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.