Explain or critique something you learned in your courses at Memorial University.

I am a full-time student at Memorial University of Newfoundland. I am enrolled for Bachelors of Technology in engineering program. Currently, I am registered for five full-time courses such as for the fall 2011. Out of which three courses are on-campus and two of them are online such as distance education.

The courses which I am taking on-campus are BUSI 1000, STATS 2500 and ENGL 102F. I learned a lot from these courses at MUN. BUSI 1000 is the basic introductory course of business in society. I am taking this course as an elective. In this course I learned the basic of business that what terms basically business uses. In addition to this I learned different marketing strategies which a specific business uses. The identifications of several private enterprises. Moreover, the brief explanation about ethics which involves in the business that how individuals develop their personal codes of ethics and why ethics are important in the workplace. e.g., if there is a printer in an office which is only used for business and office work, but if someone uses that printer for personal use then this is against the ethics. I also learned several challenges and opportunities in the business environment.

STAT 2500 is the course name for statistics. This course is basically for the students of business and arts. In this course I learned about basic mathematic terms. I was able to differentiate between quantitative and qualitative. Quantitative is a numerical value whereas qualitative is non-numerical values. I was also able to learn about the calculations of mean, mode, median and standard deviation. Moreover, I was able to know about probability, discrete random variables, the binomial distribution, the normal distribution and sampling distributions. The probability is more focused on union and intersections. In union we just make an order of the numbers while in intersection we take commons between two samples such as A and B. In addition to this I was able to solve all these calculations using the software named as Minitab which is used to calculate all these calculations without calculating them manually.

ENGL 102F is a course which I have to take in order to get access for other future courses. In this course I learned a lot about writing techniques and grammatical terms. I was able to learn 1st and 2nd conditional sentences, use of after, before, when, if, use of for and since, use of non-restrictive relative clauses (who and which), passive voice, prefixes, present perfect and simple past, vocabulary and verbs. The instructor taught us all these terms in a way of online quizzes which were as practice for us and I learned from those practices. Whatever I learned from those practices, now I am using all those terms in my writing. The current topic which I am working on is the blog. In this blog I have to add three posts such as the first post should be a commentary on the article, the second post should be about something I learned at Memorial University and the third post should be to summarize a section of a textbook and give an opinion. This assignment is very interesting because I was able to learn about the blog and how to create this blog.

The courses which I am taking as distance learning/education are MSTM 4020 and MSTM 4040. I learned a lot from these courses and found extremely helpful. MSTM 4020 is the course name for Economic Management for Technologists. In this course I was able to know about the principles of economics with respect to engineering and technological projects. The basics of economics are highlights with an interests and the time value of money. Moreover, I learned that project selection is based on the present worth and benefits of cost ratio. This course was designed by our instructor in a way that it consisted of several online assignments, two mid terms and one final exam. I have excelled all the assignments and a mid term.

MSTM 4040 is the course name for Project Management Technologists. In this course, I was able to learn essential skills needed for a successful project manager. I was also able to learn about planning, scheduling tools and techniques, and monitoring used for a technical project. This course is itself incredibly interesting course as it kept me very busy in this course. This course was breakdown into several steps which included the online discussion forum which is marked in the evaluation.

In conclusion, all the above courses itself are tremendously appealing and exciting. I learned a lot from these courses. I would recommend my friends and classmates to take these courses as their electives if they are suppose to take any.

Humans and Sustainability: An Overview

According to Tyler Miller, environmental science is a study of how the earths work, how we interact with the earth, and how to deal with the environmental problems.

When we first start reading about the environment, it comes to our mind several problems to sustain the natural resources such as deforestation and replanting them, the air pollution which affects the environment, killing the extinct animals. e.g., the animal "deer" is limited in the world, so killing this animal is a non-sustainable process. All these processes make a remarkable issue on the environment.

The most important step towards sustainability is to look for the most vital resource without which the creature does not survive. To help sustaining these natural resources, it is not only the responsibility of the government but also it is the responsibility of the human being. The responsibility of the government includes of issuing laws and regulations about deforestation and replantation of the trees in broad areas. The responsibility of the human being includes to avoid killing the extinct animals and the government should take an action on those people who goes against these laws. As the population is increasing the air pollution is increasing too due to the vehicles. The government should look over the problem of vehicle engines. Those vehicles which are affecting the air pollution should be inspected yearly and should be fined accordingly. So that the air pollution decreases. Those animals which are extinct on the Earth, the government should give special protection to those habitants.

In conclusion, the government and the human being both should work together to sustain the natural resources.


Reference

Miller, G. T. (2009). Humans and Sustainability: An Overview. In J. Baker-Gonzalez and E. Blau, World of Reading 3 (pp. 169-174). Pearson Education.

Should Foreign Students take an English name?

Foreign students come from different parts of the world to the universities to gain their education. Most of the international students change their names to English or Western names.

In their opinion, they think that changing their real names is very fair due to which they are easy for others to remember, able to make English friends and have access to many opportunities. e.g., they can get job interviews easily. Some of the students in their own countries are asked or forced to change their real names so that the instructors are able to pronounce their names clearly and easy to remember their names.

But in my opinion, I think changing your real name to an English name is unfair. If you retain your real name, people will know you better. People would be able to know about different cultures. Most of the people are fond of knowing different cultures. So if you retain your real name, you would be recognized and would have a chance to meet new friends. Secondly, instead of changing the full name, you can make it short. e.g., Tameem = Tam but do not change the full name as our name comes from our culture and our grandparents. It is true too that some of the names are too difficult to pronounce but instead of changing the full name it is better to change the spelling of the name so that it is easier to pronounce.

If you change your real name to an English name, it is not 100% guaranteed that you will get the job. There  are many students and employees from different parts of the world working in Canada with their real names.