Letter Requesting Scholarship:Sample

Want to write a compelling letter reqesting scholarship? Here is your sample.You may create your own circumstance.

Dear sir
I am a student pursuing my graduation having severe financial crisis and other challenges which I will disclose during the course of this letter. I am very good at studies but my current circumstances don’t seem to allow me go with my dream.. I have been suggested by a friend that your organization helps the meritorious and needy students for the purpose of graduate studies. I write this letter to implore you if there is a scope to support me with a scholarship.

I am a 43 year old Hispanic woman having been challenged of disability with severe dyslexia.An accident at work caused me Throatic Outlet Syndrome, chronic pain, migraines and several surgeries for TOS and shoulder problems. I am recovering from my physical sufferings but the future of my education is the most immediate challenge.
I used to be an artist right from my childhood and drew immense satisfaction by transporting my vivid imaginations on the canvas. Would you believe I made the colors talk! Unfortunately severe pain in the shoulders does not allow me to paint anymore. Initially I would not give up but I had to come to terms with the reality. I have cried for hours in loneliness and had sleepless nights. I am a human being too. I only discovered that was not going to resolve my crisis.

The challenges I faced could never dilute my intentions to pursue my education. Now I see these difficulties as opportunities in disguise. I want to set an example for the people challenged by hard luck. More the difficulties, greater my determination to proceed. My conscience suggests that the gap between my problems and the success is the initiative to ask for help.

You will appreciate I continued to get brilliant grades in studies in spite of the tyranny of luck. But for the help and encouragement from friends and my teachers I wouldn’t have made it possible. I have already run out the savings of my parents. What all I have now is hope.

There are people like you whose presence makes earth a better place to live. I need scholarship to complete my graduation. An annual amount of $ 15,000 would be sufficient. I will meet rest of my needs through part time writing which needs lesser concentration than painting.

I am sending this application with great expectations. I shall be grateful if your organization could favorably consider my scholarship case. I can be available for a personal interview at your convenience on working days.

Best Regards

Transformational Leadership

"Some men see things the way they are and ask why, I see things as they are and ask why not." ( Kennedy,1961)

Transformational leadership has been in existence for centuries. But the term as it is used now in organizational leadership was introduced by James McGregor Burns in 1978. A transformational leader leads people through his charisma of personality.

Charisma here doesn’t have a specific definition, it can be experienced only that builds an aura around the personality of the leader. People believe him and feel emotionally attached to his ideals. He sees beyond what is in the sight and builds his plan around that. The leader has inspirational motivation which gives his team a constant source of inspiration to overcome difficulties that come by on the way to the ultimate goal. Personally the leader shows inexhaustible energy expanding beyond physical strength.

Transformational leaders show flexibility and continuously adapt themselves to situation in contrast of the leaders who break but don’t bend. Transformational leadership comes more through inspiration and clarity of vision than training. However, it has also been found that transformation leadership can be taught, but certainly not to every leader.
Transformational leaders devise their own tools and parameters of success and have staunch belief in them. Then they make people believe in those means.

Theodore Roosevelt, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mondela, John F kennedy have been such leaders. A known recent example from the corporate world is Lee Iacocca who, sacked by Henry Ford committed himself to a new challenge at the age of fifty two, lifted Chrysler from bankruptcy to profit by the sheer power of his commitment.

Mahatma Gandhi started his career as an unsuccessful lawyer in South Africa. When he was thrown out of a first class rail compartment by an English guard, he decided to overthrow the British from India. On his return to India the contemporary leaders made fun of him and doubted his theory of non-violence. But he remained committed. Gradually the masses started orienting towards him. People left jobs, spun cotton thread to weave their own clothes and practiced non-violence. In 1947, India became the first British colony to be liberated that too through a bloodless transformation.

The main difference between the transactional theory and transformational leadership is that in the latter, people volunteer to follow willingly to achieve the goal thereby creating group effectiveness.

"Transformational leaders move followers to transcend their own self interests for the group, organization or the country" (Bass, 1997 p133)

In transformation leadership theory, individualized consideration is the degree to which the leader attends to each followers needs, acts as a mentor or coach and listens followers’ concerns and needs. (Bass, 1985)

Transformational leaders seek transform which sometimes the organizations may not be prepared to experiment with. More often than not, these leaders exhibit enough promise succeed than fail.

Tobacco Vs Marijuana:Health Risk Comparison

The number of cigarette smokers by far exceeds those who smoke marijuana (cannabis). Per day average consumption of cigarette is many times more. Cigarette is legal whereas marijuana has been categorized an illicit drug. A cigarette smoker is able to pursue routine work. Marijuana consumption leads to abnormal behavior patterns resulting in identification of the smoker as socially less acceptable than tobacco user.

Ammonia, tar and carbon monoxide and nicotine are found in all forms of tobacco. The main active chemical in marijuana is THC (delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol). The number of marijuana smokers is on steady rise in the US, especially among the school going children.
Tobacco-Tobacco is consumed in the forms of cigarettes, cigar, spit and pipe tobacco which are made from dried tobacco leaves as well as ingredients added for flavor and other properties. About more than 4000 individual chemicals have been identified in tobacco. Cigarette smoking is the single most preventable cause of disease and death in the United States. Smoking results in more deaths each year in the United States than AIDS, alcohol, cocaine, heroine, homicide, suicide, motor vehicle crashes and fires-combined. Each year about 440,000 people die in United States from illness related to cigarette smoking. Tobacco consumption leads to cancer of lung, larynx, oral cavity, pharynx, esophagus and bladder.30% of cancer deaths are caused by smoking. 80% of lung cancer death are related to tobacco use. Smoking is a major risk factor for heart disease, stroke, lung cancer and chronic lung diseases - all leading causes to death. During pregnancy, smoking can result in miscarriages, premature delivery and sudden infant death syndrome.

Marijuana (Ganja)
Marijuana is most commonly abused illicit drug in the United States. A dry, shredded, green/brown mix of flowers, stems, seeds, and the leaves of hemp plant.

Short term effects of marijuana use include problems with memory and learning; distorted perception, difficulty in thinking and problem solving, loss of coordination, increased heart rate, anxiety and panic attacks. THC suppresses neurons in the information processing system of the hippocampus. Lungs may have same respiratory problems as tobacco. Daily cough and phlegm, symptoms of chronic bronchitis and more frequent chest congestion. Regardless of THC content amount of tar inhaled by marijuana smokers and level of carbon monoxide is three to five times higher than tobacco smokers. A study of college students has shown that critical skills related to attention, memory and learning are impaired among people who use marijuana heavily. The primary health problems associated with the drug are the possibility of respiratory disorders similar to those experienced by tobacco smokers. Marijuana is often smoked with tobacco ingredient which makes isolated study of the effects of marijuana more difficult.

Cannabis use in social settings can lead to increased talkativeness and infectious laughter followed by states of introspection and dreaminess. The user typically has a feeling of greater emotional and physical sensitivity that can include greater interpersonal empathy. (Hall;1998, Joy et al 1999)

Marijuana use can increase heart rate by 20-100% above baseline. Blood pressure is increased while the person is sitting and decreased while standing. The change from sitting to standing can cause faintness and dizziness due to change in blood pressure. In case of cigarette there is rise in blood pressure which subsides with the passage of time.

Frequent smoking may result in increased stable blood pressure. Adverse mood effects can occur, particularly in inexperienced users, after large doses of cannabis. Anxiety and paranoia are the most common of these effects include panic, depression, delusion and hallucinations(Adams and Martin 1996, Joy et al 1999).Cannabis produces dose related impairments in a wide range of behavioral and cognitive functions. These include slowing reaction time and information processing, and impairing perceptual and motor performance, tracking behavior and time perception(Chait and Pierri 1992).

Marijuana smoke contains many of the same components as tobacco smoke. As much as four times the amount of tar can be deposited on the lungs of cannabis smokers as cigarette smokers if a cigarette of comparable weight is smoked. This difference is probably the result of differences in the amount of consumption. Cannabis cigarettes usually do not have filters and cannabis smokers take a larger puff volume, inhale more deeply and hold their breath longer than tobacco smokers(Joy et al 1999) There is no conclusive evidence that cannabis causes cancer in humans including those cancers associated with tobacco use. ( Joy et al; Tashkin, 1999, hall 2001)Between the ages of 4 to 9 who have been exposed to cannabis in utero have shown deficits in sustained attention, memory and cognitive functioning. However these effects were small compared to tobacco. ( Fried 1998; Hall and Solowij 1998; Joy et al 1999)

Conclusion-Marijuana and cigarette smoking both are habit forming and poisonous intoxicants. Cigarette has more immediate health hazards whereas marijuana has disastrous behavioral consequences. These evils need an ongoing crusade through media, social awareness and governmental programs.

Fish ! - Book Abstract

Fish!

The story of the book revolves around office life of Mary Jane. She is promoted manager of the promotions group on the third floor of First Guarantee. She was going to be the third manager in two years. She had heard the negative reputation of the staff which was honored with the titles like unresponsive, zombie, unpleasant, slow, wasteland, negative. The third floor had earned a reputation of a ‘Toxic Energy Dump’. People working there were de-motivated and unwilling to work. They would often unplug the cord to avoid a call. Some of the employees were on the look out for new opportunities whereas others were happy with their secure positions without being responsible.

Jane could have turned down the job but her compelling personal economics, especially after sudden death of her husband, didn’t permit the luxury of sitting home. First five weeks she struggled to understand the work and the people. Her previous work report had been good. She had the seeds of a promising leader but the atmosphere at third floor seemed to have damaged beyond repair.

While walking down from her office Jane is casually attracted by the noise and activity at Pike Place Fish Market. A fish market, opposite to being an uninviting, stinking, cold, wet, sloppy, dull place; is brimming with fun and enthusiasm with fishmongers tossing and catching fish. This amusement made her visit the market on a subsequent day; and after initial hesitation she befriends a trader, Lonnie. She talks about the problems of her workplace. Lonnie agrees to help her because fishmongers take interest in their customers. Lonnie says, “There is always a choice about the way you do your work, even if there is no choice about work itself”(p-36). He added, “I guess given the right conditions any job can be dull”. Jane is sparked by Lonnie’s convictions and listens a tape given by her boss on the way back home.

It is inspiring poetry by David Whyte.
Let this then, my small poem,
Like a new moon, slender and barely open,
Be the first prayer that opens me to faith.( p 44)

She makes up her mind to transform First Guarantee staff amid fear of failure. The tape gives her strength. “ I don’t believe that companies are necessarily prisons, but sometimes we make prisons of them by the way we choose to work there.” She wrote in her journal, “the fact is that the risk of doing nothing is probably greater than the risk of doing.”

Training Methods
Jane made her outline as to how shoe was going to use the following four principles at her workplace. She met her share of resistance at First Guarantee. She was stern at this moment and made it clear to everyone that no excuses will work. She decided to make four teams which will visit Pike Place to get first hand knowledge.

1. Choose your attitude – you can’t change circumstances but can always choose your reaction.
2. Play- The fun element enlightens the burden of work.
3. Make their day- Fish mongers took keen interest in the customers and made their day happy.
4. Be present- Most of us are so engrossed with the future and past that we become unavailable to the present moment. Being present leads to a fulfilled life spreading infectious happiness everywhere.

Four teams were constituted with specific goals and given six weeks time to gather knowledge, share the ideas during periodic meetings and have good time with a moderate budget of $200 for every team. The teams were supposed to come up with customized plans based on their deliberations suitable to the environment at First Guarantee. Jane remained aloof, though she was available to help the groups on demand.

Motivation theory
When everyone was engaged in the work, the staff took responsibility and enjoyed ding it. All the teams came up with unexpected ideas to improve the office productivity. Bill offered to be a volunteer to look after the office when guys were out. On the last meeting day she recorded-“ the room was a sea of color, music and energy. Balloons were attached to each chair, and colorful flower arrangements brought the room to life.”
The book ends with the Chairwoman’s Award Ceremony. Jane shares with the colleagues that how delighted she was. She also informs that she had declined a better job offer from a rival company because she wanted to make a difference right over here.

A plaque hanging in front entrance of the headquarter reads- “ As you enter this place of work please choose to make today a great day. Your colleagues, customers, team members and you yourself will be thankful. Find ways to play. We can be serious about our work without being serious about ourselves. Stay focused in order to be present when your customers and team members most need you. And should you feel your energy lapsing, try this surefire remedy: Find someone who needs a helping hand, a word of support, or a good ear – and make their day.

Stephen C. Lundin and two co-author give an interesting and entirely different parable of Pike Place Fish Market. The simple free flowing language and easy to imbibe ideas compressed in a nearly hundred page cover capsule make it an easy reading in one go.

Passion in Hamlet

The role of passion in the play, Hamlet.

Setting of the play occurs at Elsinore in Denmark. Prince Hamlet has returned to Denmark from his school in Wittenberg only to discover that his father, King Hamlet is dead, and that Queen Gertrude, his mother, has married his Uncle Claudius. Claudius has crowned himself as king. The ghost of King Hamlet father reveals to the Prince that his uncle was the actual killer and that he should take revenge upon him.

Hamlet never confides this fact to his mother. The young boy is in turmoil as to how to react to the situation. Though full of awe, hate and anger ; he is able to contain his immediate outburst. Shakespeare announces in the beginning that everybody is a ‘passion’s slave’.

“Give me that man
That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him
In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart,
As I do thee. (Hamlet, III. ii) ”

The play’s key characters are governed by passion over reason.. Claudius kills his own brother to become king himself. Gerrude, setting aside the grief of her husband’s death and her son’s condition marries Claudius in haste.
According to Brock,“Hamlet’s enemy was not so much irresolution, which arose from his melancholy and the nature of the problem that confronted him, as passion”.

There are instances throughout the play presenting mixture of passion, anger, revenge, agitation and control. The revelation of his father’s ghost sparks off these emotions.


Hamlet seems to reach a climax in Act III, scene iv when after revelation of truth to him, Hamlet enters her room he speaks to himself, at the same time containing his instinct to be violent -

“When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul
Lends the tongue vows.
Let me be cruel, not unnatural;
I will speak daggers to her, but use none.” (Hamlet, III. ii)

On his way to meet his mother in her chamber, Hamlet gets an opportunity to avenge Claudius when he suddenly finds the king on his knees in prayer situation, but he passes over to wait for a more appropriate time even if “more dangerous”.

“Gertrude believes that the madness is in response to his father’s death as well as the marriage between Gertrude and Claudius. Polonius attributes Hamlet’s madness to his rejection by Ophelia whom he passionately loves, since Polonius had forbidden her to see him (Tricia, 2004).”

At one point violent passion takes better of him. Hamlet kills Polonius by stabbing through the tapestry mistaking him for Claudius.,
“Here, thou incestuous, murderous, damned dame,
Drink off this potion” (Hamlet V.ii.151)

While watching the play ‘The Murder of Gonzago’ by a group of performers, Claudius’s feels guilty and turning around, confesses murder of Hamlet’s father.

In the end of the play Hamlet, Claudius, Gertrude and Laertes- all are succumb to death by poison, which symbolizes over riding passion of one type or the other among all the characters.

Freelance Writer Alert

I do make money as a freelance writer. Here are some tips if you are planning to earn from writing.
Writing has great future on the net because everyone who has something to present must get it written. But friends, don’t be lured by the sites which promise you seven figure income just sitting home groping the keyboard. I spent thousands as registration fees on some sites and none ever brought me a penny.

There is no problem getting registered but don’t pay. Unnecessary mails promising you millions will pour in giving an allusion of a great currency chest arrival.

Never enter into deal directly with a customer who may ask you to communicate through a given mail ID. Some such customers got the work done with a promise to pay after fifteen days and then lost in the wilderness.

Once you take a project, write one piece and wait for the payment. Proceed further only if the site is fair. Best of luck!

Freelance Writer Alert

Freelance Writer Alert

I do make money as a freelance writer. Here are some tips if you are planning to earn from writing.
Writing has great future on the net because everyone who has something to present must get it written. But friends, don’t be lured by the sites which promise you seven figure income just sitting home groping the keyboard. I spent thousands as registration fees on some sites and none ever brought me a penny.

There is no problem getting registered but don’t pay. Unnecessary mails promising you millions will pour in giving an allusion of a great currency chest arrival.

Never enter into deal directly with a customer who may ask you to communicate through a given mail ID. Some such customers got the work done with a promise to pay after fifteen days and then lost in the wilderness.
Once you take a project, write one piece and wait for the payment. Proceed further only if the site is fair. Best of luck!

Shakkespeare's Sonnet 116

Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare
Sonnet 116 is a unique lyric that creates the ideal of love through administration of various techniques. Shakespeare’s love is a ‘marriage of true minds’, depicting love as a pure incorruptible sentiment which is unyielding to external forces and difficulties. Love is intact even if the lover turns out to be unfaithful.
Let me not to the marriage of two minds…..Admit impediments.
"The persona gives love determined, courageous, and guiding qualities through the use of metaphorical comparisons, tone, epithet, repetition and wishes to make bold statement of love in the face of Time’s decay. The rigid fourteen lines of the sonnet are filled with an abundance of poetic and literary techniques that help to convey these main ideas." ( Grimes,2007)
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth is unknown, although his height be taken
Love is high above, like pole star, the cosmic lighthouse which guides sailors in the middle of severe sea storms. The vessels may toss and roll into the violent waves but the star remains ‘an ever fixed mark’. It’s value is incalculable though altitude can be measured, thus remaining a mystery. In line 7, wandering bark means a wooden masthead of the ship which is shaken by the tempest.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
……But bears it out even to the edge of doom
Time has no withering powers over love. It is ageless, changeless and immortal even in the face of doom’s day. Though it may take away the transient physical beauty but true love cannot be harmed by the arc of time’s sickle. Shakespeare raises love to the heights of divinity which probably no other poet has ever done. He concludes the sonnet with declaration that he would disown his poetry if proved wrong. Anyone who does so has actually not loved.
If this be error and upon me proved;
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
Poets repetition of certain words- ‘love is not love’, ‘alters when alteration finds’ and ‘remover to remove’ makes the ideas more emphatic; in synergy with eternal nature of love. The theme of the poem is ‘the real love is steady in all adversities and even unaffected by time". In sonnet116, two possible symbols are Star and Time. Star here is North Star, the symbol of guidance, the spatial lighthouse to everyone .Time is a traditional symbol of decay and aging. Rhyme scheme of the poem is abab cdcd efef in the three quatrains and gg in the concluding couplet. "English sonnets are said to be made of three quatrains and a couplet. The lines 1-4, 5-8 and 9-12 group together and the last two lines group together.
The poet has employed one hundred and ten of the simplest words in the language and the two simplest rhyme schemes to produce a poem which has about it no strangeness whatever except the strangeness of perfection.(Brook, 234)