How do I write a career mission statement? Why do individuals need goals? Why is it important to write goals down? What is self-talk? What effect can negative self-talk have on your career? What is the difference between smart and stretch goals? What are the elements of career management?

As there seem to be several different and not entirely related questions here, this answer will focus on giving you a starting point for answering some of them.
For the mission statement, you should think through the big picture rather than focusing on narrow immediate goals. In other words, you should think about whether, for example, certain forms of corporate social responsibility matter to you or whether you are focused purely on financial success. You should also consider what you would consider a major life achievement; for example, would you be most satisfied with innovating technologically, improving people's lives, or building a company as an entrepreneur?
This relates to the difference between SMART and stretch goals. SMART is an acronym for "specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, timeline." These are narrow, short-term goals that are steps on your way to "stretch" goals, which are your ultimate aims. In a sense, stretch goals are where you aim to end up, and SMART goals are checkpoints on the path. Your mission statement reflects your ultimate stretch goal. 
The point of developing these goals is that clearly written goals are the keys to success. You can use them as the basis for making a variety of career choices. For example, if you have a choice of two job offers, or even choices of various electives in your degree program, you can ask yourself how they contribute to your goals. For example, if your eventual goal is to be an entrepreneur, you might want to develop knowledge of management and finances, while in marketing you might want to focus on PR, marketing, communications, and media courses.

Describe how the Cold War was fought by each superpower. Be sure to discuss how both the United States and the Soviet Union believed that their social system was firmly based on principles of freedom and social justice.

The Cold War was a low-grade conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union and their allies that extended from the end of World War II to the early 1990s. It was characterized by an underlying threat of full-scale war between the two nuclear powers, a "hot war" that was an impossibility because it promised mutually assured destruction (MAD) and essentially meant the end of the world. As a result, the two countries engaged in all sorts of "colder" conflicts—an arms race, a space race, proxy wars (the Korean War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, and the conflict in Afghanistan in the 1970s can all be understood as part of the Cold War), espionage, and furious economic competition.
Both countries believed they were defending ideas of freedom and justice. In the case of the United States, this was understood in terms of democracy and the free market. The Soviet Union, in contrast, believed that it was carrying out the just mission of the communist revolution and sought to free the world's people from the oppression of capitalism and manifest the Marxist vision of society, something the original Soviet revolutionaries like Trotsky and Lenin saw as a historical inevitability.
This ideological schism created a situation where there was no possibility for compromise. While there were periods when the conflict was less intense (the period of Detente between the early 1960s and late 70s) there was really never a period without some element of struggle between the two powers.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/coldwar/

Why does Juliet say that she wants to be alone and how does the nurse respond?

I believe that this question is asking about the relatively short scene 3 in act 4. The scene begins with Juliet telling the nurse to leave her alone.

Ay, those attires are best. But, gentle Nurse,
I pray thee, leave me to myself tonight,

Juliet says that she wants to be left alone because she has a lot of things to pray about.


For I have need of many orisons
To move the heavens to smile upon my state,
Which, well thou know’st, is cross and full of sin.



Juliet says that she has much to pray about because she has committed many sins; however, she would still like to receive blessings from "the heavens." At this point, Lady Capulet enters the scene. Lady Capulet wants to know if she can help in some way, and Juliet states again that she would like to be alone. Juliet then tells her mom to take the nurse with her for any help that the nurse might be able to lend to Lady Capulet. The two women leave and Juliet is left alone to talk about her potion. What is interesting about the nurse's reaction in this scene is that she is completely silent. The nurse doesn't have a single line of dialogue in this scene. Normally the nurse is constantly running her mouth with advice and dirty jokes. For her not to say anything is uncharacteristic, and it gives gravity to the scene. The nurse knows a great deal about Juliet's love for Romeo, and she knows that Juliet is in great emotional pain over the forced marriage that is soon to happen. The fact that the nurse doesn't say anything or crack a single joke helps give the scene a mood of impending doom. That works well for the scene since it ends with Juliet drinking the potion even while considering the fact that it might be real poison.


What if it be a poison, which the friar
Subtly hath ministered to have me dead,
Lest in this marriage he should be dishonored
Because he married me before to Romeo?

What kind of poem is "Ode to Evening"?

William Collins's "Ode to Evening" is an ode, as noted in the title. An ode is a poem in which the speaker celebrates or appreciates something specific, in this case, the evening. Some other famous odes include Keats's "Ode on a Nightingale" and "Ode on a Grecian Urn," both of which meditate on and praise the object noted in the title, as Collins does in his poem.
The ode is addressed to evening in apostrophe, which is a poetic address to something that is either unable to respond (like an inanimate object or part of nature) or not present. The ode primarily describes the calm of evening. For example, the speaker writes,

Now teach me, maid composed,
To breathe some softened strain,
Whose numbers stealing through thy dark'ning vale
May not unseemly with its stillness suit,
As musing slow, I hail
Thy genial loved return. (15-20)

The speaker seeks the wisdom of the evening and wants to be more like the evening, "composed" and "still." The speaker celebrates the return of evening and is happy in its presence.

Further, the speaker describes evening as a magical time:


For when thy folding star arising shows
His paly circlet, at his warning lamp
The fragrant Hours, and elves
Who slept in flowers the day,
And many a nymph who wreathes her brows with sedge
And sheds the fresh'ning dew, and lovelier still,
The pensive pleasures sweet
Prepare thy shad'wy car. (21-28)



The evening allows for the "elves" and "nymph[s]" to emerge. The speaker looks forward to "The pensive pleasures" that arrive with evening, thanks to these otherworldly sprites.

The second and final stanza of "Ode to Evening" relates evening to the seasons. Evening must undergo the moods of the seasons, dealing with all of the natural phenomena associated with each time of year. Nonetheless, evening remains a source of joy and inspiration to the speaker:


So long, sure-found beneath the sylvan shed,
Shall Fancy, Friendship, Science, rose-lipp'd Health,
Thy gentlest influence own,
And hymn thy fav'rite name! (49-52)



Evening will still have its "gentlest influence" throughout all four seasons. There is always much to celebrate when it is evening. The speaker writes a true ode, one that expresses his emotional and joyful appreciation of evening.

Why does Socrates argue that it's not good to follow the opinion of the many? What should we follow?

Socrates's principal engagement with the question of the opinion of the many occurs in a Platonic dialogue known as the Crito. This dialogue takes place on the day before Socrates, who is imprisoned, is to be executed for corruption of the youth. Crito, a wealthy friend of Socrates, comes to him and implores him to escape with his assistance. Crito values Socrates's friendship and does not want him to die, but his motives for offering to assist Socrates's escape are also partially selfish. He is a fixture of the community, and is worried that if he cannot persuade Socrates to escape, "the many will not be persuaded that I wanted you to escape, and that you refused." In other words, Crito believes that if Socrates dies, even by his own decision, it will make Crito look bad. He is concerned about and swayed by the opinion of his peers, and believes that "the opinion of the many must be regarded...because they can do the very greatest evil to anyone who has lost their good opinion."   
Socrates, boldly, takes a different view of the situation, even at the potential expense of his own life. He advises Crito that the only opinions worthy of regard are those that come from "good men," because unlike the masses, who can often be swayed, like Crito himself, by peer pressure or self-serving motives, a good man will only "think of these things truly as they happened." They will be honest about circumstance and situations, and not merely stump for the outcome that's best for them. He dismisses Crito's suggestion that the many can do evil to those that oppose them, because in his opinion, "they can do neither good nor evil...whatever they do is the result of chance." He also suggests that the opinion of one individual can matter far more than that of the many, provided that one individual is more informed about the circumstances and situation than the many may be. He uses the example of a gymnast who puts far more stock in his trainer's opinion of his abilities than of the public, because his trainer is wise in the ways of gymnastics and physical competition, and is thus better informed to pass judgment on the situation than the public, who know only what they see the gymnast doing, not how and why he does it.  
Socrates argues that instead of obeying merely the dictates of the masses, we must instead first operate from the principle of never answering injustice or evil with further injustice for evil, for like begets like.  It's a similar notion to the famous Gandhi quote which reminds us that "an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind."  And surprisingly, and with uncompromising adherence to notions of law and justice, Socrates argues that the only way he can see justice done, in this circumstance, is to abide by the will of the court and see his sentence carried out. Speaking for the courts and lawgivers of Athens, whom he argues are the "good men" who know more about the successful operation of a state than he or the many would, he says that he was nurtured, brought up by, and supported by this same state throughout all of his life and educational career. His agreement with and living within those laws does not them give him the right or license to cherry-pick which of those laws he will abide by and which he will discard. By teaching in a manner which the lawgivers regard as corrupting to the youth, Socrates violated the dictates of a system which he had previously agreed to live within lawfully, and even though in a larger, more universal moral sense he has done no wrong, he has committed wrongs against the laws of the state. (In an unspoken way, Socrates does acknowledge the overarching moral rightness of his crimes by not simply disavowing them, but instead admitting freely to what he has done; he has acted against the law of the land, but he is not ashamed of his "crimes.") He imagines the "good men" of the courts advising Socrates to "think of justice first, that you may be justified before the world of the princes below." In other words, if he allows himself to be executed at the order of the "good men" and against the opinion of the many, he dies "a victim," but if he defies the system and answers the perceived injustice of his incarceration with the concrete injustice of his escape, then he is acting in violation of a system that has been set up for the good of all, by those most qualified to determine its goodness. Socrates is a hard judge of circumstances, but he is eminently fair and always in service to reason, so he values the informed opinions of the good over the opinion of the man...even at the potential expense of his own life.   
All quotes from the text are taken from the Benjamin Jowett translation of the Crito, available on the website of the classics department at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  

One consistent position Socrates takes across all of Plato's dialogues is that the opinion of the many (hoi polloi) is not worth following. As you write about this for an assignment, you should be careful to use the phrase correctly. The Greek phrase is "hoi polloi". "Hoi" is an article; it means "the" and polloi is a substantive meaning "many". Thus you can refer to "hoi polloi" or "the polloi" but anyone who says "the hoi polloi" is demonstrating woeful ignorance of Greek and should not be trusted as a source. 
The first issue here is that Socrates believes that blindly following anyone or anything is wrong. Instead he insists on interrogating or thinking critically before forming opinions. 
In trying to learn a subject, we should consult experts rather than the general public. Socrates usually makes this argument by analogy. If we want to know about shoe-making we would consult a cobbler rather than someone who has never made a pair of shoes. Similarly, to learn of pottery we consult a potter and if we have medical issues we would consult a doctor. Thus in all areas, the people worth consulting are those who have knowledge. 

What historical events occur in the novel?

Anna Sewell wrote the novel Black Beauty in 1877. The novel is set in Victorian England and is told from the horse's point of view. It was originally subtitled "An Autobiography of a Horse." It chronicles the life of Black Beauty, his experiences, masters, and fellow horses.
Since it is written from the horse's point of view, there aren't many historical references. There is a chapter entitled "The Election," which is chapter 42. It is vague in its details, referencing the man who didn't want political propaganda on his cab and the girl who gets called a "blue ragamuffin." The colors of each party are explained, but no names or dates are given.

"My boy, I hope you will always defend your sister, and give anybody who insults her a good thrashing—that is as it should be; but mind, I won't have any election blackguarding on my premises. There are as many 'blue' blackguards as there are 'orange,' and as many white as there are purple, or any other color, and I won't have any of my family mixed up with it. Even women and children are ready to quarrel for the sake of a color, and not one in ten of them knows what it is about."
"Why, father, I thought blue was for Liberty."
"My boy, Liberty does not come from colors, they only show party, and all the liberty you can get out of them is, liberty to get drunk at other people's expense, liberty to ride to the poll in a dirty old cab, liberty to abuse any one that does not wear your color, and to shout yourself hoarse at what you only half-understand—that's your liberty!"

The other historical reference is to the Crimean War. The Crimean war was a conflict that occurred between 1853 and 1856 and involved Britain, France, and some Turks fighting against Russia. The war is mentioned in Sewell's novel because one of the horses Black Beauty meets fought in that war. This is mentioned in chapter 34, which is entitled "An Old War Horse."

Captain had been broken in and trained for an army horse; his first owner was an officer of cavalry going out to the Crimean war. He said he quite enjoyed the training with all the other horses, trotting together, turning together, to the right hand or the left, halting at the word of command, or dashing forward at full speed at the sound of the trumpet or signal of the officer.

With reference to the phrase, "unlucky thing you finding it," what 'luck' did the young man have in the story "Dusk"?

The young man who has fabricated a tale in order to finagle money from someone is unable to produce a bar of soap that he supposedly has purchased so his tale holds no verisimilitude. But, after he leaves, a bar is found beneath the bench on which he has been sitting.
In Saki's satirical story, "Dusk," a young man, who has woven a tall-tell about leaving his hotel in order to purchase a bar of soap, tells Norman Gortsby that he has forgotten his way back to the hotel where he stays, and unless someone gives him some money, he will have no place to sleep this night. However, when he cannot produce the soap as evidence of the verity of his story, Norman rejects his tale, gives him no money, and the young man hurriedly departs in anger at his oversight.
Afterwards, Norman Gortsby stands up from the park bench on which he has been, and he notices a cake of soap, wrapped in paper, under the bench on which he and the young man have sat. He hurries to catch the young man:

"The important witness to the genuineness of your story has turned up," said Gortsby, holding out the cake of soap; "it must have slid out of your overcoat pocket when you sat down on the seat."

Taking advantage of the credibility of Gortsby, who hands him a sovereign and his card along with instructions that the other can mail the money back to him, the young man says,

"Lucky thing your finding it,"...with a catch in his voice, he blurted out a word or two of thanks and fled headlong in the direction of Knightsbridge.

Norman Grotsby learns of his folly when the older man who has been on the end of the bench returns to search for his bar of soap.