How to Improve Your SAT Reading Score 8 Strategies

How to Improve Your SAT Reading Score 8 Strategies SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips Are you struggling with an SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing (EBRW) score between 300 and 500? You're not alone- hundreds of thousands of students are scoring in this range. But many don't know the best ways to break out of this score range and get a 600 or higher. Here, we'll discuss how to improve your SAT Reading score specifically and why it's so important to do so. Unlike other fluffy articles out there, we'll be focusing on actionable strategies.Put these eight strategies to work and I'm confident you'll be able to improve your SAT Reading score. Brief note:this article is suited for students scoring below 600 on EBRW. If you're already above this range, my perfect SAT Reading score article is more appropriate for you. Also, the current SAT (as opposed to the old SAT)has a single 800 Reading and Writing score, which combines your individual Reading and Writing test scores. So technically, when I talk about a 600 Reading test score, I'm referring to a30/40 Reading test score,which combines with your Writing test score to get you 600. In this guide, I'll use 600 and 30 interchangeably to mean the same thing. We won't talk about Writing here, but if you want to improve your Writing score, too, check out my guide on how to raise your low SAT Writing score. In this article, I'm going to discuss why scoring high is a good idea, address what it takes to score a 600, and then go into specific SAT Reading tips andstrategies. Stick with me- this is like building a house. First, you need to lay a good foundation before putting up the walls and pretty windows. In the same vein, we need to understand why you're doing what you're doing before we dive into our top tips and strategies for SAT Reading. Note that I will talk mainly about getting to 600, but if your goal is 500 or lower, these concepts still equally apply. Before we begin, here is the table of contents for this article in case you want to come back to this later or jump around: Raising Your SAT Reading Score: Understand the Stakes Know That You Can Get a 600 SAT Reading Score What It Takes to Get a 600 (or 30) in SAT Reading Strategy 1: Save Time on Reading Passages by Switching Your Reading Strategy Strategy 2:Learn to Eliminate the 3 Wrong Answers Strategy 3:Find Your Reading Skill Weaknesses and Drill Them Strategy 4: Only Use High-Quality SAT Reading Sources Strategy 5:Don't Focus On Vocab Strategy 6:Skip the Most Difficult, Time-Consuming Questions Strategy 7:Understand All Your Reading Mistakes Strategy 8: Guess on EveryQuestion You Don't Know Raising Your SAT Reading Score: Understand the Stakes At this SAT score range, improving your low SAT EBRW score to a score in at least the 600 range will dramatically boost your chances of getting into better colleges. Let's use Penn State University as an example. The average SAT score for admitted applicants to Penn State is 1270. Its 25th percentile score is 80, and its 75th percentile score is 1370. Furthermore, its acceptance rate is 51%. In other words, a little more than half of all applicants are admitted. But the lower your SAT scores are, the worse your chances of getting in will be. In our analysis, if you score around 1000, your chance of admission drops to just 27%. But if you raise your score to 1200, your chance of admission goes up to 60%- that's a really good chance of admission! So improving your score by just 200 points makes a huge difference in your chances of getting into your target colleges. For the SAT Reading section, this is especially true if you want to apply to humanities majors and programs, such as English or communications. These programs expect your Reading score to be strong. If you score low, they'll doubt your ability to do college-level humanities work. Even if you're a math superstar and are applying to a science major, colleges still want to know that you can process difficult texts at a college level. A low Reading score will cast huge doubt on you. It's really worth your time to improve your SAT Reading score. Hour for hour,it's the best thing you can do to raise your chance of getting into college. Curious what chances you have with a 1200 SAT score? Check out ourexpert college admissions guide for an 1200 SAT score. Know That You Can Get a 600 SAT Reading Score This isn't just supposed to be a vague, happy-go-lucky message you see on a juice carton. I mean, literally, you and every other student can do this. In my job here at PrepScholar, I've worked with thousands of students scoring in the lower ranges of 300-500 on EBRW. Time after time, I've seen students beat themselves up over their low scores; they think improving them is impossible and say things such as the following: "I know I'm not smart." "I just can't read passages quickly, and I don't know how to improve my SAT Reading score." "I was never good at English, and my English teachers never told me I did a good job." This breaks my heart. Because I know that more than anything else, your SAT score is a reflection ofhow hard you work and how smartly you study. Not your IQ and not your school grades. Not how Mr. Anderson in 10th grade gave you a C on your essay. The truth is that SAT Reading is designed to trick you- and you need to learn how. Here's why: the SAT is a weird test. When you take it, don't you get the sense that the questions are nothing like what you've seen in high school? I bet you've had this problem: with SAT Reading passages, you often miss questions because of an "unlucky guess." You try to eliminate a few answer choices, but the ones left all sound equally good to you. So you throw up your hands and take a random guess. The SAT is purposely designed this way to confuse you.Literally millions of other students have the exact same problem you do. And the SAT knows this. Normally, in your high school English class, your teacher tells you that all interpretations of a text are valid. You can write an essay about anything you want, and English teachers aren't allowed to tell you your opinion is wrong. This is because they can get in trouble for telling you what to think. But the SAT has an entirely different problem. It's a national test, which means it needs to create a level playing field for all students around the country. It needs to fairly compare students with each other. As a result,every question must have a single, unambiguously, 100% correct answer. There's only ever one correct answer. Find a way to eliminate the three incorrect answer choices. Imagine if this weren't the case. Imagine each Reading answer had two answer choices that might each be plausibly correct. When SAT scores came out, every single student who got the question wrong would more than likely complain to the College Board that the test is flawed.The College Board would then have to invalidate that question, ultimately weakening the power of the SAT. The College Board wants to avoid this nightmare scenario. Therefore, every single Reading passage question has only one correct answer. But the SAT disguises this fact by asking questions with the following cryptic phrases: The author would most likely agree with which of the following statements? The first paragraph primarily serves to: In line 20, "dark"most nearly means: Notice a pattern here? The SAT always disguises the fact that there's just one unambiguous answer. It tries to make you waver between two or three answer choices that all sound plausible. And then you guess randomly. And then you get the question wrong. You can bet students fall for this. Millions of times every year. Students who don't prepare for the SAT in the right way don't appreciate this. But if you prepare for the SAT in the right way, you'll learn the tricks the SAT plays on you.And you'll raise your score. The SAT Reading section is full of patterns like these. To improve your score, you just need to do the following: Learn the types of questions the SAT tests, such as the ones above Learn strategies to solve these questions, using skills you already know Practicewith a lot of high-quality questions so you can learn from your mistakes The point is that you can learn these skills, even if you don't consider yourself a good reader or a great English student.I'll go into more detail about exactly how to do this later. But first, let's see how many questions you need to get right in order to get a 600 on SAT Reading. What It Takes to Get a 600 (or 30) in SAT Reading If you have a target score in mind, it helps to understand how many question you'll need to get right, which is known as your raw score, in order to hit your target scaled score (out of 600). Since SAT Reading combines with Writing to give you a single EBRW score out of 600, we're going to be looking at Reading test scores instead. In this case, we're aiming for a Reading test score of 30,out of 40 total points. Here's a rough raw-score-to-SAT-Reading-test-score conversion table - the exact conversions will depend on the test, but this chart will give you a close approximation of how many questions you can miss and still get a 30. (If you could use a refresher on how the SAT is scored and how raw scores are calculated, read this guide.) Raw Scaled Raw Scaled Raw Scaled Raw Scaled 52 40 38 31 24 24 10 17 51 39 37 30 23 24 9 16 50 39 36 30 22 23 8 16 49 38 35 29 21 23 7 15 48 37 34 29 20 23 6 14 47 36 33 28 19 22 5 13 46 35 32 28 18 22 4 12 45 35 31 28 17 21 3 44 34 30 27 16 21 2 10 43 33 29 27 15 20 1 10 42 33 28 26 14 20 0 10 41 32 27 26 13 19 40 32 26 25 12 18 39 31 25 25 18 Source: SAT Official Practice Test #4 Notice that if you're aiming for 600 overall and 30/40 on Reading, you'll need a raw score of about 36/52. This is a 70% score. This fact has serious implications for your testing strategy. In essence, you only need to answer about 2/3 of all Reading questions right.We'll go into more detail below about what this means for your testing strategy. Whatever you're scoring now, take note of the difference you need to get to 30. For example, if you're scoring 23, you'll need to answer about 15 more questions right on Reading to get to 30. Once again, even if your goal is something like 500 (i.e., 25/40), the same analysis applies. OK, so we've covered why scoring a higher SAT Reading score is important, why you are capable of improving your score, and the raw score you'll need to get in order to hit your target score. I hope a lot of this was useful and changed how you think about SAT Reading prep. Now, we'll look at actionable strategies you should use in your own SAT prep to maximize your Reading score improvement. 8 Strategies to Improve Your Low SAT Reading Score In this section, we give you our top eight SAT Reading strategies guaranteed to improve your low Reading score. Strategy 1: Save Time on Reading Passages by Switching Your Reading Strategy Based on my experience working with thousands of students, by far the most common problem test takers have with SAT Reading passages is this:they keep running out of time before they can get through all the questions. This is a problem because unlike SAT Math, passage questions aren't arranged by level of difficulty. Therefore, by not completing all the questions in time, you might miss some easy questions at the end that you would have gotten right, if only you'd had enough time. What's the cause of this? The most common one I see is that students are reading the passages far more closely than they actually need to be.Once again, this is a result of homework and what you learn in English class. In English, you've probably gotten (stupid) tests that quiz you about what Baron Meistoff said in a particular scene, or what color Tom's T-shirt was. So of course you've learned to pay attention to every single detail in a text. The SAT is different, though.For a passage that's 80 lines long, there might only be 10 questions. Many of these don't even refer to specific lines- instead, they'll talk about the point of the passage as a whole or the tone of the author. The number of questions that focus on small, line-by-line details is low. Therefore, it's a waste of time to read a passage line by line, afraid you'll miss a detail that a question might ask you about. The best way to read a passage? Skimming it on the first read-through. This is why I recommend thatall students use this SAT Reading passage strategy: Skim the passage on the first read-through. Don't try to understand every single lineor write notes predicting what the questions might ask. Just get a general understanding of the passage. You'll want to try to finish reading the passage within three minutes, if possible. Next, go to the questions. If the question refers to a certain line number, go back to that line number and work on understanding the text around it. If you can't answer a question within 30 seconds, skip it. (More on this strategy later.) This strategy is important because the questions will ask about far fewer lines than the passage actually contains. For example, lines 5-20 of a reading passage might not be relevant to any question that follows. Therefore, if you spend time trying to deeply understand lines 5-20, you’ll just waste time. Some students take this strategy to the extreme: they read the questions first before the passage. If a question refers to any specific lines, they then mark those in the passage, which they can later use as a guide to know what to focus on when they read the passage. Different strategies work for different students. You need to try out a lot to see which strategy leads to the best results for you. But by and large, I'm confident that you're spending way too much time reading the passage. Strategy 2:Learn to Eliminate the 3 Wrong Answers I spent some time above talking about how there is always one unambiguously correct answer. This has a huge implication for the strategy you should use to find the right SAT Reading answer. Here's the other way to see it: out of the four answer choices, three of them have something that is totally wrong about them.Only one answer is 100% correct, which means that the other three are 100% wrong. You know how you try to eliminate answer choices and then end up with a few at the end that all seem equally likely to be correct? Well, you're not doing a good enough job of eliminating answer choices. Remember, every single wrong choice can be crossed out for its own reasons. You have to learn how to eliminate three answer choices for every single Reading question. "Great, Allen. But this doesn't tell me anything about how to eliminate answer choices." Thanks for asking. There are a few classic wrong answer choices the SAT loves to use. Let's look at an example. Imagine you just read a passage that focuses on how human evolution shaped the environment. It gives a few examples. First, it talks about how the transition from earlier species likeHomo habilus to neanderthals led to more tool usage like fire, resulting in wildfires and shaping the ecology. It then discussesHomo sapiens 40,000 years ago and their overhunting of species, such as woolly mammoths, to extinction. After, we run into a question asking, "Which of the following best describes the main subject of the passage?" Here are our possible answer choices: A: The transition between Homo habilus and neanderthals B: The study of evolution C: How the environment shaped human evolution D: The plausibility of evolution E: The influence of human development on ecology Note that we're using five answer choices for illustration purposesonly- in reality, the SAT only has four answer choices per Reading question. As you're reading these answers, a few of them probably started to sound really plausible to you. Surprise! Each of the answers from A to D has something seriously wrong with it. Each one is a classic example of a wrong answer type given by the SAT. Let's look at just what these are. Wrong Answer 1 (A): Too Specific A: The transition between Homo habilus and neanderthals This type of wrong answer focuses on a smaller detail in the passage. It’s meant to trick you and make you think to yourself, "Well, I saw this mentioned in the passage, so it’s a plausible answer choice." Wrong! Ask yourself: can this answer choice really describe the entire passage? Can it basically function as the title of this passage? In the end, you’ll find that it’s just way too specific to convey the point of the overall passage. Wrong Answer 2 (B): Too Broad B: The study of evolution This type of wrong answer has the opposite problem as the one above in that it’s way too broad. While theoretically the passage concerns the study of evolution, it focuses on just one aspect of it, especially as it relates to the impact of evolution on the environment. To give another ludicrous example, say you talked to your friend about your cell phone and he said your main point was the universe. Yes, you were talking about the universe in that you both live in the universe, but this was clearly only a tiny fraction of your conversation. In short, answer choice B is simply far too generalto be a good answer to this question. Wrong Answer 3 (C): Reversed Relationship C: How the environment shaped human evolution This wrong answer choice can be tricky because it mentions all the right words. But of course the relationship between these words needs to be correct as well. Here, the relationship is flipped: the passage focuses on how human evolution shaped the environment, not the other way around. Students who read too quickly often make careless mistakes like these! Wrong Answer 4 (D): Unrelated Concept D: The plausibility of evolution Finally, this kind of wrong answer preys on students' tendency to overthink questions. If you’re passionate about arguing about evolution, for example, this answer might be a trigger answer for you since any discussion concerning evolution becomes a chance to argue about its plausibility. Of course, even though this concept appears nowhere in the passage, some students just aren't able to resist choosing this answer choice. Do you see the point? On the surface, each answer choice sounds as though it could possibly be correct. But possibly isn't good enough. The right answer must be 100%, totally right. Wrong answers might be off by even just one word, so you need to know how to eliminate these. Carry this thought into every SAT Reading passage question you do. Next strategy: find your weak links and fix them. Strategy 3:Find Your Reading Skill Weaknesses and Drill Them Reading passage questions might look similar, but they actually test very different skills. Here at PrepScholar, we believe the major skills tested in SAT passages are as follows: Big Picture/Main Point Little Picture/Detail Inference Vocabulary in Context Function Author Technique Evidence Support Data Interpretation Analyzing Multiple Texts Whew, that's a lot of skills! More than is obvious when you're reading passages on SAT Reading. Each of these question types uses different skills in how you read and analyze a passage.They each require a different method of prep and focused practice. If you're like most students, you're probably better at some areas in Reading than you are at others.For instance, you might be good at getting the big picture of a passage but not so good at getting inferences. Or you might be really strong at pinpointing the author's tone but struggle with interpreting data correctly. If you're like most students, you also don't have an unlimited amount of time to study. You have a lot of homework, possibly sports and other extracurriculars, and friends to hang out with. This means that for every hour you study for the SAT, it needs to be the most effective hour possible. In more concrete terms,you need to find your greatest areas of improvement and work on those. Too many students study the "dumb" way. They just buy a book and read it cover to cover. When they don't improve, they're shocked. But I'm not. Studying effectively for the SAT isn't like painting a house. You're not trying to cover all your bases with a very thin layer of understanding. What these students did wrong was that they wasted time on subjects they already knew, and they didn't spend enough time on honing their weaknesses. Studying effectively for the SAT is like plugging up the holes in a leaky boat. You need to find the biggest hole and fill it. Then, you need to find the next biggest hole and fill that, too. You'll soon find that your boat isn't sinking anymore. How does this relate to SAT Reading? You need to find the sub-skills you're weakest in and then drill those until you're no longer weak in them. Fixing up the biggest holes. Within Reading, you must figure out whether there are patterns to your mistakes. Is it that you're running out of time with reading passages? Or that you don't get Inference questions? Or that you're really weak at interpreting details? For every question you miss, identify what type of question it is. When you notice patterns to the questions you miss, you must then devote extra practice to those sub-skills. Say you miss a lot of Inference questions (this is typically the hardest type of question for students to get on SAT Reading). You need to somehow get focused practice questions for this skill so you can drill your mistakes. Bonus: If all of this is making sense to you, you'd love our SAT prep program, PrepScholar. We designed our program around the concepts in this article, because they actually work.When you start with PrepScholar, you’ll take a diagnostic that will determine your weaknesses in over forty SAT skills - in Critical Reading, Math, and Writing. PrepScholar then creates a study program specifically customized for you. To improve each skill, you’ll take focused lessons dedicated to each skill, with over 20 practice questions per skill. This will train you for your specific area weaknesses, so your time is always spent most effectively to raise your score. There’s no other prep system out there that does it this way, which is why we get better score results than any other program on the market. Check it out today with a 5-day free trial: Strategy 4: Only Use High-Quality SAT Reading Sources SAT Reading passages are very specific in how they work. And SAT Reading questions are very specifically phrased and constructed to have bait answers. If you want to improve your Reading score, you have to use realistic SAT Reading sources.If you don't, you'll develop bad habits and accidentally train the wrong skills. Think about it like this: say you're trying out for the baseball team. Instead of practicing with real baseballs, you decide to practice with Wiffle balls.It's alot cheaper and easier, and hitting the ball makes you feel good about your skills. So you train and train and train with a Wiffle ball. You understand how the Wiffle ball curves when it's thrown, how to hit it, and how to throw it. Eventually, you try out for the baseball team. A pitch comes, but it's way faster than you've ever practiced with. It doesn't curve like a Wiffle ball does. Swing, and a miss. You've trained with the wrong thing, and now you're totally unprepared for baseball. This is not real baseball. SAT Reading works the exact same way. Train with poorly written tests, and you'll develop bad habits and unhelpful strategies. Far and away, the best sources for SAT Reading passages areofficial SAT practice tests.This is why we include these official practice testsin our SAT prep program- so that we can accurately gauge your progress and provide you with quality training. The problem is that there aren't that many official SAT practice tests available. Because you want to use these to train your endurance for the full-length test, it's best to try to conserve them. This means that to get enough SAT Reading practice, you'll need to use other materials, too. Our first suggestion is to use prep resources specifically geared toward the SAT.Be careful, though, sincemany test-prep companies tend to release poor-quality passages and questions (most books you see on SAT Reading are pretty terrible, too). Check out our picks for the best SAT prep books here. This is especially harmful for SAT Reading because the style of its passages and questions are quite complex, as opposed to SAT Math whose questions are more straightforward. To write realistic questions, you need to understand the SAT inside and out. That's why we've created what I believe are the highest quality Reading questions available anywhere. Here's what we've done: We've deconstructed every official SAT practice test- question by question, answer by answer. We've statistically studied every question type on the test and understand exactly how questions are phrased and how wrong answer choices are constructed. As head of product, I'm responsible for content quality. I hire only the most qualified content writers to craft our test content. This means people who got perfect SAT scores, who have hundreds of hours of SAT teaching experience, and who graduated from Ivy League schools. All of this results in the most realistic, highest quality SAT Reading questions. Even if you don't use PrepScholar, make sure that whatever resource you do use undergoes the same scrutiny we exercise.If you're not sure how helpful something is or notice lots of negative reviews, it's best to avoid it. Strategy 5:Don't Focus On Vocab Vocab gets way too much attention from students. It feels good to study vocab flashcards because it seems like you're making progress. "I studied 1,000 vocab words- this must mean I improved my Reading score!" This is why other test-prep programs love teaching you vocab- you feel as though you're learning something and it's worth your money. But the truth is that learning vocab isn't really helping you. Fortunately, vocab doesn't play a big role in your SAT Reading score anymore. This is especially true for the current version of the SAT, which no longer hasSentence Completion questions. (On the old, pre-2016 SAT, these were the questions that required you to fill in blanks with vocab words.) The reasoning behind this decision was that the College Board received a lot of criticism for forcing students to memorize advanced vocab that wasn't that useful in college or for future careers. (And students rejoiced everywhere!) That said, there are still some SAT Reading questions that ask about vocab, such as this one (taken from an official SAT practice test): As used in line 68, "hold" most nearly meansA) maintainB) gripC) restrainD) withstand Wait- "hold"? They're asking a question about the simple word "hold"? Yes, it's a common word- but the key to this question lies in understanding how a word is used in context.Hold can mean all the things listed in the answer choices, but only one of them is correct. Here are examples of words you'll need to understand in context for the SAT: ambivalent convey lament postulate These are somewhat advanced words, but they're nowhere near the level of the words you used to have to know, such as "apportionment" and "expropriated." If you have a pretty typical vocabulary of an American teen, there will be at most two to three SAT Reading questions that'll really stretch your vocabulary. But like I mentioned above, you can miss 16 out of 52 questions and still get a 30 on the Reading section. Don't go crazy studying vocab- most likely, it's not the best use of your time. That time is far better spent learning how to deal with Reading passages better.There are so many more questions about passages that it's a better use of your time to learn passage strategy and how to answer reading questions than it is to memorize vocab words. Strategy 6:Skip the Most Difficult, Time-Consuming Questions Here's an easy strategy most students don't do enough. Remember what I said above about raw score? To score a 30 (600) on SAT Reading, you only need a raw score of 36- that's just 36 correct answers out of 52 questions. But what does this mean for your strategy exactly?You can completely guess on 20 questions, get five of them right by chance, and still score a 600 on Reading. Once again, you can completely guess on 40% of all questions and still hit your goal! Skip questions carefree, like this woman does. Why is this such a powerful strategy? It gives you way more time on easy and medium difficulty questions- the questions you have a good chance of getting right. If you're usually pressed for time on SAT Reading, this will be a huge help. Here's an example: on the Reading section, you get 65 minutes to answer 52 questions. This is usually pretty hard for most students to get through, as it's just 75 seconds per question. The average student will try to push through all the questions. "I've got to get through them all since I've got a shot at getting each question right," they think. Along the way, they rush and make careless mistakes on questions they should have gotten right. And then they spend five minutes on really hard questions, causing them to make no progress and waste time. Wrong approach. Here's what I suggest instead.Try each question, but skip it after 30 seconds if you're still not getting anywhere.Unlike math, Reading questions aren't ordered by difficulty, so you can't tell right away which questions are harder or easier. This is why you should try out each one but move on if it's costing you too much time. By doing this, you can raise your time per easy/medium question to 100 seconds per question or more. This is huge! It's a 30% boost to the time you get per question.As a result, this raises your overall chances of getting easy/medium questions right. And the questions you skipped? They're so hard you're honestly better off not even trying them. These questions are meant for 700-800 scorers. If you get to 600, you have the right to try them out- but not before you get to 600. How do you tell which questions are going to take you the most time?This varies from person to person, but here are two question types that commonly take more time than others: Questions without line numbers that make you hunt for details: You can spend a lot of time rereading the passage looking for where Virginia Woolf mentioned a staircase. Questions that ask you to compare two passages: If you really struggle to understand passages, paired passages will be twice the trouble. Do your SAT Reading prep with all of this in mind. If you get stuck on a question, think about what type of question it is, and figure out whether there's a pattern to the questions that consistently trip you up. Strategy 7:Understand All Your Reading Mistakes Every mistake you make on a test happens for a reason.If you don't understand exactly why you missed a question, you'll make the same mistake over and over again. Too many students scoring at the 400-600 level on SAT Reading refuse to study their mistakes. It's harsh. I get it. It sucks to stare your mistakes in the face. It's draining to learn difficult concepts you don't readily understand. So the average student will skip reviewing their mistakes and instead focus on the areas they're already comfortable with. It's like a warm blanket. Their thinking goes like this: "So I'm good at Big Picture questions? I should do more Big Picture problems! They make me feel good about myself." The result? No score improvement. You don't want to be like these students. So here'swhat you need to do instead: On every practice test or question set you take, mark every question you're even just 20% unsure about. When you grade your test or quiz, review every question you marked and every incorrect question. This way even if you guessed a question correctly, you'll make sure to review it. In a notebook, write down the gist of the question, why you missed it, and what you'll do to avoid making that mistake in the future. Have separate sections by subject and sub-topic (e.g., Big Picture, Inference, Vocab, etc.). It's not enough to just think about it and move on. It's not enough to just read the answer explanation. You have to think hard about why you specifically failed on a question. For Reading questions, you must find a way to eliminate every single incorrect answer. If you were stuck between two answer choices, review your work to figure out why you couldn't eliminate the wrong answer choice. If you don't do this, I guarantee you will not make any progress. But if you do take this structured approach to your mistakes,you'll now have a running log of every question you missed as well as your reflections on why you made the mistakes you did. No excuses when it comes to your mistakes. Strategy 8: Guess on EveryQuestion You Don't Know You might already know this one, but if you don't, you're about to earn some serious points. TheSAT does not have a wrong answer penalty. On the old SAT, each wrong answer deducted 0.25 points from your raw score. This required you to have a smart guessing strategy. But no longer! Now, there is no penalty for getting a wrong answer. This means there's no reason to leave any question blank. So before you finish the Reading section,make sure every blank question has an answer filled in. You don't want to look at your answer sheet and see any blank questions. For every question you're unsure about, make sure you guess as best you can.If you can eliminate even just one answer choice, you'll have a much better shot at getting it right. If you have no idea, just go ahead and guess! You have a 25% chance of getting it right anyway. Most people know this strategy already, so if you don't do this, you're at a serious disadvantage. Overview: Tips for Raising Your Low SAT Reading Score Those are the main strategies you should use to improve your SAT Reading score. If you're scoring around 350, you can use these to get to 500. If you're scoring around 470, boost your score to 600. I guarantee it- as long as you put in the right amount of work and study as I suggest above, you're bound to hit your goal score on test day. The main point, though, is this: you need to understand where you're falling short and drill those weaknesses continuously. You also need to be thoughtful about your mistakes and leave no mistake ignored. This is really important for your future. Make sure you give SAT prep the attention it deserves- before it's too late and you get a rejection letter you didn't want. Finally, if you want to go back and review any of the above strategies, here's a quick listing: Strategy 1: Save Time on Reading Passages by Switching Your Reading Strategy Strategy 2:Learn to Eliminate the 3 Wrong Answers Strategy 3:Find Your Reading Skill Weaknesses and Drill Them Strategy 4: Only Use High-Quality SAT Reading Sources Strategy 5:Don't Focus On Vocab Strategy 6:Skip the Most Difficult, Time-Consuming Questions Strategy 7:Understand All Your Reading Mistakes Strategy 8: Guess on EveryQuestion You Don't Know What's Next? We've got a lot of useful guides you can use to raise your SAT section scores. For Math, read my detailed guide to improving your SAT Math score. You can also learn how to raise your SAT Writing scoreoryour SAT Essay score. What's a good SAT score for you personally?Useour step-by-step guide to figure out your SAT target scoretoday. Want to improve your SAT score by 160 points? Check out our best-in-class online SAT prep classes. We guarantee your money back if you don't improve your SAT score by 160 points or more. Our classes are entirely online, and they're taught by SAT experts. If you liked this article, you'll love our classes. Along with expert-led classes, you'll get personalized homework with thousands of practice problems organized by individual skills so you learn most effectively. We'll also give you a step-by-step, custom program to follow so you'll never be confused about what to study next. Try it risk-free today: Have friends who also need help with test prep? Share this article! Tweet Allen Cheng About the Author As co-founder and head of product design at PrepScholar, Allen has guided thousands of students to success in SAT/ACT prep and college admissions. He's committed to providing the highest quality resources to help you succeed. Allen graduated from Harvard University summa cum laude and earned two perfect scores on the SAT (1600 in 2004, and 2400 in 2014) and a perfect score on the ACT. 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The Boxer Rebellion in Chinese History

The Boxer Rebellion in Chinese History Beginning in 1899, the Boxer Rebellion was an uprising in China against foreign influence in religion, politics, and trade. In the fighting, the Boxers killed thousands of Chinese Christians and attempted to storm the foreign embassies in Beijing. Following a 55-day siege, the embassies were relieved by 20,000 Japanese, American, and European troops. In the wake of the rebellion, several punitive expeditions were launched and the Chinese government was forced to sign the Boxer Protocol which called for the rebellions leaders to be executed and the payment of financial reparations to the injured nations. Dates The Boxer Rebellion began in November 1899, in the Shandong Province and ended on September 7, 1901, with the signing of the Boxer Protocol. Outbreak The activities of the Boxers, also known as the Righteous and Harmonious Society Movement, began in the Shandong Province of eastern China in March 1898. This was largely in response to the failure of the governments modernization initiative, the Self-Strengthening Movement, as well as the German occupation of the Jiao Zhou region and the British seizure of Weihai. The first signs of unrest appeared in a village after a local court ruled in favor of giving a local temple over to the Roman Catholic authorities for use as a church. Upset by the decision, the villagers, led by Boxer agitators, attacked the church. The Uprising Grows While the Boxers initially pursued an anti-government platform, they shifted to an anti-foreigner agenda after being severely beaten by Imperial troops in October 1898. Following this new course, they fell upon Western missionaries and Chinese Christians who they viewed as agents of foreign influence. In Beijing, the Imperial court was controlled by ultra-conservatives who supported the Boxers and their cause. From their position of power, they forced the Empress Dowager Cixi to issue edicts endorsing the Boxers activities, which angered foreign diplomats. The Legation Quarter Under Attack In June 1900, the Boxers, along with parts of the Imperial Army, began attacking foreign embassies in Beijing and Tianjin. In Beijing, the embassies of Great Britain, the United States, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Russia, and Japan were all located in the Legation Quarter near the Forbidden City. Anticipating such a move, a mixed force of 435 marines from eight countries had been sent to reinforce the embassy guards. As the Boxers approached, the embassies were quickly linked into a fortified compound. Those embassies located outside of the compound were evacuated, with the staff taking refuge inside. On June 20, the compound was surrounded and attacks began. Across town, the German envoy, Klemens von Ketteler, was killed trying to escape the city. The following day, Cixi declared war on all of the Western powers, however, her regional governors refused to obey and a larger war was avoided. In the compound, the defense was led by the British ambassador, Claude M. McDonald. Fighting with small arms and one old cannon, they managed to keep the Boxers at bay. This cannon became known as the International Gun, as it had a British barrel, an Italian carriage, fired Russian shells, and was served by Americans. The First Attempt to Relieve the Legation Quarter To deal with the Boxer threat, an alliance was formed between Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, Great Britain, and the United States. On June 10, an international force of 2,000 Marines was dispatched from Takou under British Vice Admiral Edward Seymour to aid Beijing. Moving by rail to Tianjin, they were forced to continue on foot as the Boxers had severed the line to Beijing. Seymours column advanced as far Tong-Tcheou, 12 miles from Beijing, before being forced to retreat due to stiff Boxer resistance. They arrived back at Tianjin on June 26, having suffered 350 casualties. Second Attempt to Relieve the Legation Quarter With the situation deteriorating, the members of the Eight-Nation Alliance sent reinforcements to the area. Commanded by British Lieutenant-General Alfred Gaselee, the international army numbered 54,000. Advancing, they captured Tianjin on July 14. Continuing with 20,000 men, Gaselee pressed on for the capital. Boxer and Imperial forces next made a stand at Yangcun where they assumed a defensive position between the Hai River and a railroad embankment.  Enduring intense temperatures which led to many Allied soldiers falling out of the ranks, British, Russian, and American forces attacked on August 6. In the fighting, American troops secured the embankment and found that many of the Chinese defenders had fled.  The remainder of the day saw the Allies engage the enemy in a series of rearguard actions. Arriving at Beijing, a plan was quickly developed which called for each major contingent to assault a separate gate in the citys eastern wall.  While the Russians struck in the north, the Japanese would attack to the south with the Americans and British below them.  Deviating from the plan, the Russians moved against the Dongen, which had been assigned to the Americans, around 3:00 AM on August 14.  Though they breached the gate, they were quickly pinned down.  Arriving on the scene, the surprised Americans shifted 200 yards south.  Once there, Corporal Calvin P. Titus volunteered to scale the wall to secure a foothold on the ramparts.  Successful, he was followed by the remainder of the American forces.  For his bravery, Titus later received the Medal of Honor. To the north, the Japanese succeeded in gaining access to the city after a sharp fight while further south the British penetrated into Beijing against minimal resistance. Pushing towards the Legation Quarter, the British column dispersed the few Boxers in the area and reached their goal around 2:30 PM.  They were joined by the Americans two hours later. Casualties among the two columns proved extremely light with one of the wounded being Captain Smedley Butler.  With the siege of the legation compound relieved, the combined international force swept the city the next day and occupied the Imperial City. Over the next year, a second German-led international force conducted punitive raids throughout China. Boxer Rebellion Aftermath Following the fall of Beijing, Cixi sent Li Hongzhang to begin negotiations with the alliance. The result was the Boxer Protocol which required the execution of ten high-ranking leaders who had supported the rebellion, as well as payment of 450,000,000 taels of silver as war reparations. The Imperial governments defeat further weakened the Qing Dynasty, paving the way for its overthrow in 1912. During the fighting, 270 missionaries were killed, along with 18,722 Chinese Christians. The allied victory also led to further partitioning of China, with the Russians occupying Manchuria and the Germans taking Tsingtao.

Assignment 6 Analyzing Conflict Management Essay

Assignment 6 Analyzing Conflict Management - Essay Example This essay aims at analyzing such a case of conflict in school and how it should be managed. Description of the Conflict The St. Mary’s Public School, New York has newly admitted a new student Amanda Martinez who has come recently from the country of Brazil to the United States. Amanda is a sincere worker and performs quite well among her peers in school. She has joined school in the last week. She did extremely well in her admission test to the school and therefore the principal has awarded her a scholarship for the entire term of year. The teachers are also very cooperative in the school and help the new student in every possible way. In her class there are about 30 girls of the same age. Most of them are Americans except for Isabel who is also of a South American descent. The students of the class did not accept her in their group from her initial days. Isabel and Amanda however have become very good friends in a very short span of time. In the forthcoming group task, stude nts in the school had to work in groups of five. Amanda and Isabel are in the same group but along with them 3 other students are present. Amanda and Isabel find it uncomfortable to work with them. When the work of the group started Amanda wanted to be the team leader as she was the best among them in studies and could allocate the duties better among the five people. However, Joanna another team member wanted to have the leadership role since it was difficult for her and two of her friends to accept that they would be working under Amanda. Thus the work could not be started because of the conflict among the team members. Analysis of the Critical issues of the Conflict: Context of the conflict The main reason why the problem has cropped up in the group is that there is a conflict of interest among the team members. Both Amanda and Joanna want to be the leader of the team. The reason why Amanda wants to have the leadership role is that she is a sincere worker and would understand the work better. She would be able to distribute the work in a fair manner among the group members. Though Isabel is happy with this decision, Joanna and the remaining two in the group have difficulty in accepting her as they want to have a power in the decision making related to the activities of the group. Apparent and underlying reasons of the conflict The perceptible reason for the conflict is the power distribution among the two groups of people working together for the achievement of the same goal. Both of the students want to have a power in the group and take interest in the allocation of the duties. The true reason behind this conflict is that Joanna being a resident of New York since her early childhood has a problem accepting the fact that they have to accept the instruction of a newly entered student. Amanda also cannot acknowledge Joanna as their leader because she is not convinced about her abilities and is worried that ignorance on part of Joanna as a leader would affect their grades for the group task. Thus there is an issue of racial discrimination in this particular case and it needs to be properly redressed. Types of Conflicts in the case This is a form of dysfunctional conflict because the students cannot work in a harmonious way which is hampering the education of the students. This kind of conflict does not lead to any productive end. It is also a form of interpersonal conflict between Amanda and Joanna

Govenance,Reporting and Ethics Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Govenance,Reporting and Ethics - Essay Example However, a company should not pay more than required for this case but the remunerations should commensurate with individual performance (Bebchuk & Roe, 1999). The committee for remuneration should also judge where to place their Company in relation to other companies. However, these comparisons should be made wisely such that remuneration levels correspond with performance improvement. According to the Combined Code address on accountability and auditing, the company's board should be able to show a balanced as well as an assessment that can be understood in order to determine the position and prospects of the company. This can simply be termed as financial reporting. The code provides that the directors in an annual report should explain their responsibility of Code Provisions The directors should explain in the annual report their responsibilities for account preparation and there should also be auditor's statements concerning their reporting responsibilities. The main roles and responsibilities of the committee for auditing include: It also recommends that, all directors including the non-executive directors should be re-elected at regular intervals by the shareholders. This contributes to continued improved and satisfactory performance. Th The code requires that a company should produce disclosure statements and also report on how they apply the principle of management and governance (La Porta et al. 2000). Companies should be free to explain the governance policies that they as well as any circumstances that have led them to employing a particular approach. The company has also to confirm that it adheres to the provisions of the Combined Code and if it does not, then it is liable to giving an explanation as to why it cannot comply. This is referred to as "comply or explain" approach and has been in existence for long whereby it is widely accepted by the investors as well as company boards. The people who are concerned with governance evaluation should do this with an aim of promoting partnership as well as trust in the company. They should consider company's nature of risks as well as the challenges that it faces. They should also consider the size as well as the complexity of the company. ISSUE 1. Non-executive directors and Independence. Non-executive directors play a very key role and are believed to be very effective in the building of good corporate governance structures. The chairman has the capability of holding meetings with non-executive directors even in the absence of executives. The non-executive directors also meet annually under the leadership of the senior independent director but in the absence of the chairman to give an appraisal on the performance of the chairman.The non-executive directors are usually provided with professional advice at the expense of the company whereby they consider it important to discharge

Proposal for relationship Essay Example for Free

Proposal for relationship Essay The idea was about to show gender inequality through different aspects of people. To do a notch thinking about the topic. The documentary shows different views of what they think of gender inequality or equality. There are interviews that were conducted from different people from different background, races, genders, and status. We have conducted interviews of teachers, politicians general public, a barber, a corporate person and so on. Although the world has become so advanced but there are gender inequalities on high levels. Gender inequality is not just a problem in it slef, it is a major problem for the economy aswell. People still thinks women if start going out for work will get dominant and powerfull over man and if she goes ot, she becomes commercial, people look them with different perspectives. Though they forget, that women are to be respected and treated as she is supposed to and given all her rights. GENDER INEQUALITY Gender inequality refers to unequal treatment or perceptions of individuals based on their gender. It arises from differences in socially constructed gender roles as well as biologically through chromosomes, brain structure, and hormonal differences. Gender systems are often dichotomous and hierarchical; gender binary systems may reflect the inequalities that  manifest in numerous dimensions of daily life. Gender inequality stems from distinctions, whether empirically grounded or socially constructed. On differences between the sexes. We will be looking into the following what causes inequality between women and men: how does it arise, why does it take different forms, why does it vary in degree across societies, what are the components that add up to gender inequality, how do various institutions and practices contribute to it, and how does it change? There is a coordination problem in social relations; namely, for interactions between individuals to proceed smoothly, they must be able to synchronize their behavior. In US society, there are many shared category systems used to create â€Å"common knowledge.† However, according to Ridgeway, these categories, â€Å"†¦must be so simplified that they can be quickly applied as framing devices to virtually anyone to start the process of defining self and other in the situation.† If you meet an unfamiliar person, you will, â€Å"automatically and instantly,† categorize them, and your interaction will proceed with this information in mind. In the US, the basic â€Å"primary† cultural categories include sex, race, and age. – In general, men are believed to be especially more competent than women in male-typed settings (e.g. engineering, sports) and positions of authority, while women are advantaged in female-typed settings (e.g. childcare, communicat ion). In mixed sex, gender neutral settings, men are believed to be modestly and diffusely more competent. Even though these beliefs are based are based on the â€Å"average† woman and the â€Å"average† man, they become the â€Å"default rules† for coordinating behavior. So if equally qualified applicants apply for a male-typed job, such as a computer engineer, male applicants will be advantaged relative to female applicants. But if two equally qualified applicants apply to a female-typed job, such as a nanny, the woman would be more likely to receive the job offer. TYPES OF INEQUALITIES Mortality inequality: In some regions in the world, inequality between women and men directly involves matters of life and death, and takes the brutal form of unusually high mortality rates of women and a consequent preponderance of men in the total population, as opposed to the preponderance of women found in societies with little or no gender bias in health care and nutrition. Mortality inequality has been observed  extensively in North Africa and in Asia, including China and South Asia. Natality inequality: Given a preference for boys over girls that many male-dominated societies have, gender inequality can manifest itself in the form of the parents wanting the newborn to be a boy rather than a girl. There was a time when this could be no more than a wish (a daydream or a nightmare, depending on ones perspective), but with the availability of modern techniques to determine the gender of the foetus, sex-selective abortion has become common in many countries. It is particularly pr evalent in East Asia, in China and South Korea in particular, but also in Singapore and Taiwan, and it is beginning to emerge as a statistically significant phenomenon in India and South Asia as well. This is high-tech sexism. Basic facility inequality: Even when demographic characteristics do not show much or any anti-female bias, there are other ways in which women can have less than a square deal. Afghanistan may be the only country in the world the government of which is keen on actively excluding girls from schooling (it combines this with other features of massive gender inequality), but there are many countries in Asia and Africa, and also in Latin America, where girls have far less opportunity of schooling than boys do. There are other deficiencies in basic facilities available to women, varying from encouragement to cultivate ones natural talents to fair participation in rewarding social functions of the community. Special opportunity inequality: Even when there is relatively little difference in basic facilities including schooling, the opportunities of higher education may be far fewer for young women than for young men. Indeed, gender bias in higher education and profe ssional training can be observed even in some of the richest countries in the world, in Europe and North America. Sometimes this type of division has been based on the superficially innocuous idea that the respective provinces of men and women are just different. This thesis has been championed in different forms over the centuries, and has had much implicit as well as explicit following. It was presented with particular directness more than a hundred years before Queen Victorias complaint about womans rights by the Revd James Fordyce in his Sermons to Young Women (1766), a book which, as Mary Wollstonecraft noted in her A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792), had been long made a part of womans library. Fordyce warned the young women, to whom his sermons were addressed, against  those masculine women that would plead for your sharing any part of their province with us, identifying the province of men as including not only war, but also commerce, politics, exercises of streng th and dexterity, abstract philosophy and all the abstruser sciences. Even though such clear-cut beliefs about the provinces of men and women are now rather rare, nevertheless the presence of extensive gender asymmetry can be seen in many areas of education, training and professional work even in Europe and North America. Professional inequality: In terms of employment as well as promotion in work and occupation, women often face greater handicap than men. A country like Japan may be quite egalitarian in matters of demography or basic facilities, and even, to a great extent, in higher education, and yet progress to elevated levels of employment and occupation seems to be much more problematic for women than for men. In the English television series called Yes, Minister, there is an episode where the Minister, full of reforming zeal, is trying to find out from the immovable permanent secretary, Sir Humphrey, how many women are in really senior positions in the British civil service. Sir Humphrey says that it is very difficult to give an exact number; it would require a lot of investigation. The Minister is still insistent, and wants to know approximately how many women are there in these senior positions. To which Sir Humphrey finally replies, Approximately, none. Ownership inequality: In many societies the ownership of property can also be very unequal. Even basic assets such as homes and land may be very asymmetrically shared. The absence of claims to property can not only reduce the voice of women, but also make it harder for women to enter and flourish in commercial, economic and even some social activities.2 This type of inequality has existed in most parts of the world, though there are also local variations. For example, even though traditional property rights have favoured men in the bulk of India, in what is now the State of Kerala, there has been, for a long time, matrilineal inheritance for an influential part of the community, namely the Nairs. Household inequality: There are, often enough, basic inequalities in gender relations within the family or the household, which can take many different forms. Even in cases in which there are no overt signs of anti-female bias in, say, survival or son-preference or education, or even in promotion to higher executive positions, the family arrangements can be quite unequal in terms o f sharing  the burden of housework and child care. It is, for example, quite common in many societies to take it for granted that while men will naturally work outside the home, women could do it if and only if they could combine it with various inescapable and unequally shared household duties. This is sometimes called division of labour, though women could be forgiven for seeing it as accumulation of labour. The reach of this inequality includes not only unequal relations within the family, but also derivative inequalities in employment and recognition in the outside world. Also, the established fixity of this type of division or accumulation of labour can also have far-reaching effects on the knowledge and understanding of different types of work in professional circles. When I first started working on gender inequality, in the 1970s, I remember being struck by the fact that the Handbook of Human Nutrition Requirement of the World Health Organisation (WHO), in presenting calorie requirements for different categories of people, chose to classify household work as sedentary activity, requiring very little deployment of energy.3 I was, however, not able to determine precisely how this remarkable bit of information had been collected by the patrician leaders of society. FACTS ABOUT GENDER INEQUALITY The five countries with the best record of gender parity are Iceland, Finland, Norway, Sweden and the Philippines. Iceland holds the top spot for the fifth year in a row and continues to be the country with the narrowest gender gap in the world. The U.S. is at number 23, falling behind several countries that it has tried to bomb or colonize, such as Cuba and Nicaragua, or moralize at, such as Burundi. (Official U.S. government goals in Burundi are to help the people of Burundi realize a just and lasting peace based upon democratic principles and sustainable economic development.) The U.S. also is only at number 17 in gender parity out of the 49 high-income countries that have been measureda rather poor showing for a country that tops the chart when it comes to high incomes. According to one recent study, incomes among the top 1 percent in the U.S. rose by 31.4 percent between 2009 and 2012, while incomes for everyone else grew just 0.4 percent. This wealth is obviously not going toward ensuring gender equality. China, the emerging economic competitor to the U.S., is at number 69 with a steady  deterioration in its gender relations since 2010. China and the U.S. have the greatest number of millionaire households, and China has seen one of the biggest economic booms in recent years. It is thus alarming that in China, just like in the U.S., the sole beneficiaries of this boom has been the rich. The disparity is particularly clear in certain key areas: for instance, the report ranks China at 133, almost to the very bottom of all the countries surveyed, in the Health and Survival category. Indeed, some of the leading affluent nations perform very poorly on the Health and Survival Category. Israel, for example, is at 93 falling below the country it demonizes regularly: Iran! The five countries with the poorest record for gender parity are Mauritania, Syria, Chad, Pakistan and Yemen. Not to let the national ruling classes of the se countries off the hook, but its important to bear in mind that these countries have all been the victim of devastating imperialist policies and violence from the West. Along with colonialism, drone strikes and International Monetary Fund demands, we can also add the resultant gender disparity to the list of the Wests gifts to these countries. GENDER EQUALITY Gender equality is the measurable equal representation of women and men. Gender equality does not imply that women and men are the same, but that they have equal value and should be accorded equal treatment. The United Nations regards gender equality as a human right. It points out that empowering women is also an indispensable tool for advancing development and reducing poverty. Equal pay for equal work is one of the areas where gender equality is rarely seen. All too often women are paid less than men for doing the same work. This is one of the reasons that the majority of the world’s poor are women: around 70% of the people who live in extreme poverty, on less than US$1 a day, are girls and women. Suffrage (the right to vote) is another area of gender equality that still does not extend to all the women in the world. Saudi Arabia does not give women the right to vote; in the USA right wing commentators say that women should never have been given the right to vote. The impor tance of gender equality is highlighted by its inclusion as one of the 8 Millennium Development Goals that serve as a framework for halving poverty and improving lives. Despite  this, discrimination against women and girls (such as gender-based violence, economic discrimination, reproductive health inequities and harmful traditional practices) remains the most pervasive and persistent form of inequality. CONCLUSION Despite modernization and acknowledgment of right, we still see countries facing the problem of gender inequality and let most to suffer from this are developing countries. After the research we can conclude that inequality does not only brings in stress and problems along it but also economically affects. The relationship between economic and gender equality is very clear. there are people who still do not allow women to go ut and work. We still think women are not supposed to go out and work as they go out they will get dominant over men. Girls are removed early from schools. Early marriages. Those who work have a glass ceiling or are not allowed to go on higher posts then men. And so on so forth. If we remove this gender inequality, let the women work educate them, they will not only be contributing with the man to run the house expenses but also help in economy; less dependent people, more bread earning hence a good lifestyle. With such an inflationary economy where prices are go ing up, one person is not enough to earn and feed the family. A women who is educated, can raise her children in a very well-mannered and appropriate way with good moral and ethnic values. A healthy home comes with educated women. BIBILOGRAPHY Amartya Sen. Many faces of gender inequality. FRONTLINE. Volume 18 Issue 22, Oct. 27 Nov. 09, 2001 Sex differences in humans . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_inequality Tithi Bhattacharya. Measuring gender inequality. report on the gender gap internationally. from http://socialistworker.org/2013/11/04/measuring-gender-inequality

The Scarlet Letter Essay -- essays research papers

In the novel, The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne discusses the issues of guilt, pain, and truth. For many people, it is hard to accept the faults of their own failures. Most do not acknowledge the reality of their lives, and wind up suffering for their mistakes. Guilt and Sin are bad and also cause pain. Hester Prynne endures in agony and pain because of the mistake she made. In the novel, Hester rarely gives up hope. Through her suffering, Hester maintains to keep her dignity. Hester is admired because of her strong will, and her ability to ignore other's views of her. "In a moment, however, wisely judging that one token of her shame would but poorly serve to hide another, she took the baby on her arm, and, with a burning blush, and yet a haughty smile, and a glance that would not be abashed, looked around at her townspeople and neighbors† (Hawthorne 50). The townspeople had no right to determine Hester’s punishment. God can only make this type of judgment. She also expresses her best qualities when she stands up to Governor Bellingham, and she confronts him about Pearl. Hester, being proud, headstrong, and confident, faces him successfully and convinces Governor Bellingham into letting her keep Pearl. She is not afraid of much in her life, especially for standing up for her family. She gains knowledge each day of her life and continues to live a fierce life. â€Å"This badge hath taught me—it daily teaches me—it is te aching me at this mom...

Negligent Tort

Negligence is neglect or disregard. Tort is a legal misgiving. Negligent tort is a type of tort in the legal system. The concept encompasses that of which an occasion where an individual’s â€Å"acts leading to injury are neither expected nor intended. † (Yell, 1999) In this paper, the elements of a negligent tort, the concepts of proximate causation and duty of care, and types of remedies for finding tort liability will be explored. Elements of Negligent Tort There are three elements of negligent tort. The first element is that of which the defendant had a responsibility of support and/or care to the plaintiff. For example when an individual puts a child in a car, they have a responsibility to secure them appropriately and drive applicably as to avoid any unnecessary dangers to the full extent of their capability (like not driving 120 mph). The second element is that the defendant did not complete this obligation. To continue with the previous example – once the individual takes the responsibility of transporting the child (with due reason that they will secure the child and drive reasonably) and fail to do so, this is the second part of finding negligent tort. The third element of this is â€Å"that this breach was the actual and proximate cause of injury experienced by the plaintiff. † (Barnes, Bowers, Langvardt, & Mallor, 2010, p. 206) Proximate Cause Proximate causation â€Å"concerns the required degree of proximity or closeness between the defendant’s breach and the injury it actually caused. † (Barnes, Bowers, Langvardt, & Mallor, 2010, p. 225) Proximate cause would mean that the reactions caused by a defendants actions may still not make the defendant 100% liable for what happens – only what can be directly correlated to his/her actions and leaving them free of indirect consequences. This action can also be used in insurance type cases. It has been discussed that if a professional driver has an accident, the company that employs him or her would be held liable for his/her accident under normal circumstances but if the driver was texting or drinking (both illegal) when the accident occurred, it could leave the company free from liability and it would fall on the driver. Remedies to Tort Liability Remedies to tort liability can be non-compensatory damages, compensatory damages, and injunctions, to name a few. Compensation or damages received should be in correspondence to the injuries received. Sometimes the conclusion can be as simple as fixing whatever was completely wrongly, for example if a dentist removed the wrong tooth, perhaps a remedy to the situation would be replacing it with a nice veneer replacement – as long as both parties are happy with that conclusion, that could be the end of it however in this day and age, rarely a civil case ends without some sort of compensatory award. Conclusion Negligent tort, along with duty of care, is a responsibility we all take on every day. When we drive, we promise to not drink, not text, and to follow the rules of the road. As citizens of the United States, we promise not to dump our extra oil in the grass, burn our tires, steal, or murder. We all have a responsibility to one another that when we promise to do something, we do it accordingly without any dangerous actions in completion of those promises. References Barnes, A. J., Bowers, T., Langvardt, A. W., & Mallor, J. P. (2010). Business Law: The Ethical, Global, and E-Commerce Environment (14th ed.). Boston: McGraw-Hill Irwin. Yell, M. L. (1999, February). Center for Effective Collaboration and Practice. Retrieved December 19, 2010, from What are Tort Laws?: http://cecp.air.org/interact/authoronline/february99/2.htm#2

Organizations and institutions Essay

Maintaining and preserving the environment has been one of the key issues that have been prevalent in the present time. Creating avenues for environmental sustainability has continuously been evident among states, organizations and institutions. The same applies for the marine ecology particularly the Giant Blue-Fin tuna. The continuous decline of its population has been alarming different sectors in the economy as well as different environmental NGOs. Thus, it created numerous efforts among different organizations and governments to protect the Giant Blue-Fin Tuna. By controlling the amount of Giant Blue-Fin Tuna captured daily, the population of such species can be saved and be prevented from extinction. The Giant Blue-Fin tuna is considered one of the most prized species in the marine kingdom. â€Å"Atlantic bluefin tuna, Thunnus thynnus (Linnaeus, 1758), aka bluefin tuna, horse mackerel, northern bluefin tuna is regarded as one of the most highly evolved fish species and one of the most prized fish in danger of over fishing. † (MarineBio. org, 2007, p. 1) A Giant Blue-Fin is characterized under the category of ‘tuna’ due to their unique composition. â€Å"Tuna, originating from the Greek word meaning â€Å"to rush,† usually swim at speeds of 1. 5-4 kts, can maintain 8 kts for some time, and can rarely break 20 kts for short periods. † (MarineBio. org, 2007, p. 1) The Blue-Fin tuna is classified under the Scombridae family and it is considered to be the largest specie under such classification. â€Å"It is one of the largest bony fishes and can reach lengths of up to 3 m, although they are more commonly found from . 5-2 m in length. Adult weights range from 136-680 kg, although the upper weight range is rare. † (MarineBio. org, 2007, p. 1) Its appearance can be described to be â€Å"dark blue to black near the dorsal surface and silvery near the ventral surface. † (MarineBio. org, 2007, p. 1) In addition, Giant Blue-Fin tuna lives from 15 – 30 years. Also, Giant Blue-Fin tunas are considered to be warm blooded fishes. â€Å"Atlantic bluefin are homeothermic (â€Å"warm-blooded†) and are therefore able to thermoregulate keeping their body temperatures higher than the surrounding water, which is why they are so well adapted to colder waters. † Locations The Giant Blue-Fin tuna are only located in certain places. â€Å"Bluefin are highly migratory and limited numbers of individuals may cross the Atlantic in as little as 60 days and are widely distributed throughout the Atlantic and can be found from Newfoundland all the way to the coast of Brazil. † (MarineBio. org, 2007, p. 1) In addition, â€Å"they range in the eastern Atlantic as far north as Norway and down to northern West Africa. Bluefin tagged in the Bahamas have been captured in Norway as well as off the coast of Brazil. Bluefin in the South Atlantic belong to a distinct southern population, with known spawning areas south of Java, Indonesia. † (MarineBio. org, 2007, p. 1) Current Problems In the course of time as development begins to step into the picture, certain negative and adverse have began to emanate from the process. The most affected sector in the development process is the environment. As humans continue to develop technologically the consequences of such improvements have been the environment and the ecosystem. With this, it can be argued that the marine ecosystem has also been suffering the same fate. Such occurrence does not spare the Giant Blue-Fin tuna as its population gradually and continuously declines over the years. It is widely known that the Giant Blue-fin tuna serves as an important source of food and income among the fishing industry. â€Å"Once, giant bluefin migrated by the millions throughout the Atlantic Basin and the Mediterranean Sea, their flesh so important to the people of the ancient world that they painted the tuna’s likeness on cave walls and minted its image on coins. † (Montaigne, 2007, p. 1) The Giant Blue-fin tuna are regarded by many to be a source of delicious food particularly in the making of sushi. â€Å"The giant, or Atlantic, bluefin possesses another extraordinary attribute, one that may prove to be its undoing: Its buttery belly meat, liberally layered with fat, is considered the finest sushi in the world. † (Montaigne, 2007, p. 1) Too much hunting With the huge demand for its meat, the Giant Blue-fin tuna has been a victim of excessive hunting by different fishermen and institutions. â€Å"Over the past decade, a high-tech armada, often guided by spotter planes, has pursued giant bluefin from one end of the Mediterranean to the other, annually netting tens of thousands of the fish, many of them illegally. † (Montaigne, 2007, p. 1) In addition, with the application of the technological advantages in fisheries, the decline of Giant Blue-fin tuna rose exaggeratedly. â€Å"The decimation of giant bluefin is emblematic of everything wrong with global fisheries today: the vastly increased killing power of new fishing technology, the shadowy network of international companies making huge profits from the trade, negligent fisheries management and enforcement, and consumers’ indifference to the fate of the fish they choose to buy. † (Montaigne, 2007, p. 1) Enforcement or Request There had been different efforts by states as well as international organizations in addressing these issues. Fishing of Giant Blue-fin can never be banned due to the relative demand of consumers for their meat. Thus, organizations and states arranged quotas for local and international fishermen on how much each should fish. However, these quotas are oftentimes neglected or not followed. â€Å"The group charged with managing bluefin tuna stocks, the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna (ICCAT), has acknowledged that the fleet has been violating quotas egregiously. † (Montaigne, 2007, p. 2) In addition, recognizing the constant decline of Giant Blue-Fin tuna in the ocean, ICCAT has requested different states and companies to reduce their quotas to allow these species to populate and multiply, however, these organizations and states declined. â€Å"But despite strong warnings from its own biologists, ICCAT—with 43 member states—refused to reduce quotas significantly last November, over the objections of delegations from the U. S. , Canada, and a handful of other nations. † (Montaigne, 2007, p. 2) It has been predicted that if this type of fishing continues, then such industry would collapse and the Giant Blue-fin can become extinct. â€Å". Scientists estimate that if fishing continues at current levels, stocks are bound to collapse. † (Montaigne, 2007, p. 2) What can be done There are different mechanisms that environmentalist and the government have tried to enforce to prevent the continuous over fishing of these species. However, little compliance can be seen in the process due to the high demand posed by the Giant Blue-Fin tuna especially in the world market. Thus, it is necessary for states and groups to enhance the level of monitoring and implementation of rules and legislation. In addition, stricter measures must be enforced to facilitate a better future for these creatures. Effective Management Effective management can be a solution to the long and impeding problem of over fishing in the ocean for Giant Blue-Fin tuna. â€Å"Experts agree that, first, the world’s oceans must be managed as ecosystems, not simply as larders from which the fishing industry can extract protein at will. †(Montaigne, 2007, p. 4) By creating effective and efficient management mechanisms can help enhance the efforts in improving the overall status of Giant Blue-Fin tuna. â€Å"Second, the management councils that oversee fisheries, such as ICCAT, long dominated by commercial fishing interests, must share power with scientists and conservationists. † (Montaigne, 2007, p. 4) Cutting Fishing Vessels The constant decline of Giant Blue-Fin tuna are due to numerous fishermen who catches them. One possible scenario that legislators and organizations can do is limiting the number of allowed fishermen and industries who will engage in such actions. By doing so, it can help the population of the Giant Blue-Fin tuna to increase. â€Å"Further, governments must cut back the world’s four million fishing vessels—nearly double what is needed to fish the ocean sustainably—and slash the estimated 25 billion dollars in government subsidies bestowed annually on the fishing industry. † (Montaigne, 2007, p. 4) Setting quotas and marine sanctuaries By creating quotas, Giant Blue-Fin tuna population can be maintained and can provide an avenue for an increase in population. â€Å"For giant bluefin in the Mediterranean, that may mean shutting down the fishery during the spawning season and substantially increasing the minimum catch weight. † (Montaigne, 2007, p. 4) But with this situation comes with effective and efficient inspection and enforcement among the state, agency and organization in-charge of the process. Also, by creating marine sanctuaries in the area, Giant Blue-Fin tuna can survive the excessive amount of fishing by fishermen in a certain area. Marine sanctuaries seek to protect the overall area where Giant Blue-Fin tuna are situated. This means that they cannot be caught. â€Å"Another crucial step, both in the Mediterranean and around the world, would be the creation of large marine protected areas. † (Montaigne, 2007, p. 4) Campaigning for change can also help in the process of conservation and sustainability. â€Å"Also important are campaigns by such groups as the Marine Stewardship Council, which is working with consumers as well as retail giants to promote trade in sustainably caught fish. † (Montaigne, 2007, p. 4) Conclusion The Giant Blue-Fin tuna is characterized to be an important part of the overall marine ecosystem. Taking them out in the overall system can create disparities and consequences in the marine ecosystem. Thus, the continuous decline of Giant Blue-Fin tuna must be addressed to sustain the continuous demand of people in the future. By creating efficient and effective monitoring mechanisms as well as legislation, the lives of Giant Blue-Fin tuna shall be sustained. It is our responsibility to continue addressing this for it shall be the future generations that will suffer if actions shall not be put into place and changes to occur in near time. References MarineBio. org (2007) Atlantic Bluefin Tuna. Retrieved November 28, 2007 from http://marinebio. org/species. asp? id=236 Montaigne, F. (2007) ‘Still Waters: The Global Fish Crisis’ in National Geographic: Interactive Edition. Retrieved November 28, 2007 from h http://www7. nationalgeographic. com/ngm/0704/feature1/index. html

Free Essays on Darryl Strawberry

Affects and Struggles of Cocaine and Darryl Strawberry Cocaine is a drug that has been existent since the 1800’s. It is a powerfully addictive drug of abuse. Individuals who have tried cocaine have described the experience as a powerful high that gave them a feeling of supremacy. However, once someone starts taking cocaine, one cannot predict or control the extent to which he or she will continue to use the drug. The major ways of taking cocaine are sniffing or snorting, injecting, and smoking, and there are serious consequences for taking and abusing this drug. Darryl Strawberry was a famous major league baseball player who was known for his cocaine addiction. The health risks of cocaine use will develop more rapidly if smoked rather than snorted. Smoking allows extremely high doses of cocaine to reach the brain very quickly and results in an intense and immediate high. The injecting drug user is also at risk for acquiring or transmitting HIV infection/AIDS if needles or other injection equipment are shared. Physical effects of cocaine use include constricted peripheral blood vessels, dilated pupils, and increased body temperature, heart rate, and blood pressure. Some cocaine users report feelings of restlessness, irritability, and anxiety, both while using and between periods of use. An appreciable tolerance to the high may be developed, and many addicts report that they seek but fail to achieve as much pleasure as they did from their first exposure. High doses of cocaine and/or prolonged use can trigger paranoia. Smoking crack cocaine can produce particularly aggressive paranoid behavior in users. When addicted individuals stop using co caine, they may become depressed. This depression causes users to continue to use the drug to alleviate their depression. Prolonged cocaine snorting can result in ulceration of the mucous membrane of the nose and can damage the nasal septum enough to cause it to collapse. Cocaine-related ... Free Essays on Darryl Strawberry Free Essays on Darryl Strawberry Affects and Struggles of Cocaine and Darryl Strawberry Cocaine is a drug that has been existent since the 1800’s. It is a powerfully addictive drug of abuse. Individuals who have tried cocaine have described the experience as a powerful high that gave them a feeling of supremacy. However, once someone starts taking cocaine, one cannot predict or control the extent to which he or she will continue to use the drug. The major ways of taking cocaine are sniffing or snorting, injecting, and smoking, and there are serious consequences for taking and abusing this drug. Darryl Strawberry was a famous major league baseball player who was known for his cocaine addiction. The health risks of cocaine use will develop more rapidly if smoked rather than snorted. Smoking allows extremely high doses of cocaine to reach the brain very quickly and results in an intense and immediate high. The injecting drug user is also at risk for acquiring or transmitting HIV infection/AIDS if needles or other injection equipment are shared. Physical effects of cocaine use include constricted peripheral blood vessels, dilated pupils, and increased body temperature, heart rate, and blood pressure. Some cocaine users report feelings of restlessness, irritability, and anxiety, both while using and between periods of use. An appreciable tolerance to the high may be developed, and many addicts report that they seek but fail to achieve as much pleasure as they did from their first exposure. High doses of cocaine and/or prolonged use can trigger paranoia. Smoking crack cocaine can produce particularly aggressive paranoid behavior in users. When addicted individuals stop using co caine, they may become depressed. This depression causes users to continue to use the drug to alleviate their depression. Prolonged cocaine snorting can result in ulceration of the mucous membrane of the nose and can damage the nasal septum enough to cause it to collapse. Cocaine-related ...

John Wayne Gacy, the Third Most Prolific Serial Killer in U.S. History

John Wayne Gacy, the Third Most Prolific Serial Killer in U.S. History John Wayne Gacy was convicted of the torture, rape, and murder of 33 males between 1972 until his arrest in 1978. He was dubbed the Killer Clown because he entertained children at parties and hospitals as Pogo the Clown. On May 10, 1994, Gacy was executed by lethal injection. Gacys Childhood Years John Gacy was born on March 17, 1942, in Chicago, Illinois. He was the second of three children and the only son born to John Stanley Gacy and Marion Robinson. From age 4, Gacy was verbally and physically abused by his  alcoholic father. Despite the abuse, Gacy admired his father and constantly sought his approval. In return, his father would hurl insults at him, telling him he was stupid and acted like a girl. When Gacy was 7 years old, he was molested repeatedly by a friend of the family. He never told his parents about it, fearing that his father would find him at fault and that he would be severely punished. Gacys Teen Years   When Gacy was in elementary school, he was diagnosed with a congenital heart condition which limited his physical activity. As a result, he became overweight and endured  teasing from his classmates. At age 11, Gacy was hospitalized for several months at a time after experiencing unexplained blackouts. His father decided Gacy was faking the blackouts because the doctors were unable to diagnose why it was happening. After five years of being in and out of the hospital, it was discovered that he had a blood clot in his brain, which was treated. But Gacys delicate health issues failed to protect him from his fathers drunken wrath. He received regular beatings, for no particular reason other than his father disdained him. After years of abuse, Gacy taught himself not to cry. This was the only thing he consciously ever did that he knew would provoke his fathers anger. Gacy found it too difficult to catch up with what he had missed in school while hospitalized, so he decided to drop out. His being a  high school dropout  solidified his fathers constant accusations that Gacy was stupid. Las Vegas or Bust At the age of 18, Gacy was still living with his parents. He became involved with the Democratic Party and worked as an assistant precinct captain. It was during this time that he began to develop his gift for gab. He enjoyed the positive attention he received in what he felt was a prestigious position. But his father quickly squelched whatever good came out of his political involvement. He belittled Gacy’s association with the Party: he called him a Party patsy. Gacy’s  years of abuse  from his father finally wore him down. After several episodes of his father having refused to let Gacy use his own car, he had enough. He packed his belongings and escaped to Las Vegas, Nevada. A Frightening Awakening In Las Vegas, Gacy worked for an ambulance service for a short time but was then transferred to a mortuary where he was employed as an attendant. He often spent nights alone at the mortuary, where he would sleep on a cot near the embalming room.   On the last night that Gacy worked there, he got into a coffin and fondled the corpse of a teenage boy. Afterward, he was so confused and shocked by the realization that he had been sexually  aroused by a male corpse, that he called his mother the following day and without providing details, asked if he could return home. His father agreed and Gacy, who had only been gone for 90 days, quit his job at the mortuary and drove back to Chicago. Burying the Past Back in Chicago, Gacy forced himself to bury the experience at the mortuary and move forward. Despite not having completed high school, he was accepted at Northwestern Business College, where he graduated in 1963. He then took a management trainee position with the Nunn-Bush Shoe Company and was quickly transferred to Springfield, Illinois, where he was promoted to a management position. Marlynn  Meyers was employed at the same store and worked in Gacys department. The two began dating and nine months later they married. Community Spirit During his first year in Springfield, Gacy had become very involved with the local Jaycees, dedicating much of his spare time to the organization. He became adept at self-promotion, utilizing his salesmanship training to gain positive attention. He rose through the Jaycee ranks and in April  1964 he was awarded the title of Key Man. Fundraising was Gacys niche and by 1965 he was appointed the vice-president of the Jaycees Springfield division and later that same year he was recognized as being the third most outstanding Jaycee in the state of Illinois. For the first time in his life, Gacy felt confident and full of self-esteem. He was married, a good future before him,  and had persuaded people he was a leader. The one thing that threatened his success was his growing need to be  sexually involved with young male teens. Marriage and Fried Chicken After dating in Springfield, Illinois, Gacy and  Marlynn  married in September 1964 and then moved to Waterloo, Iowa where Gacy managed three Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants owned by Marilyns father. The newlyweds moved into  Marlynns  parents home, rent-free. Gacy soon joined the Waterloo Jaycees, and once again quickly moved up the ranks. In 1967, he received recognition as Outstanding Vice-President of the Waterloo Jaycees and earned a seat on the  Board of Directors. But, unlike in Springfield, the Waterloo Jaycees had a dark side that involved illegal drug use, wife swapping,  prostitutes, and pornography. Gacy slid right into the position of managing and regularly participating in these activities. Gacy also began to act on his desires to have sex with male teenagers, many of whom worked at the fried chicken restaurants he managed. The Lure He turned a basement room into a hangout as a way to attract teens. He would entice the boys with free alcohol and pornography. Gacy would then take sexual advantage of some of the boys after they became too intoxicated to put up any resistance. While Gacy was molesting teens in his basement and doing drugs with his Jaycee pals, Marlyn was busy having children. Their first child was a boy, born in 1967, and the second child was a girl, born a year later. Gacy later described this time of his life as being nearly perfect. It was also the only time he finally gained any approval from his father. The Colonel A common trait shared by many  serial killers  is their belief that they are smarter than everyone and that they will never get caught. Gacy fit that profile. With his above-average earnings and his social connections through the Jaycees, Gacys ego and confidence level grew. He became pushy and commanding and would often brag about accomplishments, most of which were transparent lies.   The Jaycee members who were not into hookers and porn began putting a distance between themselves and Gacy, or Colonel, as he insisted on being called. But in March 1968 Gacys near-perfect world quickly fell apart. First Arrest In August 1967 Gacy had hired 15-year-old Donald Voorhees to do odd jobs around his house. Donald met Gacy through his father, who was also in the Jaycees. After finishing his work, Gacy lured the teen to his basement with the promise of free beer and  porn movies. After Gacy supplied him with an abundance of alcohol, he forced him into having oral sex. This experience seemed to unplug any fears Gacy had about getting caught. Over the next several months, he sexually abused several teenage boys. He convinced some of them that a scientific research program that he was involved in was looking for participants and they would be paid $50 for each session. He also used blackmail as a way to force them into sexual submission. But in March 1968 it all came crashing down on Gacy. Voorhees told his father about the incident with Gacy in his basement, who immediately reported it to the police. Another 16-year-old victim also reported Gacy to the police. Gacy was  arrested  and charged with oral sodomy of the 15-year-old and attempted assault of the other boy, charges he strongly denied.   As his defense, Gacy said that the accusations were a lie by  Voorhees  father who was trying to sabotage his efforts to become president of the Iowa Jaycees. Some of his Jaycee friends believed it was possible. However, despite his protests, Gacy was indicted on the sodomy charges. In an effort to intimidate Voorhees and keep him from testifying, Gacy paid an employee, 18-year-old Russell Schroeder, $300 to beat up the teenager and warn him against showing up in court. Voorhees went straight to the police who arrested Schroeder. He promptly  admitted his guilt  and Gacys involvement to the police. Gacy was charged with conspiracy-assault. By the time it was over, Gacy pled guilty to sodomy and received a 10-year sentence.   Doing Time On December 27, 1969, Gacys father died of cirrhosis of the liver. The news hit Gacy hard, but despite his obvious poor emotional state, the prison officials denied his request to attend his fathers funeral. Gacy did everything right in prison. He earned his high school degree and took his position as head cook seriously. His good behavior paid off. In October 1971, after completing just two years of his sentence, he was released and placed on  probation  for 12 months. Marlyn filed for divorce while Gacy was in prison. He was so angered by the divorce that he told her that she and the two children were dead to him, vowing never to see them again. Marlyn, no doubt, hoped that he would stick to his word. Back in Action With nothing to return to in Waterloo, Gacy moved back to Chicago to begin rebuilding his life. He moved in with his mother and got a job working as a cook, and then worked for a construction contractor. Gacy later bought a home 30 miles outside of Chicago, in Des Plaines, Illinois. Gacy and his mother lived in the house, which was part of the terms of Gacys probation. In early February 1971, Gacy lured a teenage boy to his home and tried to rape him, but the boy escaped and went to the police. Gacy was charged with  sexual assault, but the charges were dismissed when the teen did not show up in court. Word of his arrest never got back to his parole officer. First Kill On Jan. 2, 1972, Timothy Jack McCoy, age 16, was planning on sleeping at the bus terminal in Chicago. His next bus wasnt scheduled until the following day, but when Gacy approached him and offered to give him a tour of the city, plus let him sleep at his house, McCoy took him up on it.   According to Gacy’s account, he awoke the following morning and saw McCoy standing with a knife at his bedroom door. Gacy thought the teen intended on killing him, so he charged the boy and got control of the knife. Gacy then  stabbed the teen to death. Afterward, he realized that he had mistaken McCoys intentions. The teen had a knife because he was preparing breakfast and had gone to Gacys room to wake him up.   Although Gacy had not planned to kill McCoy when he brought him home, he couldnt dismiss the fact that he had become sexually aroused to the point of orgasm during the kill. In fact, the killing was the most intense sexual pleasure he had ever felt. Timothy Jack McCoy was the first of many to be buried in the crawl space under Gacys home. Second Marriage On July 1, 1972, Gacy married a high school sweetheart, Carole Hoff. She and her two daughters from a previous marriage moved into Gacys home. Carole was aware of why Gacy had spent time in prison, but he had downplayed the charges and convinced her that he had changed his ways. Within weeks of being married, Gacy was  arrested and charged  with sexual assault after a teen male accused him of impersonating a police officer to get him into his car, then forcing him to engage in oral sex. Again the charges were dropped; this time because the victim had tried to blackmail Gacy. In the meantime, as Gacy added more bodies in the crawlspace under his house, a horrible stench began to fill the air, both inside and outside of Gacys home. It got to be so bad that neighbors began to insist that Gacy find a solution to get rid of the odor.   Youre Hired In 1974 Gacy left his construction job and started a contracting business called Painting, Decorating, and Maintenance, or PDM Contractors, Inc. Gacy told friends that one way he planned to keep his costs down was by hiring teenage boys. But Gacy saw it as another way to find teens to lure to his basement of horrors.   He began posting available jobs and then invited the applicants to his house on the pretext of talking to them about a job. Once the boys were inside his home, he would overpower them using various tricks, render them unconscious and then begin his gruesome and sadistic torture that almost always led to their death. The Do-Gooder While he wasnt killing young men, Gacy spent time reestablishing himself as a good neighbor and good  community leader. He worked tirelessly on community projects, had several neighborhood parties, developed close friendships with his next-door neighbors, and became a familiar face, dressed as Pogo the Clown, at birthday parties and at the childrens hospital.   People liked John Wayne Gacy. By day, he was a successful business owner and community do-gooder, but by night, unknown to anyone but his victims, he was a sadistic killer on the loose. Second Divorce In October 1975 Carole filed for divorce after Gacy admitted to her that he was attracted to young men. She wasnt surprised by the news. Months before, on Mothers Day, he had informed her that they would not be having any more sex together. She was also bothered by all of the gay porn magazines lying around and she could no longer ignore all the teenage males coming in and out of the house. Having Carole out of his hair, Gacy focused on what really mattered to him most; keeping his do-gooder facade in the community so that he could continue to achieve sexual gratification by raping and killing young boys. From 1976 to 1978, Gacy had managed to hide the bodies of 29 of his victims under his house, but because of lack of space and the odor, he dumped the bodies of his last four victims into the Des Moines River. Robert  Piest On December 11, 1978, in Des Moines, 15-year-old Robert Piest went missing after leaving his job at a pharmacy. He told his mother and a co-worker that he was going to an interview with a construction contractor about a summer position. The contractor had been in the pharmacy earlier in the evening discussing a future remodel with the owner.   When  Piest  failed to return home, his parents contacted the police. The pharmacy owner told investigators that the contractor was John Gacy, owner of PDM Contractors. When Gacy was contacted by the police, he admitted being in the pharmacy on the night the boy disappeared but denied ever speaking to the teenager. This contradicted what one of  Piests  fellow employees had told the investigators. According to the employee,  Piest  was upset because he had been turned down earlier in the evening when he asked for a raise. But when his shift ended, he was excited because the contractor that was remodeling the pharmacy agreed to meet with him that night to discuss a summer job. Gacy’s denying that he had even spoken to the boy raised a lot of suspicions. Investigators ran a background check that revealed Gacys past criminal record, including his conviction and prison time for sodomizing a minor. This information put Gacy on the top of the list of possible suspects. On December 13, 1978, a  warrant to search  Gacys Summerdale Avenue home was granted. While investigators searched his home and cars, he was at the police station giving an oral and written statement about his activities at the pharmacy on the night  Piest  disappeared. When he learned that his house had been searched, he went into a fit of anger. The Search The  evidence  collected at Gacys house included a high school ring for the class of 1975 with initials J.A.S., handcuffs, drugs and drug paraphernalia, two drivers licenses that were not issued to Gacy, child pornography, police badges, guns and ammunition, a switchblade, a piece of stained carpet, hair samples from Gacys automobiles, store receipts, and several items of teen-styled clothing in sizes that would not fit Gacy.   Investigators also went down into the crawl space, but did not discover anything and left quickly due to the rancid odor that they attributed to being a sewage problem. Although the search solidified suspicions that Gacy was likely an active pedophile, it did not turn up any evidence linking him to  Piest. However, he was still their prime suspect.   Under Surveillance Two surveillance teams were assigned to watch Gacy 24 hours a day. The investigators continued their search for  Piest  and continued interviewing his friends and co-worker. They also began interviewing people who had contact with Gacy. What investigators learned was that Robert  Piest  was a good, family-oriented kid. John Gacy, on the other hand, had the makings of a monster. They also learned that  Piest  was not the first, but the fourth person who had disappeared after having contact with Gacy. Meanwhile, Gacy seemed to be enjoying a game of cat and mouse with the surveillance team. More than once he was able to sneak away from his house undetected. He also invited the team into his home and served them breakfast, and then he would joke about spending the rest of the day getting rid of dead bodies. The Big Break Eight days into the investigation the lead detective went to the  Piests  home to bring his parents up to date. During the conversation, Mrs. Piest mentioned a conversation that she had with one of the employees working on the night her son went missing. The employee had told her that she had borrowed her sons jacket when she went on her break and left a receipt in the jacket pocket. This was the same jacket that her son had on when he left to go talk to the contractor about a job and never returned. That same receipt was found in the evidence collected during the search of Gacys house. Further  forensic tests  were performed on the receipt that proved that Gacy had been lying and that  Piest  had been in his home. Gacy Buckles Those closest to Gacy were interviewed by detectives on multiple occasions. Afterward, Gacy demanded that they tell him everything that was said. This included the in-depth questioning of his employees regarding the crawl space under Gacys home. Some of these employees admitted that Gacy had paid them to go down into specific areas of the crawl space to dig trenches. Gacy realized it was just a matter of time before the extent of his crimes would be exposed. He began to buckle under the pressure, and his behavior turned bizarre. On the morning of his arrest, Gacy was observed driving to the homes of his friends to tell them goodbye. He was seen taking pills and drinking mid-morning. He also talked about committing suicide and confessed to a few people that he had killed thirty people. What finally led to his arrest was a  drug deal  that Gacy orchestrated in full view of the surveillance team. They pulled Gacy over and placed him under arrest.   Second Search Warrant While in police custody, Gacy was informed that a second search warrant of his home had been issued. The news brought on chest pains, and Gacy was taken to the hospital. In the meantime, the search of his house, particularly the crawlspace, had begun. But the extent of what would be uncovered shocked even the most seasoned investigators. The Confession Gacy was released from the hospital later that night and taken back into custody. Knowing that his game was up, he  confessed to murdering  Robert  Piest. He also confessed to thirty-two additional murders, starting in 1974, and hinted that the total could be as high as 45. During the confession, Gacy explained how he had restrained his victims by pretending to do a magic trick, which required that they put on handcuffs. He then stuffed socks or underwear into their mouths and used a board with chains, which he would place under their chest, then wrapped the chains around their neck. He would then choke them to death while raping them. Victims Through dental and radiology records, 25 of the 33 bodies found were identified. In an effort to identify the remaining unknown victims, DNA testing was performed from 2011 to 2016.   Went Missing Name Age Location of Body January 3, 1972 Timothy McCoy 16 Crawl space - Body #9 July 29, 1975 John Butkovitch 17 Garage - Body #2 April 6, 1976 Darrell Sampson 18 Crawl space - Body #29 May 14, 1976 Randall Reffett 15 Crawl space - Body #7 May 14, 1976 Samuel Stapleton 14 Crawl space - Body #6 June 3, 1976 Michael Bonnin 17 Crawl space - Body #6 June 13, 1976 William Carroll 16 Crawl space - Body #22 August 6, 1976 Rick Johnston 17 Crawl space - Body #23 October 24, 1976 Kenneth Parker 16 Crawl space - Body #15 October 26, 1976 William Bundy 19 Crawl space - Body #19 December 12, 1976 Gregory Godzik 17 Crawl space - Body #4 January 20, 1977 John Szyc 19 Crawl space - Body #3 March 15, 1977 Jon Prestidge 20 Crawl space - Body #1 July 5, 1977 Matthew Bowman 19 Crawl space - Body #8 September 15, 1977 Robert Gilroy 18 Crawl space - Body #25 September 25, 1977 John Mowery 19 Crawl space - Body #20 October 17, 1977 Russell Nelson 21 Crawl space - Body #16 November 10, 1977 Robert Winch 16 Crawl space - Body #11 November 18, 1977 Tommy Boling 20 Crawl space - Body #12 December 9, 1977 David Talsma 19 Crawl space - Body #17 February 16, 1978 William Kindred 19 Crawl space - Body #27 June 16, 1978 Timothy O'Rourke 20 Des Plaines River - Body #31 November 4, 1978 Frank Landingin 19 Des Plaines River - Body #32 November 24, 1978 James Mazzara 21 Des Plaines River - Body #33 December 11, 1978 Robert Piest 15 Des Plaines River - Body #30 Guilty Gacy went on trial on February 6, 1980, for the murder of thirty-three young men. His defense lawyers tried to prove that  Gacy was insane, but the jury of five women and seven men did not agree.  After only two hours of deliberation, the jury returned a verdict of guilty and Gacy was given the death penalty. Execution While on death row, Gacy continued to taunt authorities with different versions of his story about the murders in an attempt to stay alive. But once his appeals were exhausted, the execution date was set. John Gacy was executed by lethal injection on May 9, 1994. His  last words  were, Kiss my ass. Sources Fall of the House of Gacy by Harlan Mendenhallï » ¿Killer Clown by Terry Sullivan and Peter T. Maiken