Full Text of 'ROLE of U S CORRESPONDENT BANKING in Form

Okay I’ll show you what.People using nonsense short-forms throughout the conversation. Yes, and that too without proper punctuation. Not even a question mark.At times, I can’t even interpret what the person means. How many seconds do they actually save by typing out such senseless things?Please stop using codes. I’m not a computer.People who stretch out words with repetition of letters till it gets so annoying.I think these people are making up for the time saved by those short-form lovers. For what? To make the universal time spent on typing be a constant?In your language, I should say “Stoopppppp!”Excessive use of the letter - ZThe number of unnecessary Z’s in your texts is inversely proportional to how cool you are. Not the other way around.Excessive use of full-stops.I mean what is the deal with all the full-stops? Are you singing a song or something? Or are we playing fill in the blanks game so that I have to fill out all the dots? I don’t understand.Using JUST emojis. What situation be, no change.These people make me want to hate emojis altogether. For God’s sake, speak it out. This isn’t a primer book and I’m not a two year old.The always online one who won’t reply, especially when helps are asked.To add to it, the person not only stays online the whole time but changes his dp twice and updates his status stating how bored and jobless he is. But busy enough to send me a single picture. People, I tell you. -_-Keeps sending each word as a text.This could’ve been wrapped up in two texts. These people probably doesn’t know how disturbing it can get when your phone beeps and vibrates at the rate of 1 time/second.Those people who sends only those stupid chain messages.Reaaally? If you keep sending such messages, your whole contact list will have you in their block list. Oh yeah, I’ll frame it this way. The one BIG thing God fixed for you is the mass block action of your contacts.People who use swear words too much such that it finally makes you scared.Using all the swear words you know in a single conversation and keeping up the ‘swag’. Too much of the F word is giving me a headache.Inconsistent in the cases.Is there something wrong with your keyboard? I’ll pay for it myself to get it fixed. It takes me a hell lot of time to type a single word with all that switching of cases. How, man? WHY man?Taking too much advantage of the revoke feature.Consider yourself finding a large no. of messages from a person and opening up the conversation to see this. *facepalm*In how many messages can someone possibly make a mistake?Then I would also like to mention those people who won’t pick up the calls even if they had sent you a text 20 seconds ago. What could have happened in that span? You got run-over by a bus?The number of unknown guys who keep sending messages saying that they’re ‘interested’ is increasing.Seriously guys, go get a life. :3Thank you for scrolling all the way down. Cheers.PS: All the conversation screenshots attached are made up and are meant for reference.

Well, first, let us talk about where the name “Jesus Christ” comes from. The name Jesus is an Anglicized form of the Latin name Iesus, which is in turn a Latinized form of the ancient Greek name Ἰησοῦς (Iēsoũs), which is, in turn, a Hellenized form of Jesus’s original name in ancient Palestinian Aramaic, which was יֵשׁוּעַ (yēšūă‘), a shortened form of the earlier Hebrew name יְהוֹשֻׁעַ (y'hoshuaʿ), which means “Yahweh is Salvation.”y'hoshuaʿ is the original Hebrew name of the hero Joshua, the central figure in the Book of Joshua in the Old Testament. Consequently, yēšūă‘ was one of the most common male given names in Judaea and Galilee during the early part of the first century AD when Jesus was alive. There are even multiple other people with the exact same name mentioned in the New Testament, including Jesus Barabbas in the Gospel of Mark and Jesus Justus, an apostle mentioned in the Book of Acts and in the Pauline Epistles.Although people today often treat the word Christ as though it is Jesus’s last name, it is actually not a name at all, but rather an epithet (i.e. a descriptive title). The English word Christ is an Anglicized form of the Latin word Christus, which is, in turn, a Latinized form of the ancient Greek word Χριστός (Christós), meaning “anointed one.” The word Χριστός is used in the New Testament as a Greek translation of the Hebrew title מָשִׁיחַ (māšîaḥ), which has roughly the same meaning.In antiquity, the title of māšîaḥ was not exclusively specific to any one particular person; instead, it was a generic title that could be applied to anyone who was regarded as fulfilling the role of God’s anointed. For instance, in Isaiah 45:1, the title is applied to Cyrus the Great, the shah-in-shah of the Achaemenid Empire, who freed the Jews from captivity in Babylon after he captured the city in 539 BC and allowed them to return home to rebuild their Temple in Jerusalem.Now that we have that covered, we can proceed to explain where the phrase “Jesus H. Christ” most likely comes from. Most Christians are familiar with the Chi Rho monogram. If you are not familiar with it, here it is:It is composed of the capital forms of the Greek letters chi ⟨Χ⟩ and rho ⟨Ρ⟩, the first two letters of the Greek word Χριστός, superimposed over each other. It is a sort of clever abbreviation that was used by early Christians to signify “Jesus” without having to write out his full name.There is, however, another monogram used to represent Jesus that many people are less familiar with: the IHϹ monogram. Here is one form of it:While the Chi Rho monogram is composed of the capital forms of the first two letters of the Greek word Χριστός, the IHϹ monogram is composed of the first three letters of Ἰησοῦς, which, if you recall, is the Greek spelling of the name Jesus.The first letter is the Greek letter iota ⟨I ι⟩, which looks like the Latin letter ⟨I⟩ and makes the [i] sound as in the word machine, or sometimes the consonantal [j] sound as in the word yellow. The second letter is the Greek letter eta, which makes the long E sound, but which looks like the Latin letter H ⟨H η⟩. The third and final letter is the lunate sigma ⟨Ϲ ϲ⟩, a form of the Greek letter sigma which looks extremely similar to the Latin letter ⟨C⟩ and makes the [s] sound as in the word soft.These are the first three letters of the name Ἰησοῦς, the Greek spelling of the name Jesus used in the original Greek text of the New Testament. At some point, however, presumably sometime in the early nineteenth century, ignorant Americans who were accustomed to the Latin alphabet and who knew nothing of the Greek alphabet mistook the letters of the IHϹ monogram for the Latin letters J, H, and C. They concluded that the J must stand for “Jesus” and the C must stand for “Christ,” but then no one could figure out what the H stood for. Apparently, some people just concluded, “Hey, I guess H must be his middle initial!”Eventually, the phrase “Jesus H. Christ” became something of a joke and it began to be used as a mild expletive. In his autobiography, the American author Mark Twain (a.k.a. Samuel Langhorne Clemens; lived 1835–1910) observed that the phrase was already in common use when he was still a young lad. Twain tells a humorous anecdote of how, in around 1847, when he was apprenticed to a printer, the evangelical psignNower Alexander Campbell, the leader of the “Restoration Movement,” ordered the printer to whom the young Samuel Clemens was apprenticed to print some pamphlets for one of his sermons.Unfortunately, the printer accidentally dropped a few words and, in order to avoid having to reset three whole pages of text, made space to fill in the missing words by abbreviating the name “Jesus Christ” to simply “J. C.” at one point in the text. The pious Reverend Campbell, however, insisted that the printer must not “diminish” the name of the Lord; he insisted that he needed to include the full name, even if it meant resetting three whole pages of already set text. The printer reset the text, but, because he was annoyed by the reverend, instead of changing the text of the pamphlet to say simply “Jesus Christ,” he changed it to say “Jesus H. Christ.”It is important to note that Mark Twain’s story is not the origin of the phrase, but it is an early piece of evidence of the phrase being used.Here are the origins of some other humorous oaths:“By Jove!” Jove was a name for the Roman god Jupiter. This oath substitutes the name of a pagan god for the Christian one, the implication being that it was considered less offensive to swear by a deity perceived as being false than a deity perceived as being true.“For Pete’s sake!” The “Pete” that this oath refers to is Saint Simon Peter the Apostle. The oath substitutes Peter’s name for Christ’s to make it a lesser oath.“Gadsbud!” This seemingly nonsense phrase is most likely a contraction of either “God’s body” or “God’s blood,” referring to the body or blood of Christ respectively.“Gadzooks!” This seemingly nonsense phrase is actually a corruption of “God’s hooks,” referring to the nails used to pin Jesus to the cross during his crucifixion.“Holy mackerel!” This oath is of uncertain origin, but it may be a substitute for “Holy Mary,” referring to Mary, the mother of Jesus.“Zounds!” This seemingly nonsense phrase is actually a corruption of “God’s wounds,” referring to the wounds Jesus suffered during his crucifixion.

I was warned.Multiple people told me this one guy was a nightmare to work with and I counted myself lucky never to have been chosen to support him when his usual Executive Assistant was out sick or on vacation.He is known to scream and throw fits. To talk to his EA like they’re stupid and make truly unreasonable requests just so he has something to fuss about.Then it happened - I got the call that Oh Demanding One (ODO)’s full-time EA was going to be out for a few months to take care of family issues, and I was to fill in for him.I could feel the rush of fear and anxiety wash over me instantly.Working to support an executive you'll likely never meet in person comes with a unique set of challenges, even without it being someone known to be…difficult.I had to get my mind right and start off on the right foot.I set up a call with him before his usual guy went out on leave to introduce myself and talk about the transition.The first thing I said to ODO is that I wanted to do the absolute best job for him that I could and to make the transition between EAs as easy and painless as possible.I told him I always welcome feedback and if there’s something I’m doing that he doesn’t like, to please tell me because that’s the only way I would learn how to support him properly.He thanked me for that, we chatted for a few minutes, and I took over his support the following Monday, living in anticipation of his legendary temper and the horror I knew was coming.ODO has never had a single cross word for me.He has texted me several times thanking me for doing a great job - when I wasn’t even going above and beyond, just doing my thing.He’s made it a point to frequently communicate to the EA Manager, my direct boss, how pleased he is with my support.She said he told her I’m ‘delightful’.The other EAs who have filled in for him in the past are in awe and disbelief.Is he demanding? Oh, heck yeah!But he has never asked for anything truly unreasonable, and while he’s high-maintenance he has also totally cut me slack a couple of times when I made legitimate mistakes.It’s all about how you approach someone.

I literally went through the 100+ answers here, many of them saying "Can't believe no one mentioned this!"I really can't believe no one mentioned 'this'!You think wasting a little space in a public washroom is bad? A bad vending machine? A badly designed sink? Wait till you see this.​Antilia- Mukesh Ambani's HouseThe world's most expensive housing for one family. Officially $1 billion USD (or Rs. 6,400 crore).Think about it for a second. ONE FAMILY, A BILLION USD.Now look at that ugly looking piece of junk once again. A billion dollars. Look outside any window from the building, and you can see abject poverty all around. And then you choose to make something for 1 BILLION USD, just for your own family.It's your money, and I know you have the right to spend it any way you want, Mr. Ambani. But at least design it to become a landmark- a thing of beauty and pride for the city (btw, Burj Al Arab also costs 1 billion USD to build, is a source of national pride, and brings in tourism and money for itself and for others as well), or just to look like an average office building, but at least not something that makes the whole area look poorer by addition of a billion dollars to it.If this is not bad freaking design, I don't know what is.Oh, and btw, some Vastu went wrong, and hence the Ambani family is not even currently living in it.P.S.: I am sorry I have to add this, but this is getting ridiculous. If you agree with the answer, cool. If you don’t, please feel free to downvote and move on. Don’t waste time bysinging praises of the architecture and commenting that I don’t understand it’s beauty (You are free to have your opinion, like I am)Telling me that it’s their money, so they have a right to do anything they want with it (I agree, but they don’t have the right to make me think it’s a work of art just because they spent so much on it. I reserve the right to my opinion.)Don’t get me started on Vastu Shastra being a correct and accurate science coming from the old Indian epics (at least the modern interpretation of it), unless you also want to prove to me that you are an alien, and that man never went to the moon. In which case, I ask you not to comment at all- downvote, and be on your way.The area around is not poor (maybe not the 10cm exactly around it, but try and move a kilometer away in any direction and you shall see).The cost of Burj Al-Arab (until you have a reliable link. And no, Wikipedia page doesn’t count. Go check the cited source on Wikipedia itself, and then comment).All these have been mentioned and discussed in the comments- by me and others- endless times. Feel free to bring something new to the table, but don’t give me the same old logic again and again and again. It gets boring.Cheers.

A TERM PAPER is a concisely written, documented paper of reasonable length in which a student identifies, analyzes, interprets, and draws conclusions from the facts and opinions of other people. A term paper requires a student to obtain information from a variety of sources (i.e., special subject indexes, encyclopedias and dictionaries, reference books, scholarly journals, books, and newspapers) and thenPlace it in logically developed ideas. Term paper writing is one of the most common requirements for an upper-division course such as the one for which this book was probably assigned. Such term papers usually count for a signNow part of your final grade. Yet many, perhaps most, students have never received formal instruction about how to write a good research report. There are nine steps in writing a term paper, which will be illustrated with brief examples.Step 1: Select a SubjectStep 2: Narrow the Subject into a TopicStep 3: State the ObjectiveStep 4: Make a Preliminary BibliographyStep 5: Prepare a tentative Working OutlineStep 6: Take NotesStep 7: Prepare a Final OutlineStep 8: Write a DraftStep 10: Prepare Final Copy .

I got my job as a designer without going to design school.I wanted to change careers and become a designer, but I didn’t have four years and $100k to go back to school. So I decided to teach myself. At first, I had a lot of doubts on whether someone could teach themselves well enough to get a job.If you’re wondering the same, the answer is yes.I hacked together my own design education in 6 months while working a full-time job. I didn’t think I was ready but started applying for jobs anyway — and got a job at a great startup, Exec.I’ll admit, I’m nowhere near as good as many design prodigies that come out of a 4-year education at an elite school. But I’m definitely good enough to do my job well. I design a pretty wide range of things — for the website, iPhone app, emails, social media, and print.Maybe you want to change careers and become a designer full-time.Or you just want to learn some basics for your startup or side project.This is a guide to teach yourself design.Update: I first published this answer over a year ago. Since then I’ve gotten hundreds of emails asking for more guidance and easier to follow steps, and I finally found one: Designlab. This course wasn’t around when I was learning, but man do I wish it was – it would have made the whole process a lot less daunting. What I really like about it is that it gives you project assignments, and then connects you to a design mentor who gives you feedback (they have really good ones who work at Facebook).Step 1. Learn to seeThe biggest mistake is jumping into Photoshop too fast. Learning Photoshop does not make you a designer, just like buying paintbrushes doesn’t make you an artist. Start with the foundation.First, learn how to draw.You don’t have to sit in a room with a bunch of other artists trying to draw a naked woman.You don’t even have to get that good at drawing. Just learn some basics so you can be comfortable sketching with a pen.You only have to do one thing to learn how to draw: get the book You Can Draw in 30 days and practice for half an hour every day for a month. I’ve looked at a lot of drawing books and this is one of the best.Learn graphic design theoryStart with the book Picture This. It’s a story book of Little Red Riding hood, but will teach you the foundations of graphic design at the same time.Learn about color, typography, and designing with a grid. If you can find a local class to teach the basics of graphic design, take it.Go through a few of these tutorials every day.Learn some basics in user experienceThere are a lot of books about user experience. Start with these two quick reads that will get you in the right mindset:The Design of Everyday ThingsDon’t Make Me Think!Learn how to writeDon’t fill your mockups with placeholder text like Lorem Ipsum. Your job as a designer is not just to make pretty pictures — you must be a good communicator. Think through the entire experience, choosing every word carefully. Write for humans. Don’t write in the academic tone you used to make yourself sound smart in school papers.Read Made to Stick, one of my favorite books of all time. It will teach you how to suck in your readers.Voice and Tone is a website full of great examples of how to talk to users.Learn to kill your workThis is the hardest step in this whole guide.Be prepared to kill everything you make. Be prepared to violently slaughter your precious design babies. The sooner you can embrace this, the better your work will become. When you realize your work isn’t good enough, kill it. Start again.Get another pair of eyes. Ask for feedback on your work from people who care about design. Don’t know anyone? Make some designer friends — go to designer meetups and events.Get the opinion of people who don’t care about design, too. Show your work to people who would be your users and ask them to try your website or app. Don’t be afraid to ask strangers — I once took advantage of a delayed flight by asking all the people in the airport terminal to try out an app I was designing. Most of them were bored and happy to help, and I got some great usability feedback.Listen. Really listen. Don’t argue. If you ask someone for feedback, they’re doing you a favor by giving you their time and attention. Don’t repay the favor by arguing with them. Instead of arguing, thank them and ask questions. Decide later whether you want to incorporate their feedback.Step 2. Learn how to use Photoshop and IllustratorHooray! Now you’ve got a pretty solid foundation – both visual and UX. You’re ready to learn Photoshop. Actually, I recommend starting with Illustrator first and then moving on to Photoshop after. Illustrator is what designers use to make logos and icons. InDesign is good for print design like flyers and business cards.Learn IllustratorThere are a ton of books, online tutorials and in-person classes to learn Illustrator. Choose the style that works best for you. Here are the books I found especially helpful to learn the basics of Illustrator:signNow Illustrator Classroom in a Book – It’s boring, but if you get through at least half of it, you’ll know your way around Illustrator pretty well.Vector Basic Training – This book teaches you how to make things in Illustrator that actually look good.Now for the fun stuff! Follow these online tutorials and be impressed by what you can make. Here are two my favorites – a logo and a scenic landscape.Learn PhotoshopThere are a million and one tutorials out there. A lot of them are crap. Fortunately, there are sites with really high quality tutorials. PSDTuts by TutsPlus is one of them.Here’s a good photoshop tutorial to make an iPhone app.Here’s another good photoshop tutorial to create a website mockup.Carve out an hour or two every day to go through some tutorials, and you’ll be impressed by how quickly you progress.Step 3. Learn some specialtiesDo you want to design mobile apps? Websites? Infographics? Explore them all, and pick and choose the ones you enjoy to get better at them.Learn Logo DesignLearn how to make a logo that doesn’t suck: Logo Design LoveYou’ll want to take it a step further than a logo though. Learn to create a consistent brand – from the website to the business cards. Check out this book, Designing Brand Identity.Learn Mobile App DesignStart with this tutorial to get your feet wet on visual design for mobile apps.Read this short but very comprehensive and well-thought out book on iPhone design: Tapworthy. It will teach you how to make an app that not only looks good but is easy to use.Geek out on the apps on your phone. Critique them. What works and what doesn’t?Learn Web DesignRead Don’t Make Me Think to learn how to make a website that people find easy to use and navigate.Read The Principles of Beautiful Web Design if you want help making a website look good.Make a list of the websites you think are beautifully designed. Note what they have in common. Some great examples are on SiteInspire.Now for the hairy question of whether you need to know HTML/CSS as a designer: It depends on the job. Knowing it will definitely give you an edge in the job market. Even if you don’t want to be a web developer, it helps to know some basics. That way you know what is possible and what isn’t.There are so many great resources to learn HTML and CSS:My favorite free one is Web Design Tuts.My favorite paid one (pretty affordable at $25/month) is Treehouse. If you’re starting from the beginning and want someone to explain things clearly and comprehensively, splurge for Treehouse tutorials.Step 4. Build your portfolioYou don’t need to go to a fancy design school to get a job as a designer. But you do need a solid portfolio.How do you build a portfolio if you’re just starting out for the first time? The good news is you don’t need to work on real projects with real clients to build a portfolio. Make up your own side projects. Here are a few ideas:Design silly ideas for t-shirts.Find poorly designed websites and redesign them.Got an idea for an iPhone app? Mock it up.Join a team at Startup Weekend and be a designer on a weekend project.Enter a 99 designs contest to practice designing to a brief.Do the graphic design exercises in the Creative Workshop book.Find a local nonprofit and offer to design for free.Resist the temptation to include every single thing you’ve ever designed in your portfolio. This is a place for your strongest work only.Steal, steal, steal at first. Don’t worry about being original – that will come later, once you are more comfortable with your craft. When you learn a musical instrument, you learn how to play other people’s songs before composing your own. Same goes for design. Steal like an artist.Go to Dribbble for inspiration on some of the best designers. Check out pttrns for iOS inspiration, and siteinspire for website inspiration.Step 5: Get a job as a designerWhen I first started learning design, I went to a job search workshop for designers. I walked into a room full of designers who had much more experience than I did – 5, 10, 15 years experience. All of them were looking for jobs. That was intimidating. There I was, trying to teach myself design, knowing I was competing with these experienced designers.And yet less than a year later, I got a design job. There was one key difference between me and many of the other designers that gave me an edge: I knew how to work with developers.The biggest factor to boost your employability is to be able to work with developers. Learn some interaction design. Learn some basic HTML and CSS. Designers in the tech industry (interaction designers, web designers, app designers) are in extremely high demand and are paid well. That’s where the jobs are right now.If you don’t have any experience working with developers, get some. Go to Startup Weekend, go to hackathons, or find a developer through a project collaboration site.Make a personal website and make your portfolio the centerpiece.Go out and make serendipity happen – tell everyone you know that you’re looking for a job as a designer. You never know who might know someone.Research companies and agencies you might be interested in. Look on LinkedIn for 2nd and 3rd degree connections to people who work at those companies and ask for intros. The best way to get a job is through a connection. If you don’t have a connection, there’s still a lot you can do to give yourself an edge.Once you’ve got the job, keep learningI’ve been at Exec for a year now and have learned a ton on the job. I seek out designers who are much more talented than I am, and learn from them. I find design classes (good online ones are Skillshare, General Assembly, Treehouse, and TutsPlus). I work on side projects. I geek out at the design section of bookstores. There is still so much to learn and to improve on.Keep your skills sharp, and always keep learning.“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.” ― Ira GlassThis article was originally published on Karen’s blog.

(I am answering this anonymously due to complaints I made to the state about this workplace which have not yet been resolved.)I told my manager I was not the only person taking federally-mandated 10 minute breaks.I was working at a busy soup/salad/sandwich place in a UC college town in CA. I won't say what city, but this place had been known for its enormous salads since the 1970s prior to a fire which burnt it to the ground.I was hired the 2nd week of their reopening after rebuilding. I worked my ASS off, never took a sick day (since it wasn't allowed) took any shift that was needed and as many extra responsibilities as possible to show management that I took the job seriously and was in it for the long haul.This was the first job I had been offered in the 5 years after having my child, so I was desperate to not only get back into the working world but to also show my employers they did right hiring me: an overweight unknown with a 5 year gap in their resume.I worked. And worked. And WORKED. I was one of the few employees available for the school holidays. I would be able to come in with 10min notice. I would stay after hours after I finished cleaning the salad area to make sure the bread loaves in the kitchen were plastic wrapped and put aside for the morning breakfast rush.All 42 loaves of bread. Off the clock.I would fill in for the dishwasher when they would be fired/not show up in addition to my regular duties.I made friends with the kitchen staff and the bar staff next door (same owner) so I could inform our customers what every ingredient was in their meals.I made sure to bleach and scrub the 4 cutting boards at least once per month; I tried to do it every week, but was told by management "it wasn't necessary", even when I saw mold actively growing on the boards.So I did it off the clock, cause that shit was DISGUSTING!I informed the head chef when I found a baby cockroach frozen in an ice cube I had just scooped from the ice machine.I told management about the full-sized German Cockroaches we saw running wild underneath the register area, which is less than 2 inches from the food storage and service area. One long lunch counter and a clan of roaches underneath…I kept my mouth shut when the Bar Manager (the Owners best friend) propositioned me, screaming at me accusing me of stealing when I started eating the rest of my lunch after I clocked out, and I stayed on after half the bar staff quit after he cornered and sexually assaulted a lone female bartender the day before.Nothing was done about his behavior and the restrictions put upon him were repeatedly violated. When I was told to text the manager of he came into the bar after 10pm, and he did so at 11:30pm 2 nights afterward, I was told I was hanging out at the bar too much (I had JUST finished cleaning and had clocked out 10min prior), why am I there afterhours (the bar closes at 2am that night) and that I am NOT the {name redacted} enforcer and to mind my own business.The thing which got me fired happened on a Saturday shift. I was working from Noon to 8pm, with a 1 hour lunch break between 4–5pm. I was working as a floater, which meant my entire job was making sure the food line was being stocked with ingredients faster than they could run out. In a place where we were so busy we would help 20 customers in 2 minutes (the management timed us via camera), this meant a LOT of running around and a LOT of heavy lifting.The salad dressing came in 10Gal buckets which had to be brought 100ft from the walk-in to the food line, then lifted to fill the large ramekins on the counter. Four different dressings. Plus the salad mix needed to be replenished every 10min or so…I also need to to refill the to-go boxes, napkins, mustard, mayonnaise, horseradish, roast beef, turkey, ham, marinated tofu, tuna salad, chicken salad, salami, peanut butter, bananas, avocados, bacon, tomatoes, lettuce, jalapeños, banana peppers, onions, sprouts, cherry tomatoes, beans, boiled eggs, and croutons.I had to pay attention to the levels of the 3 soups we had available and inform the kitchen of we needed more heated up. I was more often than not also the person heating them.I had to hand cut the bread loaves, but could only fit 6 cut loaves at a time on the back board, so I was cutting loaves every 10–15 minutes.In short, I was exhausted that day.At 6:30pm I noticed we had a lull in customers and decided this would be a good time to take my 1st 10min break of the shift. My coworkers all agreed they'd be fine and that I should go on my break. The moment I clocked out my manager decided that I shouldn't be going on a break right then. She kept repeating that I had gone "on AN HOUR BREAK" just 1 1/2 hours earlier. She said that phrase 5 times. I only had another hour and a half until I was off of work and this would be the only chance I get to take a break before the dinner rush started.I had been working there 30–40 hours/week for the previous 10 months, so I KNEW when the rush would start.She asked me "How do your coworkers feel about you being the only person taking cigarette breaks?!""I'm not the only person taking 10 minute breaks."She became so incensed that if it weren't for my coworker standing behind me to ask her a question I know she would have started screaming at me right there and then. She then told me to finish my break (I now had 3 minutes remaining), and the rest of the shift passed without incident.That was Saturday. I had Sunday off and the place was closed for a holiday on Monday.On Tuesday, 2 hours before my scheduled shift I got a text message from the owner telling me that I was being let go and ALSO banned from the premises. The security crew were informed of the ban and I shouldn't embarrass anyone by making them enforce it.He refused to give me a reason, either through text or in person later that day when I went in to pick up my final paycheck.I finally got a reason when I was forced to fill out a reason to file for unemployment benefits.The reason? Given by the same manager who argued with me about taking a break:"So go ahead and choose Discharged (fired) for the drop down menu.For the explanation, just say that your employer no longer felt that you represented the company in a manner that the company felt was appropriate or a reflection of our practices and standards."Yeah. I was fired for taking my first 10min break 6 1/2 hours into my shift.Even the unemployment representative was dubious saying over the phone "Well, that says a lot of nothing."I got my UI benefits, but I still reported them for denying proper breaks, not allowing us to use or accruing sick leave, and for retaliatory termination.

Well, that depends on what you mean by “believe” and what you mean by “last.” Probably the last true believers in the old gods in antiquity were the Neoplatonists belonging to the school of Simplikios of Kilikia (lived c. 490 – c. 560 AD), who were persecuted under the reign of the emperor Justinian (ruled 527 – 565 AD). These stubborn philosophers doggedly clung to the ancient religion centuries after almost everyone had converted to Christianity.In late antiquity, however, many of the old gods were Christianized and their traditional roles and attributes were given to Christian saints. In the Greek-speaking east, the Dioskouroi, the twin sons of Zeus said to rescue sailors at sea and soldiers caught behind enemy lines, were replaced with Saint Nikolaos of Myra, who, even in Greece today, is still said to protect sailors.Asklepios was a Greco-Roman god associated with healing and medicine and his temples across the Mediterranean, known as Asklepeia, functioned as peculiar institutions which were a cross between hospitals and faith-healing centers. After Christianity, Asklepios was replaced with the twin healers Saint Kosmas and Saint Damianos. His Asklepeia were converted into shrines for the healer saints. Despite the change in dedication, the process of how these institutions functioned hardly changed at all.I am not, of course, saying that all Christian saints are really pagan deities or even that the saints I have mentioned were necessarily not real historical individuals, but I am merely that, in many cases, attributes of pagan deities were given to Christian saints.ABOVE: Illustration of the healer saints Kosmas and Damianos, from Les Grandes Heures d'Anne de Bretagne by Jean Bourdichon, painted circa 1503 and circa 1508, who stepped in to fill Asklepios’s old role as the god of healingIn ancient times, the goddess Athena was associated with warfare. She was usually portrayed holding a spear and dressed in armor. She was believed to be a perpetual virgin and her greatest temple was the Parthenon on the Athenian Acropolis, whose name means “House of the Virgin.” At the end of the sixth century AD, however, the Parthenon was converted into a Christian church dedicated to a very different virgin: the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus.ABOVE: The Parthenon on the Athenian Acropolis, originally built in the fifth century BC as a temple to the goddess Athena, was converted in late antiquity into a Christian church dedicated to the Virgin Mary.A Byzantine account from seventh-century AD Constantinople describes an epiphany of the Virgin Mary in which she suspiciously bears little resemblance to the maternal figure in Christianity and instead seems almost identical to the Greek warrior goddess Athena. Supposedly, when the city was besieged by the Avars, the Virgin Mary appeared on the ramparts, arrayed in full battle armor and clutching a spear. Then she urged the people of the city to fight back against the enemy.ABOVE: Athena Giustiniani, Roman marble copy of a Greek fifth or fourth-century BC statue of the goddess Athena, depicting her wearing her helmet and holding her spearIn antiquity, the site of Eleusis near Athens was the center of the cult of the Eleusinian Mysteries, which centered around the goddess Demeter, who was believed to control the harvest, and her daughter, the goddess Persephone, who was abducted by Hades, the ruler of the Underworld.When the British traveler Richard Chandler visited Eleusis in around 1765, accompanied by the painter William Pars and the architect Nicholas Revett, he reported that there was ancient statue there, a Caryatid, which the locals venerated, believing it protected the crops. They called the woman the statue represented “Saint Demetra” and held that she was a Christian whose daughter had been abducted by a malicious Turk.In 1801, however, the statue was removed by another Englishman named Edward Daniel Clarke, who bribed the local Turkish officials to let him take it and load it on a ship back to England. The locals were dismayed and horrified. When the town experienced a run of years with poor harvests a few years later, they blamed it on the theft of the statue, saying that Saint Demetra was punishing them for having allowed it to be taken so easily. The statue was never returned and is still in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England.In the Latin west, the rustic fertility god Priapus seems to have had a very strange afterlife. Priapus is shown with a grey beard, a red Phrygian cap, and an enormous, erect phallus. The Romans kept statues of him in their gardens. Here is a first-century AD Roman fresco of the god Priapus from the House of the Vettii in Pompeii:If this image of the grotesque, grey-bearded fertility god with a pointy red hat whose statues were kept in gardens seems familiar to you, you may have one of these fellows in your own garden, even today. He does not have his phallus anymore, but he has not changed a whole lot otherwise:(To be clear, we do not have unambiguous evidence that the garden gnome is really derived from Roman statues of Priapus, but the similarities are certainly uncanny.)People in the small town of Isernia near Naples still wore wax amulets of the hand of Priapus as late as the 1780s and celebrated a festival every year on September 27, during which they offered wax votive phalli to Saints Cosmas and Damian. They had forgotten who Priapus was, but still continued the ancient Roman customs associated with his cult. The British classicist Richard Payne Knight wrote a very fascinating and highly erudite treatise on this subject titled A Discourse on the Worship of Priapus, which he published in 1786. You can find the full text of his treatise here.ABOVE: First-century AD Gallo-Roman statuette of the fertility god Priapus from the city of Picardy in northern FranceSo, depending on what you consider “believing” in the old gods, you could say that the worship of the old gods has, in some sense, continued to the present day, but they are no longer called by their ancient names.It is also worth pointing out that there have been numerous attempts to revive the ancient religion in the modern era. There are Hellenic Polytheistic Reconstructionists, who have tried to revive ancient Greek religion. One of the most prominent such groups is the Supreme Council of Ethnikoi Hellenes (Ύπατο Συμβούλιο των Ελλήνων Εθνικών; YSEE), which exists in Greece.ABOVE: Hellenic Reconstructionist priest performing a ritualABOVE: Modern Greek polytheistic temple in modern GreeceThere are also numerous groups that have attempted to revive ancient Roman religion in the modern era. One of the most prominent of these is Nova Roma (“New Rome”).ABOVE: Roman Polytheistic Reconstructionist ceremony performed by Nova Roma in Florida in 2008All of these groups, however, are reconstructionist; they have no direct continuity with the ancient religion, but rather are trying to reconstruct it based on surviving sources from antiquity.For more information on this subject, I suggest reading this article I published on my website as an expansion on this answer, in which I discuss this subject in greater depth and debunk a few modern customs commonly supposed to be “pagan survivals.”

Full disclosure:  this advice comes from when I applied in 2007.   Perhaps some aspects of the process have changed, but that would  surprise me quite a bit.When they say you should address the two merit review criteria of "Intellectual Merit" and "Broader Impacts," they really mean it!After applying, you get to see the rating forms filled out by the three people that reviewed your application.  At least when I applied, the form consisted of two sets of check boxes: one for the "Overall Assessment of Intellectual Merit" and one for the "Overall Assessment of Broader Impacts."  They check one of "Excellent, Very Good, Good, Fair, or Poor" for each criteria.  They then write 2-3 sentences explaining their score.  As far as I can tell, whether you get the fellowship or not depends entirely on your scores on these sheets.  I know people who scored 5 "Excellent" and 1 "Very good" responses received the fellowship my year; I seem to recall people receiving 4 "Excellent" and 2 "Very Good" did not.The reviewers are likely reading hundreds of these applications over a weekend, and for every application they have to find something to say about the two merit review criteria.  If you yourself tell them exactly how you fulfill those criteria, they will often take your explanation and paraphrase it into the text box that they have to fill as explanation for their score.  If you don't explicitly address the criteria, they will have to really ask themselves how you satisfy the criteria, and they may not rate you as highly if they can't explicitly see how you are meeting the criteria.  I would strongly recommend trying to discuss the merit criteria in all 3 of the required essays.  You can even explicitly talk about "Intellectual Merit" and "Broader Impacts" to make it even easier for your reviewers to find.