Week 6- Cards and Culture

                   This week in class we started Tuesday off playing a card game, and Sal each gave us directions on how to play. The goal of our game was to put the highest number down, but if you had a diamond, put that one down and you automatically win. Aces were low. As our  We were allowed a few practice rounds and my group and I started getting the hang of it. Then, Sal instructed us to play without talking. For our group, it was pretty easy to do that because we all knew how the game was played and could use motions to communicate. However, when Sal told the winner of the round, which was me, to move to the next table, things changed. Again, we couldn't talk. We could only start the game. We began to play, and I threw down a diamond in order to win. However, when everyone had put down their cards, another kid took the cards and signaled that he had won the round. I was so confused! I was supposed to win that round! Then, during another round, a kid put down an ace, and won, even though I was told that aces were low. I was starting to get a little frustrated, but I couldn't talk and didn't want to argue non-verbally so I just went along with it. After playing for a few minutes or so, Sal told us to stop playing and all of a sudden we all started arguing about who was right and who was wrong and why we should've won that one round, and that aces were low, etc. Sal suddenly interrupted us, saying "Each table was a different culture. And you all were put into a situation of culture shock". Sal also discussed ideas, such as ethnocentrism, which is the  tendency to view other groups or cultures as inferior to your own. In my head, I started to think about how true he was, and realized that I had thought I was right because that's what my "culture" taught me. I was being ethnocentric! It was crazy to think that just in a matter of 15 minutes, we all faced a symbolic brainwashing, in which we each were told what was right and what was wrong, and then grew critical towards people that weren't doing the "right thing".
            Now, from a very small scale, this is not a big deal. But if you think about this globally, this thing happens every second of every day. I would bet that the majority of the American population believe that other countries should change in order to fit our own culture, and vice versa. I am assuming this because I have experienced this first-hand, even if it was on a smaller scale. Freshman year, my advisory and I began to have a debate on whether or not there should be one common language amongst the world's population, and if so, which one. I argued that, no, there should not be one common language, because although it would make things easier in the long run, language is a vital part of culture, and we could also never decide on which language to make the 'official language' be. However, one of my classmates began to say that if it were ever to happen, that we should make everyone speak English, and I asked him why, and he said something along the lines of "Because that is what we know and we are better than the other languages, because America is the best". This is a perfect example of ethnocentrism, for it shows that this guy thought that just because we spoke English, we were obviously better. However, I think that someone speaking Korean, or French, would say the same thing about their own language. It is crazy to think that we have become so assimilated to our own cultures that we want what is best for ourself and would benefit ourself the most, rather than wanting what is right and equal.
This experience in class was  really powerful one that made me take a step back and examine the world from a bigger perspective and realize just because we live in a certain culture doesn't mean our culture is the best.

Week 5- A Bronx Tale

This week in Sociology, we watched a movie, "A Bronx Tale", which is about a kid growing up in an Italian Village in the Bronx in the 1950's. The movie captures his journey through adolescence and was a great example of the sociological mindfulness, as well as generalizations, which we also discussed when we read, "Should We Generalize" by Joel Charon. The movie was very powerful and was a great example of how we truly are shaped by when and where we live and that the people around us will always impact us, for better or for worse. Many racial issues came up in the movie, especially seen through the main character's best friends discussions of the African-Americans living near them. However, I found it very inspiring and moving that the main character did everything he could to be civil and ultimately non-discriminatory with the African-American group, which we saw through him dating an African-American girl, and saving her brother from a "brawl" with the Italians. From this, we saw that there truly are good people out there that mean well, and aren't always generalizing about people, which was an idea discussed in Charon's article. This article, along with the movie, showed that although generalizations and stereotyping are inevitable, there is such thing as an accurate generalization, and that if we try our best to accurately generalize, then generalizations can become beneficial, as seen in "A Bronx Tale". This movie, although very different from my life, reminded me of the many stereotypes that we make everyday.

Everyone stereotypes. Like I said before, it's inevitable. I hear about 10 or 15 stereotypical comments/generalizations a day, some about Jewish stereotypes, and less noticeable ones, such as hearing comments like, "you're wearing black. therefore, you must be having a bad day" (which is another thing we discussed in class this week). I have always tried my hardest to not generalize about people, just because I know that it can be hurtful and won't help the task that all humans must learn to do, which is to generalize accurately about people. This week taught our class a lot about human nature and how we do live in a constantly connected and stereotyping world, whether we want to or not.

My Service Experience

So I started a book drive, working with United Way and the book drive, Page it Forward, and I volunteered to be a representative from the high school. This weekend, I found out about a book sale near me that allowed for charities to come in after the sale and take what they wanted. I brought my friend along and we arrived to the place with about ten minutes until the sale ended and the charities could start. When I saw my school librarian, who told me about the sale and met me there to help me, I was really excited, but she seemed to have a purpose. As I looked around, I saw that there were tons of charities around and almost all of them looked like they wanted the same kind of books I wanted: children's books. My friend and I brought 2 small card board boxes to pack up the books we got, but as we looked around, we realized that we were nearly amateurs at this, because Bernie's Book Bank, another local charity, had a U-Haul in the back, 20-30 big bins and about 15 helpers with them. I was really nervous and I was afraid that I had no chance against this huge organization. So, as soon as the lady told us we could go into the warehouse, my friend and I pushed our way to the front and sprinted to the back of the room that held all the children's picture books. We literally filled our two tiny boxes up with books in nearly 5 minutes, and then found more and more boxes to fill. I just kept grabbing piles and piles of books, not even noticing what the were. My thought was "if the're for children, I want them". But that was exactly what all the other people around me thought! It was actually so intense and my friend and I were laughing at how intense it was and how much we were sweating, trying to load all of our boxes onto carts and into our truck, which at that point we had realized we had to pull up to the front, put all the seats down and start loading up the truck. I was amazed at how many books we kept getting. We probably made 10 or 15 trips back and forth to my car, each time with 5 or 6 boxes of books. The atmosphere in the warehouse was crazy and hectic, and many times ladies walked up to my boxes of books and taking my books! I was initially kind of mad, but then I realized something that I hadn't realized in my panic of trying to get the most books I could; every single person here was trying to do something good for others. I was astounded by how many charities were there, and I even talked to many of them, some who were getting books for a church drive, those who were going to ship books off to third world countries, and those were would resell the books to help raise money to fight against environmental problems. This moment, when the nice, old lady from a church book drive started looking through my books, has stuck with me since it happened and will stick with me forever. It truly amazed me that all of these people were so giving and that we were all trying to do the same thing: give. My service experience truly did change my life and made me realize that there are so many good people out there that all want to make a difference in someone else's life, just like I want to. The fact that I brought home about 40 boxes of books, (800-1000 books), which is truly amazing and exciting, was not nearly as rewarding as what I learned in that chaotic atmosphere in the warehouse stacked high with books: those who give are those that are good. I will never forget this experience and hope I have many more to come. It truly was inspiring.

Week 4- Social Construction of Reality

This week in Sociology we did a lot of activities involving the idea of social construction of reality, which is the idea that society constructs our idea of things, such as what is wrong versus what is right. One example he used was making a student spit onto a spoon. However, as soon as the spit came out of her mouth, our view on it suddenly changed and we were all pretty grossed out by it, whereas we view it as a good thing in our body. This shows social construction of reality because the society we live in has established that spit is bad when it's outside of your mouth, even though there is no real biological difference between inner spit and outer spit (weird way to put it, I know). Another thing that showed the social construction of reality and what our society values was the Ship activity in which we were all assigned different roles, such as college student or traveling poet, and we all had to decide who should be saved and who shouldn't. After doing this activity, we realized that we favored those that had qualities that our society seems to favor, such as good careers, intelligence and young age. It was interesting to see that we mostly all shared the same opinion about who was a "good person" and who was a "bad person" just based off of their descriptions. During this discussion, I began to think of another example of how a society values different things and I began to think how this is present in my life. I came to thinking about the Stevenson society and culture. Even though it is on a much smaller scale, I think we would all value people that work hard, are very friendly, and take leadership because that is the society we are placed into when we are at Stevenson. This week taught us a lot about the way in which society impacts us and that we truly are shaped by the people and things that occur around us.

Week 3- "Freaks and Geeks"

This week in class, we watched an episode from the show, "Freaks and Geeks", which was basically a typical high school setting show that took place in the 80's. This show offered new insight to what sociological mindfulness actually means when placed into a real-life situation. One good example of sociological mindfulness in the show was when Lindsay realized that Eli, who was a kid with disabilities, was being picked on. Lindsay walked up, picked up his books for him, and made sure he was OK after the bully verbally attacked him and knocked his book onto the floor. This act of kindness shows that Lindsay knew to do the right thing and did it, despite her outside environment, which would be telling her otherwise. I have seen this type of bullying happen a lot of times, and most of the time I act just as Lindsay did, and through doing so, I have realized how big of an impact that one action could have on someone's whole day, week, or even life. I once heard a story about a boy who was seen carrying his books home from school one day and another boy shoved his books onto the ground and broke his glasses. Then, another boy came up to the bullied kid and helped him up, and eventually became his friend. At the end of the story, we found out that the bullied kid was originally going to go home for the weekend and commit suicide, but because of the kindness from the one boy, he did not because he found something to look forward to in his life. This story was very powerful and basically emphasized sociological mindfulness, showing that we must always be aware of the others around us and always try to be tolerant and caring of others, because we can and do affect the people around us, whether it be intentional or not. I think that is what sociological mindfulness is about- it's about always trying to do the right thing and having good intentions when helping people, rather than just having self-motive and asking "What's in it for me?". We must always be aware of our surroundings, no matter what.