Final post

This year in sociology we had to do our first blog post about our selves. I thought I knew who I was and I knew everything there was to know. This year has changed my way of thinking. I am now more sociologically mindful, I see things and people in a way that I have never viewed things as. I feel I am more understanding about people and where they come from and who they are. I've learned that you need to have an open mind to things to fully understand. The community service part of the class also helped me understand a world that I was not familiar with. It thought that volunteering was boring and frankly a waste of my time but its opened my eyes to see that giving back is very rewarding. This class has thought me more life skills that I will actually use than any other class I've taken at school.

Crash

This week in class we watched the film Crash. It's about different people of different races and how their lives interact with one another. This film shows how race can be intentional and unintentional, for example in the film two black people get pulled over by a white male and the police officer sexually harasses the black women when she is being searched. Later on the women gets into a car accident and the man who touched her ended up being the on who saves her life after she refuses him to touch her. It is ironic because he knows what he did was wrong and he was the one who saved her. Another example in the movie of unintentional racism is when the off duty cop is give the black guy on the street a ride and then they start arguing and the black man says that he doesn't wana see what he has in his pocket implying it was a gun when really the man had nothing dangerous at all. The off duty officer ended up shooting him and it killed him, eventhough the black man seemed dangerous it was really the white man who was a threat. So eventhough people try and avoid racism it is always there in the back of everyone's mind.

Race

This week in sociology we talked about race and how it really doesn't exsit. Our society has made up race in our minds to make sense of things, like catagories. If you were to walk slowly from the northern hemisphere to the southern hemisphere you would be able to see the gradual change of skin color. Biologically there is no race, no way to determine if someone is white, black, purple or green. This separate our society and creates racism,  which is a battle the country is still facing today in 2013.

social class and poverty

This week in class we learned about social class and poverty. We learned about old money and new money and demonstrated that through an activity by playing monopoly. I was the one in my group who had the old money and through out the game I kept getting more wealthy. The girl in my group who started out with little or who would be in the lower class ended up loosing all her money and had nothing to her name at the end of the game. This is how it works in real life. The people who have a lot of money tend to be able to take risks and have a greater chance at success because in the game when I landed on someones lot I was able to pay my way out but the other girl in my group just kept loosing her money faster and faster because she wasn't making as much as she was spending in the game. In real life rich people are able to take chances because they have money to fall back on. If someone in the lower class tried to start a business they would be putting most of the money they have toward that, as for someone in the upper class they would fail over and over again and nothing bad would really happen to them. Even though it should be easier to move to higher social classes it is really hard in the real world.

volunteering

I volunteered at Claremont in Buffalo Grove, it is a rehab and living center for the elderly. When I got there I went and signed in and then went to the third floor where the mentally unstable elders were. I did many different activities the times I went, I helped pass out food and take trays away for them, I played games with them such as bingo, we did exercises in chairs (most are wheelchair bound), I painted nails and gave hand massages to the women. It was a completely different experience than I thought it was going to be. They had trouble doing many regular daily activities, such as walking or being able to feed them selves. It was an eye opening experience because I am not around many elderly people most of the time and it was interesting to listen to their stories because they lived in a completely different world than we do now. Sometimes it was hard to do what I was doing because it is so sad to see people living the rest of their lives in a wheelchair or not even being able to leave the top floor. They even had a passcode so none of the people living their could go up or down the elevators. It was a completely new and different experience for me and I'm glad I had the opportunity to do it.

Unfortunately they didn't like cell phones so I wasn't able to take a picture but I got my hours written up.

social class

This week in class we have been learning about social class. Our society defines people on many different things such as, income, wealth, education and how much your house costs. The wealthiest people are in the highest class and the poorest people are in the lower class. Almost fifty percent of Americans are on the poverty line, and only one percent of people are in upper class. The majority of the people who live around us are in the middle class. After learning about that, we learned that social stereotypes are what keeps us from going up or down in social levels. This tends to limit people because they think that they are bound by their social class. The area where we live in social class does not seem to affect us as much as it would if we were in a more diverse area.

Deviance

This week in class we learned about Deviance and how its different form what we know in are usual social norms.We looked at an article a group of students in the 70's called the Saints.They where a group of eight male white middle class students. Many people had said in the article  referring to the boys saying how great students they where and popular in the community.But They also violated some aspects of their school's society, like how they would ditch classes and and go to the pool hall but the teachers did not notice it.But there was another group in the school the Roughnecks that were not the greatest students to be at the school but they did the same types of things the saints did but they usually got caught. The Roughnecks were the ones who were shown to not be as successful later in life. Sometimes I do a positive deviance like washing the dishes because I would normally not do that.

Last week in class we learned about how men and women are portrayed in the media. We watched a documentary about how men are viewed as unemotional and the ways the let their emotions out is with anger and violence. Their violence was linked to the school shootings from being bullied. In shows and movies men are always the tough ones and if they show any weakness they are considered not manly. The boys at school act like this, they dont really show any emotions and they when do other boys at school make fun of them. I can see first hand at school how this is affecting the boys in society.

Media

This week in sociology we watched a couple films about how television and the media has a huge effect on our lives. The video talked about how toy companies market to young children. They make a show like spongebob for example and sell tons of products like lunch boxes, t-shirts, and toys. They also talked about how girls in the media are portrayed as super skinny and pretty. Due to this young girls are striving to look like the models on tv, but in real life only 5% of women in the world have that body shape. When Fiji got television the country went from liking being big to wanting the "western" look. This is wrong because not everyone has the same body shape and sometimes they photo edit the models to look a lot skinnier than they actually are. There are so many ways the media shapes our lives, when I look through magazines sometimes I wish I could look like the models but they don't actually look like the picture in real life.

Human Nature

This week in sociology we watched a show about a young girl who was neglected most her life. Her name was Danielle and one day a neighbor called the police because they saw a little girl in the window and they thought Danielle's mother only had two sons. When the police came to the house it was filthy and there all kinds of bugs in their home, when they came to the girls room she was in the corner in a soiled diaper. She was about 6 years old but she look like she was 2 or 3. She had animal like traits, she walked to the side almost like a crab, couldn't make eye contact, and was scared of other human interaction. She had the mental age of an infant maybe in the 6 month range. After she was adopted it improved but not much. This just shows us how love and affection actually do affect us greater than we realize. It can be the difference from having a mental disability or not. Danielle's case shows us to appreciate and love everyone around us because even though the affects aren't on the surface they have a lasting impact, especially when a child is developing.

Nothing and values

This week I'm sociology we talked about subcultures, subcultures are groups within a culture that aren't part of the norm. Each subculture has its own mores, folkways taboos and values. These aspects of a culture are tailored to each individual subculture, which makes each unique. These subcultures we find shape who we are as people. Our culture around us has a bigger influence in our lives than we notice. We also did a "nothing" assignment were we had to do nothing for ten minutes. It was a lot more challenging than I thought it was going to be. The whole time I felt like I should pull out my phone to check a text or the time, also I felt really awkward when standing alone and couldn't really keep my mind from thinking of nothing. Even though every student wants to do nothing for homework, they should be careful what they wish for.

God grew tired of us

This week in class we watched a movie called "God grew tired of us", it was about the lost boys of Sudan. They were forced from there homes and out of their country to a UN relief camp and stayed there the majority of their childhood. Then a few of the older boys were chosen to go live in America.  It was a complete 180 for them, going from getting water from a river for daily use to having water run from the sink. They have never had these luxyeries when they were growing up so even using the bathroom was a challenge because they had never used a toilet before. I think Americans take what we have for granite because we do not realize how easy we have it. This movie has made me realize how fortunate we are to live in such a privillaged society.

Culture Shock

This week in class we learned about culture differences and culture shock. Culture shock is the drastic change that one goes through when experiencing a new culture. We looked at different toilets that different culture throughout the world use. When the class saw these pictures everyone was like "That's so weird!", because we are not used to flushing the toilet to wash our hands, like the toilets in japan. A time where I experienced culture shock is when I went to Ireland. When my family went out to dinner and we were ordering our drinks the waiters at the restaurant did not know of some common drinks that people order in America, so we had to explain what was in them so they could make them for us. Also driving was complicated because everything was backwards for us and normal for everyone else on the road. When we got into the car I go in on the drivers side thinking it was the passenger because I am so used to doing so at home.

Stereotypes

This week in class we watched a movie called A Bronx Tale. It was about a boy named collodro who witnessed a murder by the neighborhoods mobster, Sunny. Collodro was asked About the murder and  denied that sunny commited the crime because a rat in their neighborhood was the lowest you could be. Sunny soon befriended him and gave him the nickname C. Throughout the entire movie there was a racism issue. People were separated by neighborhoods, blacks on one side Italians on another. Until one day Collodr rides with his father on one of his bus routes. There's a black girl who he finds attractive and after their first encounter on the bus he sees her at school and asks her out. The movie is filled with stereotypes, like when collodro meets Jane for the first time he thinks she is going to have an exotic name but in reality he's the one with the weird name, not her. Stereotypes like these still happen today  in the world we live in. Whenever I go to the city and drive through a prodominatly black area I get nervous because my whole life I've grown up around the ideas of stereotyping bad neighborhoods.

Groups

This week in class we learned about "in groups" and "out groups". When we walked into class we were separated into two groups, people who were wearing blue jeans and people who weren't. Then we were given 5 minutes to come up with reasons why the other group was wearing jeans or wasn't, depending on which group you were in. The reasons varied from "jeans were ugly", " because they wanted to",  "they were too lazy" or "they had no other clean clothes".  We then looked at the list and decided which reasons were judgmental and it turned out that the majority were. We did that because when people are categorized in groups they tend to judge others that are different. 

This happens all around us in everyday life. We have seen this happening back in the 1900s with the separation of whites and African Americans. This is still happening in our lives today, judging people based solely on looks. Most people try not to judge others, but its just the society we live in.  We have to be careful what we say or do to others because it affects other more than people realize. I see this happening all around me, sometimes I'm the one being excluded (out group) and sometimes I'm in the crowd (in group). It should be important to people to make sure that these "groups" affect people and how they act towards others around them.

social construction of reality

This week in class we learned about the social construction of reality, which means that the society that we live in influences how we experience the world around us. In class we did a couple of actives  which demostrated this idea, we looked at the difference that people see in spit and saliva. Saliva is completely normal when it is in our mouths, but the second it leaves our mouths as 'spit' people think it's disgusting. Why? It is because our society has created this idea that when saliva leaves our mouths it's gross, but really it's the exact same thing. Also we did an "Abandon ship" activity where we pretended to be 16 random people and we had to vote 7 people off our boat. People voted others off due to their backgrounds, for example I played an elderly women and the reason why I was voted off was because my character was old and had nothing to offer the group for 'survival'. The society there has created a view of what people are and are not capable of, therefore already desiding who was going to stay and who was going to be voted off.

sociological imagination and sociological mindfulness

This week in class we learned and discussed sociological imagination and sociological mindfulness.
Sociological imagination is understanding that people are affected by where they live and what time period they live in. For example, I would probably not be the same person I am now if I was born during WWII verses being born in the present day. This is due to the different factors such as technology, values, traditions and the environment.

Sociological mindfulness is appreciating and realizing the unique qualities of others and looking past stereotypes and judgement. For example, it would be to realize what people actually have going on in their lives and what they are personally going through. This explains why people act the way they do and how what you do affects others. People now often judge people based solely on their looks or what they are wearing, if everyone just gave new or "different" people a chance before they judged them our society would be a much peaceful place.

Relating these topics to my life, I would not be the same person I am today if I had not moved to a different part of the suburbs due to the fact that I made all new friends and they influenced who I am now. Also I took on more responsibilities with moving, which ultimately changed my attitude and views towards people and made me have more respect for people.

Who Am I..

Well my name is Nolan I am a junior in high school. I have brown hair, brown eyes, and last time I checked I was around 5'5. I am originally from a small suburb but my parents got divorced before high school and now I live with my dad and sister . I have three cats at my dads house, Chewy, Kitty and Teddy, three turtles and a snake. At my moms house I have two cats Buddy and Poppy, I'm kind of a crazy cat lady. I have an older sister named Natalie she is nineteen and a freshman in college. In my free time I enjoy hanging out with my friends and visiting my sister as often as I can. I love to travel too, this summer I am taking a trip to poland for a few weeks. That's basically me in a nutshell.