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.

Gender Roles

In the beginning of this week we talked about feminine and masculine ideas in society. The first half of the week we watched the movie "Killing Us Softly 4". The movie highlighted the dangerous influences the media has on women, and girls. They have to look a certain way to fit in with todays idea of beauty, when in reality the models on TV or magazines don't even look like that in real life. The scary thing is women see about 300 ads a day telling them how they should look! Later in the week we talked about how masculine boys and men should be. Men have a more narrowed of a rigid idea of how masculine they should be. Boys are taught if they're not tough, big, strong, and emotionless they are weak. But that's not the case at all and because it's been around for so long it's going to be a hard thing to change so quickly. The idea of how woman should be has changed drastically over the past 50 years and I think that it's possible for men to do the same. Possible, not definitely easy.

Nature vs Nurture

After reading and watching the documentary about children growing up without any regular interaction or affection made me think simply how can anyone do such a thing? Children left to live on their own, without guidance or any human interaction. They never received any parental love or compassion and left the children barely alive. As they got older, many of them were not capable of living on their own. For a child to develop into a healthy adult they need that love and affection, the nature of that is what will feed into their character and how they interact when they are older. This week was really interesting to me because I really didn't know a lot about how much of your personality is determined through what you received and have seen from ages 4-6.

God grew tired of us

Last week we watched the movie "God grew tired of us". It was movie about African refugees who lived in Sudan since they were very young and were known as the lost boys. A group of those refugees were given a chance to go live in America to start a new life and make money. Once they arrived in America, they were very shocked at the things around them. The food was very different to what they were used to. They had to learn to go grocery shopping and learn about all times of food that they could eat. They had to learn how to turn on light switches, use TV's, stoves, microwaves etc. Once they finally settled down and started getting more comfortable with their surroundings, they had to go find jobs so that that would be able to support themselves. Once they started working, the jobs that they had found were not the greatest and so the times that were given to them to relax or hang out with their roommates was very limited and that had made many of the lost boys lonely and homesick. Many of the lost boys said that they liked living back in Sudan because it always felt like they had family around them, while being in America you were always by yourself and depended on yourself. As the yeas went on, the lost boys that were in America became accustomed to everything and found jobs to support themselves and most of their families back in Sudan. My parents can sort of relate to this when they came to America and had to get accustomed to the food and places around here because it was so different.

Culture Shock

This week in Sociology we talked about Culture. We might all live on the same planet but the thing we do, say or eat is different all around the world. Gestures might mean one thing here in America but if you were to go to a different country it could mean something totally different. When I moved to America my parents were the ones who went through culture shock. Having lived all there life in Bulgaria, they did not know how to read or write in English. They were totally clueless when they arrived. They couldn't get around easily because they didn't know how to ask. But, as time went on they started to learn and life got easier and easier for them. Even though still at times my mom is shocked at what Americans do and how different it is, after 13 years!

A Bronx Tale

This week in sociology we watched the movie called "A Bronx Tale"a movie based off of real events that have to do with this young boy called Calogero or C growing up in an Italian neighborhood. He lives a pretty normal life for a young kid until his path crosses with, Sunny. The mot powerful mobster in the Bronx. Growing up, Sunny takes Calogero under his wing and becomes like a second dad to him. As Calogero gets older he is put into the group or catagory of an Italian. Since this movie sets place in the 60's being a different race was a big problem. African American people also were seen as a different group. There were 2 neighborhoods in this movie that were part of the scene. The Italian neighborhood and the African American neighborhood. If you were to step into the wrong neighborhood it was not taken lightly. You were insulted and abused until you got out of their "territory". This example is a really good example of  how we put certain people in certain group and judge them off that. Most of the time though we group people without realizing it. That's because it might be how we were raised, and what time we live in.

Micro Vs. Macro

This past week in sociology we discussed the differences between Micro Sociology and Macro. Micro Sociology is how small things around you (the certain group you are in, or a person who's has a more confident and brooding voice) will affect your decision. When we were doing the "Abandon Ship" activity the decisions were made by those people with the loudest voice or by the group of friends on the boat. Macro Sociology is how the bigger picture in society shapes and our decisions (Where we come from, ethnicity, where we live, what we were taught from young to like and dislike). That as well helped with the decision making during the activity

Social Construction

In sociology that week we talked about Social Construction of reality and how we view people around us the way that social norms have taught us to view different groups and people. We did a fun activity called the "Abandon Ship". There was a certain amount of people chosen to be stuck in a really small life boat. Since the life boat was so small, some people had to be thrown off. The people that were stuck on the life boat had to decide who gets thrown off. Most of the decision were based off the name or group they were put in from society. Ex- Youth, health, and money. If you were old, you were thrown off because you were seen as not being useful but, if you were young and were going to be an importance for the future of the boat or society, you were saved.

Sociological Mindfulness

This week we talked about sociological mindfulness. In brief summary it's how each little act we do matters and has an affect on others. I already sort of had known this and for some reason it has become something I live by. It's just the way my brain works. I always wonder what I'm doing and how it's going to affect the people around me and what sort of outcome it will bring. I was really glad that we talked about this in class though because it would be a nice change to see others being aware of their actions and outcomes.

About me!

10 Facts about me!

• I was born in Bulgaria. 

• I have a huge love for music.

• I love to travel and go on random adventures.

• My favorite colors would be black and blue.

• I love going snowboarding or skiing in Colorado.

• Going to Florida would have to be my second favorite place to go, Colorado being first.

• I have an older sister 

• Psychology really interests me and is why I decided to take Sociology.

• I will be turning 18 on August, 31st.

• I tend to be a perfectionist.