Beauty Therapy for Wellness | Business Plan

Magnificence Therapy for Wellness | Business Plan Section 2 The Business My Background: The thought for this business has been getting arranged out in my brain since I initially started examining Beauty Therapy at James Watt College. My long periods of client support understanding, that I increased past to beginning school, in friendliness both in an administrative job and a colleague will work well for me and can be adjusted to suit the magnificence and corresponding treatments industry. At the point when I began I knew my ultimate objective was to set up my very own independent venture utilizing the capabilities I was to pick up, I didn't, anyway acknowledge at the time that I would proceed to seek after integral treatments. During the 3 years I have been examining I went from magnificence, to spa course and afterward onto Complementary Therapies, I have been a committed understudy all through this time and consistently took on any test given to me. I have buckled down all through this time and as an outcome to the difficult work I have done I was extended to an employment opportunity in the 5 star Blythswood Square Spa where I had done my position, I have been there for very nearly 2 years now where I have built up my ability and information base, this had permitted me to work with a wide range of individuals and experience the work I need to do. I have additionally had the chance to observe direct numerous great working practices, which has given me a lot of thoughts of how I can see my business and medicines running. Just as my time in school and the spa I additionally accomplish telecommute with customers I have met through dear loved ones. This has let me construct a little customer base with whom I can swear by at calmer occasions in the start of my new pursuit. I have included a duplicate of my CV in Appendix 2. The Idea: The thought for my business will be a room in the nearby wellbeing place in which I will offer reciprocal treatments. Back rub will be the primary center, I will offer constrained fragrance based treatment utilizing pre-mixed oils which have been pre-mixed and named before I get them. The fundamental medicines I will offer will be Swedish back rub, profound tissue knead, sports/therapeutic back rub, Indian head rub, fragrance based treatment (utilizing pre-mixed oils) and facials. I will be working intimately with the medicinal services experts in the inside in which the business is based and will take referrals from them to attempt to help the patients in their human services needs. The business will be not quite the same as anyplace in the region as there are just salons around, which are all significantly more centered around magnificence treatment and nails rather than back rub and corresponding treatments. Business Name: My business name will be A Tranquil Touch, serene methods calm, quiet or tranquil and this is the means by which I plan my business to be. I will expect to consistently have a quiet climate, quiet staff should I have to grow or find support and consistently leave my customers feeling peaceful and loose. The touch part alludes to the back rub medicines I will offer. Position to Date: The entirety of my underlying exploration has been completely aggregated and when I have bought the items and gear required and register that I am independently employed to HMRC I will be in a situation to open. Statement of purpose: A Tranquil Touch will be a position of quiet and peacefulness, as the name recommends. I will offer the most ideal support to my customers through difficult work, superb client care, exclusive requirements and polished methodology. I will plan to give a spot and treatment list for which my customers will wish to return over and over to get the integral treatments they need so as to feel their best. Momentary targets: Throughout the following a year I plan to accomplish ordinary visits from existing customers from the wellbeing community and of my own, nearby new faces through suggestions and with effective publicizing through Facebook, through advancement, bundles and pricelists. Banners will be in plain view in the wellbeing community, town corridors, schools and other open structures around, value records will be accessible in different areas all through the different areas also. To guarantee a productive business later on and build up a sound demographic I will publicize as much as Possible before opening and in the first year refreshing and rustling up new business through advancements and promoting as and when is vital. Long haul goals: My focus on what's to come is to grow the business into a wellbeing community, where customers can come to unwind, loosen up, tweak their psyches and bodies and improve any clinical they are accepting from the NHS. I would want to have a fruitful business and utilize staff to run a room each at whatever day. I might likewise want to incorporate a wonder room as a major aspect of the business to enable customers to look tantamount to they feel, patterns are quick moving notwithstanding and keeping in mind that I will endeavor to proceed with my own learning and that of my staff, I would take over as an overseeing job giving medicines as and whenever the situation allows. I will consistently be 100% engaged with my business, steady to workers, continually taking a gander at things through the clients eyes while giving the most ideal customer venture for all. Industry Analysis Circulation Chanel: A Tranquil Touch, based inside Port Glasgow Health Center, is an all encompassing salon with a well disposed and loosened up ethos in which gives an exclusive requirement of back rub administrations. The technique for circulation is immediate appropriation as the administration is coming legitimately from myself to my customers and they go to the premises. Rivalry: For A Tranquil Touch I need to separate myself from different salons in the region that offer a comparable kind of administration. In the wake of investigating I found that there are 4 salons in the encompassing region of Port Glasgow Health Center, who are my immediate rivals. There is a hole in the region for an assistance which focuses on reciprocal treatments, gaining practical experience in back rub and which isn't centered around excellence medicines yet hopes to improve the wellbeing and prosperity of its customers. Subsequent to having conveyed a survey (remembered for addendum 3) and addressing my own customers I have increased through versatile administrations, I discovered that they need a business they can feel sure will furnish them with administrations and medicines to supplement and improve the human services they are getting from the NHS. A great many people appear to be uninformed of the additional advantages of back rub or don't believe that beauty parlors are the best spot to get these medicines (a few instances of the returned surveys are remembered for addendum 4). Direct Competitors Tres Mar: 5 Church Street, Port Glasgow, PA14 5EH are the salon in my general vicinity I consider to be my most grounded rivals. They offer fragrant healing, reflexology and chiropody just as back rub, facials and sports rub. Right now they are frequently completely reserved yet this generally with nails, waxing and the other excellence medicines they offer. For whatever length of time that I keep my costs low I ought to have the option to focus on my customer base and keep them. I will likewise offer distinctive opening times keeping my room open late when they are not so as to target customers subsequent to working hours (I have incorporated a duplicate of the treatment value list in informative supplement 5). Amethyst Hair and Beauty: King Street, Port Glasgow are the nearest salon to the wellbeing community where I will be based, right now they do offer facials yet have no body knead medicines on their treatment menu as they offer increasingly shallow medicines, for example, nails, lashes, waxing and hair dressing. This ought to be of incredible advantage to me. I may likewise attempt to cause a connection with the salon where we to can offer referrals to our customers (I have incorporated a duplicate of the treatment value list in addendum 5). The other 2 salons in the territory are the Relaxation Room and Brown Street Hair and Beauty. Both of these salons are moderately new and furthermore offer for the most part excellence medicines, as they are not yet entrenched inside the region and have not done much in the method of publicizing I don't consider them to be a significant danger, as long as my promoting is done well I am certain I can set up my business in the region without an excess of trouble in the method of rivalry. Operational Plan Administrations: I intend to offer various sorts of back rub which will be Swedish, Aromatherapy (utilizing pre-mixed oils), profound tissue, sports/healing, Indian head, bamboo, hot stones and facials in any case. I will offer full body and have numerous alternatives for part body which will be back, neck and shoulders, facial, scalp neck and shoulders, legs and feet, hand and arm, stomach and chest, neck and shoulders. All back rubs will be redone to address the issues of the customer and will along these lines be bespoke, this is something totally not quite the same as that which is offered in any of the encompassing salons and will be my primary selling point. Cost: The lease for the space for the first 2 months will cost me  £600. The room is in stroll in condition and needs no improving, because of the particular idea of the business I will require next to no hardware which is knead bed at approx  £350, hot stone radiator and stones  £100, a hot towel bureau  £150 and a choice of towels (enormous and little), face fabrics and gloves on which I gauge I should go through  £100 regardless. My different costs will be items and consumables, for example, sofa move, spatulas, bowls, emergency treatment unit, grapeseed oil, pre-mixed fragrance based treatment oil, chemical, toner, cover, exfoliator, cotton cushions, tissues, knead cream and lotions all of which I can get for a surmised cost of  £200 to kick me off. I can get the entirety of this from excellence express which will downplay my delivery costs. As I plan on paying my protection with my own cash I gauge I will require a rough aggregate of  £1500 to kick me off. Lawful Entity: The lawful element I will exchange under will be as a sole dealer as I will be working for myself, leasing a room and exclusively answerable for firing it up. Hence, there are no specific legitimate customs to cling to and no arranging consent is required as the transport

Goodwill Stores A Business Case Free Essays

The condition given portrays how significant money limits are when investigated, all things considered. The last forces account holders to pay on time their liabilities and when they do as such, picking up derivations on their payables to one or a few people (their lenders). Appropriately, it additionally features some shift of norms as businesspersons become progressively mindful on the best way to oversee or control the said conclusions. We will compose a custom paper test on Altruism Stores: A Business Case or on the other hand any comparative subject just for you Request Now Like in the given circumstance wherein the money limits were as yet recorded however paid after the markdown period where the business accused the sorting room or the mail station for the deferral (utilizing the long procedure the explanation of default of installment). In all probability, in that given case, just a couple of segment of the money rebate will be depleted against protest which, I believe, is a bit of leeway to the bank (from 4% money markdown to 3% due to delay) since that doesn't totally debilitate the sum of money rebate. In addition, indebted individuals regularly perceive and acknowledge that cause making the full installment despite everything fall on the rebate time frame however was truly paid past it. So the firm, rather than paying their obligations on legitimate time (w/rebate), expands their genuine installment on it utilizing the cash to some more exchanges that includes credit terms or understanding. Ulysses, being another representative of the organization, would just follow or hang on into that â€Å"special norm† examined to him by Lavares; that standard that absolves a portion of our regarded information relating a specific business idea. Most firms, particularly the low winning one, will probably be actuated by such having their explanation â€Å"Other organizations do it anyway† (Peer pressure) and the reasoning that it is so conceivable and by one way or another licit. Given these helpful favorable circumstances doing such, it is still best to follow things in accordance with some basic honesty or on what is correct (installment on the best possible rebate time frame). By that, in any event, he would guarantee that he won't make some hard memories when dozing around evening time. Conversation 1. What are the moral contemplations for this situation? Once more, it is still best for account holders to pay their obligations inside the best possible rebate time frame (security of self and of business). Considering these â€Å"ethical considerations† that must be watched or, more than likely the firm will endure their relating outcomes, we may attest to the potential-burdensome nature that incompliance of account holder may offer. Given the way that lenders may interest for exposure on specific pieces of his debtor’s record, the last ought to at any rate be arranged and has a valid justification out of that, ought to have the option to elucidate something significant on it (permitting the money rebate), and possibly present substantial confirmations that is appropriate and sensible or, in all likelihood he would endure the thing in addition to harms. Given the rights in completely inspecting the record (by investigating the record of money to check if the borrower truly paid inside the rebate time frame), the bank may know whether the account holder genuinely paid on that day or not. Another point here will be the need of loan bosses of cash on the last date of rebate period. Since no cash was gotten by him, it is obvious that he some way or another endured something (for example he likewise has an obligation to somebody). Furthermore, the best possible or simply solution for that will be the undoing likewise of the money rebate he gave his borrowers (the individuals who pay past the markdown period and keep on accusing the mail station, and so on to support the money rebate). The issue in those contemplations is that lone a couple applies it. They simply keep everything, the activities, quick and in accordance with their rivals and clients’ needs without worry to the key standards they ought to apply (realizing just is inconsequential). 2. Who are the partners that are hurt or profited in this circumstance? Account holders, given the last mentioned, ought to likewise remember that the in time when they are currently in the situation of a loan boss allocating money limits, there is an incredible chance of them experiencing with the end goal that would likewise defer the correct date of installment yet still get the money markdown through reasons and reasons. Here, it would be preference if the loan boss would not permit such on the grounds that he himself really did likewise in time he was a borrower. This suggests the reasonableness today that most would consider or recognize money limits regardless of whether they are paid somewhat late, contingent upon the circumstance. Once more, the embodiment of tempt is here that powers lenders to overlook not-on-time installments. Having that specific circumstance, we may show up or know that there are people profiting and not profiting by it. The individuals who profit by it by and large would be the account holders. They are the people absolved from the deferral in installment or simply endure a little decrease in the markdown rate concurred. Another advantage out of that would be the possibility that they could animate more the inflows and outpourings of the firm’s cash. Those marketing firms that issue charge deals receipt in a large portion of his exchanges frequently advantage from these (enormous receivables all subject to money markdown). Likewise, loan bosses are people hurt out of it. Damage here would rely upon the need of bank for cash on the grounds that once more, there are situations where installment to one is relied on the installment of another. On the off chance that the loan boss couldn't pay his lender and get the rebate sum as a result of no installment of his indebted person, the best cure would likewise be the abrogation of the latter’s option to money markdown. Having all that, we may esteem that the individuals who are new to these sorts of things and thoughts would in all probability be hurt. 3. Should Ulysses proceed with the training began by Philmon? Does he have any decision? At the outset, indeed, he should proceed with the training began by Philmon. He should, from the start, look and see more the circumstance the firm is going up against and the entirety of the issues in it as to the office he was set in. In time he definitely knows the entirety of the business’ complexities and such; he may now begin to see himself as commendable and start to appeal to for correction or recommendation of things and thoughts (development) in agreement to what he esteems increasingly fitting and progressively moral depending on his generous information about the issue and to some degree cause it to relate more with the moral contemplations examined before. Taking a gander at the decisions he has given this circumstance, I think he has many. In the event that he regularly feels uncertain taking a shot at such thought that it might be licit or not, he would not have the option to perform well his activity on the firm and would ideally be set in another firm that generally simply do something very similar. Given that reality, it is still best just to go on with it and gradually improve the things by means of suggestions, proposition, and so on. Suggestion First would be for the firm to pull back and arrange all its late installments and pay them rather on schedule. At that point center around things the business could loan or offer credit to (amplifying the chance to gracefully advance). So in the opportune time, they would begin getting their ideal cash close by adequate to cover what they will give their indebted individuals. Beside security, doing such may give a decent mental impact to laborers like Ulysses who takes part in getting ready and dating of checks. Having such instead of work, the constant quintessence of inspiration will almost certain be watched and brought driving tasks up in an increasingly gainful structure. Furthermore, developments, authority, collaboration, and so forth would likewise rise. Step by step instructions to refer to Goodwill Stores: A Business Case, Papers

Determination of % Composition of Pennies Using Redox and Double Displacement (Precipitation) Reactions Essay Example for Free

Assurance of % Composition of Pennies Using Redox and Double Displacement (Precipitation) Reactions Essay Presentation: Oxidation includes the addition of electrons of hydrogen or the loss of oxygen or reduction in oxidation state. On the off chance that zinc totally responds with HCL, at that point the hypothetical yield of copper ought to be equal to the real yield. Reason: In this lab, we will decide the percent creation of an advanced (post-1982) penny by utilizing a solid corrosive to respond and break up the zinc center, leaving just the copper covering. When just copper remains, we will contrast its mass with the whole mass of the penny to decide the amount of a penny is copper and what amount is zinc. 1. Acquire one 50.0 mL measuring utencil, and mark the recepticle with your NAME and HOUR. 2. Acquire a penny dated 1982 or later. Wash the penny with cleanser and water to get it clean. 3. Utilizing a triangular record to make FOUR oppositely-set little sections into the edge of the penny (the imprints with be roughly 90 degrees separated. The sections must be sufficiently profound so the zinc is uncovered, yet not all that profound that the pennys mass is enormously influenced. 4. Clean the top and base surface of the penny with steel fleece until it’s gleaming. Flush the penny in CH3)2CO and dry it on paper towel. 5. Decide the mass of the penny on the parity, and record the mass in the table on the base of the page. Expelled the penny from the equalization utilizing tweezers and spot it in its container. 6. While wearing gloves, cautiously empty 50 mL 3M HCl into the measuring utencil. 7. Spot your marked measuring glass under the smoke hood to respond. Watch the impact the corrosive has on the copper outside of the penny. Inquiries to reply to help manage the advancement of methods for the assurance of the percent copper and zinc in pennies through titration and gravimetric procedures: 1. What is the heaviness of a post 1982 penny? 2.5 grams 2. What is the percent copper and zinc in a post 1982 penny? 97.5% zinc, 2.5% copper 3. What number of grams of copper and zinc are in a post 1982 penny? 97.5 grams zinc, 2.5 grams copper 4. What number of moles of copper and zinc are in post 1982 pennies? 5. Compose a decent response of zinc with HCl. Zn(s) + 2HCl(aq) ZnCl2(aq) + H2(g). 6. What number of moles of HCl are expected to respond totally with the entirety of the zinc in a post 1982 penny? 2.5 7. In a system created to decide the percent zinc in post 1982 pennies, 50 ml of a HCl arrangement was utilized to respond (break down) the entirety of the zinc in the penny. To guarantee total response, the arrangement contains twice the same number of moles of HCl that is really required. What centralization of HCl ought to be utilized? In the situation portrayed in issue 7, what is the sum (in moles) of overabundance (unreacted) HCl in arrangement? 9. What number of moles of NaOH would be expected to totally respond with the entirety of the abundance HCl decided in issue 8? 10. As portrayed in issue 7, a methodology was created to decide the percent zinc in post 1982 pennies. In that system 50 ml of a HCl was utilized to respond (break down) the entirety of the zinc in the penny. To guarantee total response, the arrangement contains twice the same number of moles of HCl that is really required. To decide the percent zinc in the penny, the abundance (unreacted) HCl was titrated with NaOH. Decide the grouping of NaOH required on the off chance that you need to utilize around 25 mL of NaOH to titrate the abundance HCl. 11. Compose the reasonable compound response of zinc with HCl (same as issue 5). Is the result of this response solvent in watery arrangement? 12. Compose the reasonable compound response of the result of the response depicted above (issue 11) with NaOH. Is the result of this response dissolvable in fluid arrangement?

A Patriarchal World Essay -- essays papers

A Patriarchal World John Bodnar says it well when he recommends that the focal point of regular day to day existence was to be found in the family-family. It was here that past qualities and present truths were accommodated, inspected on an understandable scale, assessed and intervened. This affirmation suggests that the worker family-family unit is the vehicle of digestion. I will make this attestation a stride further and inspect all the more explicitly the ground-breaking job of the male centric dad inside Anzia Yezierska's book Bread Givers and Barry Levinson's film Avalon. Yezierska's topic strikingly delineates the requirement of a man centric world, while Levinson represents the procedure of absorption and the outsider, presently American, family and its decay. In this paper, I will epitomize how the male centric dad, Sam Kochinsky (Armin Mueller-Stahl) and Reb Smolinsky are the key determinant of the elements by which the family absorbs. In digestion, you are said to fit in with your environmental factors. Absorption is a procedure by which you accommodate the perfect with the real world. Managing for all intents and purposes three ages of a whole Jewish American worker experience, Levinson delineates not really the converging of two societies, however potentially the spoiling of credibility, obfuscating (recollections of) the natural the scoundrel being the TV. The upbeat network of more distant family is, at long last, displaced by the gleaming simpleton box that executes discussion and transforms its rural crowd into zombies. In Yezierska's work, she exemplifies the battle between the Old World and the New World. The male centric dad, speaking to conventional Jewish ways, and Sara Smolinsky, the courageous woman, battling against her dad with the craving to accommodate with the real world. In Bread Givers, Yezierska emblematically delineates Sara as the settler separating her ways as she leaves once more on the excursion that was given to her when she showed up by which to change her life-managing the day by day change as she battles to hold together the needs of society and her (families) genuineness in nowadays of profound difficulties. The leader of the family, Reb Smolinsky is a steadily Orthodox Jewish rabbi, who lives by the Holy Torah, and anticipates that his family should do likewise. His rule over the family fortifies Old World, conventional qualities and convictions. Reb holds to the Torah conviction that in the event that they [women] let... ...ggested an adjustment in the expectations that Jules would basically have a superior life than that of a backdrop holder. In setting up TV a New World, Levinson depicts how a modest, vainglorious, poor substitute in some way or another enticed and delighted the family. Maybe Levinson is stating that in spite of the fact that it might be the simpler to meet, digestion is excessively exorbitant. Then again, you have Reb whose obstinate convictions and male predominance combined with an aloof spouse permit him to guarantee power over his girl's lives. Disdain is very harming and isolates families too. Whichever way you take a gander at it the standpoint is ideal for neither digestion nor seclusion. Thus I finish up in saying that the male centric dad has a particularly significant job and keeping in mind that he needs the quality found in Yezierska's character, Reb, (so as to hold the family together) he should likewise be eager to adjust to an evolving reality. Movement is neither a call for digestion nor detachment. Distinction is significant, however why oppose change when you can better yourself simultaneously. List of sources: Levinson, Barry. Avalon. 1990. Yesierska, Anzia. Bread Givers. Persea Books: New York, 1999.

The Taming of the Shrew Essay -- Shakespeare Plays Papers

The Taming of the Shrew In assuming the assignment of coordinating The Taming of the Shrew, Gregory Doran followed in a long queue of executives that were confronted with the test of how to mount one of Shakespeare's difficult plays. The primary issue of the play is the manner by which to manage the ruthless treatment of Katharine by Petruchio. It is male control of the female through viciousness and starvation that inevitable breaks Kate's will and restrains her. The interpretive signal saved to the chief is to choose how totally Kate gets loyal to Petruchio and on the off chance that she really goes gaga for him. There is additionally the general endeavor to mollify the cruelty of the content through presentation, utilizing incongruity to mellow the agonizing activity occurring on the stage. Past creations have discovered shifting methods of managing these issues to make the play absorbable to present day crowds. Incredible freedom is normally taken with the content so as to legitimize the misanthropic suggestions of the play. One significant method of managing the issues of the play is done through the consideration or prohibition of the enlistment. The play opens with the alcoholic Sly being deceived to accept he is sovereignty, and the whole of The Taming of the Shrew is a presentation for his advantage. Its incorporation in this way fills in as a surrounding gadget that can remove the crowd from the troublesome pieces of the show, as the crowd is made aware of the way that they are just viewing a presentation. To avoid the enlistment makes the activity in front of an audience all the more genuine, it is beyond the realm of imagination to expect to dismiss the story as negligible showy behavior. A case of the use of the enlistment is the John Barton creation in 1960, with Peter O'Toole as Petruchio. The cut scenes including editorial from Sly from The Taming of a ... ...o. Plainly Doran didn't see the creation about a clash of the genders, however rather as a romantic tale between two individuals who experience issues identifying with all others around them. Both Kate and Petruchio are reconceived as unreliable individuals who are truth be told, solid willed so as to shroud their feelings of dread of their insufficiencies. Doran discovered inspiration for the activities of the play that depended on content to make an extraordinary perspective on the characters. Holderness, Graham. Shakespeare in Performance: The Taming of the Shrew. Manchester University Press. Manchester. 1989. Holland, Peter. English Shakespeare: Shakespeare on the English stage during the 1990s. Cambridge University Press. Joined Kingdom. 1997. Spencer, Charles. Entertaining, contacting - and wise. London Telegraph. April 2003. Thompson, Ann. The Taming of the Shrew. Cambridge University Press. Joined Kingdom. 2003.

SIPA Energy Association Welcome Message COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY - SIPA Admissions Blog

SIPA Energy Association Welcome Message COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY - SIPA Admissions Blog There are many student groups at SIPA that provide a place for discussion, debate, fun, networking, and friendship.   A full list of student groups can be found by clicking here.   One such group, the SIPA Energy Association, asked me to send out a message to incoming students that selected Energy and the Environment as a concentration.   However I thought it would be nice to post the message for all to view.   Orientation will feature a time to get to know representatives from other groups as well. Dear Incoming International Energy Management and Policy (IEMP) Track Student, On behalf of the SIPA Energy Association (SEA) Board, congratulations on your acceptance into the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) and on your choice to follow the IEMP Track.   The IEMP Track is one of the most prestigious energy programs in the world, and will equip you with the requisite skills to succeed in the dynamic international energy sector. I would like to take this opportunity to briefly introduce you to SEA, a student-run organization whose efforts (with your involvement) will positively complement your academic achievements.   The primary missions of SEA are 1) to build a closely-knit community of students and practitioners of energy, 2) to enhance the energy curriculum by conducting a broad spectrum of activities outside the classroom, and 3) to act as the collective voice of energy students vis-a-vis the Center for Energy, Marine Transportation and Public Policy (CEMTPP), the body which administers the IEMP Track. SEA works closely with CEMTPPs director as well as the IEMP Program Assistant (PA), to schedule guest speakers, panels, site visits, energy-related international trips and much, much more.   Programming for the 2009-2010 academic year is already underway.   You can expect to attend the IEMP fall retreat, the Joint SIPA-SAIS Washington DC Energy Policy and Career Networking Trip, the Annual Alumni Dinner, the NYMEX trading competition, the Spring Energy Symposium and countless individual speakers, to name a few.   In addition, SEA releases a monthly student-run alumni newsletter, and plans to publish the first edition of a student-run SIPA Energy Journal this fall.   Finally, because SEA believes in building comradery amongst energy peers and establishing lasting relationships, we host countless happy hours throughout the year. How can you get involved?   SEA strives to foster a culture of commitment to the energy program.   Thus, we believe the more you become engaged in SEAs mission, the more you will gain personally and professionally during your time at SIPA.   In addition to attending general member events, all SEA members are invited to volunteer to assist with larger events, initiate and execute new projects (subject to the boards approval), or compete for various assistant director or editorial positions.   Please mark your calendars for the First General Member SEA Meeting, scheduled for Thursday, September 10th from 7-9 pm in SIPA IAB room 1512.   At this meeting, you will have the opportunity to meet SEA Board members and learn details about membership and involvement, dues, and perhaps most importantly, be entered into the listserv as well as into the SEA peer networking database to assist you in your career building activities. Until then, please feel free to contact one of the following SEA Board members (according to the first letter of your last name) with any questions about SEA, the IEMP Track and energy curriculum, CEMTPP, SIPA or regarding any other general issues.: Last name A-I contact JP Yorro (President): jpy2103 [at] columbia.edu Last name J-R contact Meaghan Casey (Vice President): mec2175 [at] columbia.edu Last name S-Z contact Jeffrey Klug (Director of Communications): jjk2162 [at] columbia.edu Again, congratulations on your acceptance into the program.   We look forward to meeting you all in September! Sincerely, JP Yorro President, SEA

The Way to Enlightenment Production and Consumption in Nicholson Bakers The Mezzanine - Literature Essay Samples

Nicholson Bakers The Mezzanine suspends time for both the protagonist and the reader, with the escalator serving as a symbol of the productive and consumptive postmodern society. Because of the escalator, the storys narrator and other contemporary office workers have more time to devote to their work and are thus more productive. And while some critics deplore the rate of production and consumption in society and call for a return to the humanist days, Bakers novel posits that the post-modern world actually encourages contemplation; he turns the notion of a hyper-productive, dehumanized postmodern world on its head. Like Prousts madeleine, the escalator ride opens Howies mind to numerous involuntary memories. When he approaches the escalator, his recollections begin: It would have been less cumbersome, in the account I am giving here of a specific lunch hour several years ago, to have pretended that the bag thought had come to me complete and all at once at the foot of the up esc alator, but the truth was that it was only the latest in a fairly long sequence of partially forgotten, inarticulable experiences, finally now reaching a point that I paid attention to it for the first time. (Baker, p. 9)The narrators memories quickly begin to open up, one on top of another, because of a simple lunchtime errand. His contemplation does not need to occur away from the bustle of his workday life, it is his workday life and one of the ubiquitous symbols of postmodern convenience, the stapled CVS bag that facilitates the memories (Baker, p. 9). The phase were in now, is multinational or consumer capitalism . . . and correlated with postmodernism is the world depicted in The Mezzanine (Klages, par. 15). Howies participation in this contemporary capitalist society, where he is both a producer and a consumer, are essential to his enlightenment. The escalator is also a metaphor for the readers endeavor, Reading, as the site where textual mediation is realized, migh t therefore be appropriately described as a vehicle of local transport, of travel without leaving home, in which one moves, metaphorically, on the spot (Chambers, par. 18). The Mezzanine for the reader is what the escalator is for Howie, the vehicle through which time is exploded from its linear standard and depicted more pastiche-like, a narrative style that is common in postmodern literature. The pastiche narrative is similar to the inner mind; it is not linear: digressions counternarrative affinity with the paradigmatic dimension, the dimension of lists and listing, is itself associated with memory, as the faculty that both realizes and mental continuities and, on occasion, interrupts them with sudden disjunctions, or second messages' (Chambers, par. 15). The narrators errands, which must take place during his one-hour lunch break, are the primary message within the story. However, his tasks within this specified period are triggers for the second messages that are essentially Howie meditating on his life. The style of The Mezzanines narrative is the first of several indicators that the novel is Bakers nod to the benefits of a productive and consumptive, i.e. a postmodern, society. Baker rejects grand narratives, favors mini-narratives, stories that explain small practices, local events, rather than large-scale universal or global concepts (Klages, par. 29). Through his seemingly mundane lunchtime routine, Howie is able to peel away at the layers of his life, and it is through these layers or mini-narratives that the reader empathizes with the protagonist and gains a pleasurable shock of recognition (Simmons, par. 18). The narrator is not coming down from on high to tell the reader how things are or should be, he is merely sharing the beauty that he has discovered in his everymans life. Postmodernists pull art back into the maelstrom of daily life; Bakers novel exemplifies this movement (McGowan, par. 2). Like those opposed to postmodernism, Ho wie at first attempts to resist the influences of the world around him by literally shutting out the noise; he uses earplugs both at home and at work. But he eventually recognizes that it is when he is without the earplugs, and allows the world to seep into his consciousness, that he is the most content: Lunch hours I never wore them; and possibly this explained why my thoughts had a different kind of upper harmonic during lunch (Baker, p. 109). His contemplation of the earplugs reminds him of one of the most intimate moments he shared with L., his girlfriend:. . . sometimes, to demonstrate special tenderness, she would get the wooden toaster tongs, take hold of an earplug with them, drop it in my ceilingward ear before I had gotten around to doingso, and tamp it in place, saying, You see? You see how muchI love you? (Baker, p. 110)Despite his best efforts to drown out the productive and consumptive world that surrounds him, Howie becomes engaged in an intimate interaction. Without the noise of postmodern society, he would not be using the earplugs and therefore would not have these moments of contentedness nor his intimate interaction with L. The narrators attempted resistance to the outside world bears both personal and professional productivity. Baker refutes the notion that individuals can enjoy autonomy from capitalism, in The Mezzanine he is acknowledging that the very materials of their work come from the culture . . . the individual creator is permeated with, even constituted by, that culture (McGowan, par. 2). No matter how much one fights the influences of postmodern society, they invariably seep into your world. The carton of milk Howie purchases at Papa Ginos reminds him of a carton of Sealtest milk from his childhood. The milk carton is tied to his thoughts about the disappearance of the milk man and milk bottles, which in turn allows Howie to contemplate the disappearance of his own childhood and transition into adulthood: I have, t hen, only one unit of adult thought about milk to weigh against dozens of childhood units. And this is true of many, perhaps most, subjects that are important to me . . . if I could locate the precise moment in my past when I conclusively became an adult, a few simple calculations would determine how many years it will take before I reach this new stage of life: the end of the rule of nostalgia, the beginning of my true majority. And luckily, I can remember the very day that my life as an adult began. (Baker, p. 47) A simple lunchtime purchase of a cookie compels Howie to purchase a carton of milk that is the key to his consideration not only of the evolution of consumer design (the transition from milk bottles to milk cartons) but the consideration of his own mind, the power of memory, and the relation of both to the passing of time. Howie revisits this particular contemplative vein later in the story, when he recalls his tardiness to work earlier that day: An d this was when I realized abruptly that as of that minute, (impossible to say exactly which minute), I had finished with whatever large-scale growth I was going to have as a human being, and that I was now permanently arrested at an intermediatestage of personal development . . . I was a man, but I was not nearly the magnitude of man I had hoped I might be. (Baker, p. 54)Howie can assess his personal development by means of how he reacts to the products around him, a typical measure of postmodern art that aspired to use the affective power of images much as popular culture does (McGowan, par. 3). With every evolution of the milk container, which is essentially a fetish for the narrator, comes additional knowledge. Bakers narrator possesses a keen intellect that is not limited to his waxing on about consumer items. While some may scorn the postmodernists for their lack of adherence to order and, in literature, the grand narrative, Baker believes that you can appreciat e one while having your feet firmly planted in the other. Howie offhandedly refers to works of art and literature that are not of the postmodern vein, An image came to me Ingress portrait of Napoleon . . . I felt like Balboa or Copernicus (Baker, p. 51). He marvels at the escalator or other developments that are inextricably tied to the postmodern, but he is also transfixed by classic literature: A glowing mention in William Edward Hartpole Leckys History of European Morals (which I had been attracted to, browsing in the library one Saturday, by the ambitious title and the luxuriant incidentalism of the footnotes) was what had made me stop in front of the floor-to-ceiling shelf of Penguin classics at the bookstore on a lunch hour two weeks earlier and reach for the thin volume of Aureliuss Meditations (Baker, pp. 121-122)Howie displays an educated literary sensibility, a wit and erudition that sometimes rises to Nabokovian heights (Simmons, par.10). And Bakers nove l presents a postmodern historical imagination . . . while recognizing the distance between Roman virtue and consumerist zeal . . . refuses to see that distance as a disabling one (Simmons, par. 45). Unlike their critics, postmodernists are not elitist; rather they embrace all of their influences be they classical or contemporary. The garbage truck, a symbol of the waste of mass production and consumption, is also a fetish for the narrator. And like the milk containers, the garbage struck allows Howie to view himself and his thinking in relation to the larger time/space continuum: But it was the garbage truck I saw at age thirty on display against the blue sky that reminded me of my old backdrop discovery. Though simple, the trick was something that struck me as useful right now. Thus, the when I was little nostalgia was misleading: it turned something that I was taking seriously as an adult into something soupier, less precise, more falsely exotic, than it really wa s. (Baker, pp. 38-39)Howie has pronounced his denial of nostalgia and his acceptance of the contemporary. The things that we yearn for from the past were at one time the things that we looked upon with doubt because of their newness. In subscribing to the whims of nostalgia, one can never truly enjoy the present, and becomes stuck in an endless cycle with no reward. Whereas if one seizes upon the present, as Baker demonstrates in The Mezzanine, the bliss of nostalgia can still be accessed but without any of the conscious, negative yearning. The narrator also finds pleasure in the towel dispenser in his offices bathroom. To Howie, the dispenser is an absolute marvel, proof that newness and order still exists: The renewing of newness whether it was for me then, and is still, one of the greatest sources of happiness that the man-made world can offer (Baker, p. 93). And like many of the other objects in The Mezzanine, it reminds the narrator that there are similar elements everywhere, that newness and order exists in new Pez dispensers, in parachutists lining up a plane door to jump, in pinball games and slices of bananas, and finally, in the escalator. There is joy to behold in the disposable world; you just need to be open to the experience. In another nod to the benefits of embracing the world of mass production and consumption, Howie finds pleasure in the vestiges of his consumer life: Just after lunch always seemed to be the time to think about practical things like bills and I cant help mentioning here the rarefied pleasure that I took in handling my finances back then; especially the pleasure of getting in the mail fat envelopes filled with charge statements and their receipts. (Baker, p. 69)The narrators role as a consumer gives him pleasure and a feeling of control. The charge receipts, like the old business cards and paycheck stubs that he refers to in another section of the novel, are proof to Howie and the world that Howie exists . To be a consumer is to know your place in society, and for the narrator that is a powerful thing. Jurgen Habermas and Fredric Jameson, in their attack on postmodernism, insisted that a complete immersion in the local gives us no way to judge it and is thus doomed (McGowan, par. 5). Bakers The Mezzanine proves otherwise. The narrator may begin his contemplation with the local, like his charge receipts, but his judgment of those items and how they are metaphors for his own existence goes beyond the immediate. The impetus for personal improvements should not come down from on high as Habermas and Jameson suggest. When improvements are organic, from the local source, is when they are most effective. It is not necessary for the reader, or for the narrator as he recalls his trip up the escalator, to know the larger stories behind the narrators life or his companys mission: While the problems you were paid to solve collapse, the nod of the security guard, his sing-in book, the es calator ride, the things on your desk, the sight of colleagues offices, their faces seen from characteristic angles, the features of the corporate bathroom, all miraculously expand: and in this way what was central and what was incidental end up exactly reversed. (Baker, p. 92)The details of our existence are what we adhere to, not the grand schemes. As Howie recalls the experience of the escalator ride, and the numerous involuntary memories from that day, it is the minutiae that are brought to mind his own organic recollections. They are the markers in his life, and with the distance of several years, each memory provides for Howie the link to the next, and how each has influences his total being. Critics of postmodernism decry mass production and consumption as signs of the degeneration of culture. Postmodernists, like Baker, argue the opposite. If the values that we attach to mass culture have much to do with whether we think ourselves at the end of empire, at th e dawn of a new age, on the forefront of progress, or just muddling through (Simmons, par. 1), then the postmodernists are the optimists, and in Bakers case, see the society on the forefront of progress. Where modernists seek to find binaries and other signs of order, postmodernists celebrate chaos why attempt to assign order where none exists? Baker and the postmodernists assign responsibility to the individual because they believe that, whether or not order exists, individuals are capable of finding meaning in their existence. The plethora of products and images in the postmodern world merely present individuals with increased opportunity for reflection because each is a stimulant unto itself. The human experience, including contemplation and self-discovery, is seldom orderly. It accepts stimuli to produce involuntary memories, and the more stimuli available, the more occasions for reflection.