FINAL BLOG

Sociology has taught me about who i am as a person and about other people in general. I have learned to see from different a point of view and i have a better understanding of people who i dont usually come in contact with.
Silence:
Before sociology, I never had any thoughts on silence. I had the idea silence was awkward and it had to be avoided. Soc has made me think about why we fill silence. We fill silence because we are so used to hearing people talk and noises that silence has become negative, but silence should be enjoyable and not out of the ordinary.
Are You Gonna Eat That?:
Before sociology, if i were to be asked to eat a human beings body i would refuse no matter what. After talking about it in class i would eat the bodies if i were in the circumstances that the survivors were in. But soc has not only taught me that i should do what i need to to survive, but ive learned to think of things from a different view point. I was so set into my own world before that other options seemed out of reach. i have to be willing to think of things differently and outside of my norms to figure out the solutions i need.
Identity Molecule:
Before sociology, i would have thought my only place in society was my social class, but after talking about it in class, i recognize that everything we do makes us part of a group. those groups shape who we are and who we communicate with. it is important to be apart of a lot of groups to get a perspective of different people
Cards:
Before sociology, all i thought about was the way i did things. Soc has taught me that my way isn't the correct way, its just the way i know how to do things. each individual has their own way to do things and we need to take into consideration what other people do in order to fit into society.
Jails
Before sociology, i pictured jails as places with bars and prisoners had to sit in their cell all day and they werent aloud out. Sociology has not only taught me what jails really are, it has taught me how wrong jails treat the prisoners. I had the idea that prisoners are people who did illegal things and needed to sit in a jail cell. Prisoners do illegal things for reasons such as mental problems or drugs abuse and they cant control themselves. i realize how i should look down upon them becuase they have problems just liek all of us but they deal with them in different ways.
The Average Girl:
Before sociology, I saw those magazine ads and beleived them. i though all the girls in the magazines truly looked perfect. i knew they used make up, but i didnt realize all the computer engineering they put into making these girls looks perfect. I think that our society has put stress on girls and guys to look a certain way but looking at it with a sociological point of view, i realize that things like looking flawless arent important, its what you do that makes you who you are not the way you look.
Deviance:
Before sociology, i looked at people doing different things in public as strange or creepy. i would see someone standing in a public place doing literally nothing and think they were creepy and doing soemthing wrong. sociologically, people have differnt ideas of what is normal and judging one on things they do out of the ordinary is wrong.
Racism:
Before sociology, i saw people who have dark skin as black and brown skin as indian, asian looking people as chinese. i didnt differentiate bewteen different kind of people. calling a japanese man chinese is like calling a jewish person catholic. japanese and chinese are 2 different people. Sociology has taught me that judging who someone is by skin color is giving me the wrong idea of who people are. it is important to ignore the color of skin someone has and even more important to get to know someone by who they are.

OVERALL:
Soc has taught me a lot about life and i really enjoyed the class. Thank you Sal you were an awsome teacher!!!

Racism

Racism is created by people in society judging other on the color of their skin. I believe the measures we take to avoid racism create more racism. Colleges accept people partly based on the color or their skin because they want a more diverse campus. I think since there are expectations that there will be diversity, it creates more racism. College acceptance should be based on you skill in school. Also, jobs look for people who are diverse because they don't want to get in trouble and be considered racist because the majority of their workers are white. The extremes we go to in order to create diversity divides up people into groups even more. Also, when statistics show what percent of a community is black or mexican it seperates them into being different than the whites in the community. It is much easier to say the number of people in the community and ignore the specifics because the specifics make it seem as if the other skin colors are different from the majority.

CRASH

We watched Crash in class this week and it was the first time I had seen the movie. It is now one of my favorite movies. The scene that sticks out the most to me was when the upper class white woman was complaining about different races. She was blaming the cleaners which were most likely Asian, her house cleaner who was Mexican, and the guy who changed her locks for her. She blamed them for doing their jobs wrong, however, if it had been a white person doing the job the same way she would have thought they were doing a perfect job. Our society assumes that a job is to be done by a certain race and it is unusual for a white person to do these jobs. I was reading something on a website the other day about a Mexican man mowing his lawn. He was upper class and he was outside of his house in a nice neighborhood. A neighbor drove by who hadn't met him yet. She asked him if he was looking for more jobs and because she needed her lawn mowed. He was a Mexican mowing a lawn in a nice neighborhood so she assumed that was his job and she wouldn't think that he could live in the same neighborhood as her. If it was a white man mowing the lawn outside the house, she would never have stopped and asked if he could mow her lawn because she would assume he lived there. The preconceived ideas out society has creates racism and we need to realize that anyone can be in any social position before we assume their place in society.

family social class

My parents both grew up in similar social classes. My mom grew up in Bay City, Michigan. Her dad owned a scrap yard and her mom was a teacher. They were middle class, had a nice house and my mom and her sister had the opportunity to go to good schools to prosper in their futures. My dad grew up in Hinsdale, Illinois. His dad worked in the auto industry and his mom was a teacher. They were middle class, had a nice house and my dad, his sister, and his brother were able to go to good schools inorder to prosper in their futures. They were both in the middle middle class and i think now my family would be considered upper middle class. My parents both work hard inorder to grow from where they started from. It's hard to say if my grandparents were in the same social class becuase times have changed so much that it's hard to tell what was middle class now may be lower class now. The school that i go to and plan on going to for college and my goal as a career hopefully will land be in the same social class i am in now. since i grew up this way it is hard to imagine not being in this class and not having children in this class. especially after watching the videos and reading the stories about the people in such poor conditions becuase their families didnt have money. i am motivated to be in the upper middle class when i get older and hopefully my motivation will get me somewhere.

High School & Social Class

In high school, kids social class is determind by their parents. The jobs their parents have place them into a certain social class. Most students at stevenson are in the upper middle class becuase our parents work hard and live in the area in order to send us to stevenson. i dont think the social class your in effects your friends inside the school becuase most of us are in the same class, the friends we make inside school just so happen to be the same as us. however, friends from outside of school do depend of social class becuase usually outside friends are made doing soemthing of interest. for example, you may belong to a nice country club and the people who belong there also have a lot of money, and are in the same social class as you. someone of a lower social class wouldnt belong to a country club. also friends that are made from a sporting team usually are in the same class. the wealthy play sports like polo with other wealthy people and lower class people wouldnt be playing polo. this summer i went on a community service trip in hawaii. the trip was a lot of money and all of the kids on the trip were from the east coast like new york city and long island besides me and my friend from chicago. someone who didnt have a lot of money wouldnt not have been able to go on the trip, there fore social classes have similar interests and have the opportunity to do the same things.
to move down in a social class would be a lot harder to adjust to than moving up. moving down forces you to make changes to cut back on things where as moving up a social class allows you to have more opportunities to do more things.
Marrying someone in a different class would be tough. your interests wouldnt be the same and your backgrounds would be different. your friends and family would be interested in somethings and your spouses friends and family would be interested in others.

Deviance

In class, we defined 'deviance' as something that breaks social norms. Standing in public for a short period of time would break social norms, or doing something nice for a complete stranger. Things that are caring or nice to someone else is so out of what our society is used to becuase most people are so absorbed into themselves that they dont take the time to help strangers for no reason. i took the train down town this weekend with my friends and when we got on the train it was almost full. there was a lot of us and we all wanted to sit near eachother so we walked up and downt he whole train looking for somewhere to sit. when we finall decided that we would all sit seperately, a couple stood up and told us to take their seats becuase there were enough empty ones around that seat for us all to sit. we were confused of why they were willing to do this. we had never met them before and we didnt do anything to help them but they were willing to give up their seats for complete strangers. it was just 2 nice people doing something good, but in our society its out of the norm to do so. i tried to think of a reason of why they did this for us. i realize now that there was no reason for it, they saw that we were having trouble finding a seat and they were willing to give us theirs out of the kindness of their hearts.

The Average Girl...

girls in magazines and on tv today are potrayed as perfect, beautiful, and skinny. Girls in the real world, especially teenagers, think they need to look like these girls on tv so they harm themselves in order to get the perfect image. i think our society needs to lighten up on the pressure we put on girls. no one should think the way the look is wrong. the girls in the media arent real people. they are average looking people who are made up to look perfect. i watched a show the other day called toddlers and tiaras. little girls from less than a year old to around 5 years old are made up to win a beautfy competition. it sends the girls a terrible message from a young age that looks will help you get ahead. i think its rediculous that our society puts so much into the way we look and it effects our lives in every aspect.

Jails

This week in class we watched a show and read an article about jails in the US. Almost everything we learned about the jails shocked me. I had the picture of jails in my head as a bed in a tiny space with bars and a guy being locked up inside the bars all day. It was completely different in the movie. There were tiny rooms with an actual door and 3 or 4 guys in a room. It was also shocking to me that most of the jails in the US don't have programs to help the criminals. They just lock them up and treat them badly, then let them back out onto the streets with nothing to help them improve. One jail in the show did have a program that tried to teach the criminals how to live their lives and not commit crimes, however, jails like that are fairly new and very rare. I think jail only worsens the problems of the criminals. Sitting all day and having nothing to do but think promotes them to want to do more illegal things. They have no brain stimulation whats so ever so they aren't motivated to change themselves. Our jail system is like a revolving door. Prisoners go to jail, spend their time thinking or more ways to break the laws, get out of jail, break more laws and go back into jail and start all over again. We need to fix the problem in jails by making all jails be required to provide help for the criminals. By helping them, we help ourselves because the more they follow the laws, the more we have to worry about them harming us.

Saints Vs. Roughnecks

I think stevenson is made up of mostly saints. We are mostly considered upper, middle class and we get away with most things. most students at shs have the money to get the cars to get them out of the public eye when they are doing things they shouldnt be doing. if we couldnt afford the cars, there would be more things occuring in town or in public and more chance of gettin g caught. most shs students come off as being really good at acidemics and sports and rarely breaking the rules. However, there are the occasional rougnecks that cause trouble and get consequences for it.

Nature vs. Nurture

In class we talked about the young girl who was kept locked up with no social interactions for 12 years. First hearing about this, I didn't think there would be any scientific studies coming from it, i thought it was just a very sad story of a girls life. Then we discussed how she had no language skills, could barely walk, and still wore diapers at age 12 yet she still was fascinated by humans. She would look at people for a long time and try to connect with them even though she had no communication skills. This shows that social interaction is nurture. We, as people, need socialization in order to survive. However, the way we interact with people is determined by nature, as are most of our lives. It is just so happens that the people around us, like family, also picked up similar traits so it seems as if it is nurture rather than nature.

Tuesdays With Morrie- Dependency

In what ways are Americans afraid of being dependent on others? Do you think that this is related to our value of independence and freedom? In what ways do you depend on other people? Does this bother you?

Americans have a fear of depending on other people. People think that they need to be able to do everything on our own. Some are afraid of commitment in relationships because that means relying on others. Some don't want their children to be too close with their grandparents because they are worried the grandchildren will be put down when their grandparents pass away if they are too close. We fear death, there fore we fear depending on one who may die. We value freedom and independence because we have that right. Some people don't have the freedom we have, and we take it for granted by only wanting to be independent and not using dependency. Although we are independent people, we all do depend on people for things. I depend on my parents for shelter and providing me with money and a good life. I depend on my school to educate me and my friends to provide me with entertainment. It doesn't bother me because I think to some extent, dependency is a good thing. family and friends are there to be relied on and as long as we don't depend on people too much, it is good for us.

Cards

Our society's daily norms could be comical to someone from Japan. Just by sitting in a chair with out legs crossed would be recognized as a rude gesture to someone from a different culture. The card game we played this week helped us experience the diversity that is found all over the world. Each table was given a different set of rules for the card game and once the different rules were put into one game, the players could no longer understand what was going on. Just as if you took someone from America, Japan, Libya, and put them all together, their "rules" would also be different and it would make it difficult to understand eachother their their separate ways of life. Sociologically we are all brainwashed into thinking our ways are the right ways but outside of the fishbowl there's a whole world with different norms.

Social Construction of Reality

How is their reality in the neighborhood socially constructed? What are the unwritten rules that govern how you can or can’t act? How do you think this construction came about? Can you see their racist attitudes as a social construction?



Their social triangle starts at the bottom with the black and other races. the different races are seperated by the towns they live in, shown in the movie by a change in music. above the other races are the younger teenage boys who think they are higher in society than they really are, like C and his friends. Next, is the working class like C's parents becuause they are well respected but they arent in power. the highest is sonny and his group. they got the highest status not because people liked them so much but people feared them. the unwritten rules were that you couldnt disrespect sonny or anyone who he liked becuase he would get back at you. also, it was an unwritten rule that you couldnt go into other races towns. it came about becuase over time people did things that made them seem "better" than another social class. the lower social classes feared the higher ones so they were less than them. their racist attitudes are very apprent in their social construction becuase thats the basis of their social triangle and within the triangle, certain groups of races are higher than others.

Identity Molecule

As a person in our society, you are identified by what groups you belong to. These groups change over the course of your life and the changes in groups changes who you are as a person. When i was younger I belonged to many groups like sports teams,dance classes, and school friends but the most influencial and important group in my life was my family. They were the ones I spend the majority of my day with and they were the ones I wanted to be with and looked up to. My master status was a daughter or a sister. As I am getting older, my groups are changing and the influences on my life are changing. In junior high my biggest influences were the girls on my cheer team. I had hours of cheer practice each day all the way through freshman year and I indentified myself as a cheer leader, and thats what people knew me as. Now that I have stopped cheering, and that group is out of my life, the major group I identify with is my group of friends. I have plenty of different groups of friends, but there is a group of 6 girls who i consider my best friends. We are together at any moment we can be and they have a huge influence on my life. We talk the same, enjoy the same things, and think the same way. I couldn't imagine my life without them becuase they are my life. My family is still a huge part of my life but I think as we get older we realize that we have a choice of who influences us and we pick people that relate to us rather than our family becuase our family has been there and already had their share of influences on us. i think that everyone is who they are because of the people in their life. It's not a fact of liking them or not, but either way they have an effect on the person you are.

Are You Gonna Eat That?

The survivors of F-227 were extremely lucky to have survived the plane crash, however, they were less lucky than those that died. They were left with nothing. They had little hope that they would be rescued but as soon as they heard that the search for their plane had been called off, the little bit of hope left had vanished. They had no food and were growing weaker by the day. The dead bodies that lay in the snow had come across every ones mind, but no one dare mention the idea out loud. Since our societies have influenced us to think that no matter what, it is wrong to eat humans. Even if it's for survival, there's no way that it could be okay for a human to eat another human. The survivors could either die a slow death, or eat the human remains and live. Some made the unimaginable leap and ate the dead bodies, yet some could not change their mindset that society put on them. They knew they would die if they didn't do it, but there was no way they could do something so wrong. Now, in order to make a real decision, you would have to be in the situation, but, just thinking about it, if you were one of the F-227 survivors, would you have eaten the bodies? I've thought about this from many point of view and tried to figure out what I would truly do. I couldn't come up with an answer myself so I asked my parents. My mom had a simple answer of no because she thinks it would be too gross. My dad's answer is the one that made up my mind. My dad said he would absolutely do it. He said that if I was dead and some how I knew my dad was alive and had to eat my body in order to survive, would I want him to eat it? Of course I would. And if I was alive and my dad was dead he would absolutely want me to eat his body. It's repulsive to think about eating any human, let alone a family member, but you can be forgiven by that person, and you would never forgive yourself if you had the chance of food and gave it up because society taught you it is gross.

Silence

In our society, silence is awkward becuase we are so used to moving so fast and always having something going on around us that silience is unusual and we don't know how to act in a situation of silence. Theres always a need to fill the silence with words or actions. Everyone experiences awkward silences, when a teacher is frustrated with their class they yell, and after they yell there is always the awkward silence before they can get back to their lesson. People talk not always because they have something important to say, they talk because it is silent and they want to fill the silence in with words. It affects us as listeners beacuse we are so used to people talking that we don't always pay attention to what they are saying. When someone says something that is important and worth hearing, we don't realize it becuase we are used to the constant sound of people talking and we are unable to distinguish important things from the unimportant.

Who am i?

Hi! I'm Jenny Anderson and I am a junior in Sal's first period class. At school, I am involved in Give, Student Embassador, Big Brothers Big Sisters, and Student Council. I am not always the most outgoing, but when I have something to say I speak my mind. I love meeting new people and building relationships with them. Freshman year I was on cheer leading at school and I couldn't imagine what my life would be like without it because, although I no longer cheer, I met one of my best friends from cheer. She is one of the biggest influences on my life and I always turn to her when I need advice. My family also has a huge influence on my life. I'm extremely close with my parents and they are there for me no matter what. My brother also has influenced me becuase, although we aren't as close as I'd like us to be, he is always there for me to talk to or have a good laugh with. I enjoy myself the most when I'm with my friends and I would do anything for them. Music plays a big role in my life because whenever I'm in a bad mood or stressed about something, music helps me relax.
Highschool has made me into the person I am. Over the 3 years, I've learned so much from my friends, my teachers, and my mistakes. Also, this summer I went to Hawaii for a month to do community service work. The 80 hours of service we did changed me. It gave me a different perspective on life. I realized that people need help and it's my job to help them. I got the oportunity to build a house for Habitat for Humanity. The family whose house we were building was also there helping to build their house. Hearing their story and why they needed their help gave me a better understanding of how people get into these less fortunate situations and gave me a better idea of how I could help them. We also went to the Ronald Mcdonald house to help sick kids and their families. We cleaned the rooms to make sure there so no chance of the kids getting more sick, we made meals for the families, we ate with the families, and we played with the sick children. The couldn't do anything about the situation they were in, but from us being there, it put a big smile on their faces and it momentarily stopped their worries. It also put a smile on my face to know that I was able to help someone who needed it out and I will remember this experience throughout my life time.
After highschool, my goal is to go to college, I don't know where, but I know that I want to work with kids. I work at a childcare center in a fitness club and I love interacting and learning more about the kids each day. I took sociology becuase I want to learn more about the way people think and why they do things. Hopefully, after this class I will be able to look at things in a different light and understand the way people think.