Academics & The Arts Articles

Article / Updated 02-01-2023

Listen to the article:Download audio Reflective journaling is a structured approach to journaling that focuses on finding meaning in life events by asking questions, such as “What happened?” “How did I respond?” and “How did this event change me?” Through the reflective journaling process, you can examine your thoughts, interpretations, and belief systems to become more self-aware and to grow from your life experiences. In addition, the reflective writing practice can improve your ability to challenge assumptions and think creatively. Exploring life with reflective journaling When you picture yourself journaling, you likely see yourself writing in a free-form fashion about thoughts, feelings, and whatever comes to mind. This unstructured technique, referred to as free-writing, is probably the most well-known of all journaling methods. People usually free-write without a specific purpose. Similar to going on a Sunday afternoon drive without having a destination, you’re just out to see the sights, and maybe you meander down some side roads on a whim. Your drive may be a fun and relaxing activity that provides perspective on your neighborhood and its surroundings, and might possibly lead to somewhere new and exciting, but that’s not the intention. Like that Sunday drive, free-writing may lead to meaningful self-discoveries, but is most often just an exploration of familiar inner roads. On the other hand, reflective journaling combines intention with exploration. This type of journaling goes on that metaphorical Sunday drive with a final destination in mind. You can still explore interesting sights and meander down those side roads along the way, but you arrive at a meaningful destination. Your trip fulfills a purpose beyond just getting in the car and driving. Reflective journaling is a therapeutic practice that can help you identify, grow from, and find meaning in your past experiences. And the new perspective you gain along the way can change the way you respond to people and events in the future. We create our life stories by making meaning of events that happen in our lives. Reflective journaling allows you to reconsider those stories, to deeply explore all sides of an event, and to confirm or even rewrite those stories. You can use reflective journaling to examine events in the distant past, or events that happened just yesterday. You can also use it to reflect on important topics in your life: relationships, life passages, parenting, and more. Fortunately, like most journaling methods, you can quickly get the hang of reflective journaling. And, with practice, you can turn it into a powerful tool to enhance your understanding of your past, increase self-knowledge and self-awareness, help you change how you respond in stressful situations, and even improve relationships. Defining reflection Before you dive into practicing reflective journaling, I want to make sure you understand what I mean when I say “reflection.” You can interpret the term reflection in a number of ways that apply to your reflective journaling practice. To reflect may include any or all of the following: To cause to change direction: “The glass reflects the light.” Reflective journaling can reflect light on, or bring insight to, related concepts, issues, and behaviors. For example, while reflecting on your relationship with your son, you suddenly see a similarity in your relationship with your father. Your reflective thinking bounces the light off the surface of your intended subject (your son) to a nearby subject (your father), which ultimately provides some insight into yourself in the process. To mirror back: “The still water of the lake reflects the trees along its banks.” Nothing provides self-awareness as effectively as a mirror. Reflective journaling gives you the opportunity to see your behaviors and attitudes mirrored back to you, simply through the act of writing about them as well as reading and analyzing your entries afterwards. And when you maintain an intention of remaining curious about yourself, you can use reflective journaling to understand yourself better and make purposeful change in your life. To make apparent: “Their work reflects their attitude.” You may have difficulty seeing patterns in your own life. However, writing consistently about the same issues from different angles can provide a work of reflection. Much like weaving a blanket thread by thread, then stepping back to see the patterns you created, reviewing journaling entries made over time can help you perceive behavioral patterns in your life. To consider or think carefully about: “They reflected on the many mistakes they had made.” This definition provides the most direct explanation of what you’re doing when you write reflectively in your journal. You simply write down the thoughts, emotions, and responses that you have while you consider your topic. Seeing the benefits of reflection Simply thinking or writing about your past doesn’t necessarily involve true reflection. Don’t play past events in your head over and over again, a practice called ruminating. This process doesn’t provide any constructive insights and can actually be unhealthy. Ruminating about your past can lead you to beat yourself up mentally about past mistakes and to dwell on regrets. Looking back in this manner can lead to sadness, anger, and depression. In contrast, reflective journaling, done with intention and purpose, provides a constructive outlet. You can get many benefits from considering past events introspectively and, in particular, thinking about your responses to those events. Here are a few potential benefits of reflective journaling. Reflection can: Help you make connections between experiences. These connections, in turn, help you to see the past from a new perspective. Looking back, you can express compassion and empathy to that past version of yourself and other people who played a role in hurtful events in your life.For example, a good friend did something that seemed like an intentional slight at the time. Upon reflection, you can now perceive their behavior for what it was: They had a lot going on in their life, felt overwhelmed, and couldn’t give you what you needed. They didn’t slight you intentionally, you now realize. This realization, then, opens the door to forgiveness and healing. Improve your critical thinking skills. One of the purposes of reflective journaling is to question assumptions you make about people and events in your life. An assumption is an unexamined belief or way of thinking that you’ve taken for granted. Assumptions guide conclusions and decisions you make, so becoming aware of and questioning your assumptions is key to critical thinking, resulting in improved self-awareness and better decision making. Show you how far you’ve come. Each day, you do the best you can, but you can’t easily tell if you improve much over time. When you reflect on past behaviors and relationships, and compare those behaviors and relationships with where you are today, you can see how much you’ve changed and grown. And if you realize that you haven’t changed much, that realization can spur you to make life course corrections. Give you the opportunity to reassess what you want in your life. Reflecting on where you’ve been and what you’ve experienced allows you to decide what you like or want in your life and what you don’t. It can inspire you to recommit to goals or change direction altogether.

Article / Updated 01-30-2023

Everything worth doing benefits from proper planning, and taking a test is no exception. The last chance a student has to influence the outcome of a test is the night before they take it. Here are ten must-dos to positively affect the outcome of a test. Eat a well-balanced meal It’s a proven fact that what you eat will have an effect on your physical and mental performance. Avoid coffee and doughnuts or pizza and soda the night before a test. Grilled fish with steamed vegetables on the side, mixed fruit for dessert, and caffeine-free beverages throughout would be perfect. Greasy, heavy food can make you lethargic the morning after consumption. No alcoholic beverages of any kind should be consumed. Get your stuff ready for the morning Make sure you have all the materials that you’re taking into the test ready. If a laptop or calculator is allowed, have it on the charger. Have more than one pencil or pen in hand. Pack a bottle of water and/or some candy for the nervous dry-mouth that can set in before an exam. Gather all your stuff together and have it ready to go the night before. Lay out your clothes Choose an outfit that is layered and lay it out before retiring. You won’t have any control over the temperature of the testing area, so be prepared to add or subtract layers so you can be comfortable during the exam. Go for comfort, not style. Review with a buddy Schedule a question-answer review of the testable material with a study buddy early in the evening to test your knowledge of the subject. Use it to identify the areas that need more effort. The review will also help you have confidence in your ability to do well on the test. Visualize a positive outcome Attitude affects test scores. Even with proper planning, too many people hurt their performance on a test because they just know that they're going to fail. Think positively and don’t embrace failure as an outcome. Don’t think that you might fail, know that you will succeed, and your performance will be the better for it. Make a morning pre-test plan List the things you need to do before the test. List everything that needs to happen and make sure there’s enough time to get it all done without creating stress. Don’t try to do too much; now is not the time to try to work in a load of laundry. Set the alarm No-brainer, huh? You’d be surprised how often this happens to well-intentioned people. Check your morning plan and get up early enough not to be rushed. Don’t rely on others to get you up. Exercise before retiring A little light stretching and exercise will help you fall asleep faster and sleep soundly through the night. It also works out the tension you may be carrying after a day of studying and test prep. If you go to bed tense, you may wake up with a backache or headache — definitely not appreciated on the day of a test. Get a good night’s sleep Don’t burn the midnight oil the night before a test. The extra effort put into late-night studying will be offset by reduced mental performance due to lost sleep. It won’t help, so don’t try it. Call it a night and go to bed; your morning will be better for it. Reward yourself Treat yourself right. Remember to schedule a little post-test celebration or other reward for all your hard work preparing for the test. Make it special. After all, you are worth it!

Article / Updated 01-30-2023

February is Black History Month, a celebration of African American achievements and civil rights pioneers, such as Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, and Martin Luther King Jr. The month also celebrates the history of Black American leaders in politics, industry, science, culture, and more. Hundreds of sites around the country have important stories to tell about the history of Black people in America. If February is a good time for you to travel, you might consider visiting one or more of these places as a way to celebrate Black History Month. Reading or watching a documentary is a great way to learn about history, but actually being in a place where an event happened or a historic figure once walked can lend an even deeper significance to your experience. See the list of 10 Black American history sites below. Of course, there are many more, but these, hopefully, will give you some ideas, and spark your interest in exploring further. The origins of Black History Month Black History Month began in 1915, when thousands of African Americans traveled to Chicago to participate in a national 50th anniversary celebration of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery. That year, Harvard-trained historian Carter G. Woodson — known as the “Father of Black History” — led the effort to form the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, today called the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. In February 1926, that organization established Negro History Week — to coincide with the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. During the following decades, mayors across the nation began issuing proclamations recognizing the special week, and by the 1960s, it had evolved into Black History Month. Woodson’s home in Washington, D.C., is a National Historic Site managed by the National Park Service. It’s scheduled to reopen in the spring of 2023 after a full renovation project. Another Woodson-related site in Washington is the Carter G. Woodson Memorial Park. Important sites in Black American history Frederick Douglass House National Historic Site in Washington, D.C.: This site preserves the last residence of Douglass (1818-1895), who escaped slavery and became a prominent activist, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. The house is expected to reopen in 2023 after being closed to the public in March 2022 for renovations. Harriet Tubman Byway and Underground Railroad State Park and Visitor Center in Church Creek, Maryland: You can go on a self-guided driving tour of more than 30 sites that tell the story of this amazing woman who, from 1849 to 1860, operated the Underground Railroad – a secret network of routes, places, and people who provided shelter and assistance to escaping slaves. Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site in Tuskegee, Alabama: The Tuskegee Airmen were the first African American fighter pilots in the U.S. armed forces, and they earned three Distinguished Unit Citations During World War II for successful air strikes in Italy and Berlin. National Museum of African American History & Culture in Washington, D.C.: Part of the Smithsonian Institution, the museum is dedicated to the documentation of African American life, history, and culture. It opened in 2016 and has more than 40,000 artifacts and close to 100,000 members. Whitney Plantation in Edgard, Louisiana: The plantation opened to the public as a museum in 2014 and is dedicated to educating the public about slavery in America. Guided and self-guided tours cover the generations of Africans and their descendants who were enslaved there, the plantation owners, the buildings, and how the plantation operated. The King Center in Atlanta: Coretta Scott King, wife of Martin Luther King Jr., established the nonprofit Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change (The King Center) in 1968. The organization provides resources and education about the life, legacy, and teachings of Martin Luther King Jr. The campus includes the Kings’s burial site and the Freedom Hall exhibition building. Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta: This National Historic Site is where Martin Luther King Jr. served as pastor between 1933 and 1975. Go to the church’s website to learn about visiting the church and other King-related sites in Atlanta. Freedom Rides Museum in Montgomery, Alabama: This museum tells the story of the Freedom Riders, groups of courageous Black and white college students who rode Greyhound buses through the segregated south in 1961. Their mission was to compel the U.S. government to enforce Supreme Court decisions outlawing segregated transportation seating and facilities. A group of these Freedom Riders was attacked by an angry White mob in the spring of 1961 in Montgomery. Selma, Alabama: There are several places to visit in Selma, including the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the site of a brutal attack by law enforcement on a group of civil rights marchers on March 7, 1965. Famous civil rights leader John Lewis (later, a congressman) led the march for voting rights. He suffered a skull fracture in the attack, an event that became known as “Bloody Sunday.” Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Missouri: The museum preserves and tells the story of African American baseball and how it impacted social advancement.

Article / Updated 01-26-2023

.no-borders{margin-top:20px}.no-borders .img-div{border:none !important;margin:10px 0 10px 0 !important; padding:0 !important}Hey, students, it’s midyear… could you use a little help with tough, college-level subjects, or guidance on studying for a college entrance exam, like the ACT or GMAT? Dummies has you covered! Check out our academic books, including college prep subjects like College Writing For Dummies, GMAT Prep 2023 For Dummies, ACT Prep 2023 For Dummies, Praxis Core 2023-2024 For Dummies, and a whole lot more! Our exam prep books include online access to full-length practices tests, flash cards, and other study aids. Dummies is your trusted, friendly guide to learning, with a no-nonsense, easy-to-follow approach, detailed explanations, and plenty of practice problems! So, grab your book and get on your way to better grades! AmazonBarnes & Noble AmazonBarnes & Noble AmazonBarnes & Noble AmazonBarnes & Noble AmazonBarnes & Noble AmazonBarnes & Noble AmazonBarnes & Noble

Article / Updated 01-24-2023

Black American directors became more and more visible in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, with Spike Lee at the forefront. This article identifies just some of the many Black American directors who made a name for themselves, and a sampling of their work. Spike Lee: Getting personal From the 1986 film She’s Gotta Have It to his later work on Netflix, Spike Lee truly helped inspire a generation of filmmakers. In 2006, Lee, whose career had always been marked by generating his own projects, helmed a rare studio film, Inside Man, starring Denzel Washington, Jodie Foster, and Clive Owen; it became the highest grossing film of his career at roughly $88 million in the U.S. and Canada and more than $95 million overseas. Lee hit high marks with critics for his 2002 movie 25th Hour, his rare film with White main leads (Edward Norton and Philip Seymour Hoffman) and not-so-high critical marks with his 2008 film Miracle at St. Anna, a film he specifically made reclaiming Black WWII history Hollywood films consistently erased. His 2018 film BlacKkKlansman, written by him, Kevin Willmott, David Rabinowitz, and Charlie Wachtel, became an Academy Award darling; it was adapted from Rob Stallworth’s 2014 memoir Black Klansman about his efforts as a Black man to thwart the Ku Klux Klan in Colorado. BlacKkKlansman, which grossed more than $90 million worldwide, was nominated for six Academy Awards, winning one for Best Adapted Screenplay — a first for Lee, who had received an honorary Oscar for his contribution to film in 2015. Over his prolific feature film career, Lee had only received one nomination, in 1990 for Best Original Screenplay for Do the Right Thing. He fared slightly better with documentaries, receiving a nomination for his provocative 4 Little Girls (1997), chronicling the murder of four girls in the Birmingham church bombing in 1963. In 2020, Lee released Da 5 Bloods via Netflix. This epic Vietnam veteran tale reteamed him with Delroy Lindo (from Crooklyn) and Clarke Peters (from his 2012 film Red Hook Summer) and marked his first time working with newcomer Jonathan Majors as well as with Chadwick Boseman. With Da 5 Bloods, Lee achieved the distinction of having released films in five different decades, from the 1980s to the 2020s. Lee, a long-time professor at his film school alma mater, helped produce films of several filmmakers, including Gina Prince-Bythewood’s feature debut Love & Basketball in 2000. 1990s and early 2000s: The music video launch The rise of hip-hop music gave Black directors opportunities to showcase their vision and skill in music videos. Both Spike Lee and John Singleton directed music videos, most notably Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” for Lee and Michael Jackson’s “Remember the Time” for Singleton. Hype Williams elevated music videos with his innovative “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)” (1997) by Missy Elliott and “Big Pimpin’” (2000) by Jay-Z and UGK, among many greats. Williams’s debut 1998 film Belly helped introduce rapper DMX as a leading man. Music video directors, like F. Gary Gray, Tim Story, Antoine Fuqua, and Millicent Shelton, began transitioning primarily into film. Gray would hit with Friday (1995) and Set It Off (1996), starring rappers Ice Cube and Queen Latifah, respectively, on his way to later direct The Italian Job (2003), which made more than $175 million worldwide. Gray also directed Straight Outta Compton (2015), which made more than $160 million domestically and $200 million globally, and Fate of the Furious (2017) in the mighty The Fast and the Furious franchise. This made him the first Black American director to have a film reach $1 billion dollars in global box office receipts. Black directors without strong music video roots were also active at this time, including Carl Franklin with Devil in a Blue Dress (1995), Rick Famuyiwa with The Wood (1999), Malcolm D. Lee with The Best Man (1999), and Gina Prince-Bythewood with Love & Basketball (2000). Lee Daniels, who produced the feature film Monster’s Ball (2001), for which Halle Berry became the first Black woman to win the Academy Award for Best Actress, directed several films that made a huge impact. Daniels's influential films during this time period include Precious, in 2009, which was adapted from Sapphire’s 1996 book Push and introduced actress Gabourey Sidibe. The film was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. Mo’Nique won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress and Geoffrey Fletcher became the first Black screenwriter to win the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. The 2010s: Drama, horror, heroes, and more The late 1990s and early 2000s gave only a glimpse into what was to come. The 2010s ushered in Black directors who experienced even more notable breakthroughs, most notably Ava DuVernay, Barry Jenkins, Jordan Peele, and Ryan Coogler. Ava DuVernay Ava DuVernay, a Los Angeles area native, began her Hollywood career as a film publicist specializing in outreach to Black audiences. She worked on a string of successful films, including The Brothers (2001), Shrek 2 (2004), and Dreamgirls (2006), which launched Jennifer Hudson’s career. She directed several small films prior to breaking through at Sundance, first with I Will Follow in 2011 and then with Middle of Nowhere in 2012, with which she became the first Black female director to win its U.S. Directing Award: Dramatic. As her career progressed, DuVernay became acclaimed for both her filmmaking and her bold advocacy for inclusion. Filming Selma (2014), the first Hollywood feature film directly centered on Martin Luther King Jr., brought together DuVernay and Oprah Winfrey, who portrayed the real-life Annie Lee Cooper and her courageous struggle to vote in Jim Crow Alabama. That led to DuVernay’s spearheading the dramatic series Queen Sugar as its creator and visionary. Adapted from Natalie Baszile’s 2014 novel, the series revolves around three siblings from the Bordelon clan. With the launch of Queen Sugar in 2016, DuVernay committed to utilizing all female directors, which opened up additional opportunities for Black women directors, including Julie Dash, the first Black woman director to have a film distributed theatrically with her 1991 film Daughters of the Dust. Also directing for Queen Sugar were Tina Mabry, known for Mississippi Damned, Channing Godfrey Peoples, known for Miss Juneteenth, and Felicia Pride, known for the short Tender. With her 2018 film A Wrinkle in Time, adapted from Madeleine L’Engle’s classic 1962 novel and starring Storm Reid, along with Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, and Mindy Kaling, DuVernay became the first Black woman director to have a film pass $100 million at the box office. Through the streaming platform Netflix, DuVernay was able to make profound social justice statements, particularly through her 2016 documentary 13th, exploring the constitutional amendment and its relation to the mass incarceration of Black people. This documentary won four Emmys and an NAACP Image Award and garnered an Oscar nomination. Her Netflix limited series When They See Us, about the Central Park Five (later known as the Exonerated Five), who were falsely imprisoned for the 1989 rape of the Central Park jogger, won several African American Film Critics Association (AAFCA) and NAACP Image Awards. It also won the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or a Movie for Jharrel Jerome, a first for an Afro-Latino actor. Barry Jenkins Director Barry Jenkins’s 2016 film Moonlight is a tender coming-of-age story based on playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney’s unpublished semiautobiographical play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue, centered on a young man exploring his sexuality. It surprised critics and fans when it won the Oscar for Best Picture in 2017 over frontrunner La La Land after a dramatic mix-up initially announced La La Land as the winner. Jenkins’s 2018 film adaptation of James Baldwin’s celebrated 1974 novel If Beale Street Could Talk, addressing mass incarceration, resulted in actress Regina King winning her first Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. The Underground Railroad, Jenkins’s limited series for Amazon, a first for him, was adapted from Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel. Jordan Peele Jordan Peele surprised many when his 2017 feature film debut Get Out garnered him a Best Director and a Best Picture Oscar nomination, a first-time combo for a Black director. It was also a win for Black horror films and horror in general. Get Out, starring British actor Daniel Kaluuya, takes a turn when he and his white girlfriend visit her parents and he begins meeting Black people in a “sunken place” devoid of their essence or souls. He suspects it’s intentional and tries to escape the same fate. Made for less than $5 million, Get Out, also starring Lil Rel Howery, LaKeith Stanfield, and Betty Gabriel, grossed $255.5 million worldwide. Peele followed Get Out with Us (2019), starring Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o as both the protagonist and the antagonist, grossing more than $255 million worldwide. Ryan Coogler California Bay Area native Ryan Coogler’s first feature film, Fruitvale Station — about the 2008 Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) cop killing of 22-year-old Oscar Grant III — was released in 2013 This came at the same time as the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the murder of Trayvon Martin. Fruitvale Station starred Michael B. Jordan, who was just starting to make a real push toward the big screen. It was the rare film that humanized the victims of cop killings and not just the cop. From there, Coogler turned his attention to Sylvester Stallone’s iconic Rocky franchise and created Creed, his 2015 film, shifting the focus to Adonis “Donnie” Creed. Creed starred Michael B. Jordan as an offspring of Apollo Creed and starred Sylvester Stallone as Rocky. That film grossed more than $170 million worldwide. None of Coogler’s previous achievements, as impressive as they were for a director, especially one younger than 30 and Black, foreshadowed how significantly he would change the film landscape as the co-writer and director of Black Panther, the first standalone Black-cast film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Black Panther starred Chadwick Boseman as T’Challa/Black Panther, the would-be king of the fictional African nation of Wakanda and Michael B. Jordan as Killmonger, a challenger to the throne. Released February 16, 2018, to critical and popular acclaim, Black Panther, with its African Diasporic casting of actors from the United States, England, various parts of the African Continent, and the Caribbean, proved to be a global sensation. In the United States and Canada alone, Black Panther grossed more than $700 million on its way to a worldwide gross of more than $1.3 billion. This made Coogler the highest-grossing Black director, just ahead of Gray’s The Fate of the Furious, which grossed more than $1.2 billion in 2017. The love and pride audiences have for Black Panther made the unexpected passing of Chadwick Boseman on August 28, 2020, at age 43, a cause of national and international mourning. 2020: A stream of Black women directors A high point of 2020 was the emergence of Black women directors, with a Black woman-directed feature-length film released almost every month. It began with Numa Perrier’s Jezebel on Netflix in January 2020, followed by Radha Blank’s The 40-Year-Old Version, which won Sundance’s U.S. Dramatic Competition Directing Award prior to being shown on Netflix that October. That February, Canadian-American director Stella Meghie released The Photograph, which she wrote and directed, starring Issa Rae and LaKeith Stanfield on the big screen. Other films that followed include the high school mean-girl tale Selah and the Spades from writer/director Tayarisha Poe on Amazon Prime Video; writer/director Channing Godfrey Peoples’ Miss Juneteenth, starring Nicole Beharie, on video-on-demand; and Gina Prince-Bythewood’s action film The Old Guard for Netflix, starring white South African Charlize Theron and Black actress KiKi Layne. In the year prior, 2019, Melina Matsoukas, a music video master known for her collaborations with Beyoncé, Rihanna, and even Whitney Houston, had gotten the party started early with her feature film debut Queen & Slim, starring Kaluuya and Jodie Turner Smith. It generated considerable buzz. So did the announcement that Nia DaCosta, whose anticipated Candyman reboot was pushed to 2021, would direct the next Captain Marvel film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Article / Updated 01-23-2023

.no-borders{margin-top:20px}.no-borders .img-div{border:none !important;margin:10px 0 10px 0 !important; padding:0 !important}It’s Practice Problems books to the rescue! Hey, students and teachers, it’s midyear… could you use a little help with your particularly challenging subjects? Got an exam coming up? Teachers, would you like additional material to help your students? Dummies has you covered! Check out our series of academic books serving up a ton of extra practice problems, with step-by-step explanations of each solution. Our Practice Problems books (print and ebook) also give you free online access to the same questions and answers with the ability to customize your practice. You can specify the number of problems to work on within the topic areas that give you the most trouble. The books also include free online Cheat Sheets and articles on Dummies.com. So, whether it’s calculus, chemistry, statistics, or English grammar, grab a Practice Problems book and boost your (or your students’) grades! AmazonBarnes & Noble AmazonBarnes & Noble AmazonBarnes & Noble AmazonBarnes & Noble AmazonBarnes & Noble AmazonBarnes & Noble AmazonBarnes & Noble AmazonBarnes & Noble AmazonBarnes & Noble AmazonBarnes & Noble

Article / Updated 01-19-2023

The debt ceiling, legally known as the debt limit, is the total amount of money that the U.S. government is authorized to borrow to pay existing obligations, such as Social Security and Medicare benefits, military salaries, interest on the national debt, tax refunds, and disbursements for other programs. The debt limit applies to federal debt held by the public, namely, securities held by investors outside the federal government, and to federal debt held by the government’s own accounts. The debt limit does not create new spending commitments but allows the government to finance existing obligations already established by Congress. The debt limit is codified at Title 31 subsection 3101 of the U.S. Code and the current statutory debt limit is $14.694 trillion. The debt limit is administered by the Department of Treasury, who publishes a graph of debt subject to the limit. History of the U.S. debt limit Congress has the sole power to borrow money on the credit of the United States as authorized by Article I Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution. Until 1917, Congress authorized each debt issuance separately. In order to help finance the United States’ involvement in World War I, Congress passed the Second Liberty Bond Act of 1917, which also established a limit on the total amount of bonds that could be issued. Congress broadened the limit to apply to all federal debt in 1939 and 1941 through the Public Debt Acts. Congress authorized the Department of the Treasury to issue such debt necessary to fund government operations (as authorized by the federal budget) as long as the total debt remained below a stated ceiling. According to the Treasury Department, since 1960, Congress has acted 78 times to raise, extend, or revise the definition of the debt limit – 49 times under Republican presidents and 29 times under Democratic presidents. In the history of the debt limit, the U.S. has experienced a technical default. In 1979, Congress completed negotiations to raise the debt limit at the last minute. Subsequently, Treasury failed to redeem $120 million of Treasury bills on time due to unprecedentedly high interest from small investors, Congress’ delay in raising the debt limit and faulty word-processing equipment. The Treasury Department described this failure as a technological glitch and the investors were eventually paid in full. In addition, the only time the debt limit has been numerically exceeded occurred December 16, 2009 when Treasury posted a national debt calculation of $12.135 trillion while the limit was $12.104 trillion dollars. Treasury utilized extraordinary accounting tools to meet federal obligations until Congress raised the limit to $12.4 trillion on December 24, 2009. Consequences of failing to increase debt limit If the debt limit is not raised, the United States will not have enough money to pay all of its obligations and will default. Most economists and financial experts observe that a failure to increase the debt limit and subsequent U.S. government default would have significant negative economic consequences. The U.S. government would default on its legal obligations for the first time in American history. Default could precipitate another financial crisis and threaten the jobs and savings of all Americans. If the federal government interrupts payments, people like Social Security recipients or government contractors, will have less money to spend, causing the economy to slow down Investors could demand a higher interest rate, causing the economy to slow down more and, perversely, worsening the deficit problem by increasing required interest payments on the debt Interest rates could go up for credit cards and mortgages because the interest rates paid by corporations and consumers in the U.S. are tied to the rate the nation pays. The special role of the dollar and Treasury securities in global markets would be damaged Default would create fundamental doubts about U.S. creditworthiness.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 01-19-2023

Statistics involves a lot of data analysis, and analysis is built with math notation and formulas — but never fear, your cheat sheet is here to help you organize, understand, and remember the notation and formulas so that when it comes to putting them into practice or to the test, you’re ahead of the game!

Article / Updated 01-11-2023

The Word Knowledge subtest of the ASVAB AFQT will contain some questions that ask you to define an underlined word in a sentence. Even if you don't know the word's meaning, you should be able to figure it out based on its context within the sentence. If you're unsure about your context skills, try the following practice exercise to test them. Practice exercise The following chart contains five sentences, each of which contains an underlined word. Copy the chart onto a sheet of paper. Then, based on each sentence, write your definition in the "Your Definition" column. Then look up the word in the dictionary (or check the definitions under "Answers and explanations") to find out how close you were. In the "Dictionary Definition" column, write the official definition; this will help you to remember it. Sentence Your Definition Dictonary Definition 1. Smoking has deleterious effects on your health. 2. The topic was too serious for her to be so facetious. 3. The English lexicon contains hundreds of thousands of words. 4. She told him not to plagiarize, but he copied the text anyway. 5. The commander didn't want to capitulate, but the general told him to surrender. Answers and explanations Deleterious is an adjective that means causing harm or damage. Facetious is an adjective that means treating serious issues with deliberately inappropriate humor. Lexicon is a noun that means the vocabulary of a person, language, or branch of knowledge. Plagiarize is a verb that means to take someone else's work or idea and pass it off as one's own. Capitulate is a verb that means to cease to resist or to surrender.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 01-11-2023

Playing rock guitar starts with having a vocabulary of chords of different types, including basic, as well as barre forms (6th-string root and 5th-string root) and a few other movable types.