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The reason I am taking Soc 101 is for that exact reason. It is one of the classes that I am missing to fulfill my general education requirements. When I went into this class I was not exactly sure what to expect. I was not sure what sociology meant or what the study of sociology meant, but after Professor Green described it, I am more interested in the subject now. I hope to learn maybe something about myself. Why I am the way I am, or behave the way I do. I hope to be able to analyze myself, from what I have learned from the class. By being a party of this class, I believe that I will bring a lot of discussion to the class.
Subjects that I do not have a lot of knowledge on often cause curiously which leads me to asking questions. I think I will ask questions that will start section discussions each week. I look forward to learning more about sociology. ?CҐ,-. ?0 Today my outlook is different. Over the course I have learned a lot about what sociologist analyze in the world today, and over the course I have found myself tying things that I used to take for granted, back to what I have learned in this course. One topic that we discussed in class was about social norms. What was normal in society and what was not?
In discussion I remember this topic vividly because I remember Professor Green giving the example of a male being able to scratch his private parts with no up roar reaction, but If a female did that, it would cause disgust. At that point It made me think about social norms. Why was It was k for males to do that and not females? In an assignment we had on social norms It was the perfect time to teach my friends a little bit about what I had learned in sociology and to see what they thought; I was going to break social norm. Their reaction was priceless. When given this assignment, I had no idea what I was going to do.
As the weekend approached, I thought that would be the perfect time to do something that would throw my friends for a loop. On Saturday night, the plan was to all meet up at my house and we were going to go out to a party. It was not until everyone had arrived that I suddenly came up with an idea. I was almost ready, all I had left was to put on my shoes and that is where I decided to break a social norm. As I completed my outfit, I put on one tennis shoe and one flip flop and walked out into the living room where everyone sat waiting. When I first walked out It was hard to keep from smiling.
One of my girl friends said, you trying to decide what shoe to wear? ? 1 said no, wearing these shoes. They all looked at me puzzled. They had that kind of look like, she It was not normal for them to see me or anyone In Tanat case wearing two Deterrent snows. You never see people doing that. As I continued walking around the house in these two different shoes, they all Just laughed at me, asking me if I was serious. It was hard to stay confident, and trying not to laugh with them was the hardest. After about 20 minutes of walking around the house we finally were ready to go.
I went in my room and changed my shoes. I then came out and told my friends what I was doing, and explained to them how society has impacted us. I asked them, why is it not k for people to wear two different shoes? And I told them it is because it is not normal in our society. It was not normal because in society that is not what you see. It is not even an option to buy two different shoes as a pair. In stores you only see pairs of shoes that match. Although one fits a left foot and the other fits a right foot, they are identical in colors and style.
In advertisements and in the media you always see people wearing matching shoes, and to be seen in mismatch shoes would be pretty embarrassing. Because of the media and advertisements, wearing the same shoes is the only thing we recognize as being normal, not wearing two different shoes. Many of my friends were very interested and I could tell they really thought about it. Although this assignment was somewhat embarrassing, I had fun doing it and I think I taught my friends a little bit about sociology. Another topic that we tended to focus a lot on that I found relations to in my life was the idea of sociological imagination.
In the book, Big Picture?C,-1?0 sociological imagination is defined as the and ability to look at the connection between who we are as individuals and the larger social and historical forces that shape our lives. ?C,-1?0 In other words you do not know why a person may be the way he or she is unless you know what they have been through. You cannot relate on a personal level to that person until you have witnessed their experiences. I felt this was the overall concept of sociology. It is a way for a person to look at their life as a result of their interaction with society.
The sociological imagination examines these and figure out why I am the way I am and also why I have chosen to do certain things For me I have faced many issues in my life that I consider personal, but one that I can tie back to imagination?C,-1?0 that may some what seem as a humorous story is one that actually happened to a friend of mine, but then later also effected me. My friend who had been dating her boyfriend for a couple years decided to break up. After her break up she was depressed and never wanted to do anything. She changed as a person, and became someone I no longer recognized.
I ad no idea why she was acting the way she was. She acted as if someone had died. My friend and I exchanged many words, sometimes hurtful but it was not until a few months later that me and my boyfriend faced the same issue. My opinion immediately changed after that moment. I knew exactly what she was feeling when this happened to her. My attitude changed and I soon became a stranger to my friends. I relate this issue back to because when this happened to my friend my opinion on it was to Just get over it, but when it happened to me, I realized it was not that easy. In society it is so normal to have a boyfriend.
It somewhat feels like something your expected to have, because eventually It wall lead to marriage Ana or naval a Tamely. It Is not Like we can Just go out right after a break up and be with any guy we see. It Just is not normal. Society has shaped us to think that we be single all our lives. Eventually we have to find someone or else be lonely forever. The only solution to this problem was to be in my shoes, and once I was I knew exactly how she felt. Any situation that people go through I think should be tied back to sociological imagination because it is the truth.
No one knows what one is going wrought until you yourself experience it. On a more emotional note, in what was stated previously, the social imagination which explains why we live the life we do or do the things we do makes this concept very important to me. In my life there is a story, and not until I took this course did I learn why my life was the way it was or why I did things the way I do. I grew up without a mother, pretty much all my life. She died from breast cancer when I was only five and ever since I have learned to become a woman, basically on my own.
Growing up with a family of boys, I never had the omen role model and till this day I still do not. Before this course in sociology, it would make me emotional when I question myself with why it had to happen to me, but now I know it was because it was to make me the person I am today. It has made me do things that I never in million years would have thought to do. I have been a participant in many breast cancer events and I even held a fundraiser where I raised 5300 dollars in order to donate to the American Cancer Society.
For me, sociological imagination, although I found a story in it, it also opened a pathway for me to see life in a different perspective. Today, our society is what we would refer to as a capitalist society. Although Capitalism is huge among our society it was hard for me to relate it to my personal life. I had trouble comprehending exactly what the concept was unfolding. Capitalism, which is an economic system based on private property in which revenue seeking individuals, companies or businesses compete in the marketplace is exactly how we live today. We live in a society where there is room for competition.
In a communist society, the system is based on everyone being given the same things and no one being able to compete to make money. Capitalism has impacted my life in many ways. Capitalism is everything. It is in school, my family, and even in the Jobs I work. My family consists of a family of four, not because my parents had to have a family of four but because they wanted to. In China, because they are a communist country, everyone is given the same amount of freedom. No one is better than the other, but everyone is equal. For example in the newarticle14 around the you are only aloud to have one child.
If you have more than one, they take your child away from you. Here, unlike China, looking for a Job goes pretty much as you please. You are able to choose where you want to work and which Job is going to pay more. As school goes, you are able to choose what classes you want, and sometimes if you are lucky, what teachers you want to have. Capitalism is almost like freedom. Without it everyone would be the same and there would be no room for competition or options. We need capitalism in order to have choices. If we were ruled by the government, who told us that we all had to be the same, the world would be a boring place to live.
Every family would be the same, every working man and women would make the same amount of money ND it would be like looking at your-self in a mirror all over the world. If everyone was n Dealing ten same as everyone else In ten world, Ana 010 not want to compete with one another for more money, then capitalism would not be necessary. Economy has had a dramatic effect on me and many other people living in California. Today the economy has become almost unbelievable. With gas prices rising to almost 4 dollars a gallon is ridiculous. The price of living is almost unimaginable.
For me the economy has made it almost impossible for me to live on my own, let alone survive. Any student living in our economy, going to school full time and working part time is barley getting by. Although the goal of capitalism is to give everyone their freedom and independence, the economy has made it very hard to live and be independent, and that is why I am where I am now. Living at home, working two part time Jobs and going to school full time. Although it is almost unimaginable it is due able. The fact of the matter is though; I am able to make a choice.
I can either go to school or work full time, or do both. There is no one telling us what we have to do as an order. We are given options. If I wanted to move out I could, but I would have to work a lot more than I do now. Although it is hard to get by today, glad I have the choice to make my own independent decisions. For me I agree with what Karl Marx says about our society. In Big it states that Marx believes that economy determines society. ?C,-1?0 Max Weber believed that ideas were more important and thought that those and other contributions shaped our society.
In world though, the economy does shape our society, or at least that is what I believe. The way we live, the clothes we where, the places we go, the families we have are all because of the economy. The society we live in today, no one cares about ideas anymore, it is all about how much money you have and where you stand in society. No one is going to listen to a homeless person on the streets who might have a good idea, but they are going to listen to someone with higher power, maybe someone with money who can actually buy himself to the top to prove a point.
In politics, there is never a poor person running for president, it is always people with money, who have higher power than everyone else. Economy says everything about the society we live in today. One of my favorite themes in this course was gender. It was Just interesting to hear different opinions people had on this topic. For this topic, I lead the discussion in my section. I was glad to have picked that week to lead discussion because I have a lot of different thoughts on gender and recently I encountered a situation that made me think about this topic after the situation had occurred.
While at a Padre Game with a group of friends, we were leaving walking towards the trolley when my male friend was approached by another person who started to bad mouth him. My friends first reaction was to stand up for himself, so him and this other errors started to get close to one another bumping each other with their chests. My friend, who was male, was with a group of girls, one of us being his girlfriend. She was the first one to notice that the person her boyfriend was about to get in a fight with was not who he thought it was.
He was about to fight a female, who could barely be identified as a female because of her short hair and her boyish clothing. Once we all realized her name was Heather and her friends were telling her to stop, we shouted for him to stop because he was about to fight a female, which was something he would never do. When we got on the trolley we were laughing about it, out teen I tongue auto It I leaned to my Eternal slating next to me Ana toll near now I had Just been discussing gender in my sociology class. I wondered why it made a difference that she was a girl.
Why did my friend automatically back off when he figured it out that she was a girl? I never witnessed something like that. I have seen girls that dress like guys and sometimes you have to really analyze the person, but this was the first time I really started to think about it. It made me think about the reading it Means to be Gendered Me?C,-1?0 by Betsy Local from the kook Mapping the Social Landscape by Susan J. Ferguson. The reading described the life of a woman who was similar to what I witnessed at the baseball game.
In the book the women describes her life as sometimes hard but because society only has two gender structures, she has to deal with the consequences. Recently an event occurred at San Diego State that has everyone talking, including people around the world. It struck a discussion among the campus that I related back to sociology. Of the 96 students who were arrested, 75 of them were students at SUDS. It made me wonder why those students did what they did. Was it because of their family, gender or socioeconomic class that caused these students to take action in this illegal action?
Was it because of society and the influence that drugs and weapons have on us or was it Just because they wanted to experiment with new things, and maybe needed some extra money? It is something that still makes me wonder even now. Behind each situation in life there is a theory. At least that is how it is analyzed in a sociological outlook. Are systematic and ever-evolving expressions that, in sociology, seek to explain why we act and think as we do?C,-1?0 (Witt 2007: 5). In every condition I encountered, It made me think why I acted and thought as I did.
From putting on different shoes to not being able to identify a girl who was dressed like a boy. Over the time being in Sociology 101, I feel that I have learned a lot. Some things that we went over in class got to me on and emotional level and some discussions in class were very intense. The week we discussed Capitalism, the topic got to me in an emotional way. We had the guest speaker who was the actor in Marx in Soho (which I watched) and also a few who Joined our discussion that day. One T. A ho I can not seem to remember his name broke down our system a little bit better.
The way he spoke and the way he delivered his message had some kind of effect on me. It really made me question why I was going to school and getting an education and what will happen if I am not successful in life. What would I tell my family or how would I survive. It was a matter of what I could do to make the world different, and some ways a better place. Sociology has now become one of my favorite subjects. Although sometimes some subjects are boring, many of them make you really think about life. Why everything happens and why people act the way they do. I find myself relating a lot of things I hear or see back to sociology.
I think about things before I react and try to pass the word on to friends. They sometimes look at me weird but when they think about it, it catches them by surprise, Just as it did to me when I was taught it. It is hard to imagine how I was so oblivious too subject that is all around us. It is what we see, do, and hear about every day. It is our society that we live in that makes I t ten way It Is ay when I enrolled In sociology 101 at ten Degrading AT ten ear, I never would have thought it would become a subject of interest, one that I am almost tempted to change my major to.
But I love to look beyond the box and I love to help others and I think that is what sociology is all about. At the beginning of the year when I had written about what I hoped to accomplish out of this course, I think I have. I now have learned something new about myself, why I am the way I am and why I react and behave the way I do. I am glad that I took this course and if it was not a GE course, I would recommend it to all students. I would call it a class that will leave a lasting impression on many.