The Interpretation Of Dreams A Streetcar Named Desire,...

In the words of Sigmund Freud, â€Å"The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind.† The legendary psychologist saw dreams as an avenue to study one’s underlying motives for action. Similarly, in literature one finds striking significance from the illusions of protagonists that often predict the nature of one’s psyche. Two such examples present themselves in Blanche, from Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, and the grandmother, from Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man is Hard to Find. The former tale follows a lady without a home who finds herself reliant on her belligerent and bestial brother-in-law. The latter traces a family’s road trip South and their encounter with a wanted fugitive. Both Blanche and the grandmother find themselves tethered to their idealistic and often times hypocritical fantasies which signify their underlying mental instability and foreshadow their eventual ruinations. Williams and O’Connor examine their protagonists’ delusions through gender, clothing, and nostalgia. Both Blanche and the grandmother shelter themselves from threats––verbal, physical, or reputational––by using their gender as a shield. In a conversation with Stanley, Blanche claims that â€Å"a woman’s charm is fifty per cent illusion† (91). She hides behind her identity as a woman to vindicate her deceit. Alone and heartbroken, she desperately attempts to marry Mitch for financial security, yet again utilizing her femininity forShow MoreRelatedEssay on I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou2409 Words   |  10 Pagesresentful towards her ethnicity. A local white dentist refused to treat her toothache and told her that â€Å"†¦my policy is I’d rather stick my hand in a dog’s mouth than in a nigger’s† (Angelou 160). Immediately after hearing this, Maya and Momma (Maya’s grandmother) were taken back by this insulting remark and were absolutely speechless. The dentist did not even look Maya in the face when he said this which made her feel as though her race was inferior. This is a clear example of how her childhood experience

New World Class Of Research Serious Colleges - 1556 Words

Our college was established very nearly a hundred years back in the repercussions of the Great War. The men and ladies who assembled this new organization trusted that it would be not just a living dedication to the haziness of their later past, yet an encouraging sign for what s to come. Their point was that gives up made in war ought to be recognized through instruction and research that would improve the world. We are conveying this desire. We have dispatched another vital arrangement, which sets out our vision to pioneer a particular new world class of research-serious colleges. Investigate the Strategic Plan website pages to discover how we mean. ut vitam habeant, with the goal that they may have life Our values mirror our saying. To do equity to the trusts and the desires of those on whose shoulders we now stand, we endeavor to have any kind of effect in everything that we do. Today our University is a vivacious, fiery and worldwide group, in which devoted and skilled individuals are reckoning, working towards and molding what s to come. We are submitted both to undertaking look into that spares, enhances and advances lives, and to cultivating an educating and learning environment that changes the possibilities of our understudies and those they will go ahead to impact. Get some answers concerning some of our most noteworthy revelations. We imagine being a University which is interested in ability, not benefit and available to everybody with theShow MoreRelatedQualitative Reflection1032 Words   |  5 Pagesstudy takes a closer look at those traits and characteristics to analyze how you are perceived through the eyes of another. Statement of Purpose The research project conducted uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods to collect data, analyze, then interpret how an individual is perceived in society. 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Capital Budgeting Methods for Corporate Project Selection Free Essays

Capital Budgeting Methods for Corporate Project Selection In a 2001 Graham and Harvey survey of 392 chief financial officers (CFOs) asked â€Å"how frequently they used different capital budgeting methods? † Approximately 75% of the CFOs replied that they use net present value (NPV) or Internal Rate of Return (IRR) always or almost always (Smart, Megginson Gitman, 2004, pg. 251). Projects are viewed as capital investments in the corporate world, and as such, are evaluated closely for their possible financial impacts on the â€Å"bottom line† due to their higher risk of failure. We will write a custom essay sample on Capital Budgeting Methods for Corporate Project Selection or any similar topic only for you Order Now Capital investments are those that are considered long-term investments such as manufacturing plants, RD, equipment, marketing campaign, etc. , and capital budgeting is â€Å"the process of identifying which of these investment projects a firm should undertake† (Smart, Megginson Gitman, 2004, pg. 227). According to Smart, Megginson Gitman, there are three steps in the capital budgeting process: * Identifying potential investments Analyzing the set of investment opportunities, identifying those that will create shareholder value, and perhaps prioritizing them * Implementing and Monitoring the investment projects selected This paper will focus on step two, and will discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the four most common methods that are utilized for evaluating, selecting and prioritizing projects in the corporate world. Net Present Value (NPV), Internal Rate of Return (IRR), Straight/Discounted Payback Period and Profitability Index are the four of the most come methods u sed during step 2 of the capital budgeting process. Four fictional potential capital investments will be used to illustrate how the different methods can affect project selection for a portfolio. THEME PARK CAPITAL INVESTMENTS A theme park senior executive management team had four capital projects presented during the last capital budget meeting. The projects are a $250M park expansion, $50M value resort renovation, $500M new moderate resort construction and $200M new value resort construction. All these projects have similar completion time frames and have 20 year life expectancies. Years 1 to 5 cash flows for each project come from the pro formas, and Years 6 -20 are based on an expected 2% per increase in cash flows. The company has $750M to invest on capital projects this year, and they must decide which projects should be approved. NET PRESENT VALUE Net Present Value is the sum of discounted future cash flows and provides the appropriate adjustments for the time value of money. In short, NPV is the reverse of compounding interest, and this process begins with the selection of a â€Å"discount rate. † According to Smart, Megginson Gitman, pg. 01, â€Å"A project’s discount risk must be high enough to compensate investors for the project’s risk† The discount rate can be based on the inherent risk of a project, the required rate of return on shares, cost of equity, etc. The discount rate should not be one rate for all projects with in a firm, but reflect the nature of the project. The formula for NPV is: In this calculation, CFt rep resents the net cash flow of the year and r is the selected discount rate. CF0 usually represents the initial outlay to get the project started, and is usually a negative cash flow. As a rule, projects with a negative NPV are not approved, but a â€Å"hurdle† could be set such as projects with a NPV $100M will be dismissed. The main strength of using NPV in project selection is that risk of each project analyzed can be accounted for differently by adjusting the discount rate. This means that more risky a project, the higher the discount rate applied to the calculation. Other strengths of NPV are that it focuses on cash flow instead of accounting earnings, firms would select projects that should have a positive impact on the firm, and it evaluates the life of the project instead of just the early years. The main weakness of using NPV is the â€Å"inability to incorporate the value of managerial flexibility. † This means that there may be â€Å"options that the managers can exploit after an investment has been made to increase its value† (Smart, Megginson Gitman, 2004, pg. 236). INTERNAL RATE OF RETURN Internal rate of return (IRR) is rate of return that a firm expects to earn if it selects the project and holds it for its economic life. That rate of return is the discount rate that will make the NPV equal zero. This discount rate can be determined with a financial calculator, excel or trial and error. Once this rate is determined, it is then compared to a â€Å"hurdle rate† established by the firm. The â€Å"hurdle rate† should be set â€Å"at a level that reflects market returns on investments that are just as risky as the project under consideration† (Smart, Megginson Gitman, 2004, pg. 238). The â€Å"hurdle rate† is the discount rate in most cases. IRR, like NPV, takes the in to account the time value of money. This means that the first year cash flows are greater in value than the second year and so on for the economic life of a project. The second strength is that the â€Å"hurtle rate† can be based on market returns of similar projects. The last is that since it is a â€Å"rate of return†, it is more understandable to non-financial managers than NPV. There are some mathematical â€Å"quirks† of IRR that should be noted. If the cash flows alternate between negative and positive values, it is possible to have multiple IRRs. In cases with borrowing and lending, it is possible to have a positive IRR that meets the â€Å"hurtle rate†, but could have a negative NPV. Lastly, sometimes due to the nature of the cash flows, there could be no real solution. The last two issues with IRR that deal with the scale and timing of a project’s cash flows. The scale issue can show as example of a friend promises to pay you $2 tomorrow for $1 today. This means that the IRR for this transaction is 100%, but let’s say that the amounts were $150 tomorrow for $100 today. The IRR would then be just 50%. The first deal increases your wealth by $1, but the other increases your wealth by $50. The timing issue has to do when comparing projects that have higher cash flows earlier to projects that generate higher cash flows later in their economic life. For example, two projects have an initial outlay of $1000, but project 1 has large cash flows near the end whereas project 2 has higher cash flows earlier. This example shows that Project 1 will have a higher impact on wealth, but because the cash flows are near the end of its life, the IRR is lower. If managers just focus on the higher IRR, they could trade short term gains for long term wealth (Smart, Megginson Gitman, 2004, pg. 244-246). STRAIGHT/DISCOUNTED PAYBACK PERIOD The payback period is the simplest of all the methods. The Straight Payback Period is the time it takes a project to the cumulative cash inflows to recoup the initial outlay of the investment. Firms will set a â€Å"hurtle† such as projects must have a three year payback period to be approved. The Discounted Payback period takes the method one step further by discounting the cash flows before determining the time it takes to recoup the investment. The payback method strengths are that it is simple to calculate and to understand by non-financial managers, but the weaknesses are what make this method much less desirable than NPV or IRR. Since the payback cutoff period is arbitrary, it has little connection with increasing the stakeholders’ wealth. It is a crude way to manage risks because of the thought that the longer to recoup costs, the more risky the project, and this can lead to managers to underinvesting in long term projects that could offer higher rewards (Meredith Mantel, 2008, pg. 47). PROFITABILITY INDEX Profitability Index is closely related to NPV and IRR. PI is calculated by dividing the sum of the present values of the project’s cash flow less the initial cash outflow by the initial cost of the project. Projects with a PI 1. 0 should be rejected. The PI is useful when a firm is trying to rank investments that pass the other capital budgeting methods. Because PI is related to NPV and IRR, it shares the same strengths and weaknesses outlined previously. THEME PARK CAPITAL INVESTMENTS SELECTION The maximum that can be spent this year on facility improvements in $750M, but the entire amount does not need to be utilized. The CFO of the theme park has set the following project selection criteria: * Projects with an NPV ? 0 should be rejected * Projects with an IRR ? discount rate should be rejected * Projects with a PI ? 0. 99 should be rejected * For the current economic condition for the travel industry, the risk for projects is set at 25%. The senior executives with assistance from the financial department analyzed the information and developed the following breakdown: During the meeting, the senior executives decide that both the park expansion (project A) and the value resort renova tion (project b) will be approved. This is due to the fact that combined, the projects meet the â€Å"hurtles† set by the CFO and that provides the most value than any single project. The remaining funds will be held in reserve for future projects. PROJECT MANAGER REBUTAL When looking at the same financial analysis thru the lens of a project manager, the PM may agree that projects A B are a good choice based on financials, but may suggest that the new value resort construction (project D) should be approved as well. This due to that there would be cost savings if both the renovation and construction projects were completed at the same time. The cost savings would be due to more efficient resource management and better prices on building materials due efficiencies of scale. The other point to make is that by building the new resort, they would increase the capacity of the guests that could stay on property to visit the new expansion. It the end, the PM could debate that financial analysis does not take into account the synergistic positive impacts on cash flows when certain projects are placed in the portfolio (Pennypacker Dye, 2002, pg. 187-189). References Meredith, J. R. , Mantel, S. J. (2008). Project management, a managerial approach. (7 ed. ). United States of America: Wiley. Pennypacker, J. S. , Dye, L. D. (2002). Managing multiple projects. New York, NY: Marcel Dekker, Inc. Smart, S. B. , Megginson, W. L. , Gitman, L. J. (2004). Corporate finance. Mason, Ohio: Thomson/South-Western. How to cite Capital Budgeting Methods for Corporate Project Selection, Papers