For many students both in Europe and in the United States, September means the sad end to summer vacation. ‘Back to school’ anxiety sets in. Many students may feel anxious about going back to school and some feel stressed about starting school or college for the first time. Whichever the case may be; the morning rush, the homework, studying, the quicker pace of life, it´s not something to look forward to after the summer break. It does not mean that a student doesn´t like school, but realistically there are few students who are not concerned about the new changes that ‘back to school’ time brings, including new teachers, new classmates and new study material. And there is the added pressure of fitting into a new social group.

Parents and teachers can try to help ease the transition, but the question is how to cope with and relieve ‘back to school’ stress yourself? First of all, you shouldn’t panic. Nearly every student starting school with you is feeling the same. Stay in contact with your old school friends and give it time. Soon you will have a new group of friends that you hang out with. Socialize, introduce yourself to people you don’t know and get involved in school activities like music or sport to meet new people with the same interests.

Look at the positives of being at a new school –more independence, more variety in classes, some choice in what you want to study and new challenges. And keep in mind, in a few months time there’s going to be a winter break!

Reference: http://www.cyh.com

If you love working with and training dogs, you possess compassion for animals and a tremendous amount of patience then maybe you should become a dog obedience trainer.  Dogs are social animals and if they’re not provided with proper training, they can become destructive: soiling a house, destroying  belongings, fighting other dogs, barking excessively or even biting people. As a future dog trainer be prepared to deal with it!

Dog obedience trainers work closely with dogs to correct behavioural problems and to train dogs to interact socially with people and other animals. The aim of this job is to help to open up basic communication between dog and owner, and allow for a much better relationship between the two.

Learning to become a dog trainer can begin while you’re still in high school by taking courses in biology, psychology, English, and physical education. During summer vacation you could volunteer with an animal shelter to get some experiences with animals.  Certificate programs in dog obedience training are offered through a variety of schools, where you will learn training methods based on positive motivation and reinforcement, appropriate for the specific breed of dog and it´s temperament.

Highland Canine Training Harmony – NC, offers dog training certification programs with specializations in basic or advanced obedience training, behaviour modification, police K-9 training, detection, search and rescue, competition, obedience or sport-dog training.

At K-9 Companions Riverside – CA,  to become a Certified Dog Trainer the dog trainer must complete the book work, tests and hours, plus have 1 years worth of practical experience working with dogs and clients under the supervision of a professional dog trainer.

The Animal Behaviour College’s Dog Obedience Instructor Program is structured to offer each student the convenience of a home study with the benefit of working one-on-one with a professional trainer.

Completion of a course allows you to take a licensing exam through the National Association of Dog Obedience Instructors (USA) or its equivalent in your country.

Chikara Kakizawa

A recent survey found that 75% of British children can’t boil an egg and in Australia obesity has overtaken smoking as the leading cause of premature death and illness. Obesity in Britain has been rising since the 1980s, when ready-made and microwave meals as well as cake mixes became more prevalent in British supermarkets. It’s scary that today’s children don’t know how to cook at home, but it´s because their parents were never taught to cook. If you cannot cook properly it is impossible to know how to eat properly.

In Britain a 1 hour cooking lesson per week is, at least theoretically, compulsory for primary school children. In 2008 the British Government announced that cookery would be compulsory for 11-14 year-olds from 2011 . The Australian Government is now considering implementing cookery in schools too.

Many specialists agree that while cooking, children learn skills that benefit in other subjects, such as mathematics (measurements), chemistry (following instructions and chemical reactions) and language (through reading).

Cooking lessons at school teach the importance of a healthy balanced diet, nutrition and the importance of getting enough vitamins in an easy and fun way. They also make children more responsible and conscious consumers who know how to shop for food. The top five meal suggestions that a teenager should know how to prepare are soup, risotto, spaghetti bolognese, shepherds pie and casserole.

As a result of the British Government’s decision, there is an urgent need to recruit more food technology teachers and to give further training to current teachers. Pursuing a career in cookery might just be an excellent choice, so get it while it´s hot !

The Spanish letter "ñ" on a keyboard

It is estimated that by the year 2045, Spanish will be the most widely spoken language in the world. Humberto Lopez Morales, the secretary of the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language, claimed that this is predicted by evaluating several factors. Perhaps the most prolific of these is that Spanish is the second most-learned language in the world (behind English). He also highlights the advantage of speaking another language in economic powerhouses such as the United States, where being bilingual opens the door to the labour market. This contributes to the number of people learning Spanish, and in the US almost 16% of the population are Spanish speaking.

There are currently more than 500,000,000 people in the world that speak Spanish; including native, bilingual and foreign-language speakers.  It is the third most widely spoken language in the world, and the second when referring to native speakers alone.  I can´t think of a better reason to start learning a language today!  Here are some courses to check out:

Expanish in Buenos Aires, Argentina, offer small group classes of 20 hours a week.  The average group size is 4 people,  and students can practice conversation, engage in group activities and improve sentence structure with their fellow classmates. Expanish believe the best approach to learning a language is to also learn about the culture and how the two intertwine. They organise a number of activities and workshops so that students can apply the Spanish that they have learned in the classroom to real life situations.

In Colombia the Spanish World Institute have Spanish courses for students to learn Spanish as a foreign language. Their academic programs look for a deeper understanding of the Colombian culture, through cross-cultural education, personalised attention and dynamic teaching methods in a professional and friendly atmosphere and they also offer voluntary programmes.

If you have an interest in a particular country I would recommend that you choose to study Spanish there, as most of the programs involve learning about the local culture and customs as well, which is an added bonus.  Suerte! (good luck!)

Reference: Wikipedia

Photo by Newsday

Do you remember Cocktail, the drama with Tom Cruise as an ambitious bartender who finds love while working at a bar in Jamaica? It’s no wonder why so many people wanted to become bartenders after that!  But what exactly are the qualifications that a successful bartender has? It’s not all glamour and green, but rather lots of hard work. From memorizing drink recipes, learning techniques, handling glassware and money,  maintanence and opening and closing the bar, there are lots of things a bartender needs to know. Your success also depends on your personality as this job requires exceptional social and interpersonal skills, listening skills, open-mindedness, and the ability to relate to many different kinds of people.  To begin, we recommend enrolling in a bartending course where you can get hands-on experience behind the bar!

Here are some bartending schools to get you started:
National Bartenders Bartending School in Los Angeles offers a Certificate in Bartending/Mixology, where according to the school brochure, you will learn what it takes to become a successful bartender and the secrets to making great drinks that keep the customers happy. The school also offers additional bartending course options including Bar Management and TIPs Certification.

Bartenders Academy of New York is the only bartending school in New York to offer a separate Flair class within their Bartending Program . Flair is the act of flipping, spinning, throwing, balancing and catching bottles, drinks and various bar tools when you’re making cocktails.

Boston Bartending School of America gives their students access to over 96 other school locations throughout the country to receive training and job assistance at no additional charge. Each graduate of their Bartending Program is also entitled to free refresher courses at any location nation-wide.

After graduating from the Bartending Program at the Australian School of Bartending in Oakleigh, you will receive a certificate of attendance for fully attended modules in the short skills courses in bartending, introduction to wine, cocktail making, beer cellar operations and the Responsible Serving of Alcohol [endorsed by Liquor Licensing Victoria].

Some of you may have to wait to pursue a career in bartending however, as the minimum age depends on the legal-age limit imposed by different countries, and it varies between 18 and 21.

Class of 2014, you may or may not know who this is...

Every year professors from Beloit College put together a list of characteristics to descibe the incoming university student (this year it is those born in 1992).  This list, known as the Mindset List, aims to reflect current and past popular culture shifts, and to give us all an idea what reality our current young adults are living in. The list highlights key cultural and political changes that have shaped this year´s generation, and reminds us how quickly references become dated.  If you can believe it, the class of 2014 is a “post-email” generation; they don´t email because it is just “too slow.” Our recent high school graduates live in a world of fast technology and extreme multi-tasking.   This list, while not scientific by any means, is a fun tradition at Beloit College to mark differences in generations, which when we stop to observe, pass us by in the blink of an eye.

Here are a few items from this year’s incoming freshman college students (born in 1992) that made the list.

1. Few in the class know how to write in cursive.

12. Clint Eastwood is better known as a sensitive director than as Dirty Harry.

17. Trading Chocolate the Moose for Patti the Platypus helped build their Beanie Baby collection.

18. Fergie is a pop singer, not a princess.

19. They never twisted the coiled handset wire aimlessly around their wrists while chatting on the phone.

26. Unless they found one in their grandparents’ closet, they have never seen a carousel of Kodachrome slides.

27. Computers have never lacked a CD-ROM disk drive.

31. The first home computer they probably touched was an Apple II or Mac II; they are now in a museum.

46. Nirvana is on the classic oldies station.

50. Toothpaste tubes have always stood up on their caps.

For this year´s complete Mindset List click here.

On August 26 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution became law, and women got full voting rights. It was the day the Suffrage battle was won, and is today celebrated in the USA as Women’s Equality Day. For many centuries, women were discouraged from pursuing higher education because it was culturally considered unnatural for a woman to be educated, although the way to attaining equal status in society was mainly through education. In Colonial times girls were only taught to read and write. Oberlin College, the first university to accept women and Afro-American students was founded in 1833 in Ohio. By 1910 women made up 39 percent of all collegiate undergraduate students and even 20 percent of all college faculty. In 1945, the first woman was accepted to Harvard Medical School.

Even today there are still changes to be made, as key research has found that social stereotypes, gender bias and the climate of science and engineering departments in colleges and universities contribute to the inequality. The National Coalition for Women and Girls in Education (NCWGE), is a nonprofit organization of more than 50 groups dedicated to improving educational opportunities for girls and women. The organization provides advocacy for the development of national education policies that benefit all women.

And last but not least, only 41 Nobel Prizes and Prizes in Economic Sciences have been awarded to women while 765 have been given to men between 1901 and 2009.  Girls, it’s time to increase the score!

Source: Wikipedia and nobelprize.org

An astrology wheel

Have you ever wondered why so many of us read astrology columns? Most daily newspapers and magazines feature horoscopes and there is a huge selection of astrology websites to choose from on the internet. Many of us upload daily horoscope applications to our phones. We do it for fun and out of habit, but we are also looking for answers and guidance to apply to our lives. Astrology is actually a highly respected science and goes all the way back to ancient times. Even today most people know what their astrological sign is and this ‘sun-sign astrology’ is the most popular form, because only your birthday is needed to generate a horoscope.

Whether you believe horoscopes or not, astrology is without a doubt an interesting subject to study.

Kepler College in the USA  is authorized by the Washington Higher Education Coordinating Board to award a Bachelor and Master of Arts in Philosophy and Transmission of Astrology.  But if you’re just a beginner  interested in learning the basics of astrological symbolism and how to apply that knowledge to chart interpretation, we recommend you to take their online Certificate Program in Astrology.

The London School of Astrology offers Foundation Classes of Astrology for beginners in central London. You will be introduced to the angles and houses of the horoscope, rulerships, the Sun-Moon cycle, nodes, eclipses and basic astronomy.  Given that many astrologers nowadays use computers, you will also have the opportunity to discover the software available. The shool’s aim is that you will have a firm foundation of astrological principles upon which to build further understanding.

And who knows, maybe you’ll become a world famous celebrity astrologer, with your own column, radio program and a group of fans? Have you checked your horoscope to find out what it says?

Because there are fewer jobs, many young adults have decided to go back to school, or in the case of recent graduates, continue their studies. Postgraduate programs are receiving an increased number of applicants, many of whom are young adults who have turned to education to improve their chances of gaining employment. In 2009, institutions like the University of Glasgow and Sheffield Hallam University have seen more than a 50% rise in postgraduate applications.

For those of you who are heading back to school, share your story with us in the comments section.

Reference BBC UK

On 11 August, the Universidad Mayor de Chile became the first university in Chile to be accredited by the Ministry of Education from the U.S. government because of its high quality standards, which according to the U.S. government, are similar to those of universities in the USA. To obtain this certification, the Chilean centre was part of a strict evaluation process, which lasted five years, and was conducted by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, an agency under the Government of the United States. This comission also certifies United States universities such as Princeton, Johns Hopkins, Cornell and Columbia, and their role is to ensure that higher education institutions are fulfilling their purposes and addressing the public´s expectations.

Universidad Mayor de Chile

The accreditation will allow Chilean students of this University to study both undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in American institutions. The rector of the Universidad Mayor, Ruben Covarrubias said that with this progress, the doors of American universities are opening and creating new international opportunites for their students.