Here’s an essay that’s sure to make an admissions officer reach for the triple grande latte to stay awake
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Wild Talk - Radiolab - 1 views
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Two stories: First, about the Diana monkey (alarm calls), with some new insight. Second, about prairie dog chirps, which have "a grammar of color, shapes, and sizes."
Harper Lee And Exploitation In The Name Of Literature - 1 views
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When I first heard the news about this "Sequal" to To Kill A Mockingbird, I was just as excited as most of the rest of the public. I came across this article that explained the controversy over this book. Although lengthy, it provides great points and insights to the situation. (Much more than the news companies reveal when reporting the story)
Language and Emotion - Insights from Psychological Science - 5 views
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We use language every day to express our emotions. This article explores whether or not language has the ability to affect what and how we feel. Two new studies from Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, explore how interaction between language and emotion influences our well-being. -
whether verbalizing a current emotional experience, even when that experience is negative, might be an effective method for treating for people with spider phobias -
We use language every day to express our emotions, but can this language actually affect what and how we feel? Two new studies from Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, explore the ways in which the interaction between language and emotion influences our well-being.
Science of Lying (Scishow) - 2 views
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An insightful look at the process of lying, done by Hank Green on Scishow.
Why Do Some People Have an Accent? - 2 views
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This article offers brief insight into the two types of accents, 'foreign' and 'regional,' and the difference in sound pronunciation between people from different areas.
Which Will Get You Further: Fitting In or Standing Out? - 1 views
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Is it better to fit in or stand out? That question has vexed all of us at one time or another, from teenagers to aspiring executives to sociologists. The answer, says Stanford Graduate School of Business professor Amir Goldberg: It depends.
How Hateful Rhetoric Can Create a Vicious Cycle of Dehumanization - 0 views
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As anti-Muslim rhetoric increases, American officials are cautioning that it could validate extremists' perceptions that Americans are waging a war on Islam. New research from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management lends credence to this fear. Research conducted by Ntour Kteily (Northwestern assistant professor of management and organizations), Gordon Hodson (Canada's Brock University), and Emile Bruneau (U. Penn. neuroscientist) shows that feeling dehumanized by another group can lead you to dehumanize that group in return, which can increase support for aggressive actions against them. Meaning, if Americans think that Muslims see them as savages, Americans will be more likely to return the "favor," perceiving Muslims to be savages. And both groups will be more likely to support aggressive acts-like drone strikes or torture-against the other.
Your Facebook sharing can reveal hidden signals about you - 0 views
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Our social media activity can give extraordinary - and often unintentional - insights into our mental wellbeing. Little wonder that professionals whose job it is to look after our emotional health are now exploring how they can use these signals to take the 'emotional pulse' of individuals, communities, nations and even the entire species. Apparently, the words that're said are less important than the category or the frequency of posts in re: painting user profiles.
Don't Let Sleeping Metaphors Lie | Psychology Today - 5 views
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Language describes reality. That is its primary, most self-evident function. We use words to define for ourselves, and communicate to others, what's going on out there. Less evident, but almost as potent, is language's role in shaping reality. The meaning of what is out there changes with the words we choose to describe it.
If Your Shrink is a Bot, How Do You Respond? - 1 views
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An interesting story--my students, you might recall Sheryl Turkle of MIT referencing robot therapists in her TED talk. USC has developed a robot therapist, Ellie, designed to talk to people who are struggling emotionally, and to take their measure in a way no human can. Originally developed to work with military PTSD patients, Ellie's purpose: to gather information and provide real human therapists detailed analysis of patients' movements and vocal features, in order to give new insights into people struggling with emotional issues. The body, face and voice express things that words sometimes obscure. Ellie's makers believe that her ability to do this will ultimately revolutionize American mental health care.
'Some of the More Mundane Moments in Life Make Great Essays' - NYTimes.com - 26 views
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“I spent [choose one: a summer vacation/a weekend/three hours]
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struck by the number of students rhapsodizing about expensive travel or service projects in exotic locales
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Elaborate and fancy isn't always better than simple and concise
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I was surprised by this article and by the fact that sometimes, our seemingly boring moments in life has the potential to transform into a great college essay. This article made me change my views of college essays and reexamine what topics I want to write about. - ...15 more comments...
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I liked the ideas this essay shared because I realized that if I were to have written my college essay prior to reading this article, my essay would've been similar to the majority of students who submit college essays. This site stresses the importance of being different and that having humility, humor, and personal stories in college essays are attractive. But the article did imply that there are limits and that some things such as torturing animals and showing inconsideration to other people, are inappropriate. -
It seems more common now for counselors and advisors to recommend writing about everyday things, but with our own personal "flair." So it was helpful to read in this article about how there are some negative everyday experiences that are important to leave out.
Forensic Linguists Use Spelling Mistakes to Help Convict Criminals | VICE | ... - 0 views
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Interesting article/interview with a forensic linguist gives insight into how exactly they catch criminals.
Gestures Offer Insight: Scientific American Mind - 4 views
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"Various language families differ in how they distribute components of meaning between speech and gesture--at least when referring to directional kinds of information. [...] De Ruiter is examining in greater detail the presumed interaction between speech and gesture for pointing motions. He has recorded dialogues between two people telling each other stories and has found that an extended gesture--such as when someone points up toward the sky--tends to delay the verbalization to which it refers ("the plane ascended at a steep angle"). Gestures also adapt to speech; when a storyteller has misspoken and stumbles momentarily, a preprepared gesture appears to be held in abeyance until the speech component is running smoothly again."
TED Talk: "What Our Language Habits Reveal" by Steve Pinker - 1 views
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"So to sum up: language is a collective human creation, reflecting human nature -- how we conceptualize reality, how we relate to one another -- and by analyzing the various quirks and complexities of language, I think we can get a window onto what makes us tick."
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A great insight on how revealing of our personalities our use of language can be.
Niche Construction - 1 views
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An important insight from NCT is that acquired characters play an evolutionary role, through transforming selective environments. This is particularly relevant to human evolution, where our species appears to have engaged in extensive environmental modification through cultural practices. Such cultural practices are typicaly not themselves biological adaptations (rather, they are the adaptive product of those much more general adaptations, such as the ability to learn, particularily from others, to teach, to use language, and so forth, that underlie human culture) and hence, cannot acurately be described as extended phenotypes (1). Mathematical models reveal that niche construction due to human cultural processes can be even more potent than gene-based niche construction, and establish that cultural niche construction can modify selection on human genes and drive evolutionary events (2-4). There is now little doubt that human cultural niche construction has co-directed human evolution in this manner (5)
The College Admission Essay: How to Conceive, Create, and Perfect It - 4 views
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Getting to the point where you are writing from your heart is the first step to producing an outstanding college admission essay.
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I believe this is very key. As it goes to say, it is really difficult. I just think that this is the first thing people need to realize.
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Getting to the point where you are writing from your heart is the first step to producing an outstanding college admission essay.
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Huge point brought up here: the essay can be about really anything as long as it's incredibly sincere and you understand and mean everything you're writing about. The bit about the essay being "funny, insightful, and wickedly intelligent" should come from your own personality if you're writing about something you truly know.
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Even though this is an .com site it's written by someone who has experience in this matter and it's really interesting because it basically tells you what to do. And when the author did this, he got into a really good school. -
This website has many well-written examples of sample college essays. The only problem with these is that they are not categorized into either well written, or really long. How to conceive, create, and perfect it essay is right because it is very difficult to start your essay. Basically this essay is talking about how this person got writer's block, and how she overcame it.
Writing the "Perfect" Essay - Office of Undergraduate Admission - Boston College - 7 views
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The best essays that we read are ones that tell us not only about a specific event, mentor, excursion, or accomplishment, but also tell us how the writer has been affected by their experiences.
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You want to tell college's about yourself, so if you talk about your grandma being your mentor, make sure you explain how she has inspired you. Explain her existence has affected you.
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Many of us feel that in the fall of your senior year, the college essay is the only portion of your application remaining on which you can still have a significant influence. Granted, you will need to continue working hard in your classes, but you have already met people who will speak highly of you in a recommendation, you have already been involved in various extra-curricular activities, and you have likely completed your standardized examinations. The one remaining portion is the college essay. We realize how hectic your senior year is, but take advantage of this opportunity.
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Many of us feel that in the fall of your senior year, the college essay is the only portion of your application remaining on which you can still have a significant influence. Granted, you will need to continue working hard in your classes, but you have already met people who will speak highly of you in a recommendation, you have already been involved in various extra-curricular activities, and you have likely completed your standardized examinations. The one remaining portion is the college essay. We realize how hectic your senior year is, but take advantage of this opportunity.
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Essays should be more about how an experience affected a writer, and should give insight about the writer than just telling a story. Doing so will personalize the essay more and let the reader set the writer apart from the other thousands of applicants. -
The writer can make their essay sound more personal by focusing on specific events or qualities within a larger event. -
The writer needs to be able to convey how they changed or show specific qualities that they gained from events that impacted their lives. rather then just explaining a story in their lives because the admissions officer wont be able to know the real you.
Keywords hold our vocabulary together in memory - 0 views
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In a study published in the Journal of Memory and Language, Michael Vitevitch, KU professor of psychology, found there are words, like main players in a social network, that hold key positions on the word network and that we process them more quickly and accurately than similar words that they hold together in our memory." The finding may help lead to new insights into developmental and acquired language disorders and treatments for those ailments.
Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year Is Not a Word - 2 views
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And the 2015 word of the year: the emoji for "tears of joy." Whereas traditional alphabet scripts struggle to keep pace with 21st century rapid communication, emoji, in contrast, "are becoming an increasingly rich form of communication, one which transcends linguistic borders...They can serve as insightful windows through which to view our cultural preoccupations."