What Makes Studying More Challenging Than It Already Is

According to Kendra Cherry, “Learning is often defined as a relatively lasting change in behavior that is the result of experience.Apart from change, learning is among the constants in the world. From the moment you open your eyes as an infant, you tend to study the sounds and the sights around you. When you go to the park for the first time, you try to learn how to interact with other kids. At home, doing chores, knowing how to dress up, and cleaning after yourself are part of the learning experience, too. All of this aims to prepare us for actual studying that will take place at school.

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The thing is, the more year levels people cover, the more you may find it challenging. “There are gains in learning to be harnessed from putting minds together,” according to Benjamin Mitchell-Yellin, Ph.D. It is the reality that a lot of students deal with. In the beginning, it may be math or science alone. After a year or two, history or chemistry may become difficult as well. There may come a time when everything seems tricky, and you may genuinely consider quitting school before you even develop your multitasking skills.

The question is, why does it happen? What makes studying more challenging than it already is?

Urge To Meet Everyone’s Expectations

Ever since we were kids, we were programmed to want to meet everyone’s expectations. For instance, whenever your mother would say, “Make sure that you will become #1 in class,” that’s what you’d strive to do. If your father said, “I hope you will excel at math,” you might force yourself to make it happen.

However, why should you have to go to such lengths? Is it for praises, recognition, or determination to prove your worth? If any of those acts as your driving force, you will undoubtedly run out of juice before you reach the finish line.

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Incessant Grade-Shaming From Parents

It is fantastic to have moms and dads who never pressure you to be better than your peers. When you come home with a B- or C+, they congratulate you and tell you how proud they are of your accomplishment. Even though you have a tough time during your exams and perhaps only get half of them correctly, they say that it’s okay and that you can always come back stronger next time.

What’s awful is having parents who always nag you to be the best. The typical conversation at home may go like this:

“Mom, I got an A-!”

“Oh yeah? Why didn’t you get an A+?”

“It was an extremely challenging project, and—”

“No more excuses. Any grade below A+ is trash. Do you hear me?”

Now, I am hardly exaggerating. Some parents genuinely talk like that to their kids. They think it will do them good, but that’s not true. Their driving force to study is the fear of getting insulted by their parents and feeling insignificant because their A- is “not good enough.” Because of that, the kids may end up flunking once they crack.

Final Thoughts

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How difficult is it to be helpful to a person who tries their best to get good grades? Sure, not every hard worker has a shot for the gold, but it will still be nice to encourage them to push forward. As Nate Kornell Ph.D. said, “College isn’t all about grades, it’s really about learning.”

A word of advice? Don’t let anyone pressure you and make you feel less because someone is better at something than you. If the opposite happens, you may give up on studying altogether, thinking that you are not smart enough to stay in school.

Ultimately, if learning has become very challenging to you to the point that you have been stressed, anxious, and worried, be enlightened by talking to one of the compassionate online therapists from BetterHelp. Mental health, whether it be mild or severe, is a priority for each counselor of the BetterHelp team. Take that step and get connected to us today.

 

Costless Ways To Drive Traffic To Your Website

Getting traffic can be very simple and fast if you pay for it. You can buy adverts on your niche-related websites or use more sophisticated tools like Google AdWords (Google Pay-Per-Click Solution) and Facebook ads (a similar product from Facebook), to name two of the most famous ones.

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Now, I am aware that not everyone has a massive marketing budget. Paying your way through advertisements, therefore, may not be an option. So, I want you to focus on some free traffic-driving techniques that you can use to drive traffic either to your websites or the merchant’s website.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

If your site or contents are well-positioned on Google among the organic results, you can get a lot of free traffic. According to Hamza Salim Khraim, PhD, “Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an Internet marketing strategy that used widely for improving the volume and quality of customer traffic to a company website through search engines.” However, SEO is a long-term process, and that means that you cannot and should not expect fast results. It can take weeks or even months to get a decent position, and it requires a lot of effort from you.

Forum Marketing

A fast and effective way to get traffic is through forum marketing. All you have to do is find forums that are already on Google in your niche (e.g., category keywords, secondary keywords, brand keywords, and other buying keywords). You can start writing valuable replies and comments and embed your affiliate links inside the post or in your forum signature. Consumers use social media, such as online communities, to generate content and to network with other users,” M. Nick Hajli, Ph.D. pointed out.

Blog Commenting

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Blogs often offer the possibility to comment on posts. If you find popular blogs with posts related to the product you are promoting, you can add your comments with your affiliate links (or links to your site). However, make sure that it adds value to the content, it is natural, and you do not send SPAM.

Facebook Posts

You can post or add your comments also on niche-related Facebook fan pages or groups with your affiliate links or the link to your website. “As a social networking site, Facebook provides people with the tools and opportunity to be of international communities that share opinions and contents and communicate directly with one another or to other large communities,” Church S. Akpan, PhD and co-author wrote.

Twitter Posts

You can find tweets that talk about a product of a category of products related to your niche. Try to help people in their decision-making process by posting tweets with a link to your site or your affiliate link. However, with tweets, it is difficult to add a lot of value in 160 characters, so sending the users to your website where they can get more valuable information before buying is more recommended.

YouTube Videos

You can create YouTube videos with information about your products or categories. Then post your affiliate link in your profile or the video description.

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Yahoo! Answers

Yahoo! Answers is a popular community of people with a lot of questions and answers. You can find niche-related items there, and then you can add your replies with your affiliate link.

Article Directories

Article directories are third-party websites where you can write and publish your articles. It is another good source of free traffic that you can mainly use if you do not have a website yourself.

You should be able to measure where your best traffic comes from. If you do that, you can start trying different techniques before moving on to those channels that bring more traffic and convert better.

Affiliate Marketing Tutorial: What Makes A Niche Good?

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When you are a businessman, the determination can get you far. Without that, you may give up the first time you experience losses. However, having wit is always better than being determined. You may not deal with failure much if your niche is correct.

Let’s see a list of some aspects that characterize the right niche. Be aware that it is not a list of mandatory requirements. You probably will not find the perfect niche that can satisfy all the criteria. Just take it as a guide to choosing the better niche among a list of candidates. 

Market Size

The bigger a niche is, the better it will be for you, considering it remains specific and doesn’t become too general. You should find the right balance between size and specificity, and sometimes it is easy to determine the size of a niche. Say, you want to promote products for golfers. It will probably take two minutes for Google to find how many golfers there are in a specific region or country.

Market Trends

When considering a niche, trends are also significant. You should address several questions when assessing one. “Is it a growing or shrinking niche?” “Is the people’s interest in the products in this niche growing or at least stable?” “Are specific products going to stay in the market for a long time?”

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“Niche markets are an attractive opportunity available to small businesses forced to compete against the scale economies that larger competitors are able to achieve,” Dawn Thilmany, Ph.D.  explains.  Because entering a niche takes time and effort, it is always better to be in a stable or growing market than a stagnant one. You want products that can sell for a long time. This way, you will be able to maximize your results, get recurrent profits, and scale your business for many months to come.

Hungry Niches

“By definition, niche markets are relatively small markets, but this does not mean that niche markets are unimportant or unprofitable,” DeeVon Bailey, Ph.D.,  and co-authors wrote. Some niches are “hungrier” than others. A hungry niche is made up of individuals that are very passionate about a topic or desperate to solve their problems. Dating, dog training, golfing, and weight loss are the best ones to be in, frankly speaking. They are easier to market to, and people usually keep buying several products without stopping in those niches. 

Accessible Niches

Another thing we should consider is how easy it is to get in touch with people in the niche. The easier, the better. You have to promote products to them, and it will be challenging to succeed if they are impossible or tough to reach online. 

Niches With Medium Or High Competition

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A market with high competition is, without a doubt, a lucrative market. It means that the slot is profitable, and people are making money in it. Of course, high competition also means that it is more difficult to reach a potential buyer and stand out. However, your goal is not to dominate a market over your competitors. You only need a tiny piece of a specific market to be successful. “As we have seen, the niche market strategy is often portrayed as a form of defensive “pull marketing” in which management first identifies a niche market, then develops a product for it, and eventually seeks to protect it by raising a variety of barriers,” Mikael Ottosson, Ph.D. and collaborator pointed out. In truth, you can even promote products of different brands in the same niche, regardless of the competition. 

Final Thoughts

If you cannot wrap your head around all this niche talk, that’s okay. Start from the beginning of the article and try to absorb the ideas again. Trust me, doing that will serve you well in the end when you find your niche.

Good luck!

Nucleophile And Base In Substitution And Elimination Reactions

As an organic chemistry tutor, there are a couple of questions that I get asked about a lot. “What is the difference between the nucleophile and the base? “How can I use this to determine substitution and elimination reactions?” 

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Definitions

The first thing that I want to let you know is that a nucleophile and a base are usually the same things.

Nucleophile, as the name implies, has the terms “nucleo,” which means nucleus, and “phile,” which means loving. It gives us an obvious idea that nucleophile is a nucleus-seeking chemical species. And since the core is positively charged, a nucleophile is an atom or molecule that is of negative or partially negative charge. This way, it can attract the positivity of the nucleus. 

A base, on the other hand, is just like what you can see from the acids-and-bases theories of Arrhenius, Bronsted-Lowry, and Lewis. The Arrhenius theory defines base as a molecule that disassociates in water to give off an OH-. However, keep in mind that this will not always be the case in the substitution and elimination processes because your solvent will not always be water. Conversely, the Bronsted-Lowry theory asserts that a base is a proton acceptor that picks up an H+. The Lewis theory states that a base is an atom or molecule that is willing to donate an electron pair to form a bond. 

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Comparisons

Now that we know the three definitions for a base or a nucleophile, let’s compare them with each other. We can exclude the Arrhenius definition because we do not always use water as a solvent.

 An OH-, a species that picks up an H+, and a species that donates a pair of electrons to form a bond; they all sound like the same thing, right? If a molecule wants to pick up a proton, it will “offer” a set of electrons to pick up that proton or that H+. If the proton is H+, we can assume that the base is going to be negatively charged.

Can you see the pattern here? I am not trying to burst your bubble or blow your head off; I want to show you that the nucleophile and the base are more or less the same things. So, the next question is, “How do we tell them apart?” 

Contrasts

It’s all about the context. If you are still getting confused, try to understand this non-complex example: John has a sister, Mary, and a large family. To Mary, John is a brother; to his mother, John is a son. Let me ask you, is John a brother or a son? The answer is that he’s both. It just depends on the context that you’re using this. 

If a molecule participates in nucleophilic substitution, we call this attacking molecule as the nucleophile. If a unit takes part in beta elimination, we call this as the base. But even if it has been established above that finding out whether your nucleophile or base is undergoing substitution or elimination reaction is essential, there are still two other reactions that you should look out for: the 1-type and 2-type reactions.

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1-Type Reaction 

The 1-type Reaction refers to SN1 and E1 reactions. They make use of carbocation intermediates and a fragile attacking molecule; that’s why we cannot expect to see a fast response with this. It just keeps on waiting for this carbocation to form before it can proceed with the Reaction.

2-Type Reaction

As for the 2-type Reaction, it refers to SN2 and E2 reactions and has a potent attacking molecule. The latter can be thought of as the bully molecule because it doesn’t want to wait for a carbocation to form; it just goes and attacks directly. 

For you to be able to tell these reactions apart, you have to look at the chemical equation. Ask yourself, “Is there a negatively charged molecule here or not?” 

A negative charge is what’s going to clue you in at this point. You are looking at an active molecule, so it must be a 2-type reaction. Examples include OH-, SH-, CH3O-, CH2CH3O-, and so on. 

Alternatively, the 1-type Reaction is likely to have the neutral version of our strong nucleophiles and bases. H2O, H2S, CH3OH, and CH2CH3OH are just of the examples for this.

This is not so difficult to understand now, is it? 

 

 

 

Fostering A Helping Relationship Between Your Child’s Therapist Or Psychologist And His School

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Their therapists often see children who have special needs in medical facilities. There, they are being looked after until such time that they can thrive on their own. But the work of therapists and psychologists doesn’t stop when the kids start going to school. They are much needed by these children more than ever before, as the kids’ transition to a life that’s filled with challenges and development.

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How Therapists Teach And Help Kids With Dyslexia

Dyslexia is a neurological and often genetic condition that makes it hard to read, and to learn. In the country, between 5 and 15 percent of Americans is dyslexic. Due to this alarming number of patients, therapists are continuously looking for ways to help people with dyslexia cope with the hardships of visual, language-related learning. Currently, there is still no cure for the condition. But the early diagnosis, support, and guidance reduce the impact of dyslexia on the person’s quality of life. According to Margie Gillis, Ed.D. with Eve Kessler, Esq., “Children with dyslexia will not learn what is left unsaid and must be taught in a “programmatically scaffolded” manner, building little by little upon what they have already learned.”

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A person with dyslexia has trouble processing written material typically. It is a misconception that dyslexia links to the level of intelligence of a person. “A dyslexic person who has word-finding difficulties can have trouble with their expressive language,” says Scott Bezsylko, the executive director of Winston Preparatory School, which specializes in teaching kids with learning disorders. Though dyslexia at present is considered a learning disorder, people with the condition can be more intelligent than the average person.

There is no clear cut symptom of dyslexia. A person has to go through rigorous testing before a doctor can fully diagnose him with dyslexia. The effects of dyslexia vary. The only shared trait between people who have dyslexia is that they all read at levels generally lower than other people their age.

Symptoms Of Dyslexia

Symptoms of dyslexia can be visible as early as childhood. However, Dr. Matthew Cruger, director of the Learning and Development Center at the Child Mind Institute, suggests waiting until kids are at least six years old and have had some formal instruction in reading to seek out a formal evaluation. If you think your child has dyslexia, visit a therapist right away so you can have a proper diagnosis. Young children with dyslexia often have trouble learning nursery rhymes, recognizing rhyme patterns, mispronounce familiar words, and have difficulty learning and remembering the names of letters in the alphabet.

Adults with dyslexia carry with them the reading difficulties they experienced in early childhood. An adult living with dyslexia might have fine-tuned his reading skills over the years, but the activity still takes considerable time and effort to accomplish. They struggle to retrieve words, frequently experiencing episodes of “at the tip of my tongue.”

Complications of dyslexia can lead to several problems, mainly: difficulty in learning, social issues, and other related problems in adulthood.

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Children who have dyslexia are also at risk of developing other related conditions, such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).  In individuals with ADHD, hyperactivity and impulsive behavior makes it difficult to sustain attention, making dyslexia harder to treat.

Treatment Of Dyslexic Individuals

Compensatory strategies help individuals cope with dyslexia as they go about their daily activities. Early diagnosis and treatment also contribute to how much dyslexia affects the individual as he grows older.

Teaching individuals afflicted with the condition requires patience, and complete understanding of dyslexia and what it is. Individuals with dyslexia need a systematic approach that builds on previously learned skills, slowly, one skill set at a time. Instructions must be individually given and precisely tailored to each, addressing each person’s unique abilities and the challenges that they face.

Currently, treatment for dyslexia includes specific instructional techniques and developmental learning approaches. You should first undergo proper diagnosis and psychological testing to determine which aspect of learning you have the most difficulty dealing with. From there, you can employ specific learning techniques by your therapist and the tutor that matches your needs and helps you in the particular area of learning you need it the most.

Teachers may use techniques that involve touch, vision, and hearing to improve their skills in reading. A useful method that tutors employ is exercises that involve using multiple senses at a time. It helps the individual respond better and helps significantly with the processing of information simultaneously. Experts refer to this method as multisensory instruction.

Multisensory instruction also grants patients to over-learn material through repetition and using the learned skill in different contexts.

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Regardless of approach and the materials used, all learning sessions with a licensed therapist and a tutor answer directly to the needs of the individual. Since no dyslexic symptom and condition are the same, learning strategies and coping mechanisms, have to be explicitly tailored to the person suffering from it.

You should also engage in reading tutor sessions with a reading specialist. In people with severe dyslexia, slow progress is standard, though tutor sessions need to be more frequent than the usual number of sessions an average dyslexic patient has in a week.

Another treatment option you can try is assistive technology for reading,  such as audiobooks and the use of text to speech software.

There is no known way to correct the underlying brain abnormality in dyslexic individuals. It is a lifelong condition that needs to be dealt with to not interfere mainly in the quality of life of the dyslexic individuals. Therapists and licensed tutors can employ numerous educational techniques to aid individuals with dyslexia with their learning disabilities.

Valuing Academic Libraries: The 2016 Austin Academic Tutoring Symposium

 

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During the 2016 Austin Academic Tutoring Symposium, much has been said about improving education through tutorials as well as building or renovating libraries to cater to different types of children, including those with Autism Spectrum Disorder. A reputable speaker from the Autism Center of the University of Florida told the audience a story about a certain boy who has made an impact on their organization, leading them to launch a training program that aimed to educate library staff about autism, and providing them with specific instructions on how to manage and help them learn through books. “The quest to understand what causes autism may have just taken a step forward,” says Alison Escalante M.D. The program included an online training for librarians and other staff to learn how to communicate with autistic visitors by talking in short sentences and offering more specialized settings such as an exclusive book list for them.

According to the speaker, this poses a challenge for libraries around the world. Out of 68 kids in America, there is one who is diagnosed with autism. “Although autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is often thought of as a childhood disorder, there is an increasing number of older adults who are being diagnosed for the first time,” according to Katherine K.M. Stavropoulos Ph.D. An autistic child is mentally and physically disabled and has difficulty controlling his speech and his behavior. This growing presence of the disorder has encouraged some organizations and universities to provide additional services that would accommodate children who often cannot follow the expected usual behavior while in a library. “Given this varied presentation, researchers have acknowledged that a complete understanding of autism will require the inclusion of multiple scientific perspectives,” says Liz Pellicano PhD.

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The Florida State University’s program is an interactive project composed of four sessions that will serve as a guide to library staffers for them to be aware of the signs and symptoms of autistic visitors, to utilize strategies that provide alternatives for them, and to assign areas for those who get overwhelmed. The primary goal is to help instill a safe academic space for autistic visitors.

This is beneficial for autistic as well as regular kids. It helps their parents and themselves feel more comfortable while they interact with each other. Improving academic libraries is an opportunity for kids with autism as well as those without autism.

 

 

 

2016 Brooklyn Annual International Conference On ELearning

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Learning about “eLearning” is easy and straightforward. ELearning is acquiring knowledge and getting the education a person needs by using electronic means like personal computers, laptops, wireless gadgets or tablets, and mobile phones, if necessary. The setting is very non-traditional since teaching and learning (educational curriculum) is not in a classroom. It happens online through internet means, and yes, the course or program is delivered online. Everything about it was discussed in the 2016 Brooklyn Annual International Conference On ELearning, and more. As for Andy Tix Ph.D., “new thinking and research convinces me that all courses—including those online—have the potential to elicit powerful emotions that can inspire long-term knowledge creation.”

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10 Tips For Tutoring Students With Disabilities And Mental Disorders – From The 2016 Tampa National Tutoring Association Conference

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Many of the tutees you will work with have different disabilities or mental illness. It is therefore essential to address their needs the right way and be able to communicate with them effectively, as explained in the 2016 Tampa National Tutoring Association Conference. According to Gregg Henriques, Ph.D., “Roughly 30% (of college students) struggled with schoolwork due to mental illness, while one in four experienced suicidal thoughts, and one in seven engaged in reckless behavior.”

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