Academic activities

As I stated in the previous blog, I tried EndNote, which is a bibliographic database available within my university computer cluster.
I found it useful especially in searching for articles from electronic journals. From my first impression, most of the search engines for electronic journals are fully compatible with major bibliographic databases. Hence, down-loading articles' details will be very much useful to record what I have found on the electronic journals. Then, it will help me review what I have read or taken notes with just opening EndNotes' libraries. However, as for other kinds of resources, such as books, hard copies of any kinds of documents, I could not understand how I can utilise this bibliographic database. Partly because it is not straightforward to import, export and exchange data among bibliographic database, MS Word, or other usually used applications.
Anyway, apart from the issue of bibliographic database, I think I must learn how to write essays at first...
Therefore, I will go back to my essays. Learning how to use bibliographic database might provide us with enormous time-savings, but, to me, priority should be put in how to improve writing English for my acquiring master degree...
Good Night,

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Reading

How many words do I have to write for the assignments of the 1st semester?
15,000??? This looks like the words for my dissertation??? Then, I'm being
troubled with number of readings. One of the lecturer said that we should read
at least 10 articles (references) in a 3,500 word essay. So, I will have to
read about 40 articles to complete my essays! What is difficult is to properly
record, sort, and remember what I have read in the course of writing. We were
advised to learn how to use a bibliographic database the other day, and I've
fould "EndNote", which is available free of charge if we use it on the
university's computer cluster. I've once just touched it. However, it did not
seem easy to operate. It looks like MS Access. Then, I could not start using it
yet. But, I have now recognised that I must learn and use that. Otherwise, I
will waste much time in referring to articles. To me, it is curucial because it
takes time for me to read through all the relevant documents... I will not be
able to spend much time in referring back to the same documents again and
again. I will go to the computer cluster at latest by Wednesday after getting
my hair cut!!!

Population & Elite

I've been encountered by two interesting articles from BBC Africa website. One is about census of Nigeria, which has been stalled since the last one was conducted in 1991. What got my interest is a relationship between political interests and counting population. According to the article, Nigerian constitute states that they have to consider balance between ethnicity in assigning positions at any levels of public administration. It means that composition of population must influence the number of positions to be occupied by respective ethnicities. National statistics are very important as bases in planning national development, and census is one of them. However, if it is possible that political interests may cause serious conflict, census will become something different from just counting population. Thus we need to think of this sensitivity of political interest, especially in the case that the national constitution also has crucial influence as the case of Nigeria. Second article is about conflict between Eritrea and Ethiopia. What impressed me most was its history. During the period of colonisation by Italy, Eritrea was given some tastes of superiority to other parts of Ethiopia. It is a very famous issue of elitism in former colonised areas. Besides, another notorious affect of Cold War is there. The two super-power ravaged the area, and to make matters worse, UN did nothing effective to maintain peace during the same period. This long history of external intervention seems to contribute to the nature of intransigence of the stakeholders in the area. Some think that other indigenous culture must have something to do with their nature of inflexibility. I am quite a stranger in this area, but have felt the depth of this problem and some relevance to what I have learned in my master course so far.