Social network sites.

Tips for submitting the perfect college application.

2011-03-28T19:02:00.000-07:00

Education plays an essential role in people's life. That’s why it’s important to apply for college the right way. Here are the few tips that I’d like to share, which should greatly help new students in the future. Start as early as possible – all the ground work needs to be done the early the better. Even if you are few months away from the date when semester suppose to start – sometimes it may not be enough time to accomplish everything , in order to satisfy all enrolment requirements. Proper planning plays an important role at the time of applying for college. Make sure that you are aware of all key days of the upcoming semester: deadline to apply, last day to drop without “W”, refund deadline and etc. When you are completing you application make sure that all information provided is accurate and legit! Applying to college in some ways mirrors applying for a job, and it’ll test the way you reach for your goals and stand up to challenges. Don’t just treat this as a means to an end. The college application process, in and of itself, is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to really get to know yourself and prove yourself. Admissions personnel aren’t judging you; they’re judging your application. There’s no way your entire life can be reflected in the thin contents of one envelope, and it might even scare you how few people are actually involved in making your admissions decision. Apply to the schools at which you could truly be happy, be realistic and honestly, just do your best. Do it well! Ask for a lot of help. I wish my college application essay had been reviewed by a few more pairs of eyes. Your teachers, friends, parents, counselors, and neighbors down the street all have valuable perspectives and the college application process is even tougher if you go it alone. Stay in touch with the college. Make sure you take as many opportunities as you can to get information from the admissions office, especially if it involves meeting someone in person. Not only will this help your decision-making process, but you’ll get more info on special programs, scholarships and other ways to make your college experience personal. Plus, it might help if the person reading your application has a face to put to the name.

My first essay.

2011-03-20T20:23:00.000-07:00

I wrote my first essay in English few days ago. I wrote a lot of essays in my live: in a Russian. I realized that it’s not an easy task to write an essay in second language, such as English. It was very difficult for me. First, it took a lot of time to decide which topic I would like to write about. When I was working on the selections of the topic I couldn’t find information needed because these topic weren’t that popular here in US. Then I tried to figure out which topic is more popular and where I could found enough information about it. Finally I selected a topic. Before I started to write an essay I had to present my Power Point. It was very difficult to do, because I have to write at list two quotes in each body paragraph, and those quotes must be only from official sources like books or magazine articles. It took quite a significant amount of time to find needed information when you can’t read fast and don’t understand a lot of words. Perhaps, the most difficult was an assignment to write a poem in the end of an essay. But I did it. After I started to write an essay, my next obstacle was my level of English. I realized that I want to say more than I can, because I don’t know enough English words yet. Therefore, I had to use dictionary, and see how to use some phrases in appropriate way so reader can understand my writing. But at that time my Power Point helped me a lot. I was writing my essay for few days, but from the day I started every day was easier and easier to write, because I was learning more and more new words and gathering more information about my topic. I spent a lot of time while I was working on it, but as a result I received a good grate. I think it was a good practice and maybe one of the most effective ways to improve my English. I am not afraid of other upcoming essays that I may end up writing in the future, and I believe that my future essays will be brilliant and my English will be perfect.

A commentary of a video on youtube.com.

2011-03-14T19:21:00.000-07:00

I am a big fan of rare videos about animals posted by some lucky and quite bright people on Youtube.com. I am calling them lucky, because most of the time they weren’t planning to capture these amazing moments, but they happened to be right on the spot when it occurred. And bright, because some of those videos are very dangerous and they may end up risking their life’s trying to film these stunning moments. Jason Schlosberg and David Budzinski, from National Geographic, found themselves in n amazing filming opportunity in South Africa’s Kruger National Park. While filming at a watering hole, a group of lionesses attacked a young water buffalo, throwing him into the water. The lions struggled to keep their meal by pulling the poor buffalo onto dry ground only to be met by a rescue ‘team”…the entire herd of water buffalo! Being so upset by the attack on their little one, the water buffalo sprang into action, executing ninja like moves on the unsuspecting lionesses; chasing, kicking, and flinging. Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM

The capture of such footage was quite amazing. From what I had seen in the past, when lions attacked and grabbed a young one, the herd would typically give up the young for dead, and lions enjoying their victory - but not this time. This video clearly telling us that exception out of the “rule” may occur at any moment. Obviously, it will not be happening all the time, especially something like this which was captured in South Africa National Park, but it was there for real. I bet that those lions that were punished by buffalos may change their behavior in the future and quit attacking water buffalos when they are hanging around in large herds or may even switch to some smaller animals and unfortunately lions who live in the wilderness will never become vegetarians.

Importance of learning.

2011-03-06T20:19:00.000-08:00

Learning is an essential component of life. We are learning every day during our entire live. We start this process from simple things and then we try to learn more and more difficult things. Our commitment to know more is leading us to get an education. Education develops our perspective of gaining knowledge, which opens up limitless opportunities in the future. It helps us build opinions and have points of view on everything in life. Education is important because it equips us with all that is needed to make our dreams come true. I know if I have good education it will increase my chance to get a good job and be successful. My education it’s my asset that will never go away from me. Education is a big power. Somebody said, “You can lose all except your knowledge,” and I fully agree with it.

People should learn something new every day. Life is not just about getting things done and placing check marks on your “to do” lists. We are supposed to be exploring new things, exposing ourselves to different types of information and people, and learning and retaining the important information and lessons that we learn. This is the means by which we will grow and develop. It is how we really live better today than we did in the past. It is how we avoid repeating the same mistakes over and over again and how we make certain we continue to do those things that are working.

I know some people will depend on me in the future. My parents and my children will need my moral and financial help, and I have to be prepared to assist them. I want to be successful and I sure my knowledge is my future. My strong believes help me to be organized, committed and passionate in my learning process.

A behavior I observed and admired.

2011-02-27T16:14:00.000-08:00

“If you admire successful people, you create a positive force field of attraction that draws you toward becoming more and more like the kinds of people that you want to be like,” Brain Tracy once said. I think he’s right, and I have those people. And one of them is my mom. And it’s not just because she is my mother. Of course it’s a very important fact, but I’ve never could forget that day when she helped me to survive.

It happened when I was six year old. I was very active, fast moving and very curios child and always found some adventures for myself. One day I was playing near my house. And an accident happened with me. I broke my leg. My parents brought me at home and called to an emergency. An ambulance arrived only an hour later. When it arrived I’d already had a shock. My parents tried to be brave and helped me to be in consciousness at all time while we were waiting for an ambulance. An ambulance arrived with one paramedic and her assistant, possibly driver. A paramedic was a young woman. Probably, she didn’t have a good experience. She didn’t know what to expect when she took that call. She was confused. At that time I’d started a convulsion. My parents were scared and asked a paramedic to do something, but she couldn’t. She was afraid of a current situation, she was standing still. Then my mother came to me instead of a paramedic, and started acting like one offering basic first help. She knew about it because she had AA in nursing, and worked in the hospital for couple years before I was born. At that time my mother was less than 25 years old, but she didn’t lose self control when she saw her child in this life threatening situation. My mom did something for me and then I was taken to an ambulance car. On a way to the hospital I’ve experienced a clinical death. Clinical death is determined by either the cessation of heart beat and breathing or the criteria for establishing brain death. I was one step away from being dead. And my parents were near; they helped to a young paramedic and did all they could until we arrived at the hospital.

I know that many people helped me to come back to life: professors, doctors, and nurses. But they couldn’t do it if my mother loses a control of herself or was in a panic, and couldn’t help me in that day. My mother, who gave me live ones, literally gave another birth that day. I love my mom and truly admire her.

Advantages and disadvantages of social network sites.

2011-02-21T22:23:00.000-08:00

"Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life,” it’s a logon of a famous social networking site named Facebook. Today, everybody who has a computer knows about this social network. It’s very popular to be on different social network like Facebook. And many people registered on this site. Every year, every day number of users’ increases and it’s happening very rapidly. It’s even hard to imagine how fast it is growing, and how many people are using it. But look at this statistics which was published about Facebook. Just imagine that around 8 people subscribing to this portal every second. And there are over 585 million people already counted as Facebook users, while a year ago it was just over 337 million and in November 2008 - 120 million people. Yes, it’s popular because it very useful social network portal. If you log in to Facebook you can connect with your friends 24 hours in a day and 7 days a week. It’s very handy when it comes to share photographs with friends and family. And I use it, because my friends and my parents live far away from me. It’s very convenient, before I could only sent no more than 10 photos via E-mail, and now with Facebook I can add about 200 photos at one time. It’s truly amazing, fast and very convenient. However, I use it because I don’t have chance to present it myself. But I don’t understand people who always “sitting” in social network sites, who always chatting or constantly writing blogs. In my opinion, they may forget how to talk or participate in regular conversation. Most of them have virtual friends, but virtual friends only when you sitting in front of computer. If something wrong happened with you in real live these virtual friends wouldn’t be near you and will not be able offer any help or assistance when you need it. I think it’s a big problem that people stopped speaking with each other, and the purpose of friendship changed over the time since social networks were invented. The other big issue of social network like Facebook is security. You share some information about yourself when you register with them, and this information can be used by other people. Also it can be sold to various companies who might be interested in your personal data, and potentially can target you with their products. If you think that your information was kept confidential, it will be great – but it’s always the case. Other people are aware of it, and some of them can use it against you. Just think about it, how much of confidential information these people have who manage those social networking sites, and how vulnerable to you if you trust them.

Egypt

2011-02-13T21:25:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I got Los Angeles Time. On the cover page was an article “Elation, then anger in Cairo”. I read it. An article was about Egyptian people how had protest for last 18 days against the president of Egypt Hosni Mubarak. Mubarak run the country for almost 30 years, but people couldn’t trust him anymore; they were anger and wanted his resignation. The next article in this newspaper was a continuation of the first, named “Mubarak further anger protesters”, and it described how demonstrates met their demands, and how happy they were.

I was in Egypt few years ago. I saw how people are poor there, but I never went deep in thought about political situation in a country. Nowadays I’d have some questions, and I wanted to direct them to my husband Boris Levin; maybe he could give me answers for these questions. And here is my first question for him, “Boris, did you read this article?” “Yes,” he answered.

“What do you think about this situation?”

“I’m so happy for Egyptians that finally they will have more opportunities in their lives. Since control over their country which was established almost 30 years ago was changed,” said Boris.

“Boris, what do you think, why it happened, and people went on Cairo’s streets with protests?”

“They weren’t happy with their current president who was running their country for a big time. A level of corruption was unsustainable. Most of the people were broke and had no future,” said my opponent.

“Do you know how protests were initialized?” I asked.

“Yes, there were citizens of Cairo and surrounding suburbs near Cairo. Among them were a lot of people different ages primarily mid age adults who were representing future of the country,” my husband answered.

“Then my next question to you, how was Mubarak elected almost 30 years ago, and how he was leading Egypt?”

“Okay, I can tell you about it. Prior to Mubarak became a president of Egypt he was a vice president of the country at the time, when Anwar El Sadat was a president. Even back then Egypt was one of the most corrupted countries in the world.

At the time when Mubarak was leading Egypt, all the money in the country were in the hands of wealthy people where the rest of the country lived in poverty and starvation.”

Then I asked Boris about what he think, why Mubarak finally left his seat; and Boris said that, “He decided to resign to prevent war in the Middle East.”

“What, in your opinion, US government thought about possible resignation of Mubarak or he would manage to stay?” I asked my husband.

“I suppose, it may benefit US government who established an ally with Egyptian government for a long period of time, where piece in Middle East region was under control. And potential threats from Middle East were minimized. However with Mubarak’s resignation we should be quite concern about future developments in the Middle East region and somehow new ally should be established with new president of Egypt,” said he.

“And here is my last question for you,” I said, “What is the future of Egypt, in your opinion?”

“As we now aware Mubarak resigns and military of the country took over. Hopefully, it will not be for long and normal election will take place and Egypt citizen’s voices would be heard.”
Thank you Boris for your ansvers. Now I know more about Egypt and political situation in a country.