piano man essays

piano man essays For my final project, after a lot of research and decision making, I chose Piano Man by Billy Joel. I believe this self-titled record, Piano Man, is truly a magnificent piece of art work, and is a must in everybody's music collection. William Martin Joel was born in the Bronx on May 9, 1949, and was raised in Long Island, New York. At the age of four, Joel began taking piano lessons after his parents noticed his fascination in classical music. He joined his first band about 12 years later, and was known to frequently play the piano in nightclubs. Since then, Billy Joel has recorded 12 albums. Since the beginning of his career, he has received five Grammy's. He was also inducted into the Song Writers Hall of Fame in 1992. Piano Man was recorded in 1971, and was the first song and title track to Joel's break through album, which was released by Columbia Records in 1973. By November of 1986, the album went double platinum. Piano Man was written by Billy Joel, and recorded with essentially with the usage of a piano, harmonica, as well as vocals, which were of Joel himself. This is an electrifying melody that was inspired by Joels experience playing at the Executive Room, which was a piano bar in Los Angeles. The theme of the song is basically of regular customers shuffling through the piano bar on a routine basis, especially Saturday nights, while they enjoy the music and slowly get intoxicated, trying to escape life for a while. From the beginning of the song to the end, Joel seems to describe characters based on real characters that he encountered while working at the Executive Bar. For example, Paul the real estate novelist was about a real estate broker that was writing a book, and there is Davy who's still in the navy, and probably will be for life is a young man that is in the service. The song continues to describe various characters in the bar scene as Billy ...

Hauntington Disease Essays

Hauntington Disease Essays Hauntington Disease Essay Hauntington Disease Essay Huntington disease Name Institute Huntington Disease Introduction Shortage of information about Huntington disease (HD) and its non-clinical management inveigled me into a quest for journal articles about this comparatively rare illness. Having pored over scores of Journal of Clinical Nursing Issues, I stumbled across the article entitled â€Å"Exploring supportive care for individuals affected by Huntington disease and their family caregivers in a community setting†. It immediately arrested my attention, as it touched upon the possible implications of HD for the affected persons, their family members (including those, who could inherit the illness genetically) and caregivers. This article is a collaborative work of the three authors from the University of Plymouth, namely Beverley Soltysiak, Penny Gardiner and Heather Skirton. It was published first on 10 July, 2008. Summary of the article According to McDonald (2003), Huntington disease, formerly known as Huntington’s chorea, is a chronic neurodegenerative condition caused by a genetic mutation in the Huntingtin gene, situated on chromosome 4†. The article traverses implications and supportive care approaches to the individuals, who suffer from Huntington disease. Authors argue that different approaches should be applied to various age categories of the affected. The difference in symptoms may be subtle at first glance, but younger individuals, affected by the long-term conditions, find facilities for their senior counterparts unsuitable. : Important role in this regard belongs to the psychological aspects of the disease. People struck by HD tend to lead sedentary and recluse life. Huntington disease affects badly humans’ perception and cognition, renders their speech unintelligible, and makes them helpless to some extent in general. The far-reaching implications include unsteady gait and severe depressions, which sometimes result in strangers mistaking persons with HD for inebriates or drug abusers. It takes protracted periods of time and frenzied efforts of caregivers to jolt people ffected by Huntington disease out of the so-called â€Å"public alienation†. Authors argue that Huntington disease is debilitating in terms of its impact on the person’s physical condition, but they conclude that it is devouring person’s psychological strength even more eagerly. Sporadic outdoors activities lead to the development of the trait of standoffishness, which, in its turn, hinders the process of treatm ent. This illness is incurable, while affected people usually live no more than 30 years after the emergence of the first symptoms. However, multifarious therapies and techniques aimed at helping patients to cope with the disease are employed (physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy). A multidisciplinary approach is utilized to make sure that complex care needs are met. Research focuses in part on interviewing the afflicted people in order to understand better how to help them to deal with the problems they face every day (anxiety disorders, animosity, petulance, apathy, and obsession). Depending on their willingness to cooperate, separate persons were interviewed individually or in groups. It was found that participants with cognitive deficits or/and psychic disorders did not feel comfortable to communicate with impaired colleagues in groups, and consequently opted for individual interview or shunned it at all. The same specialists facilitated both group and individual interviews. â€Å"Data analysis was undertaken using inductive coding technique† (Miles Huberman, 1994). Interviewers point out that it was a daunting task for them to conduct the research, because cognitive problems of people with Huntington disease barred interviewers from following their train of thought. The heed was paid to the participants’ standpoint on the following themes: 1) Deciding whether to have genetic test; 2) Being given the lethal diagnosis; 3) Disclosure of information about the participant’s being diagnosed with HD; 4) Entering into serious relationship and having a child; 5) Making decisions about how to let children know of the genetic mutation; 6) Observing a family member suffer and wither from HD. Following the diagnosis of one individual, other family members are haunted by or preoccupied with the fear of having genetic mutation. Some people prefer being oblivious to this possibility, while others, prompted by the desire to obtain confidence in future, eagerly agree to undergo a genetic test. In any event, propitious outcome of a genetic test has not proved to be a precondition for sunny disposition. It failed to provide them with a necessary degree of certainty, as those, who turned out to be healthy, started to monitor themselves vigilantly for the possible appearance of symptoms. Evaluation This article provides a comprehensive study of the implications of HD and the means to address the challenges that these implications entail. The main emphasis is placed on those with HD; though, a good amount of attention is also paid to their family members, who are prone to inherit the genetic mutation, and caregivers. Bearing in mind brevity of this research and overall paucity of research into non-clinical management of HD, it would not be wise to grumble about certain details that authors failed to examine. However, I see it fit to note that more approaches of incorporating the afflicted people into the social milieu should have been developed, or at least, more thorough analysis of those listed should have been provided. In terms of interest, I would give this article eight points out of ten. On the plus side, it is laced with excerpts from the interviews, which enable the readers to take a closer look at the problem. Moreover, authors managed to construe the material without abusing the buzzwords. This makes the article flow easily and renders it readable to a broad audience. Given the scarcity of knowledge about this area of health assessment, there are no slightest doubts that further research into this area should be carried out. Many gaps still are due to be filled. Some of the possible directions of research were mentioned above. The information highlighted in this article would be of an utmost importance to the family members of people with HD and those, who take care of these people. Hospital staff could also defer to some advice put forward by Soltysiak et al. This article constitutes a precious groundwork for the researchers, who are interested in this particular area. Conclusion People affected by Huntington disease have to address a series of challenges in everyday life. It should be noted that neither these very people, nor their relatives, lead ordinary life after a family member has een diagnosed with HD. Huntington disease seriously undermines person’s physical and psychological well-being, with psychological effects having far greater scopes. Reluctance of the affected persons to engage in social activities exacerbated by their distorted vision of the world hampers the process of treatment. There is no efficient treatment at all; though, a number of therapies were developed to extenuate the implications. The problem is that at the same time as people with HD need outdoors activities to muster stamina, they also need to muster stamina to go outdoors. By and large, individuals prone to HD feel frustrated at the lack of information about HD held by health professors. References MacDonald, M. E. , Gines, S. , Gusella, J. F. Wheeler, V. C. (2003). Huntington’s disease. Neuromolecular Medicine, 4. Miles, M. , Huberman, A. (1994). Qualitative data analysis – an expanded sourcebook. (2nded. ). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Soltysiak, B. , Gardiner, P. , Skirton, H. (2008). Exploring supportive care for individuals affected by Huntington disease and their family caregivers in a community setting. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 17, 7b, 226-234.

Managing People in Context Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Managing People in Context - Essay Example This report is based on the Human Resource Management issues that the firm is facing and it aims to look into the problem thoroughly and on the basis of the analysis, it will recommend a certain course of actions that could be taken in order to guide top-level management into making the most efficient and wise decision. Â  The report considers that all possible means of data collection that could be taken from the staff reports and feedback from the workers. It then aims to use various theoretical frameworks that are used in the management in order to arrive and recommend certain actions that could solve the problem that the firm is facing. First of all, the overall human resource policy that we are following is very outdated. This policy is based on the slow and gradual progression of employees who move from the lowest grade to the highest. However, this policy is not appreciated by employees anymore who want rapid changes in the fast-moving world. The researcher would have to info rm that sticking to policy would mean that we will not be able to hire the best possible talent that is available in the market and it will also make the retention of existing pool of skilled employees difficult. In the long-run, as a result of this, we will lag behind our competitors if we do not look at our policy and revise it according to the changing needs of the time. The second important issue that there was a little representation of females in our top-hierarchy and similarly, there is an even lesser representation of minority groups.... By not giving the representation to females and minorities on our top-level panels, we are not letting some new and ground-breaking ideas pass through and hence in the future, we might face scarcity of new ideas that could harm the firm's ability to compete with other firms in the same field. (Heery and Simms, 2009) Furthermore, equally perilous issue is the fact that our workforce is facing a lot of stress and little drive towards work due to the way our compensation and reward system has been derived. There are many people who have complained about the fact that their hard performance goes wasted as there are ineffective promotions and motivation policies that our firm has employed. Furthermore, many of our worker are close to joining a trade union. So, we should try solving their grievances now, in order to form a blockade against the union's entry into the industry. Conclusion: I would like to conclude my report by saying that the human resource system that we are following is faulty and outdated. We cannot stick to it as by clinging onto it, I can see various problems approaching the firm which could be very threatening and in the future the firm may have to spend a lot more in order to correct the situation. Recommendations: Immediate revamping of the current human resource policy and changing it with the modern human resource policy that will help the firm in retention and attraction of new talent who will take the firm to new heights. This can be making the current human resource policy more flexible and hiring people at all levels in the hierarchy and not just at the lowest grade. They further enhance the performance of workers by providing them training as