Homework Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 15

Homework - Assignment Example Instead of acknowledging him as a treasure for his long service to the industry, his organizations hired a younger and more capable worker to oversee and assess his work (Schlossberg 57). He probably felt greatly unappreciated after all he had done for the company. Hank should first have taken time for a lengthy period of reflection in which to consider his options before returning to work. He might have asked for a few days for this. During this time, he could have confided in a counselor about his concerns and worries in the workplace. He could also have confided in support groups for elderly workers who are confronted by changes in the workplace that could very well portend their dismissal if they are unable to keep up with the changes. Elaine could have been more compassionate and given Hank more time to adapt to the changes in the workplace. She, as well as the other executives could also have started a support group as well as a training group specifically aimed at elderly workers such as Hank who were confounded by the new expectations that made them appear obsolete. No. I would have pleaded for more time to learn about the new methods of operation that were necessary to succeed in the changing market. I would openly have sought the help of other more productive workers in reaching the numbers of accounts that the company

Determining Training needs at Summit Credit Union Case Study

Determining Training needs at Summit Credit Union - Case Study Example Summit credit union noted that newly employed lenders did not have the needed skills and information to take up the job and the problem attribute to the way the training curriculum was organized. The problem identification will be through conducting a needs assessment. A needs assessment is the process of identifying and analyzing a company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats with an aim of improving to achieve the company goals and initiatives. The first step in a needs assessment would be an organizational analysis to determine the skill and abilities the organization needs. The analysis establishes whether the training would benefit the company and whether the required resources are available. The analysis also identifies the merits and opportunities of the company and helps to focus on the demerits and threats. The second step is to do a personal analysis to establish who will receive the training and who will conduct the training (Boyer Management Group, 2014). This analysis establishes the level of the existing competency and the areas that require more training. Thirdly, this will involve analyzing the job and the requirements. This analysis will identify the main duties, experience, skills, and competency required to take the job and perform well. The forth step would be to perform an analysis on the performance of the specific task and establish whether it is below the expectations and whether the training will help bridge the gap between the actual performance and the expected performance. Next would be to do an analysis on the content of the training to identify the appropriate content that is in line with the requirements of the specific job. This will help in delivering the appropriate training to the employees. The next step is to establish whether training will solve the employment or there are other underlying reasons of not performing well (Employee Opinion Survey, 2014). Lastly, a cost benefit analysis

3 Ps Self-Assessment Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

3 Ps Self-Assessment - Assignment Example These were due to unavoidable circumstances that were explained to respective lectures in advance. My interpersonal relations with both lecturers and students have also been good without even a single reported case of conflict. This is because I always respect people’s opinions and personality and I have excellent communication skills towards approaching people (Lambert, p. 3-6). My level of preparation for class work has similarly been outstanding with a 46 points rating. This includes my readiness with respect to assignments, presentations, and class readings. My assignments and presentations have always been done and reviewed in time, before submission time, a fact that has facilitated my excellence as I have always had time for revision and editing of my work. Both lectures and classmates have also recommended my preparedness for class readings (Lambert, p. 3-6). My participation is similarly highly rated at 45 points. While I am always ready to participate in discussions and class exercises, I normally allow other people to participate and only engage when called upon. The relatively lower score in my participation can be explained by my passive nature (Lambert, p.

Trama In Wireless Sensor Networks

Trama In Wireless Sensor Networks Recent advances in wireless sensor networks have led to many new protocols specially designed for different applications where the energy efficiency is the main consideration. The traffic adaptive medium access protocol (TRAMA) is introduced for energy efficient collision free channel access in wireless sensor networks. TRAMA reduces the energy consumption by avoiding the collisions of transmitted data packets and it allows the nodes to switch low power mode whenever they are not in transmitting and receiving mode. This article is explained about TRAMA operation, related applications developed based on TRAMA protocol and its advantages and disadvantages. A wireless sensor network is a wireless network consisting of spatially distributed autonomous devices that use sensors to measure the physical or environmental quantities like temperature, sound, vibration, pressure, motion at different places. The main purpose of wireless sensor network is to collect the information from target domain and transmit the information back to specific task. Such a network usually consisting of a number of wireless sensor nodes arranges in ad-hog fashion and each node consisting of one or more sensors, low power transceiver, processor and an energy source likely a battery. A significant amount of energy is consumed by the sensor nodes radio that degrades the network lifetime. In order to reduce the energy consumption of these sensor nodes research has been done on the design of low power electronic devices. Because of hardware limitations further energy efficiency can be achieved by designing energy efficient communication protocols. Medium access contro l (MAC) is an important technique that ensures the successful operation of the network by avoiding the collisions and switching the nodes to idle mode which are not participating in the transmission and receptions. The following attributes has to consider while designing a good MAC protocol such as energy efficiency, latency, throughput and fairness. In a wireless sensor network, the communication part consumes most of the energy which is the main optimization goal for making of MAC protocols. The MAC protocols directly controls the communication module and saves the energy. The major sources of energy consumption in wireless sensor networks are collisions, overhearing, control packet overhead and idle listening. Collisions are generated when a transmitted packet is corrupted due to interference and it has to retransmit again. Collisions also increase the latency. Overhearing is that a node takes up the packets which are intended to other nodes. Control packets used in wireless sensor network include ready-to-send (RTS), clear-to-send (CTS) and acknowledgement (ACK). The transmission of these packets leads to energy consumption, therefore a minimum number of control packets should be used to make a data transmission. Idle listening is one of the major sources of energy consumption. A node really does not know when it will be the receiver of a massage from one of its neighbours. So, it must be wake up all the time for incoming message resulting in idle listening and that can consume 50-100% of the power required for receiving. The MAC protocols for wireless sensor networks can be classified broadly into two categories i.e. contention based and scheduled based. The schedule based protocol can avoid collisions, overhearing and idle listening by scheduling the transmission and listen periods under the strict time synchronization requirements. The contention based protocols have relax time synchronization requirements and can easily adjust to the topology changes as some new nodes are joining to the network or some of the nodes are expired after deployment. These are based on carrier sense multiple access technique and have higher costs for message collisions, overhearing and idle listening. There are a considerable number of MAC protocols which are implemented for different applications in WSN. Each protocol works on different techniques and at last all are targeted for energy efficiency. TRAMA is one of the scheduled based distributed TDMA (time division multiple access) based protocol that has been designed for energy efficient collision free channel in WSNs. The remainder of this section is explained in next sections. TRAMA: Traffic adaptive medium access (TRAMA) protocol which aims to achieve the energy efficiency by avoiding the collisions of data packets while receiving and by employing a low power mode for node which are not scheduled in transmission and reception. The usage of low power mode is dynamically determined and adapted according to traffic pattern. TRAMA applies a traffic adaptive distribution election scheme that selects the receivers based on the schedules announced by transmitters. Nodes using TRAMA, exchange their two hop information and the transmission schedules fixing which nodes are the intended receivers of their traffic in chronological order. TRAMA consists of three components which are neighbour protocol(NP), schedule exchange protocol (SEP) which allows to exchange two-hop neighbour information and schedules and adaptive election algorithm (AEA) uses the information of NP,SEP and it selects transmitters and receivers for current time slot and leaving the other nodes in network to switch to the low power mode. TRAMA assumes a single time slotted channel for both data and signalling transmissions. The above figure shows the overall timeslot organization of the protocol. Time is organized as sections of random and scheduled access periods. The author [1] assumes that random access periods as signalling slots and scheduled access slots as transmission slots. NP propagates among neighbouring nodes and gathers the data during random access period using signalling slots; this way two-hop topology information is obtained. Collisions may happen when contention based mechanism is used during random access period. Transmission slots make collision free data exchange possible by schedule propagation. Schedule exchange protocol (SEP) is responsible for maintaining the updated schedules with neighbours periodically. Generally these schedules are holds the traffic based information which is useful for collision free data transmissions. A node announces its schedule before the transmission stage. The length of the transmission slot is fixed based on channel bandwidth and data size. Signalling packets are smaller in size compared to the data packets so the transmission slots are typically longer than signalling slots. ACCESS MODES AND THE NEIGHBOR PROTOCOL: In the sensor networks, often nodes are power drained and some new nodes are may join to the network. To accommodate these dynamic changes in topology, TRAMA alternates between random and scheduled access. TRAMA starts in random access modes where each node transmits the data by selecting a slot randomly. More dynamic networks require more frequent random access periods and it is opposite to static networks. During these random access periods, all the nodes must be in transmit or receive mode. NP gathers the neighbourhood information by exchanging signalling packets during the random access periods. The above figure 2(a) shows the format of the header of a signalling packet. If there is no up dated information, the signalling packets will sendkeep-alive beacons to its neighbours. A node times out its neighbours, if it does not hear from that node for a certain period of time. By the end of random access period all the nodes will have the information about its two hop neighbours with 0.99 probabilities. SCHEDULE EXCHANGE PROTOCOL: The name itself tells that SEP maintains the traffic based schedules across the neighbours and it periodically updates the schedules. A node has responsible to announce its schedule using SEP before starting the actual transmission. Schedule generation process as follows that each node computes SCHEDULE_INTERVALL based on the packets are generated by the higher layers. The SCHEDULE_INTERVALL of a node represents the number of transmission slots for which the node announce to its schedule to its neighbours according to its current state of MAC layer queue. The node then pre-computes its number of slots in the interval for which it selects the highest priority among its two hop neighbours which we called as winning slots. These winning slots are selected as transmitter and as well node announces these slots to intended receivers. If the node does not have data to send in its slots then it gives up the corresponding slots to other nodes who want to use these vacant slots. A node lost wi nning slot is this interval is reserved for broadcasting the schedule in next interval. Nodes announce their schedule through schedule packets. In these criteria there is no need of receiver address which has obtained through NP. Nodes convey the information to intended receiver using a bitmap whose length is equal to the number of one hop neighbours. Each bit in the bitmap corresponds to one of the receiver order by their identities. An advantage of using these bitmaps is simple with broadcast and multicast communication can be supported. To broadcast a packet to all its neighbours then all the bitmap bits are set to one. If the packet need to multicast with the neighbouring nodes then only that bits are set in the bitmap. For vacant slots the node announces zero bitmap. The slots which are mapped as zero can be used by other nodes in the two-hop neighbourhood. The format of scheduled packet is shown below. In that format the last winning slot in the bitmap is always reserved for announcing the next scheduling. Additionally, the data packets can carry the summary information of a node schedule to its neighbours. These schedule summaries help to minimize the effects of packet loss. As shown in the figure 2(b) the data packets contain the three blocks of summary information of scheduled data in that bitmap corresponds to the number of winning slots in the current interval. The size of the bitmap is number slots and is used to indicate whether it in transmit mode or giving up the corresponding slot. Nodes will maintain synchronization with their one hop neighbours by this schedule information. The slot after which all the winning slots go unused is called change over slot. All nodes have to listen during the change over slot to synchronize their schedules. ADAPTIVE ELECTION ALGORITHEM(AEA): A node is selected to transmit when it has the highest priority among its contending set. At any given timeslot T, the state of a given node U is determined by Us two-hop neighbourhood information and the schedules announced by Us one-hop neighbours. The node can be in three states at given timeslot T, that are transmit, receive and sleep. (i) If a node U at T in transmits, then it has the highest priority and it has the data to send then the slot is used for transmission. (ii) If a node U in receive mode, when it is the receiver of the node which is in transmit mode in the current slot. (iii) Otherwise it will go to sleep mode. Whenever a node has absolute winner for a particular slot and it has non zero bitmap for this slot, it knows that no other node in its two hop neighbourhood will be transmission in this slot. Then collision free transmission is happened to intended receivers. When a node is not absolute winner, then it is not sure who the actual transmitter for a particular slot is. For example, consider a topology in figure (4), it shows that node D is the highest priority in Bs two-hop neighbourhood. In a given time slot and node A is the highest priority in its two-hop neighbours. So, both the AD transmit in the timeslot because they are absolute winners. The absolute winner to node B is node D. The node B is looks at it schedule for D and finds that B is not intended receiver of D, then it goes to sleep mode by missing the As transmission. So, before going to sleep mode a node must also account for the alternate winner. This inconsistency will occur when the alternate winner is hidden from the ab solute winner i.e. they are three hops away. ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES: Higher percentage of sleep schedules and collision free transmissions are achieved compared to CSMA based protocols. TRAMA performance can get adapted dynamically to the network traffic conditions and adapts the topology changes throughout the network. Moreover, without considering the transmission and reception, the duty cycle is at least 12.5%; the percentage is excessive for the kind of networks. The latency of TRAMA is more when compared with other contention based protocols such as S-MAC and IEEE 802.11. The delay performance is obtained by analytical mode which notes that TRAMA has higher delay when compared with NAMA. TRAMA protocol is suitable for applications like not delay sensitive but require high energy efficiency and throughput. A typical example is sensor network used for periodic data collection and monitoring applications. CONCLUSION: TRAMA is energy- aware channel access protocol for wireless sensor networks. TRAMA uses the traffic based schedules and avoids the wasting slots and switch the nodes to low power mode when there is no data to send and they are intended receivers of traffic. Through extensive simulations, TRAMA shows significant energy savings i.e. nodes can sleep 87% of its time when compared with scheduled and contention based MAC protocols depending on the offered load. TRAMA also have higher throughputs around 40% over S-MAC and CSMA and 20% over 802.11. It avoids the collisions due to hidden terminals. TRAMA protocol is more suitable for applications like with not delay sensitive and produce high energy efficiency.

Slavery Is The South Essay -- essays research papers

Slavery is the South Essay #3 Slavery played a dominating and critical role in much of Southern life. In the struggle for control in America, slavery was the South’s stronghold and the hidden motive behind many political actions and economic statistics. By dominating Southern life, slavery also dominated the economic and political aspects of life in the South from 1840 to 1860. By the 1840’s and 50’s the Southern economy had almost completely become slave and cash crop agriculture based. Without slaves in the south a person was left either landless and penniless or struggling to get by on a small farm. However, even though slaves dominated the southern economy, slaveholders only included about 2 to 3 percent of the population. This small percentage was the amount of people successful in a slave based, cash crop agricultural, Southern economy. Therefore, the Southern economy was controlled and dominated by those who did and did not have slaves. Furthermore, with t he high demand for Southern items in Europe and Northern America more slaves were needed in the South to produce these cash crops. Without slaves there would be no cotton, tobacco, or sugar production and without these integral items the Southern economy would absolutely fail. The South depended on slaves to fuel their economy and therefore slavery dominated their economy. Between 1840 and 1860 many political issues, debates, and actions were inflamed by slavery. As America grew, the South wanted more slave states...

Ideas and Values Shape Who You Become in Society Essay

Most people strive to have a good social standing and the ideas and values they hold on to can often influence their place in society. Society dictates which ideas and values will be accepted and which will be rejected. The values that stick with us the most are usually taught to us as children and help to influence who we become. In â€Å"Girl† and â€Å"Good People†, the characters were raised to have religious values and to behave in a way that will make it easy for them to fit into their society. The main characters in these stories had their values imposed on them at a young age, and helped to shape who they’ve become and how they behave in society. Read more: Good people by David Foster Wallace  essay Religion is a cornerstone for the characters in both stories. They are taught what is acceptable in their religion, in this case Christianity, and realize certain actions could alienate them from their social groups. In â€Å"Girl†, the girl is given specific instructions on how to behave, including â€Å"don’t sing benna in Sunday school† (Kincaid, 120). She is taught that singing folk music on the Lord’s day is improper, and even though she â€Å"doesn’t sing benna on Sundays at all and never in Sunday school† (120), she is explicitly told a few times not to do it. There, it is important for her to be on her best behavior. On Sundays she is shown she must â€Å"try to walk like a lady and not the slut you are so bent on becoming† (120) because how she is perceived on Sundays can be detrimental to her public image. In â€Å"Good People† Lane A. Dean Jr and his girlfriend Sheri’s values weigh heavily on their thoughts as they consider their options when making a momentous decision. The two are very religious and â€Å"they’d prayed on it and talked it through from every different angle† (Wallace, 152). They are worried about how their society will perceive them and if they are still good people if they go through with having an abortion and never really mention the word in conversation. Even  on the phone they speak â€Å"in a kind of half code in case anybody accidentally picked up the extension† (153). Neither of them goes to a friend or even religious leaders to talk about their situation, â€Å"not Pastor Steve or the prayer partners at campus ministries, not his UPS friends or the spiritual counselling available through his parents’ old church† (152) because they are ashamed. Specifically, Lane feels â€Å"like he knew now why it was a true sin and not just a leftover rule from past society† (152). In â€Å"Girl† and â€Å"Good People†, the main character’s religious values have an affect on who they are in society, a good person or someone â€Å"who gets to touch the bread† (Kincaid, 121). Even though Lane Dean and Sheri had made the appointment, they were still uncertain of their decision. Lane knew he couldn’t make up his girlfriend’s mind because â€Å"he knew if he was the salesman of it and forced it upon her that was awful and wrong† (Wallace, 152) and he knows it isn’t his place to make a decision for her. However, he wishes he could know what Sheri is thinking and â€Å"get her to open up and say enough back that he could see her and read her heart and know what to say to get her to go through with it† (152). Sheri knows Lane Dean is a good person, and that he respects her enough to know he cannot force her to side with him, but he still wishes he could persuade her to have the abortion. Ultimately, it is Sheri’s decision to have the abortion, or cancel the appointment. Similarly, included in the long list of instructions in â€Å"Girl† is â€Å"how to make a good medicine to throw away a child before it even becomes a child (Kincaid, 120), so the girl can decide for herself whether or not to have an abortion. Beside how to make medicine, the girl is taught other gender specific lessons that include cooking, sewing, laundry, and grocery shopping. She needs to learn how to sew in order to hem a dress â€Å"so to prevent yourself from looking like the slut I know you are so bent on becoming† (120) and looking indecent in public. All of these instructions are aimed to make it easier for the girl to find a husband by teaching her â€Å"how you set a table for dinner with an important guest†¦ how to behave in the presence of men who don’t know you very well† (120). Understanding of gender roles and how to behave around men, or be a wife, are important lessons for the girl to learn in order to survive in her society. Class affiliation plays a role in the upbringing of the girl. She is instructed to â€Å"wash the white clothes†¦ and put them on the stone heap†(119) and â€Å"when buying cotton to make yourself a nice blouse, be sure that it doesn’t have gum on it†(119-120) because it doesn’t matter which social class she belongs to, she still needs to have clean, well-made clothes. Sewing is a useful skill for her, because she cannot afford clothes that are already made, or even premade fabric. Harsh words and phrases that are repeated throughout the story such as â€Å"slut† and â€Å"wharf-rat boy† accentuate the point that there is a certain way for her to behave in society and that if she acts like a slut or associates with wharf-rat boys, people will view her as being lower than them. Unlike the girl, Lane A. Dean Jr seems to belong to the upper middle class based on his name, and the fact that he attends junior college while living at home with his parents. He was named after his father, and perhaps this close affiliation with the patriarch of his family makes him apprehensive of confiding in his parents about his situation. He is close with his mother as well, and she thinks Sheri is â€Å"good people†¦she made this evident in little ways† (150). Lane is worried their decision and their sins mean they will no longer be viewed as good people to the people in their upper class society and knows Sheri â€Å"can neither [have an abortion] today nor carry a child alone and shame her family† (155). Trying to fit in to society, whether upper or lower class can be an arduous task with many lessons to learn and roles to play. Knowing your place and where you fit in determines your success. The ideas and values imprinted on youth to build character and deter bad behavior allow them to conform to society. Works Cited Mays, Kelly J. ed. _The Norton Introduction to Literature._ Portable 11th ed. New York: Norton, 2013. Print. Kincaid, Jamaica. â€Å"Girl.† Mays 119. Print. Wallace, David Foster. â€Å"Good People.† Mays 149. Print.

Cultural Autobiography Essay

Cultural Biography: How My Roots Shape My Identity It is often said that we should not let a single feature of ourselves define who we are. For example, a basketball should not only be an athlete, but must also value her roles as a sister, a daughter, a student, and anything else that gives her life meaning. A doctor should not only focus on his identity in the medical field but also his place in his neighborhood, his church, and, of course, his family. Otherwise, he would be considered the workaholic. In many cases, though, it is very easy to do. People’s identities are made up of all the roles they play in their lives. Defining oneself or someone else in only way is not healthy because it does not consider the full complexity the person. Thinking of ourselves in a limited way, such as if I considered myself only a student but did not consider my roles as a friend to others and a family member, could lead to shallow thinking. Thinking of others in such a way can result in stereotyping and even discrimination, such as if someo ne thinks she knows all she that needs to know about someone based on his religious beliefs. Nonetheless, not all aspects of our identities contribute equally to the whole. Certain elements of our environment and background help to shape us fundamentally. They seem to serve as a base for everything else that we would learn, do, and become. I think everyone has one or two areas of that nature. For me, I think that one of the most defining traits about me is the culture I came from, which is Mainland Chinese. Although I keep an open mind and try to learn new ways of looking at the world, the beliefs of my upbringing often are dominant. If you asked me to describe who I am at my core, I would probably say that I am a Chinese woman. Culture, of course, comes from the people around us. As I see it, my family, including a large extended family, has been the most influential community in shaping who I am today, because they passed on their culture to me. Often we do not realize what is our culture until we leave it. I can remember when I first arrived in America and stayed for a short time with a host family. They had a daughter who was 10 years old. She had a little cold at the time. She drank cold orange juice. I was so shocked that her mother allowed her to drink it. In my family, we feel that cold drinks are not good for sick people and that they can hurt the stomach. Many people in China think this way. I could almost hear my own mother’s voice in my head, scolding her disapproving of the cold drink. She and her sisters could never accept this. After hearing this idea for so many years, I, too, was starting to have the same reaction. When people have flu or cold, in China the appropriate drink is thought to be hot water. I suggested to the girl’s mother that she should drink warm water. They both suddenly got a disgust look on their faces. They said orange juice would be better because it has a lot of vitamin C to fight the germs. This was one of my first lessons in culture, both Am erican and my own. For my part, I still do not like to have very cold drinks. However, I do not make any suggestion about what other people should drink. In explaining how my family has influenced me, I should discuss some basic elements about Chinese culture. It is collectivist culture, not individual culture like America. That means that Mainland Chinese society tends to see the group as being more important than the person. The question then is who is the group. Based on stereotypical Western movies or shows, it would be easy to assume that nearly all Chinese act and look alike and that they would see themselves as one group. In fact, this is not true at all. Chinese people think in much smaller terms, most typically, and would see their immediate family, including elders such as parents and grandparents, as their group. In some sense, they would also consider old friends and former and current co-workers to be part of their group. It is not so common in Mainland China to make many new friends as adulthood. People in China depend on these tight networks to help them in hard times, and they have to be ready to repay the favor at som e point in the future. Tight informal networks are very important for getting by in life in China. Chinese culture value family piety. It means we believe in a strong obligation to respect and honor our family members. I would always try my  best to take care of my parents and also older relatives such as grandparents, aunts, and uncles. In a broad sense, family members, because all consider themselves a close group, would do almost anything to help each other. As is said in English, they would take the shirt from his or her own back to give to the other person. This kind of thinking is based on Confucianism, where taking care of the family is considered to be the highest value. Unfortunately, a related matter is that sometimes in Mainland China, people are not as quick to get involved when a stranger needs help, and some people without integrity are quick to take advantage of strangers and cheat them. We also do not have as much public volunteer and charity culture, as many people would feel guilty if they spend their money on people who are outside their own family. The concept of taking care of the family is so important to culture that it is sometimes humorous to other people from other countries. I once was at dinner in a group that included both American and international students. Some people were talking about what they would do if they won the lottery. A Chinese boy said he guessed that if he won, he would soon get married, and have a child. His friend, another boy from China, commented that the money would not only last for the lifetime for him and his son, but also for generations into the future. The American boys at the table laughed at the Chinese boys’ ideas. They thought they should use the money for their own fun, and would not like to get married. However, the Chinese students were looking from Chinese point of view, where not only the individual but the entire family name and bloodline is considered. They see a responsibility to their ancestors and to future bloodline that they should have a child. Personally, I like the viewpoint of thinking about multiple generations and not only focusing on the present. I have always been raised by my family to hold this point of view. Without a network of family and close friends, it is hard to survive in China, especially during hard times several decades ago. It is not so easy to get credit, so people rely on their networks to help them make a down payment for a house. Many people lack health insurance, and so if they needed and expensive surgery, they could perhaps ask their closest family and associates for help with money. Furthermore, in hospital, it is not like in America where nurses feed and bathe the  patients. In China, patients’ family members must help with those chores, and nurses usually would not help. As a result of these factors, Chinese people spend a lot of time cultivating their networks by choosing the right gifts on holidays, offering a helping hand when possible, and asking for help when needed. It is fair t o say that in China, if you do not have close connections in your life, including family members, friends, coworkers, then it is almost like you do not exist, according to society’s point of view. On the other hand, if you do have a family, then you feel much more secure and happy. You also get a large amount of your own identity from the group rather from your individual situation. It is important to behave well in society and try to be successful not only for your own sake, but also in order to create a good name for your family. Therefore I think that sometimes even if I do not feel like studying sometimes, I push myself to do so anyway, because if I came to America and did not perfect well in university, then I would create a bad impression on my family, including parents and extended relatives, as well. In fact, Chinese people from Mainland often do not like to spend time alone or to be in secluded places. We tend to like crowds and a lot of excitement and perceive them as safer because it would be harder for criminals to get away with serious crime amid a crowd. I felt strongly this way when I first arrived in America, but now I am getting used to peace and quiet. I have heard that Americans often like to go camping or fishing in order to get away from other people. This concept is a little different from China. I remember showing my mother a picture of our campus and she wanted to know why it looked so lonely. Later I took a photo when more students were out walking, and she seemed to feel much more comforted that I was in a safe place. On the other hand, some Americans have told me they think crowds are more dangerous, because it is easier for thieves to pick pockets or commit other crimes. My immediate and extended family has always been a source of much emotional support for me. My mother has several siblings and they each have children, so I have many aunts, uncles, and cousins. They always ask what I am doing in my life and they give me suggestions. They are not afraid to criticize me  if they feel it is warranted, such as for eating too much junk foods or not studying hard enough. In Chinese culture, these comments would never be taken as offense but instead in a spirit of caring. I always spend much time finding appropriate Chinese New Year gifts for my aunts and uncles as a show of respect. Sometimes the gifts could be as simple as fruit baskets, chocolates, or cake. I just want to show them that I am thinking of them. My family, including parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, serves as my home base on life. I have always felt that no matter what happened, there is a safe haven with many people who always cared about me. Much of Chinese family culture is expressed over food. If I go to visit one of my aunts and she knew I am coming, then it is sure that she will prepare my favorite noodle dish. Caring is often expressed with food. From my mother and father and several of their siblings and my grandparents, I learned to cook many dishes at a young. I learned mostly at quite a young age. In this way, too, my family has been the biggest influence on my life, as now I cook almost every day and can take care of myself. I do not need to depend on others to cook and I do not have to go to restaurants except for fun. Over meals, much culture gets passed to children as adults talk about what is going on in their lives and how they handle it. They often give advice to children, but it seems to be that there is not as much two-way communications culture as in America and other Western countries. In other words, adults would not often ask children what they think about things. I am sure that I am not the only person who feels that family has been the largest influence in life, and certainly not the only Chinese person with this idea. In fact, when we are away from our families, we try to recreate the experience in some ways. In UC, there are many Chinese students all in the same situation, living away from their home country. We have formed friend groups and often cook together, go to restaurants, or go to other activities. At times, groups of students even go on vacation to New York or Chicago or other locations. As it is in China, most social activities for us here have revolved around eating food. We often chat, give each other advice, and try to help each other to study and make good grades. As vitamin and other health supplements are very popular, we often discuss products  that we have tried or plan to try. Everyone has similar goals and we almost do not even need to say them out loud, because they are widely known. We all come from similar kinds o f families, usually involved in business. Everyone wants to make good grades, be successful, and make their parents happy. My friends are a very important group to me here, but in my overall life, I guess they are not nearly as influential to me as my relatives are. Chinese families were large for many years, sometimes with seven to 10 children. I know that my great grandmother came from a very large family. However, because of overpopulation, China has implemented the one-child policy. Although there are exceptions, the general rule is that only one child is allowed per couple. Now China is becoming a land of spoiled only-children. I often wonder what will happen to China’s family culture and if culture and knowledge will be passed down as efficiently. Many people grow up without uncles, aunts, cousins or, of course, siblings. This seems to be a significant social issue for a country whose character is still collectivist. Perhaps China will make the shift rather quickly to a culture of individualism. Or perhaps they will express collectivism in some other different formats, such as neighborhood groups and volunteer societies. At any rate, eventually rising population of people without close relatives to watch after them as they age will mean a need for more caregiving and health care professionals. There are many aspects that define my life, including my status as a student, family member, and friend. While these are important roles, they do not capture everything about who I am. One element that runs deeper than those items is my culture, most of which I received from relatives. I grew up in China until coming to school at UC. My thinking has certainly been influenced by the time I have spent living abroad, but it nonetheless does continue to be Chinese at the heart. In a Chinese family, your family is almost literally all that you have to depend on in many cases. I am quite thankful that I have a wonderful family.