20 Tips for Success in School

20 Tips for Success in School Your high school years should be filled with great experiences. Increasingly, students are finding that high school is also a time of stress and anxiety. It seems that students are feeling more pressure than ever before when it comes to performing well. There are some things you can do to make sure the high school experience is enjoyable and successful. Embrace a Healthy Life Balance Dont stress about your grades so much that you forget to have fun. This is supposed to be an exciting time in your life. On the other hand, dont let too much fun get in the way of your study time. Establish a healthy balance and dont let yourself go overboard either way. Understand What Time Management Really Means Sometimes, students assume theres some magical trick or shortcut to time management. Time management means being aware and taking action. Be aware of the things that waste time and reduce them. You dont have to stop them, just reduce them. Take action to replace time wasters with active and responsible study habits. Eliminate Those Time Wasters Find Tools that Work for You There are many time management tools and tactics, but youll find that you are more likely to stick with a few. Different people find different methods that work for them. Use a big wall calendar, use color-coded supplies, use a planner, or find your own methods of managing your time. Choose Extracurricular Activities Wisely You may feel pressured to select several extracurricular activities that might look good on a college application. This can cause you to overextend yourself and get swamped in commitments that you dont enjoy. Instead, select clubs and activities that match your passions and your personality. Appreciate the Importance of Sleep We all joke around a lot about the poor sleep habits of teens. But the reality is that you have to find a way to get enough sleep. Lack of sleep leads to poor concentration, and poor concentration leads to bad grades. Youre the one who pays the price if you dont sleep enough. Force yourself to turn off the gadgets and go to bed early enough to get a good nights sleep. Do Things for Yourself Are you the child of a helicopter parent? If so, your parent is not doing you any favors by saving you from failures. Parents who monitor every bit of a childs life, from waking them in the morning, to monitoring homework and test days, to hiring professionals to help with college preparations; those parents are setting students up for failure in college. Learn to do things for yourself and ask your parents to give you space to succeed or fail on your own. Communicate with Your Teachers You dont have to be best friends with your teacher, but you should ask questions, accept feedback, and give feedback when your teacher asks for it. Teachers appreciate it when they see that students try. Practice Active Study Methods Studies show that you learn more when you study the same material two or three ways with a time delay between study methods. Rewrite your notes, test yourself and your friends, write practice essay answers: be creative and be active when you study! Give Yourself Plenty of Time to Do Assignments There are so many reasons you should get an early start on assignments. Too many things can go wrong if you procrastinate. You could come down with a bad cold on the night before your due date, you can find that youre missing some needed research or suppliesthere are dozens of possibilities. Use Smart Test Prep Studies show that the best way to prepare for a test is to create and use practice tests. For best results, use a study group to create test questions and practice quizzing each other. Eat Well to Feel Better Nutrition makes a world of difference when it comes to brain function. If you feel groggy, tired, or sleepy because of they way you eat, your ability to retain and recall information will be impaired. Improve Reading Habits In order to remember what you read, you will need to practice active reading techniques. Stop every few pages to attempt to summarize what youve read. Mark and research any words that you cant define. Read all critical texts at least twice. Reward Yourself Be sure to find ways to reward yourself for every good result. Make time to watch a marathon of your favorite shows on the weekends, or take time to have fun with friends and let off a little steam. Make Smart College Planning Choices The goal of most high school students is to gain acceptance into a college of choice. One common mistake is to follow the pack and select colleges for the wrong reasons. Big football colleges and Ivy League schools might be great choices for you, but then again, you might be better off at a small private college or a middle-sized state college. Think about how the college you pursue really matches your personality and your goals. Write Down Your Goals Theres no magical power to writing down your goals, except that it helps you identify and prioritize the things you want to accomplish. Turn your ambitions from vague thoughts to specific goals by making a list. Dont Let Friends Bring You Down Are your friends seeking the same goals as you? Are you picking up any bad habits from your friends? You dont have to change your friends because of your ambitions, but you should be aware of the influences that might affect you. Be sure to make choices based on your own ambitions and goals. Dont make choices just to make your friends happy. Choose Your Challenges Wisely You may be tempted to take honors classes or AP courses because theyll make you look good. Be aware that taking too many challenging courses can backfire. Determine your strengths and be selective about them. Excelling in a few challenging courses is much better than performing poorly in several. Take Advantage of Tutoring If you have the opportunity to receive free help, be sure to take advantage. The extra time you take to review lessons, solve problems, and talk over the information from class lectures, will pay off in your report cards. Learn to Accept Criticism It can be disheartening to find lots of red teachers marks and comments on a paper you spent hours crafting. Take the time to read the comments carefully and consider what the teacher has to say. Its sometimes painful to read about your weaknesses and mistakes, but this is the only way to really avoid repeating the same mistakes over and over. Also notice any patterns when it comes to grammar mistakes or wrong word choices.

The History and Domestication of Goats

The History and Domestication of Goats Goats (Capra hircus) were among the first domesticated animals, adapted from the wild bezoar ibex Capra aegargus in western Asia. Bezoar ibexes are native to the southern slopes of the Zagros and Taurus mountains, and evidence shows that the goat descendants spread globally, playing an important role in the advancement of Neolithic agricultural technology where they were taken. Beginning between 10,000-11,000 years ago, Neolithic farmers in the Near East starting keeping small herds of ibexes for their milk and meat, and for their dung for fuel, as well as for materials for clothing and building: hair, bone, skin, and sinew. Today over 300 breeds of goats exist on our planet, living on every continent except Antarctica and in a quite astonishing range of environments, from human tropical rain forests to dry hot desert regions and cold, hypoxic high altitude regions. Because of this variety, the domestication history was a bit obscure until the development of DNA research. Where Goats Originated Domestication in goats has been recognized archaeologically by the presence and abundance of the animal into regions that were well beyond western Asia, by perceived changes in their body size and shape (called morphology), by differences in demographic profiles in wild and domestic groups, and by stable isotope recognition of their dependence on year-round fodders. Archaeological data suggested two distinct places of domestication: the Euphrates river valley at Nevali Çori, Turkey (11,000 years ago [bp], and the Zagros Mountains of Iran at Ganj Dareh (10,000 bp). Other possible sites of domestication posed by archaeologists included the Indus Basin in Pakistan at (Mehrgarh, 9,000 bp), central Anatolia the southern Levant, and China. Divergent Goat Lineages Studies on mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences (Luikart et al) indicate there are four highly divergent goat lineages today. Luikart and colleagues suggested that means either there were four domestication events, or there is a broad level of diversity that was always there in the bezoar ibex. A study by Gerbault and colleagues supported Luikarts findings, suggesting the extraordinary variety of genes in modern goats arose from one or more domestication events from the Zagros and Taurus mountains and the southern Levant, followed by interbreeding and continued development in other places. A study on the frequency of genetic haplotypes (basically gene variation packages) in goats by Nomura and colleagues suggests that it is possible there may have been a southeast Asian domestication event as well, but its also possible that during the transport to southeast Asia via the steppe region of central Asia, goat groups developed extreme bottlenecks, resulting in fewer variations. Goat Domestication Processes Makarewicz and Tuross looked at stable isotopes in goat and gazelle bones from two sites on either side of the Dead Sea in Israel: Middle Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) site of Abu Ghosh and the Late PPNB site of Basta. They showed that gazelles (used as a control group) eaten by the occupants of the two sites maintained a consistently wild diet, but goats from the later Basta site had a significantly different diet than goats from the earlier site. The main difference in the oxygen and nitrogen stable isotopes of the goats suggests that Basta goats had access to plants that were from a wetter environment than that near where they were eaten. That was likely the result of either the goats being herded to a wetter environment during some part of the year  or that they were provisioned by fodder from those locations. That indicates that people were managing goats in so far as moving them from pasture to pasture and/or providing fodder by as early as 8000 cal BC; and that was likely part of a process that began earlier still, perhaps during the early PPNB (8500-8100 cal BC), coinciding with reliance on plant cultivars. Important Goat Sites Important archaeological sites with evidence for the initial process of goat domestication include Cayà ¶nà ¼, Turkey (8500-8000 BC), Tell Abu Hureyra, Syria (8000-7400 BC), Jericho, Israel (7500 BC), and Ain Ghazal, Jordan (7600-7500 BC). Sources Fernndez H, Hughes S, Vigne J-D, Helmer D, Hodgins G, Miquel C, Hnni C, Luikart G, and Taberlet P. 2006. Divergent mtDNA lineages of goats in an Early Neolithic site, far from the initial domestication areas. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103(42):15375-15379.Gerbault P, Powell A, and Thomas MG. 2012. Evaluating demographic models for goat domestication using mtDNA sequences. Anthropozoologica 47(2):64-76.Luikart G, Gielly L, Excoffier L, Vigne J-D, Bouvet J, and Taberlet P. 2001. Multiple maternal origins and weak phylogeographic structure in domestic goats. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 98:5927-5932.Makarewicz C, and Tuross N. 2012. Finding Fodder and Tracking Transhumance: Isotopic Detection of Goat Domestication Processes in the Near East. Current Anthropology 53(4):495-505.Naderi S, Rezaei H-R, Pompanon F, Blum MGB, Negrini R, Naghash H-R, Balkiz Ãâ€", Mashkour M, Gaggiotti OE, Ajmone-Marsan P et al. 2008. The goat domestication process inferr ed from large-scale mitochondrial DNA analysis of wild and domestic individuals. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105(46):17659-17664. Naderi S, Rezaei H-R, Taberlet P, Zundel S, Rafat S-A, Naghash H-R, El-Barody MAA, Ertugrul O, Pompanon F, and for the Econogene C. 2007. Large-Scale Mitochondrial DNA Analysis of the Domestic Goat Reveals Six Haplogroups with High Diversity. PLoS ONE 2(10):e1012.Nomura K, Yonezawa T, Mano S, Kawakami S, Shedlock AM, Hasegawa M, and Amano T. 2013. Domestication Process of the Goat Revealed by an Analysis of the Nearly Complete Mitochondrial Protein-Encoding Genes. PLoS ONE 8(8):e67775.Vahidi SMF, Tarang AR, Naqvi A-u-N, Falahati Anbaran M, Boettcher P, Joost S, Colli L, Garcia JF, and Ajmone-Marsan P. 2014. Investigation of the genetic diversity of domestic Capra hircus breeds reared within an early goat domestication area in Iran. Genetics Selection Evolution 46(1):27.Zeder MA. 2001. A Metrical Analysis of a Collection of Modern Goats (Capra hircus aegargus and C. h. hircus) from Iran and Iraq: Implications for the Study of Caprine Domestication. Journal of Archaeological Science 28 (1):61-79. Zeder MA, and Hesse B. 2000. The Initial Domestication of Goats (Capra hircus) in the Zagros Mountains 10,000 Years Ago.Science 287:2254-2257.