued by the complexities of social work, I joined YGOS, a welfare organization reaching out to youths from disadvantaged backgrounds, as an intern. There, I worked with youths who were doing poorly academically and exhibiting behavioral problems. I enjoyed the opportunity I had to personally mentor these youths, working closely with them to improve their academic grades and attitude towards learning. Having a hand in molding them positively, revealed the possibilities that social work offered in eliciting real change in the community around me.

The myriad of opportunities that an overseas education offers me excites me. Exposure to a different welfare system will further my perspectives on the various welfare models in the world, and broaden my horizons on the pros and cons that each welfare system inherently possesses. Studying overseas will push me out of my comfort zone, forcing me to live independently. Experiencing another culture, environment, and country will open my eyes to the diversity in the world, and begin seeing the world in a different lens. 

Beyond school, I volunteer regularly with the Movement for the Intellectually Disabled of Singapore. In one of my earliest experiences volunteering, I was teaching a boy to write the alphabet “A”. After struggling for thirty minutes, he threw up his arms, exclaiming, “I don’t know how to write this!” For him, the writing of such a simple alphabet had already prompted so much difficulty. 

It was a reminder that in the search for the academic “A”s in our lives, it is such a blessing to even have the chance to search. Volunteering regularly has equipped me with empathy, which will aid me in better understanding my clients’ needs, finding lasting solutions for them.

Through social work, I hope to impact the world, shaping it, one person at a time, community by community, walking with my clients through some of their darkest emotional tunnels, and helping them to find the light again.

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Essay on Work Study: Top 7 Essays | Organization | Production Management

Read this essay to learn about:- 1. Meaning of Work Study 2. Definitions of Work Study 3. Objectives 4. Importance 5. Components 6. Situations 7. Determination of Utility of Techniques. 

Essay # 1. Meaning of Work Study:

Work-study is a management tool to achieve higher productive efficiency of an organization. It is concerned primarily with human manual work, more efficiently with the efficient design of such work and with the establishments of standards of performance.

An industrial enterprise, if it is to survive must use latest technology and most efficient methods improvised with a consistent aim of producing better quality goods at lower prices.

One way to improve the performance of production process is efficient utilization of plant, equipment and labor. This can be done by studying the work methods and evaluating their performance. Work- study is simply the study of work. It is the analysis of work dividing it into smaller parts followed by rearrangement of these parts to give the same effectiveness at lesser cost.

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It examines both the method and duration of the work involved in a process.

Essay # 2. Definitions of Work Study:

In 1825 Robert Owen expressed that from management viewpoint any population along with the mechanism and other parts of an organization should be taken as a system composed of many parts which should be combined in such a way, that every hand, as well as every spring, lever and wheel should effectively co-operate to produce maximum pecuniary gain to the proprietors

Taylor gave more importance to ‘Time factor’ in work, realizing that ‘Overall times’ for jobs were of little value as standards of performance, and that times for elements of jobs were appropriate, if methods were to be examined. His objective was to treat work and management in a scientific manner.

Gilbreth gave more emphasis on Methods of performing some job and was of the opinion that once optimum methods are established the time factor would look after itself.

He described manual work with the help of seventeen fundamental movements and developed principles of motion study by which optimum work methods can be developed. In Motion study the work is broken into a number of fundamental movements and by analysing these movements the best methods of doing a job can be developed.

Charles Bedeaux introduced the concept of rating to evaluate the discrepancy between observed/actual and standard times. He tried to evolve some system of time study by which work methods could be compared. Provisions for rest and relaxation allowances were also made in the study.

Later on using precision measurement and detailed analysis techniques, optimum work methods were developed with full utilization of resources, thus benefiting both the organization and the individual. Relationship in work has been a continuing trend since the introduction of scientific management. It is responsible for tremendous economic growth and increase in the standard of living.

The nature and object of work-study can be explained by various definitions given below:

(i) Work study/Time and Motion study is primarily concerned with discovering the best ways of doing jobs and with establishing standards based upon such methods.

(ii) ILO defines “work study” as the technique of method study and work measurement employed to ensure the best possible use of human and material resources in carrying out a specified activity.

(iii) Work study is to minimize costs either by designing work for higher productivity or by improving productivity in existing work through improvements in current methods and by reducing ineffective or waste of time.

Method study is normally conducted before work measurement:

(iv) Work Study is a management service based on those techniques, in particular method study and work measurement, which are used in the examination of human work in all its contexts and which lead to the systematic investigation of all the resources and factors which effect the efficiency and economy of the situation being reviewed, in order to effect improvement.

(v) Work Study may be defined as the analytic investigation of the methods, conditions and effectiveness of industrial work, and thereby the determination of the ways in which human efforts may most economically be applied.

(vi) The term work-study is use to embrace two distinct but interdependent groups of techniques: Methods study and Work measurement. Both these techniques are mutually supporting and should be applied in ordered sequence.

(vii) Work-study is a generic term used for those techniques which are used in the examination of human work in all its contexts.

Essay # 3. Objectives of Work-Study :

The prime function of a work-study department is to submit proposals and implement schemes to increase Productivity and reduce Waste.

It should be capable of:

(i) To recommend and implement the desired improvements in work methods by establishing the most economical way of doing the work.

(ii) Investigation and analysis of existing situation.

(iii) Examination of weakness if any in the production process.

(iv) Most effective use of the exiting or proposed plant.

(v) Efficient use of human efforts.

(vi) Ensure proper performance of those employed in the production process.

(vii) Measurement of work values.

(viii) To initiate and maintain incentive bonus schemes.

(ix) Setting standards for labor cost control documentation.

(x) To standardize the method, material and equipment used in the production process.

(xi) To determine the time required by an ideal (a qualified and properly trained) operator to perform the task at some desired level of performance.

Essay # 4. Importance of Work Study :

(i) It is a mean of raising productivity of a factory by reorganization of the work involving little or no capital expenditure on plant and equipment.

(ii) It is a systematic study where no factor of production is overlooked.

(iii) It is most accurate method of determining the standards of performance on which effective planning and control depends.

(iv) It results in savings and efficient use of resources by increasing out-put reducing scarp.

(v) Results in improved safety.

(vi) Reduction in training time.

(vii) It is a tool, which can be, applied everywhere.

Essay # 5. Components of Work Study:

The main branches of work study are:

(i) Method study,

(ii) Work measurement,

(iii) Ergonomics and

(iv) Job-Evaluation; Functional/Non-functional.

Method study is the Systematic Recording, Critical analysis, Development and implementation/installation of new methods to perform job to reduce costs etc. with regard to exiting/proposed jobs. It is some sort of MOTION STUDY.

Work Measurement is TIME STUDY, which determines the amount of time required to perform a job/task by a worker following a particular/prescribed method. It is a technique for recording the time and rates of working for the elements of specified job carried out under specific conditions and for analysis of the data so as to obtain the time necessary for carrying out the jobs at a defined level of performance is working at a standard pace and using some standard methods.

Ergonomics is the study of relationship between worker and his working environment. It tries to adjust the job process according to the worker taking care of physical and mental strains. The study of Ergonomics includes a mix of working environment, working place and human physiological considerations.

Job Evaluation is a systematic and analytical study of evaluating the work relation and values of different jobs to decide wage rates ensuring fairness to all job holders in the organization. Merit Rating is a process/technique for knowing how efficiently and effectively a job is being carried out by a worker.

It is designed to assess the merit of the person doing the job. It decides the reward an employee should get in addition to his/her wages depending upon individual merit.

Financial and non-financial incentives are used to stimulate/motivate people to improve their performance level. These schemes are designed to suit specific situations, environmental conditions etc. Financial incentives are part of total wages and provide extra pay for extra performance.

These introduce monetary differences with-in the job. Non-financial incentives include comfortable working environment and conditions; promotion and job security viz. training and development programmes, pension, promotion and job security, housing, medical, recreational, educational, incentives, subsidized lunch, transportation incentives etc.

Essay # 6. Situations where Work Study should be Used :

The technique of work-study is used to evaluate the performance of tasks in an enterprise and to determine the corresponding level of performance. It is mainly concerned with effort, time, material, equipment and space used by an effective management for obtaining its goal. It results in increased productivity, reduced costs, better use of resources etc.

The indicators for using work-study methods in a process can be:

(i) Delay in work,

(ii) Rejection of finished goods and

(ii) Low efficiency of production.

There can be very little benefit in applying work study methods when:

(i) There is little manual work in a job. Here the performance of machines etc., cannot be improved.

(ii) There is some manual work but it is of temporary nature or short lived.

Essay # 7. Determination of Utility of ‘Work-Study’ Techniques :

(i) Anticipated life of the job.

(ii) Whether manual work is a significant part of the job or not.

This can be indicated by:

(a) Wage rate for the job.

(b) Ratio of machine time to manual time in the work cycle.

(iii) Whether utilization of machine, tools, jigs etc. is dependent or work method.

(iv) Importance of job towards the output, profit margin etc.

(v) The existing job needs work study investigation if there is:

(a) Low machine utilization.

(b) Excessive Over-time/idle time

(c) Complaints from worker.

(d) Inadequate quality

(e) High scarp/wastage rate.

Related Articles:

• Essay on Method Study: Top 4 Essays | Organization | Production Management
• Essay on Work Measurement: Top 4 Essays | Workers | Production Management
• Work Study: Definition, Need and Advantages | Production Management
• Essay on Production Order | Organization | Production Management

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Why Engineers Should Study Philosophy

• Marco Argenti

Understanding the “why” before you start working on the “how” is a critical skill — especially in the age of AI.

The ability to develop crisp mental models around the problems you want to solve and understanding the why before you start working on the how is an increasingly critical skill, especially in the age of AI. Coding is one of the things AI does best and its capabilities are quickly improving. However, there’s a catch: Code created by an AI can be syntactically and semantically correct but not functionally correct. In other words, it can work well, but not do what you want it to do. Having a crisp mental model around a problem, being able to break it down into steps that are tractable, perfect first-principle thinking, sometimes being prepared (and able to) debate a stubborn AI — these are the skills that will make a great engineer in the future, and likely the same consideration applies to many job categories.

I recently told my daughter, a college student: If you want to pursue a career in engineering, you should focus on learning philosophy in addition to traditional engineering coursework. Why? Because it will improve your code.

• MA Marco Argenti is the Chief Information Officer at Goldman Sachs.

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Rise and grind working late, volatile hours may lead to depression, illness by 50.

Ronnie Cohen

Working late nights and variable schedules when you're young is linked with poor health and depression at 50, a new study finds. simonkr/Getty Images hide caption

Working late nights and variable schedules when you're young is linked with poor health and depression at 50, a new study finds.

Feeling burned out and looking for reasons to work less? A new study shows that working nights and volatile schedules in young adulthood can leave you vulnerable to depression and poor health in middle age.

The research examined the work schedules and sleep patterns of more than 7,000 Americans interviewed over three decades, from the ages of 22 through 50. To the surprise of the study's author, NYU Silver School of Social Work professor Wen-Jui Han , only one-quarter of the participants worked exclusively traditional daytime hours.

The remainder – three-quarters of the sample of American workers born in the 1960s – worked variable hours. Those with more volatile work schedules, including night hours and rotating shifts, reported less sleep and a greater likelihood of poor health and depression at age 50 than those with more stable schedules and daytime hours.

"Our work now is making us sick and poor," Han said in a Zoom interview. "Work is supposed to allow us to accumulate resources. But, for a lot of people, their work doesn't allow them to do so. They actually become more and more miserable over time."

Han would like her research — published last week in PLOS One — to prompt conversations about ways to "provide resources to support people to have a happy and healthy life when they're physically exhausted and emotionally drained because of their work."

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She was one of those employees. In her 40s, when Han was up for tenure, she worked 16-hour days, taking time off only to eat and sleep, though not sleeping nearly enough. Her doctor warned her that her physical condition appeared more like that of a woman in her 60s.

She was overworking like many young professionals who have embraced hustle culture and work around the clock.

"We can say they voluntarily want to work long hours, but in reality, it's not about voluntarily working long hours," Han said. "They sense that the culture of their work demands that they work long hours, or they may get penalized."

She says the participants in her study who sacrificed sleep to earn a living, suffered depression and poor health, she said. "When our work becomes a daily stressor, these are the kind of health consequences you may expect to see 30 years down the road."

Black men and women and workers with limited educations disproportionately shouldered the burden of night shifts, volatile work schedules and sleep deprivation, the study shows.

White college-educated women with stable daytime work reported an average of six more hours of sleep a week than Black men who had not completed high school and who worked variable hours for most of their lives, Han's study found.

And Black women who did not complete high school and switched from regular daytime hours to volatile employment in their 30s were four times more likely to report poor health than white college-educated men with stable and standard daytime work lives.

The study shows a relationship between working nights and rotating shifts with poor sleep and poor health, but it cannot prove one caused the other. That said, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention links insufficient sleep with chronic diseases, such as diabetes, heart disease and obesity, and African Americans are more likely than whites to suffer from these diseases.

How much a person needs to sleep to remain healthy depends upon age, but the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the Sleep Research Society recommend that adults between 18 and 60 years old get at least seven hours of shut-eye a night.

Dr. Alyson Myers appreciated the new study's focus on the connection between work schedules, sleep and poor health.

The study findings confirmed what she sees in many of her diabetes patients, who often get no more than five hours of sleep after they work night shifts. She counsels them to try to switch to days, and when they do, their health improves, the endocrinologist and professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine said.

Prior research has shown that sleep, diet and social habits required to work nights and rotating shifts, can increase the risk of developing diabetes. In 2019, Blacks were twice as likely as whites to die of diabetes , according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

"Poor sleep is a risk factor for diabetes that very often we do not talk about," said Myers, who was not involved in the study. "One of the things that I have to preach to my patients about is that working nights, and if you get only four or five or less hours of sleep, that's going to increase your risk of diabetes and also worsen your glycemic control."

One patient was angry with her when he followed her advice, switched from working nights to days and as a result had to contend with commute traffic. "But," she said in a Zoom interview, "we actually got better control of his blood sugar when he switched to working the day shift."

About 16% of American workers were employed outside of daytime hours in 2019, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Many of the participants in Hans' study who had volatile work schedules tended to have part-time jobs, in some cases multiple part-time jobs. "Unfortunately," Myers said, "the trend for a lot of these people is that they have to work more than one job to survive."

Ronnie Cohen is a San Francisco Bay Area journalist focused on health and social justice issues.

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• work-life balance

UK rules out EU-wide deal on work and study visas for young people

The European Commission announced its plans on Thursday to begin negotiations within the bloc of approaching the UK for a deal. The EU wants to avoid individual deals being done between its members and the UK.

Political reporter

Friday 19 April 2024 22:59, UK

The government has ruled out striking an EU-wide agreement on allowing an exchange of young people to work and study for extended periods of time.

On Thursday, the European Commission announced its plans to begin negotiating with members of the bloc on a joined-up approach that could be taken with the UK.

But the government today ruled out doing a deal with the bloc en masse - saying it preferred negotiating bespoke deals with individual nations.

The proposals related to a Youth Mobility Scheme, a deal between nations allowing 18 to 30-year-olds the opportunity to work or study for up to four years in each other's territories. It also sets out terms for tuition fees.

In its proposal, the EU made clear it was not looking to give UK citizens free access to the Schengen zone, and instead would restrict them to the countries their visa was issued for.

A government spokesperson said: "We are not introducing an EU-wide Youth Mobility Scheme (YMS). Free movement within the EU was ended and there are no plans to introduce it.

"We have successful schemes with 13 countries, including Australia and New Zealand, and remain open to agreeing them with our international partners, including individual EU member states, where it's in the UK's interest and supports the skills and opportunities of our youth."

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YMSs still require someone to apply for a visa, and applicants can be rejected.

On its website, the European Commission explained its reasoning for wanting a joint negotiation.

It said: "Only an EU-level approach will ensure that all member states are treated equally in respect of mobility of young people to the UK. This is one of the key considerations of the 2018 European Council guidelines on relations with the UK.

"Parallel negotiations by member states neither guarantee that the UK would be interested in reaching an agreement with each member state nor would they guarantee that each Member State would be treated equally."

Labour also rules out proposal

Some saw the EU's move as a pitch to Labour, should Sir Keir Starmer win the next general election.

However, the Labour Party was also quick to rule out such a proposal.

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A Labour spokesperson said: "This is a proposal from the EU Commission to EU member states, not to the UK. It has come about because the UK government is reportedly approaching other European countries to try to establish mobility arrangements.

"Labour has no plans for a Youth Mobility Scheme. We have already suggested some tangible ways that we would look to improve the relationship and deliver for British businesses and consumers, including seeking a veterinary agreement to tackle trade barriers, mutual recognition of professional qualifications and improved touring opportunities for artists.

"A Labour government would seek to improve the UK's working relationship with the EU within our red lines - no return to the single market, customs union or free movement."

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An NPR editor who wrote a critical essay on the company has resigned after being suspended

N EW YORK (AP) — A National Public Radio editor who wrote an essay criticizing his employer for promoting liberal views resigned on Wednesday, attacking NPR's new CEO on the way out.

Uri Berliner, a senior editor on NPR's business desk, posted his resignation letter on X, formerly Twitter, a day after it was revealed that he had been suspended for five days for violating company rules about outside work done without permission.

“I cannot work in a newsroom where I am disparaged by a new CEO whose divisive views confirm the very problems” written about in his essay, Berliner said in his resignation letter.

Katherine Maher, a former tech executive appointed in January as NPR’s chief executive, has been criticized by conservative activists for social media messages that disparaged former President Donald Trump. The messages predated her hiring at NPR.

NPR’s public relations chief said the organization does not comment on individual personnel matters.

The suspension and subsequent resignation highlight the delicate balance that many U.S. news organizations and their editorial employees face. On one hand, as journalists striving to produce unbiased news, they're not supposed to comment on contentious public issues; on the other, many journalists consider it their duty to critique their own organizations' approaches to journalism when needed.

In his essay , written for the online Free Press site, Berliner said NPR is dominated by liberals and no longer has an open-minded spirit. He traced the change to coverage of Trump's presidency.

“There's an unspoken consensus about the stories we should pursue and how they should be framed,” he wrote. “It's frictionless — one story after another about instances of supposed racism, transphobia, signs of the climate apocalypse, Israel doing something bad and the dire threat of Republican policies. It's almost like an assembly line.”

He said he'd brought up his concerns internally and no changes had been made, making him “a visible wrong-thinker at a place I love.”

In the essay's wake, NPR top editorial executive, Edith Chapin, said leadership strongly disagreed with Berliner's assessment of the outlet's journalism and the way it went about its work.

It's not clear what Berliner was referring to when he talked about disparagement by Maher. In a lengthy memo to staff members last week, she wrote: “Asking a question about whether we're living up to our mission should always be fair game: after all, journalism is nothing if not hard questions. Questioning whether our people are serving their mission with integrity, based on little more than the recognition of their identity, is profoundly disrespectful, hurtful and demeaning.”

Conservative activist Christopher Rufo revealed some of Maher's past tweets after the essay was published. In one tweet, dated January 2018, Maher wrote that “Donald Trump is a racist.” A post just before the 2020 election pictured her in a Biden campaign hat.

In response, an NPR spokeswoman said Maher, years before she joined the radio network, was exercising her right to express herself. She is not involved in editorial decisions at NPR, the network said.

The issue is an example of what can happen when business executives, instead of journalists, are appointed to roles overseeing news organizations: they find themselves scrutinized for signs of bias in ways they hadn’t been before. Recently, NBC Universal News Group Chairman Cesar Conde has been criticized for service on paid corporate boards.

Maher is the former head of the Wikimedia Foundation. NPR's own story about the 40-year-old executive's appointment in January noted that she “has never worked directly in journalism or at a news organization.”

In his resignation letter, Berliner said that he did not support any efforts to strip NPR of public funding. “I respect the integrity of my colleagues and wish for NPR to thrive and do important journalism,” he wrote.

David Bauder writes about media for The Associated Press. Follow him at http://twitter.com/dbauder

West Palm Beach to spend up to $300,000 studying women and minority business assistance

The West Palm Beach City Commission voted unanimously to spend up to $300,000 on a study that will show if there is an ongoing need for the city's women- and minority-owned business assistance program.

The current program was established in 2019 after a four-year study of city contracts showed that firms owned by women and minorities were not getting a fair share of that contract work.

In 2020, the first full year of the program, less than half a percent of the contract money firms competed to get went to firms owned by women or minorities, according to information compiled by the Office of Small and Minority/Women Business Programs.

By 2023, the last full year for which there is data, women- and minority-owned firms were getting just about 2.2% of city contract money.

The amount of contract money women- and minority-owned firms competed to get went from $283,519 in 2020 to more than $1.5 million in 2023.

"We still have work to do, but we are making progress," said Mayor Keith James, whose administration has established various programs aimed at helping firms owned by women and minorities, known as minorities/women business enterprises or M/WBEs in the industry.

Supreme Court's 1989 ruling to help minority/women businesses has often been contentious

The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in 1989 allowed governments to establish programs to help M/WBEs. The establishment of those programs is often contentious, as some white business owners and trade groups view them as a form of reverse racial discrimination.

That was the case seven years ago when Palm Beach County and its Solid Waste Authority hired a consultant to study their contracting.

The Florida chapter of the Associated General Contractors of America disputed the Solid Waste Authority study, questioning its methodology. AGC hired its own consultant, who said the study was “too flawed” to be relied upon as a basis for the re-establishment of gender- and race-based assistance programs.

The county and the Solid Waste Authority ultimately established programs.

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Many women and minority business owners say assistance programs are critical in helping them get a fair share of government contract work. M/WBEs often lack the track record, financial backing and networking of competitors and either lose out to them or don't even attempt to get government contracts.

The Supreme Court ruling said assistance programs had to be narrowly tailored and could be established only after a statistical analysis showed the need for them.

Even then, some programs have come under attack by business owners who argue that the market conditions that justified their establishment have changed.

How often does West Palm review its business assistance programs?

West Palm Beach code authorizes a review of the city's business assistance programs every five to seven years.

Frank Hayden, director of the Office of Small and Minority/Women Business Programs, told commissioners the city has taken a variety of steps to give M/WBEs a better shot a city contracts.

The city has provided free marketing consultation, bond readiness and technical assistance, funded a COVID-19 recovery loan program and start-up or marketing grants. The city has also published a "Doing Business with the City" guidebook and provided tips on how to respond to government requests for proposals.

Firms have to be certified by the city to get contract work, a process set up to ensure that taxpayer money is not provided to a firm that does not have the experience or expertise to get the job done. Time- and often cash-strapped M/WBEs have reported that becoming certified is a tall order.

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Hayden said West Palm Beach has gone beyond simply helping firms get certified.

"The thing that we discovered in this journey was getting firms certified, making sure they got opportunities to perform work, was just the tip of the iceberg," he said. "What we discovered is that a lot of these firms required a little extra assistance.

"I've said it a lot of times when I'm out speaking: You can find people who will be able to put windows in and doors in. But at the same time, they don't know how to market their business. They don't know how to sell their business."

As commissioners contemplated Hayden's request for disparity study money, women and minority business owners looked on from the audience.

Many of them told commissioners about why they got into business and how they were seeking to help their communities.

"My family and I had a vision years ago," said Craig Glover of A Better Way Home Care, which helps veterans through a contract with the city's Community Redevelopment Agency.

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"We wated to be in a community that was underserved. We come from those communities. We wanted to bring a business to those communities that demonstrates that we can be successful. And then we also wanted to make an impact on those communities."

Commissioners praised the business owners and said they were eager to continue providing assistance.

"I would like to acknowledge the tremendous difference that I've seen over the last five years," Commissioner Shalonda Warren said.

Wayne Washington is a journalist covering West Palm Beach, Riviera Beach and race relations at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach him at [email protected]. Help support our work;  subscribe today .

A painting of Winston Churchill by an artist whose work he hated is up for auction

LONDON — A portrait of Winston Churchill by an artist whose work the British leader loathed went on display Tuesday at Churchill’s birthplace ahead of an auction in June.

The painting by modernist artist Graham Sutherland was made in preparation for a larger portrait that Churchill hated and which was later destroyed — an episode recounted in the TV series “The Crown.”

The surviving oil-on-canvas study shows Churchill’s head in profile against a dark background. It is expected to sell for between 500,000 pounds and 800,000 pounds ($622,000 and $995,000) at Sotheby’s in London on June 6.

Sutherland was commissioned by the Houses of Parliament to paint Churchill to mark his 80th birthday in 1954. The full-length portrait was unveiled in Parliament that year, with Churchill calling it, with a smirk, “a remarkable example of modern art.”

Churchill is said to have complained that the painting “makes me look half-witted, which I ain’t.” It was delivered to his home and never seen again. The Churchill family disclosed years later that it had been destroyed.

Its fate was recreated with poetic license in an episode of “The Crown” in which Churchill’s wife, Clementine, watches the painting go up in flames.

Andre Zlattinger, Sotheby’s head of modern British and Irish art, said that in the surviving study, “Churchill is caught in a moment of absent-minded thoughtfulness, and together with the backstory of its creation, it gives the impression of a man truly concerned with his image.”

Sotheby’s put the picture on public display inside the room where Churchill was born 150 years ago at Blenheim Palace, a country mansion 60 miles northwest of London. Visitors can see it there until Sunday. It will go on show at Sotheby’s offices in New York May 3-16 and London May 25-June 5.

The Associated Press