Hootsuite vs Tweetdeck
 
Tweetdeck and Hootsuite are dashboard applications meant for the organization of social media accounts, designed particularly for brand management.
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Differences 

• Hootsuite is available to download on desktop whereas Tweetdeck is not.
• TweetDeck is a free Web platform. Unlike HootSuite, you can only manage different Twitter accounts in the multi-column interface
• Hootsuite gives its user the opportunity to use Google analytic. 

Similarities

• Both allow its user to schedule their social media post for later  
• Both allow you to manage more than one account across different platforms.
• similar sleek interface.
• Both are available for mac and smart phones and tablets.
• both allow for scheduled tweets and updates

Hootsuite is good if you’re running a business, because you can manage multiple social media accounts, schedule posts with ease, and check your analytic. Tweetdeck is for the avid Twitter user, because of its specifically-designed focus on the Twitter platform and your ability to customize your activity streams. It also gets extra points for being completely free

challenges in studying abroad

 

What you are facing when choosing to go study abroad     

 

Bureaucratic Procedures

For once, all those formalities one has to take care of when they arrive are indeed frustrating. Students tend to be quite attracted to Europe when taking a gap year, or applying for an exchange program especially from overseas. Europe indeed welcomes foreign students yet laws are laws, and every student shall obey. Find a decent place to stay is usually troublesome, not to mention decent roommates. Applying for the student visa, residency permit along with other legal procedures concerning the right to stay and work in the designated country   is no joke, especially if you have to have serious conversations in a foreign language.

Cultural Differences

Wherever you go you will face a cultural shock. The food, the way they dress and their behavior in the streets changes without even going deeper to the roots of the traditions and customs. Apart from it being very interesting to experience sometimes it is quite challenging to comprehend. Remember you are no guest, so you will be treated with zero tolerance.

If you can’t speak the native language you might as well be damn fluent in English; even then there is a chance you’ll be ignored.

While at some festive ceremony you will have to learn to behave otherwise no party for you, my friend.

Every nation treats rejection differently, so you’ll have to be careful when turning down a request.

Living with roommates can be fun, as long as you respect some boundaries and make compromises. Out here everyone is “special” in some way. If there is a no long shower policy, you better respect that.

Formal dinners are always challenging, especially if you will be dining around complete strangers living under some strange manners (to you). Don’t be ashamed to ask first before you make a move.

Language

Language is one hell of a barrier if you are living in a foreign country. I strongly suggest you get started on some intensive language course, if the University won’t provide any.

Academic Difficulties

Universities follow diverse curricula within a city; imagine how different things are when you are studying in a different country.

The lectures can be way more interactive from what you expected; the stress of having to respond to a professor’s question in the native language might blur your opinions and leave you empty handed. On the other hand there is always the risk of not understanding a word your professor is saying.

Figuring out the way your homework shall be done is rather easy, you just ask your fellow colleagues. Yet, what if their answer is just a prank?

University calls for some serious readings, some of which you won’t be able to understand even in your mother language.

The way exams are shaped is one of the major differences between Universities. You can spend all that time focusing on the wrong questions, while the things you should’ve learned are right there in front of you.

Talking in front of the class takes courage. May courage be with you?

While some professors appreciate questions after the class is over, some might be annoyed by such an initiative. Watch and learn, let someone else make the mistakes for you.

Emotional Burden

Your emotional well being will go through different phases during your stay in the foreign country. No matter how hard it will be to separate from your loved ones, in the beginning you will be overwhelmed by the euphoria of the huge change. Eager to capture everything at once, the first few days will be relentless, like some curious tourist trying to know everything about the city and its people.

With days passing, you will start feeling homesick and spend days online talking to your friends and family, ignoring the life that is actually waiting for you outside those doors. Depression might overwhelm you, if you aren’t strong enough; you will consequently pack your bags and go back to your comfort zone. If not, you will continue the journey.

Once you are over with crying and whining, you will pull yourself together and go out there to make friends. Friends will bring other friends along and so you will again feel the sense of belonging.

Work Load vs. Time Lapse

Meanwhile back at home, all you cared about was maintaining a balance between your heart, brains and your body; now you will have to take care of everything on its right time.

Household duties for once will always be waiting for you to come home; not something you look forward to.

Eating and sleeping right is a major challenge, they somehow tend to disappear of your busy schedule.

Punctuality won’t be one of your major strong spots in the beginning yet you will adjust with time, eventually.

If you don’t start prioritizing soon enough, you will get caught in a complete chaos. Trust me; losing your job is something you don’t want to experience when you are thousands of km away from home.

Finances

Managing your funds is a side project that will require your full attention. If you are not careful enough with your monthly expenditure you will regret the day you were born. As I mentioned earlier, as an expat you will be treated with zero tolerance.

•  Hunt for a scholarship or financial aid to alleviate your tuition fees.
• Get a part-time job that won’t impede your normal University routine.
• Pay your bills regularly, all of them.
• Cook your meals instead of eating outside in expensive restaurants; money goes, and it goes fast.
• Use public transportation instead of taxis, or get a bike.
• Put money on the side for “emergencies”.
• Careful when purchasing health insurance, get the package that is affordable and covers all the necessary services.
• Try not to break any laws, otherwise you will be broke in no time.
  
  
  Good Luck 
  
  
   
  
  

Stuffs you need to check for before leaving

Packing for Study Abroad Programs

 

Find out what the climate is like where you will be studying so you can pack accordingly. Students who have traveled abroad before will tell you it's important to keep certain items in your carry-on baggage, primarily the following things:

• Passport
• Visa
• vaccination certificate (African)
• Tickets
• Glasses or contacts
• Prescription medications
• Cash
• pictures of your family
• favorites snacks from your country

The motto for checked baggage is "Less is more." Pack as little as possible, because you will be able to shop when you settle in. The airlines will limit the amount of bags you may check, and you will probably have limited storage space in your residence abroad. However, there are a few essentials that you should remember to bring with you:

• Student I.D.
• Proof of insurance
• Backpack for day trips
• Prescriptions
• Camera
• Gift (if you're staying with a host family)

Why is it important to study abroad?

 Few Facts on why it is beneficial for any student to study abroad.

 

 

Today's competitive job market

 

In today's global economy, study abroad can be a defining element to every student's undergraduate degree. Many companies increasingly desire leaders with the ability to live successfully in a variety of countries and work with people of various cultural backgrounds. Study abroad can provide the structure for students to build these skills and give them an edge over the competition. The distinction of having studied in a foreign country for a session, semester, or year can be invaluable to your student's future career in today's competitive job market.

 

Improve your network through new friends and acquaintances

The relationships formed while studying abroad might become some of the deepest friendships you will ever develop. You will have the opportunity to meet people from different backgrounds and cultures, and some of these people may even become life-long friends. Study abroad returnees often report meeting others with whom they expected to have no common ground and then discovered that, despite being from different parts of the globe, they have much in common and much to learn from one another. These relationships, insights, and outlooks are a critical part of the study abroad experience. You'll network with fellow students, teachers, host families and professionals, often leading to many great opportunities.

 

Independence

During a student's time abroad, he/she will undoubtedly encounter unexpected situations that will allow them to develop self-sufficiency and independence. The more times your student successfully navigates such situations, the more confident they will become in their ability to fend for themselves. Opportunities to take weekend trips to different cities, traveling before or after the program, and even daily life will teach valuable lessons. By the end of the study, most families notice a definite change in how independent and responsible their student has become.

 

During a student's time abroad, he/she will undoubtedly encounter unexpected situations that will allow them to develop self-sufficiency and independence. The more times  students successfully navigates such situations, the more confident they will become in their ability to fend for themselves. Opportunities to take weekend trips to different cities, traveling before or after the program, and even daily life will teach valuable lessons. By the end of the program, most families notice a definite change in how independent and responsible their kid has become.

 

 

Fight stereotypes by educating others about what you represent.

There is a distinct challenge everyone faces abroad. Many other cultures only have experience with different ethnic groups through the media (e.g. news, sports, music, and movies). Students may become frustrated when the same stereotypes from home follow them overseas. However, study abroad is a unique opportunity to educate others about who you are as an individual and as a group: you can communicate your own experiences in the United States in comparison to what others see and hear. This is your chance to be an individual, as well as a representative of your culture, and to encourage positive understanding of global diversity.

 

Choices which in the end make sense

Public relations in poetry

I just had to post it for the love of Public Relations.

 

“The village inn, the dear old inn,
So ancient, clean and free from sin,
True centre of our rural life
Where Hodge sits down beside his wife
And talks of Marx and nuclear fission
With all a rustic’s intuition.
Ah, more than church or school or hall,
The village inn’s the heart of all”

So spake the brewer’s PRO,
A man who really ought to know,
For he is paid for saying so.
And then he kindly gave to me
A lovely colored booklet free.

“Twas full of prose that sang the praise
Of coaching inns in Georgian days,
Showing how public-houses are
More modern than the motor-car,
More English than the weal or sold
And almost equally as old.
And run for love and not for gold

Until I felt a filthy swine
For loathing beer and liking wine,
And rotten to the vary core
For thinking village inns a bore
And village bores more sure to roam
To village inns than stay at home.

And then I thought I must be wrong,
So up I rose and went along
To that old village alehouse where
In neon light is written “Bear”.

Ah, where’s the inn that once I knew
With brick and chalky wall
Up which the knobbly pear-trees grew
For fear the place would fall?

Oh, that old pot house isn’t there,
It wasn’t worth our while.
You’ll find we have rebuilt “The Bear”
In Early Georgian style.

But winter jasmine used to cling
With golden stars a-shine
Where rain and wind would wash and swing
The crudely painted sign.

And where’s the roof of golden thatch?
The chimney-stack of stone?
The crown-glass panes that used to match
East sunset with their own?

Oh now the walls are red and smart,
The roof has emerald tiles.
The neon sign’s a work of art
And visible for miles.

The bar inside was papered green,
The settles grained like oak,
The only light was paraffin,
The woodfire used to smoke.

And photographs from far and wide
Were hung around the room;
The hunt, the church, the football side,
And Kitchener of Khartoum.

Our air-conditioned bars are lined
With washable material,
The stools are steel, the taste refined,
Hygienic and ethereal.

Hurrah, hurrah, for hearts of oak!
Away with inhibitions!
For here’s a place to sit and soak
In sanit’ry conditions.

Betjeman’s portrait of the public relations officer is someone involved in a publicity role – which he sees as having a duplicitous nature; selectively presenting facts on behalf of a paymaster.  A function perhaps indicative of the 1950s when the new was presented as better than whatever it replaced – a move away from heritage and community.

The poem may be sentimental and hark after an idealistic British countryside that probably never existed. 

Heather Yaxley
March 27, 2007

Few facts on why I decided to learn English

Few facts on why I decided to Learn English

Ø  English is the most commonly used language among foreign language speakers. Throughout the world, when people with different languages come together they commonly use English to communicate.

Ø  Knowing English will make you bilingual and more employable in every country in the world.

Ø  English is commonly spoken throughout much of the world due to Great Britain’s expansion during the colonial age. People in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and parts of Africa, India, and many smaller island nations speak English. English is the commonly adopted second language in Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands. Speaking English opens these countries and cultures up to you

Ø  speaking English immediately opens up opportunities regardless of your ethnicity, color, or background

Ø  English is the official language of 53 countries. That is a lot of people to meet and speak to

The Joy of learning a new language (Choices which in the end make sense)