Jocellyn's blog

I would like to introduce you my new app called Journey.

Journey is your place to self-improvement through daily tasks, which will require you to think about yourself and your life in a way that you are not used to.

By improving yourself and growing you get most of your life. There are many ways in which you can do that. Following a daily tasks of thinking and writing is one of them, keeping a diary or meditation could be another one.

Any kind of self-improvement is good when it is forcing you to step out of your comfort zone and face new challenges. The reward for doing this will be gaining new perspectives. It is your awareness and attitude which will lead you to a better you. 

 Try journey, spend a few minutes daily with a simple tasks and you will become more aware of your emotions, attitudes and perspectives. 

I believe that self-improvement is for everyone and that by your own forces you can do whatever you want to do.

www.journeyapp.net

I started to fill my blog with my school essays and works. I decided to do that because I did not have any inspiration about how to write about self-improvement and following your dreams anymore. Also I just wanted to share with you what I think is interesting.

But now, I am thinking.. Is anyone reading this kind of student essays? I think, that they seem pretty boring and not interesting at all (at least that is what my boyfriend is telling me:). Maybe it is because of the school style, which did not allow me to be more personal and speak about these topics like a human. But still, I think that it is something worth reading (well, if you are fan of these topics of course). 

I just wanted to say that. And if you still do not want to read stuff like that, I promise I will also continue to write about what I always wanted to write - how to live your dream life with just a change of your mind. 

(Meantime you can check my blog about cute cows - http://cowees.jocellyn.cz/)

This paper addresses the problem of low turnout and high defection in European Parliament elections in post-communist countries, and compares these countries with the older member states in the European Union. It is based on three articles dealing with mechanisms explaining why people vote differently in national election and European Parliament (EP) election.

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I had an interesting debate about NGOs recently. We were discussing if it is ethical to have high salary while working for a non-profit. I was representing the minority who stand stand in . In the opposite side of the table were couple of (really pro-social) girls, who were fiercely advocating the notion that “if you want to help people, you don’t care about money”.

I claimed that you can definitely be both. You can be altruistic, care about NGO’s mission and still want to be well paid for your work. 

I claim there is nothing wrong or sick about being well paid in NGOs, because if NGO would not appreciate its best employees, they would go somewhere else.

This is the point, where these girls would suggest, that it is a sign of bad people. People who would go elsewhere because of money. But you have to realize that NGOs are companies as well. The competition works there in the same way as it works in huge private companies.

If you spent lots of years and money in your education and training, you are the top class in your job, you certainly deserves to be evaluated adequately. It is not about steeling the money from the NGO (and the poor starving African orphans), because if you are that capable, you are able to bring the money back to. If you have passion about its mission and you are truly committed to “do good”, you will find a way how to do it. 

Also, if you are that kind of person who I am talking about, you know very wel what is to work for free, just because you want to. These people probably started as volunteers, because they wanted to gain skills and knowledge and they wanted to change something. After years of volunteering and years of schooling, when they make it to the top, they just should not have the similar amount of money as the people they are trying to help to. That is just not fair. 

Well, there is of course a line. I do not know where, but there is. When saying well paid, I do not mean to take non-reasonable money like the hockey players do. I simply mean not making such a big difference between salary of CEO of lets say …. Red Cross and CEO of Volvo. Even people from Volvo care about its mission, they think that what they do matters and they want to make people’s life better (or they should).

Than where is the difference?

According to theory of Alesina, Angeloni and Schuknecht from 2005, EU should prefer centralization in some politics and decentralization in others. This is explained by the economical trade-offs between gains and costs. In some cases (like international trade), it is more economically profitable to involve the EU, and in some other cases (like culture), it is better to retain the national level, because the costs of heterogenic preferences are too huge.. This paper brings the reason why social policy is one of these areas, which are better governed at the national level. It is mainly because of the different models of social policy, which are based on common values and which are adapted to state’s capacity to deal with social issues. This is also linked with economic issues.

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According to David Rueda, labor is divided into insiders and outsiders. Insiders have protected and secure job with social benefits, and outsiders are unemployed or hold jobs with low salaries and low protection. Students are also considered as outsiders since they do not have a job and also do not have a certainty that they will get one after finishing school. Palier and Thelen also speak about dualization of labor (in France and Germany), but they see it as a result of sequence of developments within industrial relations, labor market and welfare state reforms. This dualization into insiders and outsiders is linked with social insurance and social protection division as well with high security at the core of labor and instability at the margin..

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Some articles claim that European political parties had changed during the process of EU accession and that this enlargement played significant role in parties’ competition. This paper argues, that political parties in the Czech Republic did not changed their position based on EU influence and that they did support EU accession from the beginning of the negotiation. I use as an example two major parties, Civic Democratic party from the right-wing and Social democratic party from the left-wing of Czech political scale.  

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Hi,

I have decided to start posting my school essays and papers to this blog from now on. The purpose of this blog was to motivate people, to share some of my thoughts about success and the right attitude to work and life. But now, I feel a little bit without an inspiration, do not really know how to proceed or what to write. That is why I will turn this blog into some kind of pseudo-intelectual debate over my favourite topics.

These essays will be covering these topics mainly:

- poverty and social exclusion

- European Union 

- democracy

- social policy

Also, I will try to post these essays in the same order as I wrote them so you can see my progress (if any) :) Enjoy!

Hello,

I did not write a lot lately (even though I am supposed to write every week) because I was focused on whole banch of other things. I got crazy about programming and I started to re-learn HTML and CSS basics. As a result I created two brain new blogs about a subjects I like:

1) Carb Fight! As you know from my New year’ s resolution, I started to try to loose weight. I chose a very symphatic method by Tim Ferriss in which you actually can eat even McDonalds, but under certain conditions. This blog tracks my way towards more skinny me with all my suffering, tips and stories. 

2) Cowees. Alias cute little cows. This web is about pure pleasure from cute pictures. Cows are my favourite animals so I decided to devote a blog to them. I want to post the cutest photos and images, share quotes and interesting facts and simply cheer you up with cowees!

This is just a little example of what cowees can do:

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I would like to write about one project of my friend. Her name is Veselina, she is from Bulgaria and we met in a Youth in Action training held in Romania about volunteering and youth employment. I liked her very much since the first day and now I am very pleased to hear how well she is doing and how active she became! This project is in fact her way how to make money for her university studying in USA.

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Dear all,

I am having some difficulties with my writing. It is not that I do not want to write or have nothing to say, it is more a fear from writing badly, meaninglessly, superficially and thoughtlessly. I have always been a perfectionist, who must have everything right. Sometimes, it is my biggest curse.

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