Premium Essay

Personal Narrative: My Choices Affecting The Person I Am Today

Submitted By
Words 339
Pages 2
Even if we don’t recognize it at the time, every choice will have an effect on the person we will become in the future: whether it’s positive or negative depends on how you handle it. A choice that I believe has severely affected the person I am today is my choice to continue taking piano lessons back in second grade. Throughout this essay, I will explore how I believe my choice has affected me as a person, and, if I had chosen not to, how different a person I would be today.
When I was in second grade, I had become fed up with piano. I was bored of practicing, I was tired of playing songs I disliked, and I was tired of my mother forcing me to continue playing even when I was tired. She gave me a choice: I could continue taking lessons, or

Similar Documents

Free Essay

Literary Theory

...Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction ‘Jonathan Culler has always been about the best person around at explaining literary theory without oversimplifying it or treating it with polemical bias. Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction is an exemplary work in this genre.’ J. Hillis Miller, University of California, Irvine ‘An impressive and engaging feat of condensation . . . the avoidance of the usual plod through schools and approaches allows the reader to get straight to the heart of the crucial issue for many students, which is: why are they studying literary theory in the first place? . . . an engaging and lively book.’ Patricia Waugh, University of Durham Very Short Introductions are for anyone wanting a stimulating and accessible way in to a new subject. They are written by experts, and have been published in 15 languages worldwide. Very Short Introductions available from Oxford Paperbacks: ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY Julia Annas THE ANGLO-SAXON AGE John Blair ARCHAEOLOGY Paul Bahn ARISTOTLE Jonathan Barnes Augustine Henry Chadwick THE BIBLE John Riches Buddha Michael Carrithers BUDDHISM Damien Keown CLASSICS Mary Beard and John Henderson Continental Philosophy Simon Critchley Darwin Jonathan Howard DESCARTES Tom Sorell EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BRITAIN Paul Langford The European Union John Pinder Freud Anthony Storr Galileo Stillman Drake Gandhi Bhikhu Parekh HEIDEGGER Michael Inwood HINDUISM Kim Knott HISTORY John H. Arnold HUME A. J...

Words: 45107 - Pages: 181

Free Essay

Literature

...Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction ‘Jonathan Culler has always been about the best person around at explaining literary theory without oversimplifying it or treating it with polemical bias. Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction is an exemplary work in this genre.’ J. Hillis Miller, University of California, Irvine ‘An impressive and engaging feat of condensation . . . the avoidance of the usual plod through schools and approaches allows the reader to get straight to the heart of the crucial issue for many students, which is: why are they studying literary theory in the first place? . . . an engaging and lively book.’ Patricia Waugh, University of Durham Jonathan Culler LITERARY THEORY A Very Short Introduction 1 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford o x2 6 d p Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogotá Buenos Aires Calcutta Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Paris São Paulo Shanghai Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw with associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Jonathan Culler 1997 The moral rights...

Words: 44695 - Pages: 179

Premium Essay

Reading Annotated

...Workbook 7 *Skinny Boy: A Young Man’s Battle and Triumph Over Anorexia 7 When Dieting Becomes Dangerous: A Guide to Understanding and Treating Anorexia and Bulimia……………7 Body Image and Self-Esteem 8 *Body Image Workbook: An 8-step Program For Learning To Like Your Looks (2nd Ed.) 8 *Body Love: Learning to Like Our Looks and Ourselves 8 *Feeling Good About the Way You Look………………………..……………………………..8 Girls Rock: Wise Teens Offer Tweens and Moms Advice on Healthy Body Image, Self-Esteem, and Personal Empowerment.9 Life Doesn’t Begin Five Pounds From Now 9 Love your Body: Change the Way You Feel about the Body You Have 9 *Self Esteem Comes In All Sizes 9 Healthy Eating and Balanced Lifestyle 10 Eat, Drink and Be Mindful: How to End Your Struggle with Mindless Eating and Start Savoring Food 10 *Embracing Fear: How to Turn What Scares us into Our Greatest Gift 10 *Exercise Balance 11 *I'm, Like, So Fat: Helping Your Teen Make Healthy Choices about Eating and Exercise in a Weight-Obsessed...

Words: 6359 - Pages: 26

Premium Essay

65 Successful Harvard Business School Application Essays 2nd Edition 1

...Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010. www.stmartins.com Library of Congress Cataloging...in..Publication Data 65 successful Harvard Business -School application essays : with analysis by the staff of The Harbus, the Harvard Business School newspaper / Lauren Sullivan and the staff of The Harbus.-2nd ed. p.em. ISBN 978...0..312...55007...3 1. Business schools-United States-Admission. 2. Exposition (Rhetoric) 3. Essay-Authorship. 4. Business writing. 5. Harvard Business School. 1. Sullivan, Lauren. II. Harbus. III. Title: Sixty...five successful Harvard Business School application essays. HF1131.A1352009 808'.06665-dc22 2009012531 First Edition: August 2009 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 CONTENTS Acknowledgments Introduction ix xi I. Defining Moment Stacie Hogya Anonymous Anonymous David La Fiura Anonymous Avin Bansal Anonymous Brad Finkbeiner Anonymous 4 7 10 13 17 20 23 26 29 ii. UndergradUate experience John Coleman Maxwell Anderson Lavanya Anantharman Rosita Najmi Faye Iosotaluno Anonymous Rohan Nirody v 37 40 43 46 49 52 55 Contents III. Career aspirations Jason Kreuziger Anonymous James Reinhart Jemine Rewane Anonymous Apar Kothari Anonymous Anonymous Stephen Cravens Anne Morriss 63 66 69 72 75 78 81 84 87 90 iV. typical day Anonymous Jay Glaubach Lexie Hallen Benoit...Olivier Boureau Jason Bohle 97 99...

Words: 47268 - Pages: 190

Premium Essay

Widows and Widowhood Inheritance

...Introduction Stripping widows of property is a huge social problem in Zimbabwe especially with the escalating death toll due to Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS). Customary laws have been unable to address the problem which suggests that extra- legal interventions might be necessary. Social work intervention is necessary to preserve the widow’s worth and dignity as a human being, which is the principal value of social work. A widow is a woman who has lost a husband by death and has not remarried, according to The South African Concise Oxford Dictionary. Property stripping refers to depriving someone of acquired or inherited movable or immovable possessions that rightfully and legally belong to that person (The South African Concise Oxford Dic tionary; Kuenyehia 2003). This study uses stripping and grabbing interchangeably as refer ring to the same act. Basing their studies in Ikot Idem in Nigeria, Okunmadewa, Aina, Ayoola, Mamman, Nweze, Odebiyi, Shedu and Zacha (2002:106) maintain: [W]omen’s wellbeing often deteriorates quickly after the loss of their husbands, when they suffer threats of both their physical security and property. A widow often loses her husband’s property to the in-laws in accordance with family traditional rules. This study proposes to explore the widows’ experiences of property inheritance in the Binga District, in the North West of Zimbabwe. Economically, people in Binga practice subsistence farming, animal rearing...

Words: 67340 - Pages: 270

Premium Essay

The Secret of Language Leadership

...SECRET LANGUAGE of • HOW LEADERS INSPIRE ACTION THROUGH NARRATIVE The LEADERSHIP STEPHEN DENNING John Wiley & Sons, Inc. More Praise for The Secret Language of Leadership “Out of the morass of strategies leaders are given to transform organizations, Denning plucks a powerful one—storytelling— and shows how and why it works.” —Dorothy Leonard, William J. Abernathy Professor of Business, Emerita, Harvard Business School, and author, Deep Smarts: How to Cultivate and Transfer Enduring Business Wisdom “The Secret Language of Leadership shows why narrative intelligence is central to transformational leadership and how to harness its power.” —Carol Pearson, director, James MacGregor Burns Academy of Leadership, University of Maryland, and coauthor, The Hero and the Outlaw “The Secret Language of Leadership is not only the best analysis I have seen of how and why leaders succeed or fail, it’s highly readable, as well as downright practical. It should be mandatory reading for anyone interested in engaging a company with big ideas who understands that leaders live and die by the quality of what they say.” —Richard Stone, story analytics master, i.d.e.a.s “A primary role of leaders is to create and maintain meaning for their organizations. Denning clearly demonstrates that meaningmaking comes from stories well told.” —Thomas Davenport, President’s Distinguished Professor of I.T. and Management, Babson College, and author, The Attention Economy “Steve...

Words: 100587 - Pages: 403

Free Essay

Tadition and Modernity

...Tradition And Modernity In the instinctive mode of western scholars, I had once thought of Tradition and Modernity as individual chapters, each of them thinking about its topic as an entity to be understood in its respective essence and unity. But I have come to understand in perhaps an equally perennial move by western students of Indian culture that these two terms do not in themselves exist. But they do function, dialogically. They work in relation with each other. Modernity functions as an economic and social tool to achieve some wealth, flexibility, and innovation for individuals and groups; Tradition functions, partly and at times largely, as a mythological state which produces the sensation of larger connectedness and stability in the face of shockingly massive social change over the last half-century. One might also say that Modernity is an economic force with social, cultural, and political correlatives; Tradition is a cultural force with social, economic, and political correlatives. Satisfyingly asymmetrical in their relation, they require us, in talking of one, to talk also of the other, just as they induce us to move as nimbly as possible between theoretical abstraction and experiential reality. But their separation is itself part of the mythological drama in current Indian thought, just as their mutual implication is the import of the same ironic smile that brings to an effective close any conversation one hears here about them. And so we take them in turn only...

Words: 21056 - Pages: 85

Free Essay

Cross Cultural in China

...Expatriates in China Experiences, Opportunities and Challenges Ilaria Boncori ISBN: 9781137293473 DOI: 10.1057/9781137293473 Palgrave Macmillan Please respect intellectual property rights This material is copyright and its use is restricted by our standard site license terms and conditions (see palgraveconnect.com/pc/connect/info/terms_conditions.html). If you plan to copy, distribute or share in any format, including, for the avoidance of doubt, posting on websites, you need the express prior permission of Palgrave Macmillan. To request permission please contact rights@palgrave.com. Expatriates in China Experiences, Opportunities and Challenges Ilaria Boncori Expatriates in China 10.1057/9781137293473 - Expatriates in China, Ilaria Boncori Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to University of Wollongong - PalgraveConnect - 2014-05-17 This page intentionally left blank 10.1057/9781137293473 - Expatriates in China, Ilaria Boncori Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to University of Wollongong - PalgraveConnect - 2014-05-17 Expatriates in China Experiences, Opportunities and Challenges Ilaria Boncori University of Essex, UK Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to University of Wollongong - PalgraveConnect - 2014-05-17 10.1057/9781137293473 - Expatriates in China, Ilaria Boncori © Ilaria Boncori 2013 Foreword © Heather Höpfl 2013 All rights reserved. No reproduction...

Words: 104917 - Pages: 420

Free Essay

Dasdsa

...ENGLISH BUSINESS WRITING [pic] MODULE BOOK AND READER Course of study: ICM / English Course title: Business Writing Year of study: term 4 ourse year: 2011-2012 Department of English School of European Studies and Communication Management The Hague University Course Information |Title |Business Communication | |Name of study unit |English Communication Skills | |Study unit | | |Department |ICM | |Module manager |A. van der Wijngaard / Y. Overdevest | |Module number |To be announced | |Programme / year of study / term |ICM / year 1 / semester 2 / term 4 | |Study load |28 hours (1 ECTS credit) | |Entry level |None...

Words: 12959 - Pages: 52

Free Essay

Kiki

...THE B L A C K SWAN The HIGHLY I mpact IM of the PROBABLE Nassim Nicholas Taleb U.S.A. $26.95 Canada $34.95 is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpre­ dictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable, than it was. The astonishing success of Google was a black swan; so was 9 / 1 1 . For Nassim Nicholas Taleb, black swans underlie almost everything about our world, from the rise of religions to events in our own personal lives. A BLACK SWAN Why do we not acknowledge the phenomenon of black swans until after they occur? Part of the answer, according to Taleb, is that humans are hardwired to learn specifics when they should be focused on generalities. We concentrate on things we already know and time and time again fail to take into consideration what we don't know. We are, therefore, unable to truly estimate oppor­ tunities, too vulnerable to the impulse to simplify, narrate, and categorize, and not open enough to rewarding those who can imagine the "impossible." For years, Taleb has studied how we fool our­ selves into thinking we know more than we actually do. We restrict our thinking to the irrelevant and inconsequential, while large events continue to surprise us and shape our world. Now, in this reve­ latory book, Taleb explains everything we know about what we don't know. He offers...

Words: 158140 - Pages: 633

Free Essay

The Illusion of Leadership

...The Illusion of Leadership Directing Creativity in Business and the Arts Piers Ibbotson The Illusion of Leadership This page intentionally left blank The Illusion of Leadership Directing Creativity in Business and the Arts Piers Ibbotson © Piers Ibbotson 2008 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2008 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan®...

Words: 68096 - Pages: 273

Free Essay

Entrepreneurship

...Rebecca Namatovu1, Samuel Dawa, Fiona Mulira and Celestine Katongole Makerere University Business School Kampala, Uganda ICBE-RF Research Report No. 31/12 Investment Climate and Business Environment Research Fund (ICBE-RF) www.trustafrica.org/icbe Dakar, July 2012 1 Contact: rybekaz@yahoo.com This research was supported by a grant from the Investment Climate and Business Environment (ICBE) Research Fund, a collaborative initiative of TrustAfrica and IDRC. It’s a working paper circulated for discussion and comments. The findings and recommendations are those of the author(s), and do not necessarily reflect the views of the ICBE-RF Secretariat, TrustAfrica or IDRC Executive Summary This report addresses entrepreneurship activity among Persons with Disability in Uganda and their potential to contribute to economic development. Data was collected from Entrepreneurs with Disabilities (EWDs) in Kampala using mixed methods research. In the study we sought to answer questions about the environment, business activities EWDs are involved in, attitudes towards business, their motivations, challenges and growth aspirations. Key findings were that the majority of the EWDs are involved in retail trade. Most of them had started their own businesses using their own savings and had previously closed a business because it wasn’t profitable. Most of their businesses weren’t registered because they said they didn’t need to yet the majority of those whose businesses were registered said registration...

Words: 11589 - Pages: 47

Premium Essay

Business

...C h a p t e r 1 Prewriting GETTING STARTED (OR SOUP-CAN LABELS CAN BE FASCINATING) For many writers, getting started is the hardest part. You may have noticed that when it is time to begin a writing assignment, you suddenly develop an enormous desire to straighten your books, water your plants, or sharpen your pencils for the fifth time. If this situation sounds familiar, you may find it reassuring to know that many professionals undergo these same strange compulsions before they begin writing. Jean Kerr, author of Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, admits that she often finds herself in the kitchen reading soup-can labels—or anything—in order to prolong the moments before taking pen in hand. John C. Calhoun, vice president under Andrew Jackson, insisted he had to plow his fields before he could write, and Joseph Conrad, author of Lord Jim and other novels, is said to have cried on occasion from the sheer dread of sitting down to compose his stories. To spare you as much hand-wringing as possible, this chapter presents some practical suggestions on how to begin writing your short essay. Although all writers must find the methods that work best for them, you may find some of the following ideas helpful. But no matter how you actually begin putting words on paper, it is absolutely essential to maintain two basic ideas concerning your writing task. Before you write a single sentence, you should always remind yourself that 1. You have some valuable ideas to tell your reader,...

Words: 234754 - Pages: 940

Free Essay

Avoid News

...living with an overabundance of food (obesity, diabetes) and have started to shift our diets. But most of us do not yet understand that news is to the mind what sugar is to the body. News is easy to digest. The media feeds us small bites of trivial matter, tidbits that don’t really concern our lives and don’t require thinking. That’s why we experience almost no saturation. Unlike reading books and long, deep magazine articles (which requires thinking), we can swallow limitless quantities of news flashes, like bright-colored candies for the mind. Today, we have reached the same point in relation to information overload that we faced 20 years ago in regard to food intake. We are beginning to recognize how toxic news can be and we are learning to take the first steps toward an information diet. This is my attempt to clarify the toxic dangers of news – and to recommend some ways to deal with it. I have now gone without news for a year, so I can see, feel and report the effects of this freedom first hand: less disruption, more time, less anxiety, deeper thinking, more insights. It’s not easy, but it’s worth it. News is to the mind what sugar is to the body We are so well informed and yet we know so little. Why? We are in this sad condition because 200 years ago we invented a toxic form of knowledge called...

Words: 5674 - Pages: 23

Premium Essay

Frankenstein History

...Reading Between the Lines: An analysis of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or, the Modern Prometheus, using Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto as an example of male discourse about women Louise Othello Knudsen English Almen, 10th semester Master’s Thesis 31-07-2012 Tabel of Contents Abstract ................................................................................................................................................ 3 Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 5 Historical Context .............................................................................................................................. 10 The View on Women and Their Expected Roles in the late 18th and 19th Century ....................... 11 - Mary Shelley disowns herself .................................................................................................. 11 - Mary Shelley’s Background .................................................................................................... 12 Women’s Role in Frankenstein ..................................................................................................... 13 Men’s Role in Frankenstein ........................................................................................................... 13 - Women in Society and Women as Writers .........................................................

Words: 30015 - Pages: 121