“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” These words by the great modern American novelist Ernest Hemingway may sound like a bit of creative exaggeration, but there is some truth buried in his symbolism. Only that which lives bleeds, and therefore, it is up to those who have lived to write. It is true that there are many young writers fresh out of university, and that the imagination can be as old and experienced as the writer encourages it to be. The problem is that some people who may have wanted to write when they were young, but rather got caught up in living life, feel that once those undergraduate days have faded into dusk; the chance to become a writer is forever lost.

You may have heard of great men and women, after having lived a lifetime worth of experience, sitting down to write their memoirs. But writing isn't all autobiography, and can be learned, honed and perfected at any stage of life. For this, there are many thriving writing programs offered in universities beyond the undergraduate and graduate degree programs. No matter how old you are, and what kind of life you have lived, and especially what kind of writing experience you have, if you have the desire to write, then a continuing education program is the best way to begin developing this creative skill.

There are two major advantages to pursuing a degree in writing in a continuing education program or as a mature student: the first has to do with experience, the second is related to working from home.

Continuing Education and Life Experience

Firstly, as stated above, once you have lived and worked and possibly engaged in family living, your repertoire of experience will be vastly wider than had you simply sat behind your computer screen. While some great works of writing do take place on alien planets or in ancient lands that no contemporary writer could possibly have lived, much fantastic prose and creative non-fiction is motivated by the world, its events, and its people and their relationships as we all know it today.

Distance Education and Working from Home

Secondly, many continuing education programs incorporate distance education into their programs—that is, working and studying from home. There is no better form of formal education than when the way you learn directly enforces what you are learning. A writer is a solitary profession, often working from home, at their own set hours, battling their own distractions, and setting their own deadlines. Taking an online program works much the same way, and so it immediately begins preparing writers for the kind of discipline required for achieving their goals.

Whether you are interested in detective or science fiction, creative essay writing or journalism, prose, poetry or screenplays, continuing education and distance education will not only give you the time and flexibility to write, but it will help you integrate the life you have lived with the work you will leave.

Visit Mohawk College for more information on online learning programs.

 
For many people, cars are a natural way of life, although cars in themselves are quite far from being natural objects. They are conceived, designed and engineered by handfuls of specialists. They combine practical science, technology, and synthesized materials. Nowhere in nature could the automobile evolve spontaneously on its own. Cars are only natural as an extension of human beings’ natural ingenuity.

We depend on cars, but cars also depend on us. This is why there are so many opportunities in the automobile service industry. Mechanics will continue to be a necessary hand to motorized society for quite some time. There are many places besides an automotive garage where automobile service technicians can find work, like car dealerships, transportation companies and car or parts manufacturing companies.

Before considering a career as an automotive technician, there are a few things you must ask yourself regarding this kind of career:

- are you prepared for the training?

- can you handle the work environment?

- are you in good enough physical condition?

- do you have the right physical and mental abilities?

Training

Getting the proper education and training could be a long and involved process. Most programs are about 30 hours a week and last for three to four semesters. The best education combines theoretical learning with hands-on experience, which is best gained through an auto mechanic apprenticeship program. You need to know if you are ready to put in the hours learning and working with little or no financial remuneration.

Work Environment

Repair shops and garages are not the most congenial work places for many people. They can be dangerous and unpredictable. You must be ready to work long hours amid loud noises, semi-noxious fumes, hazardous materials, dirt and grease, and heavy vibrating machinery.

Physical Condition

Although we are hearing more often today about the hazards of spending eight hours a day sitting at a desk starting at a monitor, this does not compare with the physical endurance required of a mechanic. You must be in good enough physical shape to withstand extended periods of time working on your feet, on your knees or on your back.  There is also much heavy lifting and carrying involved.

Abilities

The mechanic is much more than just a combination of car and engine aficionado and physical laborer. Knowing how to do something is not the same as being able to properly execute it, and so excellent eye-hand coordination is needed. The mechanic must also be super organized in terms of their tasks and time management. Mental capacities such as problem-solving, logical thinking and decision-making are very important as well. Finally, the mechanic must be a good learner and self-educator, as they must keep up-to-date with new systems and technologies.

Cars are a fundamental service to society, and so indirectly, automotive service technicians are equally important. If you’ve decided to pursue training to become a mechanic though an auto apprenticeship, you’ll find out if you have what it takes to be such a highly valued member of the motorized world.

Visit Mohawk College for more information on general mechanic apprenticeship programs.

           
 
From the Rocky Mountains of the west, to the great expanses of the Prairies, to the sophisticated city centres of Toronto and Montreal, to the gorgeous Atlantic coast of the Maritimes, Canada offers some stunning variety in terms of its culture and scenic landscape. While travelling across Canada is certainly far more difficult than backpacking across Europe, due to the vast distances between regions, there are better and more productive ways to experience Canada. If you are getting an education in a specialized trade, consider doing an apprenticeship that lets you train and work across Canada’s provinces.

Canada has an apprenticeship program called Red Seal: it is a regulated inter-provincial standards program that lets people find suitable and recognizable work across the country to complete their apprenticeships.

How Does It Work?

Red Seal is a program that reviews and selects workplaces in a variety of industries that are up to a certain standard for offering apprenticeship training. When an apprentice candidate with the Red Seal program seeks a place of employment, he or she will have an endorsed list of workplaces to choose from. The graduate will then also have earned a certificate stating that their training was done within the program.

What Are The Advantages Of Red Seal?

Being an apprentice could be tricky because one is basically offering their services to a company without financial remuneration, but rather for experience. The risk is that some companies could exploit this source of cheap labor without properly giving the apprentice the required training. Red Seal guarantees the companies considered are suitable and honorable regarding how they will treat the apprentice.

Another advantage, as mentioned above, is the chance to live and work across Canada while doing an apprentice. It is also provides the graduate of an apprentice program with the qualifications to work and settle in any province.

 

What Kinds Of Industry Does Red Seal Manage?

The areas of work for apprenticeship programs under the Red Seal program are extremely numerous and varied. Some of the most diverse examples of trades are: baker, hairstylist, heavy equipment operator, motorcycle mechanic, roofer, landscape architect, and cabinet maker. This is a very short list but one can already see the ranges of industry, from construction, to the food industry, to the design industry. There are over 50 trades registered with the Red Seal program.  

Conclusion

Canada is so much more than a beautiful place to visit. It is a leader in technology, industry and trade. This is because of the care and high-standards Canada has regarding training their specialists of tomorrow. Because of programs like Red Seal, apprenticeship training is not only a guaranteed excellent education, but also fun, interesting, and gratifying, as the future professional learns in, about, and for this great country.

Visit Mohawk College for more information on apprenticeships in Ontario.

 
The human body comes with several anatomical openings. Since our initial trips to the family doctor, we have become accustomed to having lights, tongue-depressors and thermometers placed near or inside our mouths, ears and other orifices. Having this natural access to the inner workings of our body is a great way to monitor, regulate and heal the everyday functioning of the body, its temperature, pulse, and susceptibility to infections.

Many medical procedures are not possible without some form of surgical entry into the body. These procedures can range from minimally invasive procedures to full open surgery. Skin must be broken and new anatomical openings must be carried out for these procedures. Although the extent of invasion ranges, most often there will be some damage to biological tissue. Risks with these kinds of procedures are bleeding, infection, internal organ injury, blood clotting and could sometimes lead to death.

Fortunately, modern technology has produced some wonderful instruments and devices that allow for what is known as non-invasive medical procedures. Although the origins of non-invasive procedures goes back centuries and involves some of the simplest forms of examination, like pulse-taking and the use of stethoscopes for lung sounds, the range of internal organs that can be examined today has vastly increased.

Proper healthcare training has now become intimately tied to the knowledge of such technological devices, for example, the electrocardiography machine (ECG). Compared to the stethoscope, which allows a physician to hear the heart beating and make temporal judgements based on the beats per minute, the ECG machine uses advanced electrical signals to monitor the activity of the heart. Because the device works by placing electrodes to the outer-surface of the skin, the procedure is one hundred per cent non-invasive, and carries zero risk of invasive procedures, such as endovascular surgeries which monitors the heart by accessing major blood vessels.

It is however important to keep in mind that simply because the medical risk is significantly lower with ECGs and other non-invasive procedures, that careful and thorough training is still absolutely necessary. Health courses in ECG theory and practice must cover a wide range of topics, such as:

·         equipment maintenance

·         error-recognition

·         signal-averaged ECG

·         trans-telephonic monitoring

·         ambulatory ECG monitoring

·         Holter hook-up techniques

·         analysis of rate, rhythm, axis, blocks, hypertrophy, ischemia, injury, infarction, pacemakers and electrolyte imbalance

·         and much more

Aside from the technological training required to operate this machine, the practitioner must be familiar with ethical and legal aspects of its use. Again, simply because it is not an invasive surgical operation, one cannot neglect the proper procedure for attaining patient consent, privacy, and confidentiality regarding the patient’s health.

It is certainly advantageous to employ technology if it helps us avoid having to physically enter the body for a medical procedure. As long as we do not lose sight of the complexities of machines like ECG monitors and devote sufficient training to its application, technology will only continue to be at our service.

Visit Mohawk College for more information on programs related to health and technology.

 
For a long time, we have used X-Ray technology to get a better glimpse inside the body. This has helped us not only get a better understanding of our biology, but to diagnose and further treat cancer and various other internal diseases, as well to pinpoint the location and severity of physical damage mostly related to bone fracture. There was one simple short-coming with this old method: the images produced by traditional X-Rays were two-dimensional, and the physical world, including the body, is three-dimensional. Clearly, any resulting images that lacked this third dimension would limit our complete view of the internal body.

Then along came X-Ray technology that made use of tomography. In simple terms, tomography, or a tomograph machine creates images by cross-scanning a three-dimensional object and producing image sections, which would later be reassembled to form a three-dimensional representation of the scanned object. This technology has become widely used in many areas of research industry aside from radiology, for example in fields as diverse as archaeology, oceanography and astrophysics.

Today we are familiar with the process of CT scans and CAT scans. We’ve seen it in hospitals and often on television and in movies. It looks like the long, white, sterile bed that passes the patient through the opening of a large machine with a circular aperture, practically out of a science fiction film possibly dealing with teleportation. Once the scan takes the sectional images, or slices, a certain meshing process known as digital geometric processing generates a three-dimensional image of the inside of the patient. Learning to read and understand these images is a vital part of healthcare training in radiation sciences.

Since computed tomography uses X-Rays and literally passes the human body through this high-powered radiation machine, most people may have their fears that it can include a risk of cancer. This is not entirely unfounded, but the actual amounts of documented cases of cancer from CT and CAT scanners are extremely low. Nevertheless, the proper health and technology background is necessary to understand all of the various risks of this procedure, before simply endorsing its benefits.

Exposure to radiation is a risk, but for those who already have cancer, the chances of being able to locate and treat the cancer with a CT scan far outweigh the chances of the cancer increasing. Other negative side-effects are that the patient can have a negative or even allergic reaction from the iodine, which is used as a contrast material which is distributed throughout the body for the process of imaging. The iodine, or other contrast agents, can sometimes also produce kidney problems, since the kidneys are used to flush out the iodine.

Overall, the benefits certainly do outweigh the risks. Computed tomographic scans are a relatively quick and painless procedure, and while it is not a cure or treatment in itself, it greatly facilitates the diagnostic process. This is important because CT and CAT scans are generally used to detect severe and life-threatening illnesses, which no doubt trump the discomfort or allergic reactions caused by the contrast agents. In these cases, time is a crucial factor, and any technology which buys us more time is worth the drawbacks.

Visit Mohawk College for more information on health courses.

 
There are many different styles of education. You could bury yourself in a mountain of books, studying the histories, literatures and philosophies of the world, if your goals are the pure pursuit of knowledge. Or, you could just get to work to get the best 'hands-on' training, if your educational goals are a better career.

Many industries require specialized training before someone becomes a professional. A mechanic, or legal clerk, will often do internships to begin working as part of their education. But in certain industries, it is unwise for someone still learning to do actual real work. For these industries, there is the practicum. Examples of these jobs are teachers and nurses.

A practicum is a form of schooling where the student is given supervised practice to apply the theoretical side of their education side-by-side with their classes. Unlike internships, a student doing a teaching practicum won't be permanently assigned a full time class of youngsters, and a nurse doing a practicum won't be thrown into a hospital treating patients and helping doctors. Working with children or patients leaves less room for error than with cars and documents.

Let us take nursing school to describe how a practicum might fit into the rest of the program. It is common for a program to be four semesters long, and for each semester, to have the student do about three hours a week of a practicum along with their regular course work. The practicum during the early semesters will immediately give the student applicable experience in lab work and long term care units, where students can gain experience helping patients feel more comfortable, and get more comfortable themselves being in a hospital setting, while not actually making the student do any serious nursing work.

In later semesters, the student is getting closer but is still not yet fully ready to do actual nursing work. Simulated learning environments are used to ready the student for dealing with real physical illness. Mental illness, on the other hand, is an area where the practicum is useful, and students may be given hours to work and assist in psychiatric units.

Towards the end of a nursing program, the practicum becomes more advanced and takes up more time, often for up to twelve hours a week. Options are given for what area of nursing the student would like to practice, with the most common being:

- postpartum maternal care and neonatal care

- palliative care

- care of patients with acute or long-term nursing needs

The practicum is crucial for nursing, as well as other industries like education, because the nature of the work is so delicate, helping people's health and minds. This is why a practicum, unlike other 'hands-on' training programs or internships, is the best and safest way to prepare for these kinds of careers.

Visit Mohawk College for more information on applying to a school of nursing.

 
The economic spectrum is often seen as being divided into two distinct realms: microeconomics and macroeconomics. In the simplest of terms, microeconomics deals with the economics of individual or localized businesses or even households, and are based on the idea that the resources required for these are inherently bound by the principle of scarcity. Macroeconomics, on the other hand, is concerned with entire industries and markets as a whole, or even the economics of nations  or the world, related to  populations, resources, inflation and gross domestic product.

Accounting is essentially a practice: a system of analyses and implementation of the bottom-line numbers of a company's (or nation's) financial performance. But practice alone without a supporting theoretical background is often at risk of shortcomings; that is, failing to understand the bigger picture of profit and loss, success and failure. Because of this, accounting makes use of both microeconomic and macroeconomic theory in its practice.

Microeconomics and Managerial Accounting

Human beings can sometimes have unlimited wants and demands, but in the small-scale world of microeconomics (households, businesses), the resources to satisfy these wants and needs are limited. This is known as economic scarcity The managerial accountant works to balance the budget and analyze the results of individual businesses that are themselves bound by the microeconomic theory of scarcity. Another important distinction that the accountant must be aware is the dual definition of 'profit.' Proper accounting training demonstrates that while a company can be well-off at an accounting level (revenue minus expenses), they can actually be at a loss at an economic level (including other factors such as opportunity costs and legal issues). Using these theories is solid managerial accounting practice.

Macroeconomics and Financial Accounting

Macroeconomics is not limited to specific markets, and consequently not limited to individual businesses competing for resources and market-share within the same market. The concept of scarcity is therefore less important at the macro level. Unlike the managerial accountant, a financial accountant's responsibilities is keeping track and analyzing the financial situation of entire industries, nations, and world currencies—in other words, the big picture. No economic model can be considered safe and accurate to work with if it does not take into consideration the actualities of accounting practices and past results. Likewise, because of the large-scale responsibilities of the financial accountant, his or her practices must be informed by the macroeconomic theories of production or output, employment and unemployment, and inflation, among others. Accounting programs often require classes in macroeconomics to understand the relation between these phenomena.    

Economic theory in-itself is a dead end without practice, while practice can be irresponsible and potentially economically dangerous without applying the right theory. This is why any accountant, whether managerial or financial, needs to be have some training in micro and macroeconomics.

Visit Mohawk College for information on accounting courses and other business programs.

  

 
A pill isn't always just a pill, and a dose isn't always as simple as taking a dose. There are times when our medical and pharmaceutical needs require extensive organization. The risk of over or under dosing, or taking the wrong pills can sometimes be quite serious. Some medication cancels out others, while others can have very bad reactions when taken with others. While we are normally responsible for being aware of our prescription medicine procedures, it is good to know that there are healthcare professionals out there who have the training to help us keep our drugs organized.

This is why our healthcare specialists, like pharmacy technicians, get more than theoretical and practical knowledge of the science of prescription drugs. Being able to properly communicate with patients about their doses and procedures is a large part pharmacy practice. It is often considered part of the pharmacist's community training, and it has several key components:

- The proper use of dossettes: while this sounds like a cute, diminutive word meaning 'little doses,' you may have seen these special compartmentalized pill cases divided by days of the week, or even times of the day. Knowing how to demonstrate proper use and accuracy when dispensing medication in dossettes is a key factor when a patient will be using many drugs over extended periods of time and may not have the chance for further consultation with the pharmacist.

- Identifying and labeling a variety of products: based on shape, color, size and engravings, these visual and tactile devices are extremely useful for distinguishing between different medications. The pharmaceutical technician needs to have a good familiarity when working in the lab or the back of the pharmacy, as well as when explaining the medication to patients.

- Listening and taking verbal orders: while pharmaceutical technicians are not doctors, there is still a fair amount of communicating with patients and customers, listening to any concerns or personal problems and understanding specific circumstances.

- Checking completed prescriptions: prescription drugs undergo various stages from the lab to the pharmacy to the patients themselves. Because of the sensitivity and possible health repercussions of these products, it is a vital part of pharmacy technician training to know all the steps and to be able to make a final confirmation of the exactness of a prescription before giving it to a patient, being familiar with a series of checklists and proofing the labels and instructions.

Knowing how to help a patient and customer stay organized and avoid mistakes begins with formal education in schools of health science and is continued on the job. Just as being a great student starts with being organized, so is organization a continual factor in being a great pharmacist and ensuring that people get the best pharmaceutical assistance.

Visit Mohawk College for more information on attending a health science college.

 
The eyes and ears with which we see and hear life are not the same from when we are born to when we grow older. Human perception plays a large part in our personalities and behavior. Because this perception is constantly changing, our psychological and emotional lives are always in flux. The study of developmental psychology is the scientific study that deals with these changes over the course of our lives.

Developmental psychology is often thought of in terms of having the greatest impact within three spheres of influence: social context, cultural context, and socioeconomic context. This is in contrast to the theory that most psychological and behavioral patterns in humans are innate, and that we are born with them. It is the classic nature versus nurture approach, and while one hundred per cent of emphasis should never go each way, it has been a major breakthrough in how we understand ourselves since developmental psychology has become more common place, not only in theory, but also in practical applications as well.

Many career training programs these days incorporate developmental psychology as part of their coursework. Faculties dealing with community studies are one example, with programs preparing students for careers in childcare, human resources, social services and educational assistants. Healthcare faculties also have many programs that teach developmental psychology. For example, someone attending a school of nursing will attend classes focusing on the theories of personality growth through developmental psychology.

What are some ways an aspiring nurse can actually take advantage of developmental psychology theory?

- Working in pre-natal maternity care, a nurse can assist a soon-to-be mother in preparing the right kind of household environment that will not only be healthy and safe, but will foster a positive and happy environment.

- Neo-natal care, where nurses may have to treat the baby for physical illness and injury, and where knowing the root cause of the problem may involve more than a physical mishap, but be related to the baby's attempting to grasp their reality in their environments.

- Early childhood and youth care, it is important for a nurse to be aware of influences outside the direct sphere of the parents and household, for this is a time when the cause of problems may not be fully understood by the patient or their caregivers. This actually becomes even more the case in adolescents and teenagers as well.

- Old age, here nurses are often working with patients who will constantly need assistance for the rest of their lives. Dealing with the psychological impact of palliative care and death can have major consequences on the health and comfort of the patient in these years.

Nursing is an extremely complicated and multi-faceted profession that works with every aspect of the individual's mental and physical life, and in every stage from birth to death. Getting a strong knowledge of developmental psychology from a nursing school can round off any technical and medical expertise to make a good practitioner also an intelligent and caring person.

Visit Mohawk College for more information on nursing programs
 
Electricity is behind some of the simplest, everyday tasks, like flipping a light switch, booting up your computer, or charging your phone. The little two or three-pronged outlets scattered about mask the complex wiring systems that connect our homes and offices to power plants in byzantine ways the average person knows very little about.

But electricity can be hazardous if not used or installed properly. Because of the reliance we have on electricity, it is vital that we have certain clearly defined regulations in place for the proper installation and maintenance of electrical systems. In Canada, we have what is known as the Canadian Electrical Code. Since 1927, this comprehensive guide has undergone 22 revisions and is revised every three years, as it is important that such codes keep up with new technologies and the increasing demand for power. Anyone planning a career as a commercial or industrial electrician in Canada must be very familiar with this code. Because of the complex nature of this kind of reading, and the necessity of putting to practice the regulations outlined in this code, one cannot simply pick up or download a copy, read it, and get to work. Every major university and trade school program that trains electricians should have several complete courses dedicated to studying the code, and some of the best programs combine these studies with a fully-integrated electrician apprenticeship program.

Many of the sections of the code explain the proper installation of electrical systems in a general setting, for example of a residential or commercial building. Such topics include grounding, bonding and conductors, to name a few. There are also several sections dedicated to electrical systems in locations that require special circumstances. Here are a few examples of these special locations:

- damp or wet locations: these include underground locations or in direct contact with earth, but can also include businesses dealing with water, such as car washes or water parks

- hazardous locations: places where there is a lot of hazardous or flammable materials, like gases or even flammable dusts, such as factories and processing plants

- locations in the health care industry: for example hospitals and nursing homes, where patients may have pacemakers or other electrical devices that can be interfered with from electrical systems

- temporary installations: outdoor concert and event grounds or construction sites, where electrical systems often have greater exposure to the elements and should also be installed and taken down with greater ease and speed

- emergency locations: these are electrical systems for situations where electricity must remain operational even when general electricity is out, for example with exit signs and emergency lighting during a blackout

Learning the Canadian Electrical Code is not something to be taken lightly precisely because the importance of proper procedure effects far more than the simple operations of light switches and cell phones, but affects the safety and lives of everyone. While almost anyone can plug in their computer, only someone with extensive schooling and training in an industrial electrician apprenticeship program would be trusted to power up our hospitals, airports and fire stations.

Visit Mohawk College for more information on apprenticeship programs