Financing for a college education is often one of the most important steps that people can make in their college career. It is important to make the decisions as to how a college education will be paid for, be it via personal expenses or through assistance. More times than not, it is through the latter that many college students will receive funding for their college educations.

Various Resources are Available for Financing Your Education

There are several choices that are best for a college education. These choices are typically through scholarships, grants, military funding, and loans. Scholarships are the widest received forms of college funding. Scholarships are often received while in high school, and in some instances, through special organizations for students that are returning to college. There are a lot of monies that are rewarded every year to scholarship recipients, all of whom greatly welcome the reprieve from paying the additional funds for school. This is typically the best choice for financing your college education. Scholarships are typically rewarded to individuals based on grades and community services. A scholarship is the best source for financing a college education since the monies do not have to be paid back.

Paying for Your College Education with Grants

Grants are another great way to receive financial assistance for your college education. For those that do not have the adequate financing for college, and if living at home your family does not make enough income, then grants are frequently rewarded. It should be noted that grants must be repaid, and not everyone that applies for a grant will be awarded money. Receiving a grant is still a form of assistance, and it often well received. (more…)

Attending college is perhaps one of the most important educational moves and investments that a student can make. College is quite expensive, however, so student loans are often needed to help the college student pay for their financial responsibilities while attending school.

Various Methods to Receive Financial Assistance

There are various ways that a student can receive financial assistance for college funding. One of the most popular ways is through a student loan lender. A student loan lender can be in the form of a bank, a financing company, or through an individual lender, be it public or private. There are several key points that should be addressed when dealing with a student lender. Some of the items that can be of question for the student loan lenders are: can the lender meet all of your needs, what is the rate for interest and the terms applied, what does the loan application consist of, how do the repayment plans operate, what are the rewards that are given to those that pay the loans on time, and what are the methods that a loan lender can be reached. (more…)

Rate yourself on the following items on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being the low and 5 high). This exercise aims at fact-finding and not fault-finding, and is intended to help you focus on areas for self-improvement.

1. I stay relaxed and composed under pressure

2. I can identify negative feelings without becoming distressed

3. I stay focused (not lost in unimportant details) in getting a job done

4. I freely admit to making mistakes

5. I am sensitive to other people’s emotions and moods

6. I can conceive feedback or criticism without becoming defensive

7. I calm myself quickly when I get angry or upset (more…)

Emotional Intelligence is the capacity to recognize your own feelings and those of other people, to be able to motivate yourself, to manage emotions in yourself and in your relationships. Chris Walkins

History of ‘Emotional Intelligence’

In 1985 a graduate student in the USA wrote a doctoral thesis which included the term ‘emotional intelligence’ in the title. This was the first-ever-academic use of the term emotional intelligence, popularly known as EQ … Emotional Quotient.

Then in 1990 the research work of two American university professors, John Mayer and Peter Salovey, was published in two academic journal articles. Mayer (University of New Hampshire) and Salovey (University of Yale), were trying to develop a way of scientifically measuring the difference between people’s ability in the area of emotions. They found out that some people were better than others at things like identifying their own feelings, identifying the feelings of others, and solving problems involving emotional issues.

Since their work in 1990 these professors have developed different tests to measure what they call “emotional intelligence.” Because nearly all of their writings have been done in the academic community, their names and their actual research findings are not widely known.

Instead, the person most commonly associated with the term emotional intelligence is a New York writer named Daniel Goleman who had been writing articles for the magazine ‘Popular Psychology’ and then later for the New York Times newspaper. Around 1994, he was evidently planning to write a book about “emotional literacy.” For that book he was visiting different schools to see what programs they had for developing emotional literacy. He was also doing a lot of reading about emotions in general. In his insatiable thirst for reading, he came upon the work of Professors Mayer and Salovey. At some point it seems that Goleman decided to change the title of his upcoming book to “Emotional Intelligence”, and this book instantly became an international best seller.

In this book, Goleman has collected a lot of interesting information on human brain, emotions, and behaviors.

Definition

Emotional intelligence is the capacity for effectively recognizing and managing our own emotions and those of others.

Research and experience demonstrate that while some aspects of our personalities are fixed, the way we act out those qualities is ours to choose. In other words:

• We do not choose our characteristics, but we do choose our characters

• We do not choose many of the events of our lives, but we do choose how we react to them.

Emotions have the potential to get in the way of our most important business and personal relationships. According to Professor John Cotter of the Harvard Business School, ‘because of the furious pace of change in business today, difficult to manage relationships sabotage more business than anything else — it is not a question of strategy that gets us into trouble, it is a questions of emotions’. (more…)