Speaker 2 Paul Fennels, Marine biologist

I was always interested in the in nature, generally - how the world works. Also I remember enjoying the BBC programme Wildlife on One. I wrote a letter to one of the featured scientists when I was 12 asking how to become a scientist. Besides, when I was a teenager my school had a work experience programme.I'd written to a local aquarium and they let me do a week there. This turned into a summer job - which was great. So when it came to the choice of specialization at university I didn’t hesitate too long and decided on Marine Biology. Now I’m doing my Master’s degree.

Actually, PhD sounds interesting but not quite what I’d like to do. I guess I have periods of doubt about whether being a research scientist is the right thing. It's not particularly well-paid at the moment. What’s more, all this paperwork is not my cup of tea at all. On the other hand,I imagine that my career will always be linked with science in some way. I mean, I’m absolutely fascinated by Jacques-Yves Cousteau’s crew expeditions and research and TV series. I’d like to do the same kind of things and learn more about the life in the ocean. So I’m trying to broaden my interests to include more of what I want to do. To tell you the truth, I’m dreaming of a job of a scientific journalist.

 

Speaker 3 Julie McPherson, Physicist

When I was really young I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I think that up to the age of 10 I had visions of being a lawyer. I remember thinking this job sounded very important. And my parents wanted me to study law not science. However, I'd always been really interested in finding out things. We lived very close to a large park, and I used to spend hours playing in the ponds and streams, collecting fishes and insects. I was also fond of reading sci-fi books. I used to turn my bedroom into some kind of workshop. I even made a little electronic piano when I was 14. By the time I entered my eighth form I knew a career in science was for me, though my parents were quite against the idea. At school I actually enjoyed physics more than chemistry. So physics for me represented the ideal choice, as I knew it was something I found easy to understand. Looking back it was definitely the best choice. So I went to Warwick University to study Physics. I’m planning to do my PhD here. I’d like to work in different labs around the world. Actually, I’m hoping to set up my own research group. I think the most important thing is being interested in the subject and having an inquisitive mind.

(Adapted from http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/elements/issues/04/student_jd_e.html; http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/page.asp?id=3745)

 

Module 3 Unit 1

All right, can everyone hear me? Today we are going to learn the basics of searching information from the Internet. And I am going to start with some of the key definitions you should know when dealing with hunting for information through the Internet. Complete the worksheet as you listen.

Well, what is the World Wide Web and what makes it work?

The World Wide Web (commonly referred to as WWW or the Web) is a part of the Internet, actually it is a service on the Internet that enables simple retrieval of linked information. You can retrieve documents, view images, animation, and video, listen to sound files, speak and hear voice, and view programs that run on practically any software in the world, if your computer has the hardware and software to do these things. It is pretty easy to see why and from where the Web got its name (the spider’s web of course). The WWW consists of a set of linked documents known as webpages which can be viewed using a programme called a browser. Firefox and Internet Explorer are currently the leading "graphical browsers" in the world (meaning they facilitate the viewing of graphics such as images and video and more). There are other browsers (e.g., Mozilla, Safari, Opera). Most offer many of the same features and can be successfully used to retrieve documents and activate many kinds of programs. Finding the Web documents you want can be easy or seem impossibly difficult. And can be done by using different search tools. There are many useful search tools on the Web that/These can help you find the information you are looking for if you do not already know exactly where to look.

The next point is a search engine. Special web sites provide a facility known as a search engine that can be used to search for other websites. A search engine uses special programmes to collect information about websites on the WWW and stores the information in a database. The user can then search the database to obtain a list of links to relevant websites. To search using a search engine, type words (known as keywords) into a text box (called a search box). The search engine then displays a list of website links that are relevant to the given keywords. Think carefully about which keywords could be used to define the concept you are interested in. Think whether there are a lot of synonyms of equivalent terms for what you seek. Then group those words that mean the same thing in the same group. Use keywords to form search phrases by putting quotation mark around the key words and they can be combined in different ways using special logical operators such as the words AND, OR, NEAR which can be grouped by enclosing them in brackets. Sometimes symbols such as + or – can be used to represent the operators. Special symbols known as wildcards can also be used with keywords. These symbols represent certain characters or combination of characters. E.G.: asterisk (*) is often used to represent any combination of characters. A search for “col*” would look for any word beginning with “col”. As well as keyword searches, search engines can be used for field searches. This allows the user to search webpage fields such as the title field of a webpage or its web address. Search engines, such as Google and Yahoo, search mechanically without any selection or valuation of the resources which means that the resources must be used with a critical eye. No search engine will find everything on the Internet, what and how much varies. Different search engines use various strategies to easify the search and ultimately attract more users. Let’s have a closer look at one of the convenient Google ‘s strategies. After you've entered your search terms, try the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button, which takes you straight to the most relevant website that Google found for your query. You won't see the search results page at all, but if you did, the "I'm Feeling Lucky" site would be listed on top. For example, if you're looking for the Moscow University homepage, just enter Moscow University and click "I'm Feeling Lucky" instead of the Google Search button. Google will take you directly to "www.msu.ru".

And now, are you ready for your practical session with information search on the Web?

 

Module 3 Unit 2

Good morning everyone. My name is Karol Larsen, I’m a librarian. I’d like to welcome you on behalf of the library and myself and to show you round the collections of books and periodicals the library owns to back up your studies/ learning. Past experience has shown that students starting the course sometimes have difficulty using the library. So I’d like to give you some tips for using periodicals.

As you know magazines and journals are called periodicals because they are published on a regular or "periodic" basis. Periodicals are usually separated into two major groups: popular and scholarly. Let us focus mainly on Scholarly journals and popular science magazines.

As far as journals and magazines are important sources for up-to-date information in all disciplines, many of the assignments for your courses may ask you to use specific sources or types of sources such as popular magazine articles or scholarly or professional journal articles. With a periodical collection as large and diverse as in our university, it is often difficult to distinguish between the various levels of scholarship found in the collection. So if you are able to recognize the differences between a popular and scholarly source, you can focus your research to retrieve only the type of articles you need.

Let me start by describing scholarly journals. Well, scholarly journals generally have a sober, serious look. They are usually sponsored by an academic or professional organization. Therefore the main purpose of a scholarly journal is to report on original research or experimentation in order to make such information available to the rest of the scholarly world. That’s why the audience is students, scholars and researchers and the language of a scholarly journal uses specialized vocabulary of the discipline. The papers in scholarly journals are always written by the experts in particular fields.

Another distinct feature of professional journals is that they also contain many graphs and charts but a few exciting pictures or advertisements. Moreover, long and in-depth articles, bibliographies and references as well as abstracts are also typical for this kind of periodicals. Besides, they are usually published on a quarterly (winter, spring, summer, autumn) basis.

A good example of a scholarly journal is Science, Nature, American Mathematical Society, Physical Review Letters, etc.

There is also another type of periodicals for so called news and general interest in science such as National Geographic, New York Times or Scientific American as well as Discover, New Scientist and Popular Science and so on.

These periodicals may be quite attractive in appearance, although some are in a newspaper format. They are often highly visual with a lot of advertisements, colour, photos, graphics and drawings. In contrast to scholarly journals popular science magazines report on research as news items. They also contain feature stories, editorials and short articles with no bibliographies or references. In fact, a member of the editorial staff, a scholar or a freelance writer, not a subject expert, may write articles in this type of periodicals. The language of these publications is suitable to any educated audience who are not necessarily specialists in a particular area of research but have interest and a certain level of intelligence. News and general interest periodicals hardly ever cite sources.

They are generally published by commercial enterprises or individuals, and occasionally by specific professional organizations. The main purpose of periodicals in this category is to provide information, in a general manner, to a broad audience.

And now let us turn to Web Voyage and I’ll give you some tips on how you can navigate through it …

Module 4 Unit 1

Abacus

This may sound surprising but most of the discoveries and inventions on which modern societies have been constructed were made in prehistoric times.

It is a good idea to think about the history of arithmetic, mathematics, writing and recording information.Man's invention of the computer resulted from man's need to quantify, to count and to do mathematic calculations. Long before the computer, in the Roman Empire, Ancient Asia, and other parts of the World, man was inventing easier and faster ways of counting and calculating.

The earliest counting devices known to man were his own hands and fingers. Primitive people needed a way to calculate and store information for future use. To keep track of the number of animals killed, they collected small rocks and pebbles in a pile. Each stone stood for one animal. In other words, early man counted by means of matching one set of objects with another set (stones and sheep). The operations of addition and subtraction were simply the operations of adding or subtracting groups of objects to the sack of counting stones or pebbles. Early counting tables, named abaci, not only formalized this counting method but also introduced the concept of positional notation that we use today.

The next logical step was to produce the first "personal calculator"—the abacus—which used the same concepts of one set of objects standing for objects in another set, but also the concept of a single object standing for a collection of objects, that is positional notation.

The Chinese abacus was developed about 5000 years ago and it was men’s first attempt to automate the counting process. It was built out of wood and beads. It could be held and carried around easily. The abacus was so successful that its use spread form China to many other countries. And it is still in use in some countries today.

The abacus does not actually do the computing, as today's calculators do. It helps people keep track of numbers as they do the computing. People who are good at using an abacus can often do calculations as quickly as a person who is using a

calculator.

All in all, only when the process of counting and arithmetic became a more abstract process and different sizes of groups were given a symbolic representation so that the results could be written on a "storage medium" such as papyrus or clay the process of calculation became a process of symbol manipulation.

(Adapted from: http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/abacus.htm)

 

Module 4 Unit 2

"My name is Anthony Willbourn and I am a chemist. I was really fortunate

to be able to meet and talk to the discoverers of polythene because many plastics, as they were developed, didn't have individuals you could point to and say, he or she was a discoverer. The discovery was made in 1933 by two men - Gibson and the other one was Eric Forsett, and he was trained as an organic chemist, and they were working in the field of the study of phenomena at high pressures.

They had no idea what they were going to find. And certainly didn't plan to

make a plastic. In fact, they were trying to react, at that very moment, ethylene

with benzaldehyde, to make a very ordinary sort of compound, ethyl phenyl ketone. But they didn't make it. They made by accident a white, waxy solid, and the other problem was that, when they tried to repeat these experiments, they didn't produce anything at all. They had explosions, because the gases decomposed explosively. And all this was being done in an open laboratory, which today would be unthinkable, because the pressures were up at about two thousand atmospheres. And they reacted at about 180 degrees centigrade.

And finally they had produced a few grams of this white waxy solid, because

it was interesting of course, they had to stop the work because it was too dangerous, and they had to wait until a special building had been completed, into which they could put this equipment and work safely.

What was basically remarkable was that they made something they didn't

expect to make. Nobody knew that you could join together these atomic components and produce molecules of such enormous lengths, which gave it not only good solid state properties, but a sort of toughness that made it possible to

make cable covering, and to make films and so on.

The first plant which had a capacity of only making pounds per day came

into operation in September 1939, the day the war broke out. And that was very significant, because within several months it became clear that polythene was the ideal material for making radar and using it from aircraft, which had been impossible before polythene became available. The RAF, which was of course heavily outnumbered by the Luftwaffe, couldn't stay in the air long enough to find the enemy and engage them without some help. And radar provided that essential help that made it possible for the RAF to contain the attacks of the enemy.

So of course polythene had a tremendous practical effect on the war effort."

(Abriged and dapted from http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/people/features/mycentury/transcript/wk37d2.shtml)

Module 5 Unit 1

Hello, everybody. I’d like to thank you all for giving your time to come here today and listen to me. Today I’m going to talk about litter and debris in our waterways.

Apart from less visible forms of aquatic pollution, such as pesticides, gasoline, oil, toxic chemicals and sewage there is aquatic litter and debris. This is any manufactured or processed solid waste that enters the aquatic environment from any source. In short, it is our misplaced waste and trash. It is a highly pervasive and visible form of pollution that does a lot of harm to wildlife and human health.

It should be noted that in most towns and cities, storm drains flow directly to streams and rivers. Litter on sidewalks and streets and in gutters is swept into the storm drain system when it rains. Also a lot of litter comes from recreational activities and fast food consumption. This category includes trash from fast-food restaurants that is littered by people in cars, or is left behind after a picnic. Some other items include bags, balloons, beverage containers, clothing, and toys. Another category includes cigarette butts, cigar tips, lighters, and the wrappers on cigarette packs. There is also illegal dumping that includes household waste, refrigerators and other appliances, building and construction waste, tires and sometimes entire cars. The trouble is that most of litter and household waste are made of plastic. Plastic is widely used due to its lightweight, strength, durability, versatility, and low cost. However, plastic can take hundreds of years to break down. One study found that almost 90 percent of the debris floating on our oceans is plastic.

So, it is obvious that any trash that is improperly disposed of can potentially enter a waterway and have negative impacts on aquatic animals, plants, and humans. For example, some debris can cause physical damage such as entanglement and ingestion. Each year, more than 100,000 marine mammals die when they ingest debris or become entangled in ropes, fishing line, fishing nets, and other debris dumped into the ocean. Seals very often become entangled because they are by nature curious and will investigate unusual items in their environment. When animals get entangled they have trouble eating, breathing, finding food, escaping predators, or swimming, all of which can have fatal results. Entanglement can also cause wounds that can become infected.

Besides, sea turtles, birds, fish, and mammals often mistake plastic items for food. For instance, sea turtles often mistake plastic bags for jellyfish, one of their favorite foods. With plastic filling their stomachs, animals have a false feeling of being full, and may die of starvation.

Debris can contaminate water by adding chemicals to it. Construction waste illegally dumped in a stream can include buckets that once held paints, solvents, and other chemicals that can enter the water

In conclusion, I’d like to say that decisions we make can lead to pollution, or to a cleaner environment. One solution to the aquatic debris problem is cleaning up the trash using paid employees and volunteers. Without a doubt, participating in a cleanup activity, gathering data about the debris found, and analyzing the data can help to preserve water quality, beauty, and wildlife. That’s food for thought, isn’t it?

Well, thank you very much for coming and giving attention to the problem of preserving our water recourses and for showing so much interest in participating in the cleanup activity next week. That’s all now.

(Adapted from the Internet sites)

 

Module 5 Unit 2

As much as we love gadgets, a lot of us don’t know nearly enough about how to dispose of them properly (in an environment-friendly manner). What makes high tech trash such a problem is that each piece of equipment contains numerous toxic and hazardous materials: heavy metals - including lead, cadmium, chromium, and mercury - and many synthetic chemicals that are persistent pollutants that linger in the atmosphere for years and accumulate in animals and people where they cause serious health problems. These toxics are released when equipment is damaged, destroyed or improperly disposed of - and that's what happens to a huge amount of our old electronics.

Some used computer/electronic materials can be recycled or reused instead of landfilled. There are four main types of electronic recyclers, and some recyclers perform multiple functions as collectors, refurbishers, demanufacturers and processors.

Collectors accept electronics from businesses and the general public. Collected material is then shipped to a refurbisher, demanufacturer or processor. There are two main types of collectors: those affiliated with a permanent drop-off site, and those operating from a temporary location set up for a special collection event.

Refurbishers include non- and for-profit organizations that accept, sort and refurbish used computer equipment. Reparable products are either resold or donated after they are restored to working condition; nonreparable components are sent to a demanufacturer or processor.

Demanufacturers accept used computer equipment and broken-down computer components. Parts are then further broken down into pieces such as plastic housings, wires, metals and circuit boards. Demanufacturers then send these parts to smelters or processors that have the equipment and facilities to process these components.

Processors accept demanufactured electronic components and break them down to their raw materials. Processing may also include resource recovery procedures such as precious metal separation, lead smelting and waste-to-energy incineration. Processing is the last stage of recycling before final disposition.

The biggest economic incentive behind electronics recycling is the recovery of metals - including precious metals, silver, gold and even platinum. Metals make up over half of the weight in many computers, particularly the older ones now being discarded. These computers also contain quite a lot of copper which is in great demand right now, and commands high prices. It was mining companies who first got into electronic recycling business because they figured out it was a lot more profitable and predictable - to 'mine' old circuit boards than it would be to prospect for the same amount of ore and metal in new mines. A pile of old circuit boards has a greater concentration of gold, for example, than does the equivalent amount of ore. But current recycling rates mean that we're simply throwing away about 90 percent of the billions of pounds of copper and millions of pounds of gold that are in our obsolete computer equipment – copper and gold that is essentially 100% reusable. So there is a lot of money to be made in selling used computer equipment, particularly for its scrap metal value, which recently has been quite high.

(Adapted from the Internet sites)

Module 6 unit 1

Physics

Over the last 50 years our knowledge about elementary particles and their interactions has advanced tremendously. Actually, a whole ‘zoo’ of new particles has been detected, some of which are extremely short-lived.The development of new particle accelerators operating at much higher energies was a crucial factor in the rapid advances in particle physics.Theoretical physicists have made substantial progress in uncovering the principles governing their interaction. Another breakthrough was the experimental demonstration of the existence of antimatter.

Moreover 20^th century physics has had a tremendous technological impact. The development of the atomic bomb, and as a consequence the increased knowledge of nuclear physics led to developing reactors to produce electric energy.

Giant steps in research in electron optics led to the development of instruments such as high resolution electron microscope, the scanning tunneling microscope, etc. that allow single atoms to be studied and manipulated. A new area of technology was born.

In the 1980s, spectacular advances were made in the production of ceramic materials that exhibit superconductivity at much higher.

Lasers have proved to have innumerable technological applications. These include a host of different measuring instruments such as detectors for air pollution, high-speed photography, new mass storage devices for computers (CD-ROMs), surgical instruments of various kinds, and even methods to trap and cool atoms, to name just a few.

Perhaps the most pervasive scientific innovation in the last 50 years was research on semiconductors.

Microprocessors had an enormous impact on electrical engineering. Their astounding efficiency and small size gave rise to a host of applications in the most diverse fields. Although computer design had started earlier this century, the extremely rapid development of ever faster computers with vastly expanded memory became possible with the advent of transistors integrated in microprocessors. Virtually all of today’s computing and communication devices are based on this technology.

Another development stemming from semiconductor research was the invention of photo-voltaic cells which can convert light into electric energy. They bring the promise that some day much of our energy needs will be supplied directly by the sun without producing significant pollution.

Molecular biology

Biologists had already speculated that the key to understanding how genes can transmit biological information from generation to generation must be sought

in their molecular structure.

Once the structure of DNA was established, the next question was how the cell ‘reads’ the genetic information stored in its DNA. In a remarkably short time, a small group of molecular biologists cracked the so-called ‘genetic code’.

Since this so-called ‘molecular revolution’ in biology, much progress has been made towards understanding the myriad of mechanisms by which a cell’s genome directs the biochemical processes allowing the cell to survive, divide, and fulfill specific functions in multicellular organisms.

This kind of knowledge, which continues to grow steadily, plays an increasingly important role in the development of novel therapies. Clearly, this would not have been possible without the preceding molecular revolution. The new molecular biology has also originated areas such as cell biology and neurobiology.

Genetic engineering techniques rapidly became an indispensable tool for biological and biomedical research. The human genomic DNA sequence will be extremely useful to bio-medical scientists for understanding how the human body functions and how diseases originate. However, the Human Genome Project has also raised strong ethical issues. These include the possible misuse of such knowledge, the protection of individual privacy, intellectual property rights, and the protection of universal access to public information. For this reason, the Human Genome Project is accompanied by studies of the potentially far-reaching social consequences the new genetics may have.

The possible applications of genetic engineering in biotechnology and medicine are only beginning to emerge. Genetically engineered crop plants have been bred which harbour genes resistant to various plant pathogens. There is an increasing number of therapeutic and diagnostic pharmaceutical products which are made by genetically engineered bacteria. Promising advances have been made in somatic gene therapy, where genetic defects are repaired in certain types of cells or tissues.

 

Earth sciences

The Earth sciences deal with the history of our planet. This kind of knowledge becomes increasingly involved in improving our understanding of the factors controlling the global environment and in developing more effective ways of finding and assessing natural resources, energy, and water. Methods for the prediction of natural events such as Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, landslides, floods or El Niño have been greatly improved. Furthermore, important insights into the history of the Earth’s climate have been obtained through the analysis of sedimentary records or ice cores from Greenland. Such knowledge will be important to disentangle global change caused by human beings from naturally occurring variations in the global climate system.

Another important development in the Earth sciences took place in the 1950s, when the theory of plate tectonics was empirically confirmed. Although an earlier version of this theory had already been formulated in the beginning of the 20^th century, it was largely ignored because no-one could imagine the kind of forces necessary for pushing continents, or even the giant tectonic plates that supposedly make up the Earth’s crust.

Earth science will continue to play an essential role in diagnosing and addressing some of the most pressing challenges, such as climate change and sustainable resource allocation that the global community faces.

Module 6 Unit 2

1. What will computers be like?

Speaker1:

Computers will not exist as we know them today. We will have artificial intelligence in every appliance, car, and home running the basic processes so we are left with nothing but an interface using voice, VR, and tactile response systems. The computers will all have voice recognition, fuzzy query input systems, and all information will be found by the computer, not the human based on the current task and interest and the history of the user’s responses.

Speaker2:

The computer will cease to be a box/CRT/keyboard on a desk and become as much another piece of furniture, or a household appliance. I believe we wouldn’t (shouldn’t) ever give computers total control over our lives, but the role computers will play will be much more automated that it is now. We will train them in what to do, what to look for, when to butt it, etc.

Speaker 3

One computer will only need a one inch chip to run. Everything and everybody will be connected to the Internet. All humans will become lazy. All shopping: food, electronics, clothes and so on will be done over computer. Work will be done over computer. Like if you are a constructor, and you are constructing a building, you just give a few commands in the computer and the robots on the land will be making the building. Cooking will be done by robots over computer, or better yet, it will be making itself.

2. How will we communicate with computers?

Speaker 1

We will have voice input for most applications, but VR will play a big roll in information manipulation and Cyberspace navigation. Keyboards and mice will give way to tactile gloves and eye-tracking movement headgear.

Speaker 2

No more typing. Everything will be done via voice recognition. If you say in about 500 years, everything will be done telepathically. No one will be talking or moving or not.

Speaker 3

Get rid of that keyboard. I can’t think of a more antiquated method of interacting

with even the PCs we have today. They will be replaced by voice-recognition, or perhaps neural-stimulus, and in the worst case scenario, some kind of device that can reproduce letters/ words/concepts with combinations of key presses. As the computer turns us into an international community, QWERTY keyboards will have to go away to allow common interface support for all languages.

3. Are we going to spend our whole time in Cyberspace?

Speaker 1

It depends upon the development of nanotechnology. To make a virtual reality that you never need to leave, you’re going to have to take care of bodily functions somehow – yet with nanotechnology, you can scan the entire brain into a computer, and make it operate there, so you have no physical body to bother with.

Speaker 2

Some people will, just as some people now spend most of their free time in front of the TV. But for the majority it will be maybe a few hours per day, just like most people watch TV for only a few hours per day. The people that use the net will probably watch less TV, so the total time spent on media will probably be mostly unchanged.

Speaker 3

No, because (at least for most people) there is no substitute for being face to face. We’re social animals, and we need other people around us.

4. Will computers be intelligent?

Speaker 1

That depends on what you mean by intelligence. If you mean anything that resembles human intelligence, I doubt it. While computers have become faster and bigger (and will continue to do so), we are not much better at programming them than we were 30 years ago, and most programmers use languages that would look familiar to programmers in 1965.

Speaker 2

Intelligence they already have! We can make computers more intelligent than humans in specific areas – for example, computers have proven far better at measuring gender from a photo than humans (you know those guys with long hair, you can’t really tell if they’re guys or not? A neural network can!)

Conciousness, however, is hard to predict, because it’s so hard to define!

Speaker 3

Computers will become Thinkers by 2020 but they will not be intelligent until 2050.

(Adapted from: http://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~brendy/future.html)

Module 7 Unit 1

Student 1 Flight Attendant

Well, for me one of the accessible summer jobs is that of a flight attendant. In fact, this job is an excellent source of money. Forget the adage that you must be very beautiful for this role and speak five languages - those days are gone. Of course, work with an international airline requires that you can speak a foreign language.

This job will not be available to everyone; aviation law states that you must be must be at least 18 to 21 years old to fly, and most airlines will look favorably upon those who have previous training, I mean, you have to take up a flight attendant training course. So, this job is ideal if you have skills in such areas like customer service, first aid, child care, etc. In fact, this is a highly demanding, responsible job and serving tea and coffee is only the cheesy* part that the passengers see.

Actually, you should be patient and good at dealing with people as well as very attentive and helping because this job involves instructing passengers in the use of emergency equipment, answering questions about the flight and helping people, for example, small children, elderly or disabled passengers and even giving first aid to people.

Also you have to be very self-disciplined and be able to keep calm to reassure passengers in the event of turbulence or help passengers evacuate the plane if there is an emergency landing.

Anyway, this is undoubtedly the best job I have ever done; there is great feeling of friendship among crew and plus you get the possibility of staying in hotels around the globe, free or cheap holidays.

cheesy – здесь эффектный, броский, яркий

Student 2 Barman

I am trying to live student life to the full, and have been since the first year, where I think I went out to at least one of the trendy bars or pubs almost every night. After the Christmas break, I decided that my money problems were getting a little too much, thus I decided to look for a job. I have had part-time jobs before so I was no stranger to the 'working' culture and mentality. I had bar skills which are the most vital skills to have if you are looking for a student job as a barman. In this job you need to be an enthusiastic, friendly type of person, who is able to get along with most people. You should be able to work in a team, sometimes with chefs and cooks and have good communication skills.

Besides, you need to be aware of hygiene and personal cleanliness, be good with numbers, and able to lift and move heavy items. You'll be on your feet most of the time, I can tell you, and so you'll need to be strong and energetic.

I got a bar job in one of the city centre's big clubs and worked there for a number of months. This gave me more new friends and, more importantly money. In fact, I worked 10 hours a week and my salary was pretty high.

If you are thinking of getting a job, make sure you explain that you are a student and cannot work every shift. Anyway, think twice before getting a part-time job. Don’t forget about 'pressure periods' such as coursework deadlines, exam periods and things like that.