Sunday, January 26, 2020

How to Have a Good Golf Game

How to Have a Good Golf Game Golf is much more than just hitting the ball, finding it and hitting it again. It is a constant learning process with unforgettable experiences. Golf offers you independence, but ultimately it always comes down to how well you know your limitations and the confidence you have in your ability. You must have the heart and head to play and the courage to accept the consequences. There are no shortcuts. Although there are many factors that contribute to success, golf requires patience and practice, as there is no comfort zone. Patience and practice pay off. Golf is a never-ending journey full of learning and discovery. Golf is a tough sport. You are going to need to work on and try to perfect your technical skills. To become a professional golfer, you can start at any age. As long as you have passion to play the game, you can fulfill your dreams (Wright 4). The good news is that anyone has a shot at becoming a pro golfer. The bad news is that the game is extremely difficult to play at a professional level and the competition is fierce. To become a professional golfer requires putting in hours of practice. A young golfer should start playing on various local courses on a regular basis. One needs to take golf lessons and a have a teacher analyze their form and give them pointers for improvement. According to Wright a lot of players accept the idea that they will have good days and bad days on the greens and therefore dont work at it. In fact, study and practice produces results (*). There is, and always will be, room for improvement. You also need to develop the appropriate mental and physical traits (10). You must practice the game every day and devote a lot of time to it. The golf swing will always be a work in progress regardless of how good it is. The goal is to be your best every day. Once you start feeling confident in your golf game, it is time to get out there and compete. To further your golf game, you should consider going to a golf school. If you are in high school, see if there is a school golf team or club to join. To see how you stack up against the competition, you can enter amateur events. Check with your local golf courses for more information about amateur events coming to your area (Keough42). In amateur events, you can play against other golf amateurs. By doing well in some amateur events, that can give you the needed confidence to take your dreams to the next level. The first steps towards playing against the pros are beating fellow amateurs (44). Start by playing tournaments at your local golf courses, then state and national junior events. Success in those events leads to recognition for college scholarships, and so can good high school golf credentials be a very important factor. Of all the many factors opening the door to golf, college golf is a terrific developmental ground. Robert, Bell, a student at the University of Minnesota, started his college golf career with this Division I School. After visiting the campus and seeing the training facilities, I found that they had the program to best fit my needs. It can have an enormous impact on a golfers career since you do not have to pay to play golf, and you do not have to pay for lessons at the driving range. You also get regular practice time with your team, access to weight training and the opportunity to compete at a high level. Many professional golfers matured at the college level, on their schools dime. Even Tiger spent two years at Stanford (Elling 15). If you do not play college golf, you can still refine your skills at the amateur level and prepare to turn professional. The technical skills are important to making it on the PGA, but what separates the best is the mental side of the game (Green 21). I f you are a golfer who loves the challenge and has the ability for making big shots in tournament play, you might have the tools to make it. If you play this game long enough, eventually you will face some challenges. It is how you handle those challenges that will define who you are as a competitor. One of the biggest things to do is when you feel you are well above and beyond your amateur competition, is to go to Qualifying School. When starting out on a career to become a professional golfer, every golfers dream of success. The vision may be clear, but without a plan it is just a dream. Becoming a PGA Tour Golfer does not necessarily required going to college of winning past tournaments. What you must do however is qualify. Each year there is what is called Qualifying School that covers six grueling rounds of tournament style golf where only a small number of players make it to the tour (Duunbar 19). Anyone can go for it, but it is extremely difficult. According to Dunbar The only other way to qualify for the tour without going to Qualifying School is through special exemptions (21). Each tournament has a committee that set aside a few special exemptions for players they would like to attend their tournament. One final avenue to becoming a professional PGA golfer is known as t he Club Professional. Each course around the country has a resident Professional. Gaining membership to this section of the PGA is done through apprentice program. A golfer must work under an established golf professional. Over time, and after fulfilling certain requirements, a player is recognized as a Golf Professional as well. Qualifying School is held every year by the PGA Tour and allows amateurs to compete for a post on the pro tour (25). When you continue to have success against top amateurs, this gives you the opportunity to explore your professional options. At this point, finding sponsorship support becomes very important, because breaking into professional golf is very expensive. When you feel ready to take your game to the professional level, you should begin the process of getting your PGA Tour card. Once you register with the PGA Tour and pay the registration fee, you begin the qualifying process. About 1% of the people who register for a PGA Tour card get a card each year (Forsyth 39). It is a long and difficult process. You have to finish at the top of various events over the course of months. Mr. Forsyth points out that, it takes most people multiple attempts, if ever, to get onto the PGGA tour (41). Even after obtaining your PGA Tour card there is no guarantee you will remain on the tour. Each year requires you to play well enough to keep your PGA Tour card. There are various ways to retain your card, such as being in the top 120 players or finishing in the top ten in a major (42). One of the major rewards of the game is that ev ery round begins with a new scorecard. Every time you walk onto the course, you play with the thought that this is your day to be the champion. With all the benefits of this career, it is clear why professional golfers say, Play golf for a living and never work a day in your life. (44). Golf is one of the few professional sports where you can control your own future. Even if there are no educational requirements, it would still be best if you finish a degree in college so that you have some sort of back up if you do not make it on the tour. To be a Golf Professional will surely take a lot of hard work. Some golfers believe that you must have some sort of natural talent to have chance of becoming a pro. In a book called The Golfers Mind Dr. Bob Rotella states, if becoming an expert means joining the PGA Tour then it is believed that a very minute percentage of us will actually make it, no matter how many hours it is. This side of the issue believes that while most PGA pros have spent the better part of their lives playing golf, they still possess an underlying talent that separates them from the rest of the pack. For every guy on tour there are probably 50 guys that did the same thing growing up but did not have the talent to take it to the next level (Sotzek 112). According to Sotzek, it comes down to the fact that talent by itself can be wasted without practice, work ethic, and desire, but at the same time desire, practice, and work ethic are all pretty useless without some natural talent (114). While most professional athletes have a great work ethic, it is still their natural ta lent that gets them to the top of their game. The opposing views of the natural talent argument by Dr. Bob Rotella states that is an excuse for those that lack drive, motivation, mental fortitude, dedication and the ability to sacrifice. All of these things can be learned and for many professional athletes are learned at an early age so it appears to be natural ability (27). If you read any story about a top golfer, you will realize that they spent the majority of their life practicing their skills because they thrive on competition. That is the sacrifice you have to make. So after all is said, both sides of this argument agree on is that golf is a game that cannot be mastered. Most golfers continue to play because of the love of a challenge. Playing great golf is much more than developing solid fundamentals and sound technique. It is about keeping all things perspective. A lot of players accept that idea that they will have good days and bad days on the golf course and therefore they do not work at it. In fact, study and practice produces results. The golf swing will always be a work in progress regardless of how good you are. The goal is to have a swing that is sound and works with every club in your set and holds up under pressure. The true essence of golf is capitalizing on opportunities and minimizing mistakes. It is a thinking mans game t o a great degree. Every shot is your responsibility. As long as you have the passion for the game, you can fulfill your dreams. Dreams do come true. If you do become a professional golfer, you will have a chance to earn big money and at the same time, play the sport you really love. If you do not like to work inside and if you love the outdoors, you will surely enjoy this kind of p rofession. Often times, you will also be traveling from one place to another together with your competitors sand so you can also gain many friends. Many young golfers set their hearts on playing on tour, but plenty of other opportunities exist in professional golf far beyond the golf course. PGA professionals are top class players but are also experts in other areas of the golf industry form running golf courses, to coaching and teaching. Becoming a professional golfer is a full-time job that requires commitment and love for the game. A golfer can become mentally tougher by learning from past experiences, because the game is a constant learning process. The approach to achieving a golf goal is to formulate a game plan and proceed systematically. Along the way, there is a need to assess and reassess strengths and weaknesses honestly. It takes time and effort to pursue a career on the PGA Tour, but the end result will be worth it.

Saturday, January 18, 2020

Music Has Lost Its Meaning

Back in the day a performance qualified as someone walking on stage and bearing their soul. It was about the music, and it was about the talent. Now an artist qualifies as someone who is so bizarre, so outgoing, so appealing they can sell anything. Lately the music industry has been lacking in real talent. Many artists are truly talented, that goes without saying. But this talent tends to be hidden because of the glamour and popularity of their appearance. The reason why certain artistes are so widely popular despite their lack of talent is because they appeal to the masses.Lady Gaga is someone who has entered the world of pop culture and has taken it by storm. Behind all the crazy makeup and fashion choices, Gaga has raw talent. She can actually sing, and her songs are Gaga original. But people don’t see Gaga for her vocals; they see the overexposure. Justin Bieber has found a way to go from a small town boy to one of America’s heartthrobs. Bieber is so widely known an d is selling out show after show because he appeals to the younger generation. It doesn’t matter whether he can sing or not. If the masses find him attractive, he will find a way to stay famous.It’s a popularity contest, and he is one of the winners. Now an artist is all about the hype. The music is lost behind all the glitz and glam. No one notices what an artist is trying to say when they’re distracted by fire and lights and the bizarre. It is entertaining, no doubt about that. It’s fun to see people suspended in midair doing flips, and it’s fun see people jump through flaming hoops. But where’s the music? Where are the lyrics? Where’s the heart? The definition of a musical artist has evolved and changed. Now it is not about the music, just the appearance. It is not about the talent, just the entertainment value.The music industry has lost most of its credibility and needs to find a way back to when it was about the feeling and the words, to when lyrics meant something and were not just random ideas strung together nonsensically. That was when music was the greatest it has ever been. First, you should orient yourself with a marketing term known as â€Å"positioning†. That will help to understand how products & styles get pigeonholed or stuck into a way of being perceived by the general public. Fundamentally, rap is very lyric dense poetry in tight syncopation with a rhythm. Like spoken word that rhymes, with a percussion track.So, lyrics can be about ANY subject. However, due to rap's typical lyric subject matter, based on the culture of those who started it, rap has position in society. Because of this position, it's difficult to create lyrical themes for rap that deal with other cultures or genres. Commercialism does manage to do this, however, this is the point where we wonder if an artform has lost its meaning. In other words, when McDonalds, Ford, Mountain Dew and Coors Light commercials include ho t guitar solos or hot hip hop grooves with lyrics merely selling a product, it's hard to maintain a special place in your soul for the genre.It's also hard for the artists themselves to feel good about their style, when they could be sounding just like another burger commercial. This is why things cycle out and new things have to come in. The advertising agencies never start artforms. They pick up what the people have their attention on and try to piggyback their junk food, clothing lines, cars, soft drinks– whatever onto anything that will give their stuff the same attention. Then they will sell more. Any â€Å"popular† form of communication art, is subject to exploitation. Then, you have to move onward, if you are depending upon communication arts to help you get meaning from life.So, obviously this isn't simply about rap. Every genre is in the same boat. Artists have to out-create and stay ahead of the commercialism in order to stay sane and maintain meaning. The go od news is that artists do keep creating. You just have to keep up with who the real ones are. Check out the real music magazines (not the lifestyle ; fashion ones). Find out who the artists are listening to and who they like. Skip the critics, because they often represent the commercial side. Serious rap artists have to stay ahead in order to survive and keep the meaning in rap.If they sell out, rap just becomes a product that people grow bored with. First, you should orient yourself with a marketing term known as â€Å"positioning†. That will help to understand how products ; styles get pigeonholed or stuck into a way of being perceived by the general public. Fundamentally, rap is very lyric dense poetry in tight syncopation with a rhythm. Like spoken word that rhymes, with a percussion track. So, lyrics can be about ANY subject. However, due to rap's typical lyric subject matter, based on the culture of those who started it, rap has position in society.Because of this posi tion, it's difficult to create lyrical themes for rap that deal with other cultures or genres. Commercialism does manage to do this, however, this is the point where we wonder if an artform has lost its meaning. In other words, when McDonalds, Ford, Mountain Dew and Coors Light commercials include hot guitar solos or hot hip hop grooves with lyrics merely selling a product, it's hard to maintain a special place in your soul for the genre. It's also hard for the artists themselves to feel good about their style, when they could be sounding just like another burger commercial.This is why things cycle out and new things have to come in. The advertising agencies never start artforms. They pick up what the people have their attention on and try to piggyback their junk food, clothing lines, cars, soft drinks– whatever onto anything that will give their stuff the same attention. Then they will sell more. Any â€Å"popular† form of communication art, is subject to exploitation . Then, you have to move onward, if you are depending upon communication arts to help you get meaning from life. So, obviously this isn't simply about rap. Every genre is in the same boat.Artists have to out-create and stay ahead of the commercialism in order to stay sane and maintain meaning. The good news is that artists do keep creating. You just have to keep up with who the real ones are. Check out the real music magazines (not the lifestyle ; fashion ones). Find out who the artists are listening to and who they like. Skip the critics, because they often represent the commercial side. Serious rap artists have to stay ahead in order to survive and keep the meaning in rap. If they sell out, rap just becomes a product that people grow bored with.

Friday, January 10, 2020

Nefertiti: Queen of Egypt

Today, Nefertiti is one of the most well known queens of Egypt, famed throughout the ancient world for her beauty. There is little known about the background of Nefertiti but many believe that she was not of royal bloodline. Her father was believed to be a high official of Amenhotep III and Akhenaten. It is said that Nefertiti was chosen by her Father and her Aunt, the Pharaoh’s mother, because of her strong personality that it was believed she could reign in the Pharaoh so her family would hold the real power behind the throne. She was not rivaled only by her power but also by her beauty. Her face has become one of the most recognizable images in the world since the founding of her bust in 1912. She was an independent woman and thinker centuries before her time (Fletcher, 2004). But the question that many people wonder is â€Å"Who was Queen Nefertiti and how much power did she have? † Nefertiti first rose to prominence in Egyptology in 1912, when a three-thousand-year-old bust of the queen was unearthed and quickly became a recognizable artifact around the world. But pieces of Nefertiti's life remained missing (Fletcher, 2004). The beginning of her existence starts with her breaking through the sex barrier to rule as a co-Pharaoh alongside her husband, Akhenaten. Nefertiti parents are not known and she was probably of non-royal birth, most historians say. Most believe she was 12 years old when she became queen and that Amenhotep IV was around the same age (Englar, 2009). Nefertiti married Amenhotep IV who took the name â€Å"Akhenaten†, who ruled over Egypt for approximately 17 years during the 18th Dynasty around 1357 B. C. E. She had six daughters but no sons with Akhenaten, who also had other wives. But neither of them were carved into the sculptures except Nefertiti, so many people believed he loved her most. She appeared with her husband Akhenaten on all major monuments. She even assisted in offerings. There has been no other queen who appears so frequently in Egyptian history as Queen Nefertiti. Many images of her show simple family gatherings with her husband and daughters. She is also known as the mother-in-law and stepmother of the Pharaoh Tutankhamen. Nefertiti and her husband defied ancient custom by practicing monotheism and by elevating Nefertiti far above the role of subservient consort previously played by Egyptian queens (Tyldesley, 1999). Upon her fourth year of being queen, she left the capital of Thebes where a new city to honor their chosen god, Aten was built. He believed that the Aten, a minor sun god, was the most important god so Nefertiti being his wife followed suit. The religion in the country was then transformed so their new god, Aten, may be held up above all others. Neferitti and her husband designed the new city and more than 50,000 Egyptians moved to Akhenaten to serve the king and queen in their new city. This is the first time that Egyptian religion accepted one god rather than many gods. Nefertiti’s new religious duties gave her more power than most previous Egyptian queens. Nefertiti was perhaps the most influential person on Akhenaten, at that time one of the most powerful rulers on earth. Many people do not know that Nefertiti and her husband changed their names to honor their God. Nefertiti meaning â€Å"the beautiful woman† had come to be known as Neferneferuaten which means â€Å"beautiful are the beauties of Aten. † The reason for this change is so â€Å"Aten† would be included in her new name to honor their god. During the Amarna period, Nefertiti was seen as almost equal to a Pharaoh. Nefertiti soon became enamored with her new found power and her popularity with the people and is somewhat swept up along with her husband in his dreams of glamour, power, and immortality (Moran, 2007). Upon his death she took control of Aten. The Egyptian people loved her and celebrated her beauty in art, but the priests did not feel the same way. Historians say that priests who, upon Nefertiti's death, had her name erased from all public records. This led to her being left out of history for over three thousand years. Very little is known of Nefertiti, her death is not recorded, and her tomb has not been found. Her beauty is renowned from the masks found at Amarna by archaeologists early in this century, having been lost for millennia. It is unusual that a queen like Nefertiti, death would not be recorded in the culture of Egypt. Even to this day monuments to those who ruled and played a major part in Egypt have pyramids and tombs bestowing their importance. It is very sad that Akhenaten and Nefertiti's family was all but destroyed. Three thousand years after her death, Nefertiti’s beauty still captivates thousands of visitors each year. It was her mysterious smile and powerful gaze that attracted many men to her making them wonder who she had been and how she’d become a dominant figure in ancient Egypt. However, tragedy eventually calls, and everything Nefertiti worked so hard to achieve hangs in the balance (Englar 2009). Some historians believe she died from a plague or even ruled Egypt under a new name, Smenkhkare. Yet there has, over time, been a great deal of controversy on all these facts. It would seem that Smenkhkare became co-regent shortly after the death of Akhenaten’s principle wife, Nefertiti. Speculation at times have run rampant, including one theory that Nefertiti herself had actually disguised herself as a male in the custom of Hatshepsut, becoming co-regent (Dunn, 2003). Nefertiti will always hold a mysterious history, her remains and the location of her body has long been a subject of curiosity and speculation. Her place as an icon in popular culture is secure and she has become somewhat of a celebrity due to the rare find of her bust. After Cleopatra, she is the second most famous queen of Egypt in the Western imagination and her image has influenced, through photographs, and changed standards of feminine beauty of the twentieth century, and is often referred to as â€Å"the most beautiful woman in the world† (Dunn, 2003). Her most important legacy, though, may be that she and Pharaoh Akhenaten tried to establish a monotheistic religion in Egypt, which, if it had survived, would have created a very different history for the Middle East, with important ramifications for the current religious/political turmoil of the area (Weller, 2008). She will always be held as one of the most influential and most powerful queens to ever rule Egypt. References Dunn, Jimmy. (2003). Smenkhkare: An obscure pharaoh of the 18th dynasty. Retrieved from ttps://ww. touregypt. net/featurestories/smenkhakare. htm Englar, Mary. (2009). Nefertiti of Egypt. Capstone Publishing Company. Fletcher, Joann. (2004). Search for Nefertiti: The true story of an amazing discovery. Harper Collins Publishers. Moran, Michelle. (2007). Nefertiti. New York: Crown Pub. Tyldesley, Joyce A. (1999). Nefertiti: Egypt’s sun queen. Viking Adult. Weller, Doug. (2008). Nefertiti. New world encyclopedia. Retrieved (2010, February 25) from http://ww w. newworldencyclopedia. org

Thursday, January 2, 2020

Analysis Of John Swales s Work On Genre Analysis - 953 Words

Best known for his work on genre analysis, John Swales, a linguist, has been greatly influential on academic English. His work on discourse communities has helped to greatly define and analyze the way in which unique communities may operate and exchange information. Discourse Communities are, as defined by Swales, groups that have common goals or purposes, and use communication to achieve these goals. What is particularly influential about his writing on his topic is in his description of six shared characteristics of these specific groups, which can be used to place a variety of disciplines and subdisciplines into several categories based on shared language, terminology, and informational exchange. The multidisciplinary field of education, for example, can be broken up into various subcategories according to these six characteristics. Secondary education becomes a discourse community when a specific amount of education is needed in order to teach students ages 11-18 in the first pla ce: Training for those who wish to teach at the high school level involves completing at least a bachelor’s degree program for secondary education and meet state licensing requirements at bare minimum. Aspiring teachers may also specialize in a particular subject they wish to teach, a fact that separates secondary from primary education as elementary school teachers will often teach a small amount from a variety of subjects to their students. According to Swales, discourse communities can defineShow MoreRelatedSpringboard Diving As A Discourse Community2107 Words   |  9 PagesSpringboard Diving as a Discourse Community The world of diving has been around since the 1800’s and has been seen at the Olympic games since 1904. 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