Final Post!

This semester in Sociology i have learned so many values of people and America. I come from an upper middle class and am lucky for what I have. I never realized how many different social classes there were around America. have now learned that social class was a big part of my life. I always wanted to "fit in" with all my friends since they were wealthy and had designer clothes and got a car but after being hit by the real world of working and realizing you do not need all that stuff made me not want to be the same.The media has really tried to shape who we all should become and look like by having only one way. For females you have to be super skinny and sexy while males have to be very masculine. It is terrible to see how corrupt our social media is and how it is trying to change society not even for the better. Sociology makes me think and feel about the world and myself differently. Taking this class makes me look at the bigger picture in life and has helped me grow more as a person.

(Late) Tuesday With Morrie

We watched the movie "Tuesdays with Morrie" in sociology and learned a lot about culture and what American values mean to us. In the movies, Mitch valued work for success. He liked being successful and that is all he wanted to achieve in the end. But as the movie went on, he realized he wasn't very happy with the life he was living. I don't really agree that to be happy you have to succeed in everything you do and earn the most money by working. You may be the richest man in the world but if you aren't happy with your life, you're not only the richest you are the poorest. Many students in high school think the same way. To be successful you have to go through a lot of work to achieve our goal. But success that Americans value is different that what others value. My parents and I view success as achieving a goal and being happy with it. It's different for everyone though.

Crash

This week in sociology we watched this movie called Crash. The movie took place in California, where citizens that live separate lives collide in interweaving stories of race and loss. Race was related or interrelated throughout the characters in some way or another. Within the movie, there were different scenarios of people stereotyping each other and making problems because of the stereotypes. The movie taught me that race can sometimes divide even people in racial categories. It also showed me that race can be explicit with some people and implicit with others. When people hear me speak Bulgarian they always ask what language it is, and when I tell them it's Bulgarian, many people are shocked. They say I don't look foreign and tell me it's the same as Polish or Russian. While they may be similar, they also have there differences and whenever I'm out with my mom, they always assume were Polish because we have similar characteristics of Polish people, more or so my mom.

Race

This week we talked about how race does not exist. It is biological. We often categorize the people around us by their skin color. But you can't look at someone skin and assume their race. It is much more complex than that and you can be off by a lot. What I thought was really interesting was when we talked about how different people get more or less Vitamin D depending on where they live. The closer you are to the equator the more melanin you have making it easier for you to absorb Vitamin D and have darker skin. The people further away from the equator have it a little different. Because they don't get as much sunlight as people by the equator do, these people already have Vitamin D in their skin.

Community Service 4/26 and 5/10

For my Community Service I went to a soup kitchen in Chicago called A Just Harvest. We left from school at 2:30 and arrived downtown around 3:45. We had arrived there early the first time so we stopped and ate nearby.This was my first time going to a soup kitchen and I didn't really know what to expect. I had heard a lot of good things about it though so I wasn't very nervous. I thought it was going to be filled with just homeless people and families but later I learned how off I was with my pre-judgment. When we finally arrived it wasn't what I expected it to be. There was a line of people outside waiting for the doors to open and many greeted us when we walked in. Once we were inside the place looked nothing like I thought it would. I'm not really sure how to describe it; maybe like a run down but not so run down restaurant. When we finally walked to the back we put on name tags, robes, and hairnets. Definitely not what I expected again. Once we were all bundled up and ready to go we met with the main coordinator. She talked to us and explained to us about the people that were coming in to these kitchens. I learned that most of them weren't homeless actually but had used up all their money on bills and now could not afford necessities, like food. After she finished talking to us, she had given us our first task: Go and talk to three people and learn something about them. I was immediately out of my comfort zone and not only I but all of us were uncomfortable with it. We didn't know what to do. We all looked confused and awkward. But we got over it and eventually we were all laughing and talking with these people and realized we had nothing to be nervous about. They were very happy and friendly and willing to share stories with us. Finally, they opened the kitchen and we were all assigned certain jobs to do. We have waiters, bus boys, and people serving the food. I went with a great group of people the first and second time we worked like champions and I had a great time doing it to. Time flew by! When they closed the kitchen at 6:30 we weren't finished yet, we had new jobs of cleaning up, but even when we did that we all worked really hard and finished in no time. Overall, I had an amazing experience with this and I am really glad I did it twice. I'm considering going back again because I loved it so much. People should really do it more often because the feeling you have afterwards is one that will last a lifetime.

Social Status

This week in Sociology we talked about Social class in America. We define people by what occupation they have an how much they make and then put them on a ladder, the wealthiest capitalists class in at the top and underclass is at the bottom. I found out that there was a bigger amount of the population in the middle class, while there was a very minute group of those who were wealthy and at the top. After learning about that, we learned that social stereotypes is what keeps us from going up or down. We read the article Social Classes and the Self Fulfilling Prophesy. The social class that you are raised in makes you think you have certain limitations and leaving that specific social class is something that's discouraged. We talked about why it's called the Self Fulfilling Prophesy. We predict how a single person will behave within their social class and how that person is constantly surrounded by messages and signs that keeps him from rising up or going down and instead ends up staying where he is expected to stay; in his social class.

Deviance

This week is Sociology we talked about the word Deviance, meaning someone going against social norms. Like how someone walking to school today will be deviant because most people have cars or rides to school. We also looked at different articles from different time periods and saw how they differ from now. Going from that we got to watch another episode of Freak and Geeks. This episode focused on how easy it was and still is to get pressured into doing things. One of the main characters in the show was pressured into smoking for the first time. It didn't end well though, she became paranoid and didn't know what to do with herself. But, good thing she had a good friend to take care of her and help her baby sit that night.