If you can already ski pretty well, there might be a career opportunity for you in the form of a recognised ski instructor qualification. Getting qualified could pay for your ski holidays. But first, which qualifications are the most widely recognised worldwide?
Medicine is a highly competitive course to get into at university, but traditionally students from Scotland’s poorest neighbourhoods have not attempted to enter the meritocracy that medical school admissions should be. It does cost a lot of money to put yourself through medical school, but grants, loans and other financial assistance are available. An initiative by Universities Scotland aims to raise awareness of the possibilities open to applicants from poorer backgrounds.
For fans of Star Wars, the attraction is not only the technology and special effects but the epic drama of the characters, the forces acting upon them and the choices they must make. The themes of good and evil, light and dark, the idea of characters choosing their own paths and the far-reaching consequences of those decisions, are appealing and engaging because they are rooted firmly in classic drama and tragedy. The conflict the characters have with their own destinies is central to the franchise, and it is appropriately riddled with philosophical and spiritual questions.
To coincide with Valentine’s Day, an eLearning content provider is offering a free course in Emotional Intelligence for the workplace. Does this mean showering your co-workers with chocolates and teddy bears in the hope that they will like you more? Um, no. Well maybe, but it would be pretty sappy and would probably backfire on you. What this course is about is recognising your own emotions and those of others, acknowledging them, and using that wisdom to defuse conflicts, stop tantrums before they start, and stay cheerful and productive.
Having an ‘ace in the hole’ is a popular expression which means to hold a hidden advantage or secret weapon. It comes from the game of stud poker, a version in which a mix of face-up and face-down cards is dealt at the beginning of a series of betting rounds. The face-down cards are called ‘hole’ cards, and any valuable card that lurks there is called an ‘ace in the hole’.
Many bookshop chains in the United States have a coffee bar where shoppers can read in comfort with a pastry and a skinny latté or caramel macchiato. It’s a pretty good business idea, because even as people are evaluating books and making buying decisions, the store is selling them coffee. For the customer, it beats leafing through books whilst standing in aisles.
What is the real value of an MBA? The skills developed, or the prestige of the issuing institution? For those seeking to add an MBA to their resume, their answer to that question will make the difference between spending thousands of dollars and spending no dollars at all.
Drones are filling our skies. If companies like Amazon manage to negotiate their way past aviation restrictions, drones will soon be delivering our shopping to our homes and workplaces. No longer just toys and aerial photography tools, drones are here to stay. They are used in search and rescue, disaster relief, bomb disposal, military and civilian reconnaissance, archaeology, infrastructure inspection, anti-poaching, conservation, construction and law enforcement.
In 1233 a papal bull decreed that anyone admitted to the mastership at the University of Toulouse should be allowed to teach freely in any other university. Ever since then it has been set in stone that the rite of passage into a master’s degree is a three or four-year undergraduate degree. Pretty much by definition, a master’s is a follow-on from a bachelor’s degree.
Sometimes the Earth bites. Some would say ‘sometimes the Earth bites back,’ with climate change and rising incidents of flooding in mind. But most natural disasters are not man-made. There’s very little we can do at the moment about earthquakes and volcanoes, for example. And hurricanes and typhoons were around long before we started filling the atmosphere with CO2. So studying natural disasters and preparing for them shouldn’t be undertaken with a sense of guilt about self-inflicted damage. It should be done with a simple sense of self-preservation.
Those involved in decision-making in business and law might have heard of the OODA loop. Standing for Observe-Orient-Decide-Act, it is a methodology for treading carefully, avoiding unnecessary conflict, and winning in challenging situations by performing actions based on rational decisions. To make those decisions, one must first fully understand the situation by observation, and get to know one’s opponents’ intentions and likely actions by orientation. The four steps in the loop are:
