It is commonly believed myth that personality testing instruments can measure your personality and predict your future behaviors. The pre-employment testing mechanism has been following this creed without any solid evidence. The testing industry claims all out validity. The educational institutions and employer organizations use them for screening purposes. Their transparency and equity has even convinced the courts of law.

But it is still an unresolved riddle; what do they test?

Do they test personality? What is personality then? What is its nature? How does it come into existence? Is it outcome of evolution? Does matter has capability to generate a personality? Why animals don’t have a personality? Does it remain the same during whole of your life? And many more questions.

It is like peeling off an onion. Every strip leads to many more. Finally you get a heap of onion strips. Where is the onion?

But personality is not an onion…

Allport has recorded hundreds of different definitions. Most of the psychologists equate it to your style, behaviors and reactions. They have devised instruments to measure these main areas. The collected data about your behaviors and temperaments help them to decide your career. You may organize your behaviors in future but you may never be able to go for a career of your passion.

Why?

Experts like to predict. They predict weather. They predict political situations. They predict economic conditions. They predict your future with signs, numbers, cards or palms. And they predict your future performance with the help of personality testing instruments.

What’s Your Personality?

———————–

It is well recognized fact that every human being has a personality. It is not merely your physical body. It is not merely your consciousness. It is not merely your ego. It is not merely your behaviors. It is not merely your physical expression. It is not merely your style. It is not merely your temperament.

But they all and many other characteristics are expressions of your personality.

I don’t find it wise to define personality. Admittedly it is an abstract reality. You get it with your birth. You can either develop it or disintegrate. Your style, behaviors and reactions are expressions of your developed, undeveloped or under-developed personality.

How do you look? How do you react? How do you talk? How do you live? How do you think? They all are expressions of your personality. The psychometrics measures these expressions and not your personality.

The abstract nature of personality can neither be measured nor be analyzed with any scientific or non-scientific tool. It can only be visualized. It can be developed. It can be disintegrated. Your thinking and doing makes all out the difference. A developed personality gives better style, behaviors and reactions than an undeveloped one.

Why Psychometrics are Getting Popular?

—————————————

The very first reason is that every one wants to know who he is.

But bigger reason of their massive use is just a desire of the employers to avoid bad-hire. They get hundreds of applications for a single situation. They are the only available tools to avoid idiosyncrasies.

They don’t have alternatives for psychometrics.

Tests are going to stay. Whether you are trying to be admitted for a specific discipline or looking for your dream job, you are going to encounter psychometrics at one stage or the others. You need to prepare before encountering them.

How to Prepare for Personality Testing Sessions?

———————————————–

Keep in mind…

Personality is an amazing entity. You can think. You can visualize. You can discover. You can express. You can plan. You can create. You have unlimited hidden potentials. But your selected options on paper are going to decide your future.

You should practice offline and online personality tests before encountering a real session. Your practice shall not only make them familiar to you but also generate a list of your strengths and weaknesses. You can improve them with your conscious effort.

However, it is much more important to learn how different personality and aptitude tests measure expressions of your personality. What theories are working behind them? How do they relate different jobs with different types? This knowledge shall make it a lot easier to encounter psychometrics.

When was the last time you closed your eyes and simply paid attention to the inner world in you? As you close your eyes and pay attention to your inner self, insight is awakened. You are able to become conscious of what infuses our external world. Each of us has individual awareness or ways we interpret the world around us. Because of our unique experiences of the world, we take in multiple images across the span of a lifetime. These experiences are imprinted in our psyche and our soul.

The act of recalling these memories creates expressions or feelings in our heart. These past expressions are pondered in the inner vision of our mind and our heart as though we are re-living them in the present. In so doing, we are retrieving our soul at various points of interests that have lodged a sense of importance to our individual awareness. The movement from the world around us to the world within us is a shift in attention. This shift in our attention is a conscious choice. Here, we realize that the world around us has hidden aspects to it reminding us just how privileged we are to be aware of our awareness. This realization alone gives us identification with whom we are.

You and I are conscious beings who live in a body, but this isn’t our real home. We inhabit space and time, but our real self, our authentic self, our individual awareness (soul) is a unique expression of spirit infusing our lives from an infinite number of possible correlations. We make choices every day on how our life will be lived. Each choice creates a pattern. These patterns become a statement of our character. Our character becomes a living testimony on the inner processes of our thoughts incarnating into the world we live in.

As such, the life of our soul is revealed. Every moment, we are given the opportunity to experience our soul in a variety of ways. These experiences are facets of our inner world that manifests themselves from a single expression we call spirit. The intent to focus on our past, our present, or our future desires leads us to a path. This path is a revelation of our soul seeking out an opportunity to live out our purpose. Purpose gives us meaning and hope beyond our present circumstances. It is a path into what can no longer be seen and moving our lives and our soul - into SPIRIT.

Sam Oliver, author of, “A Life in Review”

As the world continues to get more complex, careers are becoming more specialized and require continuing education credits to remain in good standing. This is especially true in the medical fields although many professions and professional organizations also demand their members to continue to develop the skills necessary for today’s changing environments.

Almost any field of study that takes a great deal of study to become a recognized member will require continuing education. From engineering, medical nurses and doctors, respiratory therapists, quality managers and many others all are expected to maintain a level of education consistent with the field of knowledge. The reason behind this is to have professionals who have not only maintained but also developed and learned new techniques and skill sets. This is critical in much of the more complex business world.

Quality engineers and managers focus on competence and techniques that not only allow for the lowest cost products to be developed but also understand the trade-offs between cost and quality.

CPA’s or certified public accountants, need to keep up with the latest laws and be up to date with many of the sometimes arcane accounting principles. Teachers and nursing are two other fields that also require continuing education to remain active in the profession.

Although a good education in many of the professional fields can provide a solid understanding of the industry no matter if it be financial, medical, industrial, or scientific. Ongoing competence in any of these fields however requires an ongoing process of continuing education. Continuing education is necessary for the professional to remain up to date with the latest techniques and knowledge base in the field of study.

Typically continuing education translates into a certain number of course credit hours for the professional every so many years. These additional education credits are sometimes mandatory when renewing government controlled certifications like a teaching certificate. Although some groups do not make the ongoing educational process mandatory, almost all provide an opportunity to obtain the educational credits through sponsored classes, seminars, and online “CBT” or computer based training.

In order to stay professional and remain in good standing wit many of the recognized professional organizations ongoing continuing education is critical for a professional career. The small investment in additional training can go a long way to keeping skills fresh and increasing the competence level of any professional.

The Detroit Schools has partnered with local universities to get students thinking about careers in science and engineering. Students at different levels of the Detroit Public Schools are being targeted in a statewide effort to get more women and minorities enrolled in engineering programs. One program that makes this its mission is the Detroit Area Pre College Engineering Program (DAPCEP).

The Detroit Area Pre College Engineering Program

DAPCEP works with area students in three main ways. It partners with local public school teachers to design a curriculum that encourages creative thinking in the sciences. To fulfill this goal, DAPCEP sponsors science fairs, field trips, and university seminars for students and teachers.

DAPCEP also runs a Saturday program in conjunction with local universities and corporations to provide enrichments activities for students in grades 4 &ndash 12. These activities focus on different aspects of math, computer science, engineering, physics, chemistry, and communication skills.

In addition to its programs during the school year, DAPCEP brings local public school students into universities for summer programs. Some of the summer programs are residential, with students living on campus for a few weeks and getting a real taste for the college life. Other programs provide transportation to and from campus.

University Partnerships

DAPCEP’s list of university partners is certainly impressive.

• University of Detroit Mercy

• Michigan State University

• University of Michigan Ann Arbor

• Wayne State University

• Lawrence Technical University

• Oakland University

• University of Michigan Dearborn

• Michigan Technological University

The Little Engineer Program

In addition to their very successful middle school and high school programs, DAPCEP also has something for smaller learners. Its Little Engineer Program is for students in grades K &ndash 3. These Saturday classes for both children and their parents focus on teaching and learning math, science, pre-engineering, and reading.

How to Join DAPCEP

The selection process for DAPCEP can be daunting for parents anxious to give this opportunity to their children. DAPCEP holds an open house each fall for prospective students and parents. Students must maintain a 2.0 Grade Point Average in all their school subjects. Other factors, such as attendance, and taking certain academic subjects in the regular school curriculum, such as physics, chemistry, and higher level math, also play a role in student selection. For many programs, students also need letters of recommendation from their math and science teachers.

Summer Course Offerings

DAPCEP’s university partnerships are providing a range of summer courses of Detroit area students. Here are some highlights:

• Watershed Investigators (University of Detroit Mercy)

Students will investigate local water quality in a series of real &ndash world experiments.

• How Math Rocks Our World (Tabernacle)

Students will see how their math and science skills compare with other students around the world, in particular China and India.

• Wireless Integrated Microsystems (Michigan State University)

Hands &ndash on activities and presentations from nine different engineering majors offered at the university.

• Engineering Intensive Workshop ( Michigan Technological University)

Students choose two areas of study, ranging from Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Aided Engineering, Computer Programming, Material Engineering, Chemical Engineering and others.

All of the DAPCEP programs emphasize the Detroit Area Public School District’s commitment to ensuring that students have the opportunity to explore many challenging areas and gain further insights into the college experience.

Many cultures around the world drink tea. Some people drink tea as part of social interaction, and others drink it for their health. Specific teas, such as black tea and green tea, have been tested for their positive affects on people’s health. And studies have shown that these two teas can in fact benefit your body. And not just by providing a little pick me up in the morning either. Studies have shown that green tea can slow the growth of cancer cells. Everyone should take notice of these anti-carcinogenic properties, especially in an age of tremendous pollution. Studies by the National Cancer Institute, in America, have shown that powerful plant antioxidants within the tea will stunt the progression of cancerous cells. The cancer preventing properties of tea are just one of the wonderful properties of the drink.

Black tea has been found to increase the presence of certain anti-bacterial proteins in the body. Not just by a little bit either, but a considerable amount. When compared to coffee drinkers, tea drinkers actually had a concentration of disease preventing protein that was 400% higher. Clearly, these are significant health benefits to be had from drinking tea. The are even more benefits though. Mental acuity can be increased as well. A study of elderly people found that those who drink tea actually reduce their risk of mental problems by half when compared to people who don’t drink tea. And the tea drinkers only had to drink a couple cups a day to realize those amazing benefits.

Green tea can help increase the rate at which calories are burned in the body. The chemicals found in green tea allow the body to more efficiently burn fat for energy. Evidence also exist to show that drinking this type of tea can help the body reduce chemicals associated with stress. While this tea forestalls senility, it also more generally improves brain functioning in all segments of the population. The caffeine contained in green tea will help improve memory and give one sharper thinking.

This tea also contains chemicals specific to plants that slow down the growth of bacteria that cause bad breath. The health benefits of drinking green and black teas are quite remarkable. The same chemicals that slow bad breath can also help people with certain bowel diseases. The bacteria limiting properties of the tea helps ease the discomfort associated with such complications. While there are obviously a myriad of health benefits directly related to the physical properties of these teas, there is also mental health relaxation that is associated with preparing a warm beverage. Taking time out of your day to prepare something that is nourishing to your body can really allow you to calm down and retreat from the stresses of everyday life. Learning about all the different types of teas can be quite an enjoyable experience. Not only will you learn about the disparate boiling techniques for each tea, but you will learn each every tea’s specific chemical properties.

Ever wonder why kids hang on to their teddy bears, binkies, blankies, etc. for so long? Have you ever wondered why they don’t understand a story you’ve told them? Because kids are touchy-feely! Children do not actually understand abstract ideas until around age 8. They will be able to pay lip service to something abstract earlier, but most don’t actually understand the concept until around age 8.

Abstract is not just for art. Abstract means that something is a concept, an idea, something we thought of, something we believe in or know to be a fact, but is not something that can be seen. The results may be seeable, but not the fact itself. Children won’t understand this abstractness about a concept until they’ve learned to understand that an “idea” is a concept.

Think about it. Some great abstracts are God, wind, and charm. You can’t see them. But they’re there, nonetheless. You see the results of God’s power by looking at a sunset, a new calf, or into your child’s eyes. But you can’t SEE God. You can feel the wind, see its gentle or destructive powers, see things being blown about by the wind, but you can’t SEE the wind. And you can see the results of someone being charmed into falling for a scam, but you can’t actually see the snake oil oozing out of the con-artist’s pores (though you might feel that you can!).

Same with kids. They can listen to a story, repeat what you say, and regurgitate it back to you, but they don’t sincerely understand the concept of what it would have been like to be the person in that story until they are 8, 10, or even 12 years old.

We start teaching children to write at 4, 5, or 6 and they eventually learn to draw the connections between the written words and the spoken words. They learn to write by mimicking what you’ve written down on paper. But it’s hard to get a child to write a whole sentence in the first grade. It takes practice on the child’s part and patience on the teacher’s or parent’s part. After weeks and months of practice, the concept of connecting all those written words together into an understandable string of words called a “sentence” actually gels in the child’s mind. The same is true for trying to teach children in the lower grades how to write paragraphs and essays.

A paragraph is a more or less structured concept that adults have created that strings several of those “nebulous” sentences together into a collective thought. Still a concept, an abstract. A young child, who has enough trouble trying to understand what the purpose of a sentence is, will have even more trouble understanding the purpose of a paragraph. Because it’s an abstract concept.

Draw the connection between those sentences and something CONCRETE that the child can see and touch and feel and you finally have an abstract CONCEPT that the child can see, and therefore understand. Numbers are a concept, and idea in our heads. Numerals, on the other hand (5, 8, 43) are the concrete version that we can see so we use numerals to explain, on paper, the idea of adding and subtracting numbers. With numerals (or blocks or hash marks drawn on a paper), the student can see the concept he/she is trying portray and understand.

Parents, teachers, and the community in general need to learn why it is so hard for children to try and learn certain abstract concepts. We, as parents and teachers, have created ad infinitum different ways/formulae/rubrics to get children to write paragraphs and essays. Most of those rubrics don’t work with younger children because they are TOO HARD to learn. They are concepts, abstract and nebulous, that a child can mimic, but won’t truly understand until they are old enough to understand abstracts. Children (even some high school students) need something simple, something easy to remember, something visual that they can touch and feel, that they can use as a tactile reminder of what that concept is all about. The words “paragraph” and “essay” are abstract concepts. The use of something visual and tactile will turn those abstract concepts into something concrete that a child can understand, usually better, faster and more permanently, than other concepts.

Enter the Hand. With five fingers on a hand and five sentences in a paragraph, a child has something visual that he/she can look at and manipulate. Using this concrete device the child will eventually be able to draw the connection between the idea of a paragraph or essay and the written, concrete version of that idea. Use your hand as the concrete manipulative, or find a curriculum that does, to turn the abstract idea into a concrete one from which your student can learn.

**********************

An Overview of the Take Stock in Children College Scholarship Program

Take Stock in Children is a statewide scholarship program being implemented by Orlando Schools and the Seminole County Public School system the program targets students with strong financial need as well as strong motivation to succeed in college. Beginning in eighth grade, students are invited to apply for the scholarships. These scholarships take the format of two years at a community college and then two years at a state university or college.

In order to be considered, both the student and the parents must sign a contract promising to follow the guidelines of Orlando Schools and Seminole County Public Schools. In addition, students must participate in a variety of Take Stock in Children activities throughout their high school years. Orlando and Seminole County Public School students must remain committed to graduating with their high school class and maintaining a drug and crime free student record.

The Take Stock in Children Program targets at &ndash risk students in the Orlando and Seminole County Public Schools and helps them learn the skills they need to be successful in college. The motivating factor is that a successful Orlando and Seminole County Public School student becomes a successful adult able to give back to the Orlando and Seminole County Public Schools. The connection between the needs of the community and the needs of the student results in benefits for both.

Scholarships and Support

Since 1996, one hundred and seventeen students have been awarded the Take Stock in Children scholarship in the Orlando and Seminole County Public School area. The program has 69 high school students participating in Orlando and Seminole County Public Schools. 101 students have graduated and received their scholarships. The first student to graduate from college because of the program received a Bachelors of Science from the University of Central Florida.

The scholarship fund has purchased over $300,000 worth of Florida Prepaid College Scholarships for students in the state of Florida. These scholarships are waiting for the students currently participating in the middle and high school levels of the program. Orlando and Seminole County students active in the program have additional opportunities to attend workshops and seminars to help them prepare for college and build their individual skills throughout the school year.

Mentors

Each Orlando and Seminole County Public School student is paired with a community volunteer mentor who helps motivate and guide the student throughout high school. Mentors do not give a lot of time but they do provide a lot of support for students working towards the scholarship. Usually mentors meet with Orlando and Seminole County Public School students for thirty minutes once a week on the student’s high school campus. Mentors also participate in the Take Stock in Children workshops and activities. Mentors come from a range of backgrounds and are united by an interested in helping the youth of Orlando and Seminole County Public Schools achieve their dreams of a college education. In addition to the mentor role, there are often opportunities to sponsor a scholarship for an Orlando and Seminole County Public School student. Every donation is matched by the state of Florida, allowing more and more students to participate in the program.

I was always somebody who felt quite sorry for myself, what I had not got compared to my friends, how much of a struggle my life seemed to be compared to others. I was caught up in a web of negativity and needed someone or something to help me to escape.

During an afternoon at work one day, aged around twenty one, a colleague I was working with started to talk to me. What he said was quite upsetting and disturbing, however would have a profound effect on my future. He said to me:

“Your quite a depressive person, aren’t you?”

“Am I?”

I said in a shocked voice as I believed I was no different to anybody else. He continued:

“Yes you are. You very rarely smile, you are negative about most issues and you always seem to be carrying the world on your shoulders”.

This man was aged around fifty three and continued:

“I used to be like you and then I was given some advice, of which I am now going to relay to you. When you feel down, depressed or sorry for yourself, read the newspapers or watch the news on the television. You may then realise that you are in fact one of the lucky ones.”

I listened and thought about what he had said. I had never been a big reader or watcher of the news, but decided to start. The advice was totally correct, the news from around the world and even my own country was quite shocking. I realised that the worries I had were actually quite trivial and that I needed to cherish everyday and start to look on the bright side of life.

Stephen Hill

Laughing gas, N2O, dinitrogen monoxide or to use its older name, nitrous oxide has a range of uses in our society. Most of these would have to fall into the category of non-essential.

Nitrous oxide is well known as a dental anaesthetic gas. Having gas at the dentist though, is much less common nowadays, because of accidents that have happened. There have been occasions where patients have had the wrong percentage of oxygen mixed with the nitrous oxide they were given. The requirement in some states that a fully qualified anaesthetist is present when nitrous oxide is used. It is not as pleasant to be given nitrous oxide as it sounds, it often causes nausea and dizziness.

Whipped ice-cream uses nitrous oxide as the gas in the tiny bubbles. Nitrous oxide ice-cream chargers have caused death to individuals who have inhaled the gas directly. Nitrous oxide is not poisonous, but inhaled in large amounts, like this and without any added oxygen, it causes the lungs to collapse. Inhaling nitrous oxide in this way is illegal in many jurisdictions. Accidents have also occurred when people have confused nitrous oxide with the highly poisonous nitric oxide gas.

Nitrous oxide is used in rocket fuels and also by custom car enthusiasts to boost the performance of their engines. The nitrous oxide is a more powerful oxidizing agent than the 21% oxygen in the atmosphere. Temperatures in the engines are higher and specially designed valves are necessary to withstand the extra heat.

Nitrous oxide is extremely harmful to the atmosphere. It has 250 times the greenhouse gas effect as carbon dioxide. This means that 1 litre of nitrous oxide has the same climate changing effect as 250 litres of carbon dioxide. The quantities of nitrous oxide released to the atmosphere are small, so it still only contributes a small fraction of the total greenhouse effect.

More than likely, when you learned how to add, you started on the right and moved to the left. If you were adding whole numbers, you added the ones, “carried” if necessary, and repeated for the tens, hundreds and so on. This works well on paper, and it is the most efficient paper and pencil method; however, adding in the other direction has several desirable advantages: the left to right method promotes a better understanding of place value, it can be done mentally with much greater ease, and it does not require that numbers be lined up in a column. Students can learn left to right addition, so they have another method to choose from when presented with addition problems.

Left to right addition involves adding the largest place values first. As you move from left to right, you keep a cumulative total, so it is simply a number of smaller addition problems. To give you an idea of how it works and what it sounds like, consider the example, 677 + 938.

Begin by adding the left most place values. In the example this is 600 plus 900 equals 1500. Add the values in the next place, one at a time, to the previous sum, and keep track of the new sum each time. In the example, 1500 + 70 is 1570, 1570 + 30 is 1600. For students who are more proficient at this algorithm, they don’t necessarily think “plus 70″ or “add 30.” Their thought process, if said out loud might sound like, “600, 1500, 1570, 1600, . . .” Continue adding the values in each subsequent place until finished. The final steps in the example are 1600 + 7 is 1607, 1607 plus 8 is 1615. The sum is 1615.

As you can imagine, students need to be proficient at single digit addition and have an understanding of place value before attempting left to right addition. When they are first learning it, they might try repeating sums as they go along (e.g. 1500, 1570, 1570, 1570, 1600, . . .) to help them retain the newest sums. They might also cross out digits as they are adding. There is no rule about having to add in this way mentally. Students could write down the sums as they proceed.

Left to right addition promotes a better understanding of place value than right to left addition. In right to left addition, single digits are carried or regrouped with little emphasis placed on what the value of those carried digits are. In the example, 1246 + 586, students add 6 + 6 to get 12; they write down the 2 and carry the 1 when they should be carrying the ten. In the next step, they add 8 + 4 + 1 to get 13; they write down the 3 and carry the 1 when they should be adding 80 + 40 + 10, writing the 3 in the tens place (i.e. 30) and carrying the hundred. Essentially, right to left addition excludes vocabulary related to place value. Left to right addition, on the other hand, promotes an understanding of place value as each digit is given its correct value. In the example, the one in the thousands place is one thousand, the two in the hundreds place is two hundred, and so on.

Left to right addition is well-suited to mental addition since the sum is cumulative with no steps in between; in other words, there is nothing for the student to keep in mind except for the cumulative sum. In right to left addition, several numbers must be remembered as the student proceeds. To illustrate this, consider the simple example, 64 + 88. In left to right addition, the sum is simple to find: 60, 140, 144, 152. Only one number had to be remembered at any point. In right to left addition, 4 + 8 is 12, so there are already two numbers to remember: the two in the ones place and the regrouped ten. The next step is to add 60 + 80 + 10 to get 150. At this point, the two must be recalled and added to the 150 to get 152. Although this sounds simple, it becomes more complicated with more digits.

Right to left addition does not require numbers to be lined up in a column, but it is often taught that way because the method tends to ignore place value and relies on a student’s ability to line up the place values to compensate. Many errors that students make in right to left addition occur because they don’t have a strong knowledge of place value, and they forget or don’t realize that like place values need to be lined up. They might, for instance, add a digit in the tens place to a digit in the hundreds place. Another scenario is a sloppy recording of numbers where a digit is mistakenly added to the wrong column. In left to right addition, the emphasis is on finding a certain place value in each number rather than relying on the place values being aligned. Students, of course, need to be able to recognize place value before they can be successful at this method. For instance, they should be able to recognize that the ones in the numbers: 514, 1499, and 321 are in the tens, thousands, and ones places respectively. If they can’t, further teaching on place value is required before addition can be taught effectively.

Although left to right addition has several advantages, it isn’t suggested that you scrap everything else. Learning a wide variety of addition methods allows you latitude in problem solving situations. By teaching students this method, you give them another option when they are tackling addition questions.