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These were my first drafts of essays during practice. I have not written the topics, but they are easy to find out if you have studied the official list. Hope these are helpful. ==================================================== The author contends that observing how people spend their leisurely time tells us more about their society than observing how they work. I tend to agree. Leisurely activities of people are a function of so many variables such as individualization, demographics, work related stress, environmental consciousness, religiousness of the society. On the contrary people rarely have much freedom at work and have a well defined set of values and work culture. In a busy, urban society of big cities with high work and commute stress, the leisure time emphasizes nature, ecology and health. The leisure activities might involve walking, cycling or household activities such as baking, house decoration, cooking and spending time with family members. Whereas, in a small town, people will tend to spend more time outdoors. There will be a less concern about environment and health. Hence the leisurely activities include significant traveling, dining out, visiting friends in other cities etc. In developed countries leisure activities reflect consumerist lifestyle. People will be driving in cars for long distances or fly for traveling even if they are not environmentally friendly ways. Whereas, in developing countries, public transport is the mode of transport over longer distances. Societies in developed countries also show individualistic attitude as the leisurely activities are mainly individualistic e.g. working on the car, going to driving range, going to beach etc. In other societies there are a lot of group activities and more interactions among people e.g. all neighbors picnic, friends going for skiing, friends going for hiking etc. Society with higher proportion of old people will have health oriented leisure activities such as in Japan. Change in demographics also change the amount of time and money available with people and leads to increase in holiday traveling or more frequent travelling. Admittedly, observing people at work will definitely tell us about their work culture, ethics, values etc. However those values may not represent those of the society as a whole and are mostly enforced at workplaces. In sum, I think observing how people spend their leisurely time is more likely to give us insights into true attitudes, values and lifestyle of the society. ===================================================== Whether the company should encourage competition among the employees or not, is a complex issue. On one hand too much competition might lead to employee backstabbing and reduced morale due to conflicting interests while on the other hand no competition might result in laxity and reduced productivity in employees. Overall, I think company managers should manage competition among employees in such a way that the overall competitiveness increases and company goals are reached. If the competition among the employees is overly encouraged the employees will feel insecure about their jobs. The persons who are highly competent or aggressive will try to dominate others. This will not only cause resentment and sense of alienation among other employees but also result in non-ethical backstabbing practices in the company. The non-competent sub-ordinates will try to save their jobs or get rewards from superiors by being sycophants. This will result in frustration among competent employees. Competition taken to this extreme will hamper the corporate culture and will be detrimental to employee retention and productivity in long run. On the other hand if the competition is not encouraged at all, the employees will become slack. Being not under any pressure to perform, the employees will waste their time in working on personal things rather than on business projects. The best strategy for business is to utilize this survival instinct in the human being to its advantage. It should encourage competition among employees, however, in doing so, care should be taken that the increased competition does not backfire as mentioned earlier. My manager used a technique of putting two employees of similar skills and qualification levels on two different but similar projects. That way, the employees will not be in direct competition with each other in order to grab credit for a given project. But they will be in indirect competition as to who finishes project in time, who is more efficient, who does a quality job, who has better communication and project management skills and so on. This ensures that the employees are aware of each other’s strength and perform to their best. The company benefits from this strategy. Hence the company managers should use competition to their advantage by managing conflicting interests of employees and forming project teams so that employees do not compete directly with each other. ====================================================== The issue of whether employees with focus on efficiency or employees stressing quality are more valuable for the company is a complex one. Although efficiency and quality are not mutually exclusive, the importance of a particular attribute will depend upon the type of business and the type of job employees are involved in. First thing is that efficiency and quality are not either or choices. Efficiency can be defined as a way of doing things faster and cheaper while quality can be characterized as the way of doing things better and effectively. Studies have indicated that unless the employee is working at his optimum efficiency, it is possible to increase both quality and efficiency of his/her work. Such an employee working at optimum efficiency and quality is the most valuable one. However, in many cases, companies will have to prefer efficiency or quality at the cost of other. The choice will depend upon the type of product or business. For Novelty Christmas Hat company who manufactures hats, efficient employees who manufacture more hats in a given time are more valuable. The customer may not care if the hat has less shine or a thread loose. The employees focusing on quality will try to make a hat which will be rainproof, durable, impact resistant etc. which will drive up the cost and won’t be a product requirement from customer’s standpoint. Consider, in contrast, the company manufacturing missile defense system. Here, obviously, the employees stressing quality of the product will be more valuable. Next, for a given company, value of the employee possessing either of the attributes depends on the type of his/her job. For example, customer service representative needs to focus on quality of service instead of reducing customer call time to increase efficiency. Same is the case with quality control manager or internal auditor who should focus on detailed procedures and policies to be more valuable. On the other hand, product engineering manager or operations engineer should find out ways to manufacture product efficiently. In conclusion, employees can be more efficient without sacrificing quality. The value of efficiency or quality of employees will depend on type of company’s business and the type of employee’s job. ===================================================== “ Although restricting public access can help protect national parks and historic sites, in fact there should be few, if any, such restrictions because these places were intended for anyone to use.” The author contends that public access to the national parks and historic sites should have very few or no restrictions. The reason offered is that national parks are intended for everyone to use. I tend to disagree with this reasoning because of three reasons: the access to national parks is not heavily restrictive as author has portrayed, the main goal of federal land management agencies is to protect the natural resources in charge, and, the commercial exploitation and accidents that might occur due to unrestricted access. Firstly, all national parks and historic sites in the USA are open to all including non-US citizens. Some national parks such as Yosemite national park is closed during winter due to extreme weather conditions or environmental hazards. Having access to parks and historic sites means having access to all of the elements that make these areas so special. That includes clean air, greenery, natural wildlife, natural sounds, historic monuments and information about them, scent of woods and flowers etc. With this definition there is no shortage of access to these sites. Secondly, there is no doubt that these places are intended for everybody’s use. However, that use should not result in abuse of the cultural heritage and natural resources. Unrestricted access could mean use of Jet Skiing on sea shores, Snow mobiles on mountains, access to automobiles in wilderness etc. This could damage and disrupt the soul and substance of these sites. Even currently the noise of helicopter disturbs the stillness of Grand Canyon; the vehicular congestion in Yosemite national park during summer causes so much pollution. Unrestricted access will not only aggravate these problems but also degrade the uniqueness and high quality experience of these sites for others. Admittedly, the proponents of unrestricted access have a point in saying people should be allowed to enjoy and access these sites to their fullest in whichever way they want. However, in doing so we face a risk of increased accidents due to unrestricted recreation and more maintenance expenses for sites. Moreover, the commercial interest will start creeping in these sites with huge hotel complexes, thrill rides, golf courses etc. which will again damage the unique experience people have visiting these sites. In sum, the national parks and historic sites are fairly accessible to all. The main goal should be to preserve the natural resources, historical context, cultural heritage and ecological balance of these sites. The undue consequences of commercialization and safety hazards also act against providing unrestricted access to these sites. ======================================================

Hi there, I am new to this forum and glad to have found it before my GRE. Could anyone please send me the practice tests for GRE by email. My email ID is kadweamita@yahoo.com Thanks a lot for your help. TargetGRE