Community Service Part 1

When Sal told our class in the very beginning of the semester that we have to figure out a way to do 10  hours of community service before the end of the semester I felt like it would be really hard to find time to fit it all in and I felt kind of overwhelmed. When Sal said there was an opportunity to go with him and a group of other  students to the St. Thomas soup kitchen downtown and volunteer there for 5 hours I was very excited but also nervous. On our way up to the soup kitchen I felt uneasy about the kind of people that might come there. I have never volunteered at a soup kitchen before and i was somewhat scared to have to be there for 4 hours. When we first arrived, a very nice woman took us to the back of the kitchen where we put our coats down and got our aprons on. After we got ready, the owner of the place sat us all down and went over what we were going to be doing. He said that are 2 basic rules: to be safe and to be kind. He said that this rarely happens, but sometimes people try to steal some food or are just misbehaving, but that we should not deal with that ourselves, instead, let him handle it. We were then assigned jobs- i was in charge of walking around with pitchers of milk and serving it to whoever wantes some aswell as greeting anyone that came in and asking if i could help them with anything. Once we ran out of milk and people started to leave, i was in charge of handing out granola bars, apples, and leftover soup at door and wishing everyone a good night. Over all it was such an amazing experience and i would love to go back there and volunteer more. I think it truly changed my way of thinking about people and how some people are unfortunatly put in a situation where they cannot afford a nice hot meal every day. The people there that influenced me the most and i will never forget was a mother with two of her daughters and they were such sweet little girls and surely did not deserve to have the life that they are living and it made me so happy to be able to at least brighten up their day a little bit with something as small as a glass of chocolate milk.

Race

So this week I learned that race does not exist... As teenagers in America, we have always been taught that your race is an identifier to who you are and where you come from, but that is not necessarily true. your race can change based on your social and cultural environment. We had an activity where Sal lined up 7 balls with distinct characteristics and had us put them in groups based on these characteristics. I divided mine by sports: basketball, baseball, football, and soccer. Easy. As time went on he kept adding more and more balls that didnt always necessarily belong to a certain group I had already established so it was hard to classify them. The lesson learned was that much like we feel about people, we felt that the balls all should be able to somehow be grouped and put with others of its kind, but once more balls (or people) are added it is a much broader spectrum of differences. People all around the world are different. They look, feel, and act different so instead of treating each "race" as an individual, we should all just focus on the important individuals that surround us no matter what society classifies them as.

Coin Flipping = Social Deivance?

A few days ago in class we played a somewhat simple game, where you had to bet on a number of pennies, then flip a coin with a partner, call heads or tales, and whoever called the right thing wins the other person's pennies. When the game began, no one in the class thought anything of it. We all figured it was simply a game of chance and there was a 50% chance that you will win, but as the game went on and people moved on to play with other people who have previously won, we saw a pattern beginning to form, and we saw that the people who were winning the pennies, kept winning and it seemed as if the game was favoring them. At the end of the game, the class ended up being VERY separated, with one person have 51 pennies, one person having 18, and the rest did not have any left. Salituro compared our penny game to the economy in America, because many people are very very poor, but then our elite are extremely rich. In the past 20 years the gap between the richest and the poorest people has drastically increased and it just goes to prove how self centered our society is and how the fact that the "middle class" is not anywhere near the middle between rich and poor.

Deviance- Saints vs. Roughnecks

A few weeks ago we started to study deviance and how it varies from one person to another. For homework, we had to read a short story about a town where there were two groups of teenage boys, one group, "The Roughnecks," were the "bad boys" from the poorer side of town and were typically associated with crime and illegal activities such as stealing or ditching school, so when they performed those acts of deviance, it was expected from them and they were punished for their actions pretty harshly. Meanwhile, in the richer and more respected part of town, lived "The Saints," a group of boys who came from wealthy families, so everyone in the society expected them to be perfect and do no harm, when in fact, they were just as trouble making as "The Roughnecks" meaning that they ditched school and did things that were just as bad  as the roughnecks, but they, unlike the other group of boys, did not get in trouble for doing what they did because of their status in the society. That story goes to prove that deviance definitely depends on who you are and where you come from, not necessarily just what you do. I think that although it is sad, it is the truth in our society that if you come from a more "well-off" community, you are not as likely to get targeted as a bad person even if you are just as bad- or even worse- than someone from a lower class community.

How Consumerism Affects Children

Yes, our genes do in fact contribute to our futures. They reflect in the way we look, our voice, maybe what we like to eat, or our natural talents, but most of what we are comes from our surroundings and the people and things in our lives. Much like the baby in the above photo, we are branded when we are very very young. Companies have logos and jingles that get stuck in our heads and are repeated over and over to us from the time we are young children up to our adult lives. The people in our society just want money and influence over us and will do anything they can to get it. Leading companies use inviting media and appealing images to get kids to beg their parents to get them that new toy or new device. In a movie we watched about child consumers, it showed that even things that may have been marked as inappropriate in the past, are now no longer marked as that. My brother and his friends, who are 9 years old, play violent, and very expensive video games, and my parents don't really think much about it, and i did not either, until i realized how this could affect my brother. Kids obviously know that the games and movies are fake, but it is still embedded in their minds that it is somewhere acceptable to behave in such a violent matter. For girls, unlike boys, the media teaches young girls to be sexy and vulnerable which leads to them feeling dominated and inferior to boys their own age.

Masculinity

"Strong" "Manly" "Tough" "Powerful" are all words that our society has taught us to believe should describe males, but is that really what being a man is all about? No. Being a real man isn't all about masculinity and strength, but that is what as children, we are taught. From media to toys to music, boys feel like they always need to be powerful and in charge, but those beliefs that our society forms can lead to violence. We read an article about school shootings, which stated that most of the shooters are average, white boys that are seeking revenge but are too "scrawny" or "geeky" to defend themselves, so they take it to the extreme in order to prove to everyone that they are just as powerful and strong as their bullies. Really, being a man is just about being thoughtful and respectful.

Femininity

Recently we have been learning about femininity and how our society affects girls and femininity. Throughout our lives, we have all been affected by the social construction of our environment and it has in a way, taught us how to behave "properly" according to our gender. As a girl, I was always taught when i was young that i have to like the color pink, and to play with barbies, and to want to grow up and be able to wear makeup and high heels, and people may have found it weird if i didn't follow my gender role. Our society puts an immense amount of pressure on girls to be perfect and while watching "Killing Us Softly" I realized how much larger the effect of media on our actions than I thought it was. I always thought that if I just ignored ads and commercials because i knew that they were not real, they would not affect me at all, but little did i know that being exposed to all of these gender construction media ads when I was younger really has affected how I view myself and others. Girls are taught to be thin, fragile, and pretty, and when they aren't all that it's considered wrong. 

Tuesdays With Morrie- Death

This week in class we watched the Movie Tuesdays with Morrie. It was a really intriguing movie that really got me thinking about a lot of topics that are a big part of life. One of the things that Morrie talked to Mitch about was Death. Morrie discussed with Mitch how Americans are afraid of death because they don't really know what it is. I agree with Morrie that people are afraid of the unexpected, and no one truly know what death is which is why it's considered to be such a taboo topic among Americans. Death is typically associated with loss which is why people may relate it to materialism. When someone dies people feel as if their whole essence died with them, and may feel as if the individual is gone forever. Morrie taught me that people should view death as a celebration of someones life rather than only a loss of their physical body.

Un-TV

this week we had to do a project that involved watching the TV. Not watching a show on TV, but watching the television itself. We had to watch the TV and watching someone else watch it, and watch it without the sound on. While watching a news broadcast  without the sound on, i realized how much we can get out of the news without even having the sound on. I also found that there are very irrelevant pictures and videos that have nothing to do with the broadcast itself. When watching a random show without having the sound on, i felt disconnected and clueless. I wanted to know what the plot was and i felt like i couldn't get an understanding of it while it was on mute. When i was watching my sister watch a random re-run of a show that she likes i realized how distracted we all are when we watch TV.My sister was watching her show, doing her homework, having a snack, and texting someone all at the same time. It's pretty funny how distracted we are when doing anything and how we multitask so much that we can't just stop and focus on one single thing at the time.

Culture Differences

This week in class we talked about cultures, and about how people who are not exposed to different cultures will find it very surprising how different we are from everyone else. We learned about a Danish mother who left her child outside of a restaurant in New York, and as a class we all shocked and right away judged the woman for being "stupid," when really, she thought the Americans were stupid for bringing their babies into closed places that are not as healthy for the child as being outside. Both the Americans and the Danish woman, in this case, experienced ethnocentrism, which means they were harshly judging the other simply because it  was not what they were used to. My dad was telling me about when he went to Japan a couple of years ago, and he was in major culture shock for the first few days he was there because of how everything that seems like a normal, or every-day thing for them, is "weird" or "out of the ordinary" in the United States.

Social Construction of Reality- A Bronx Tale

In Calogero's neighborhood, just like in many other neighborhoods, there are a lot of "unwritten rules," and things you are expected to do and to believe. People of a certain race or nationality are expected to only hang around other people that are a part of the same nationality. For example, C was criticized for hanging out with Jane by everyone who was close to him just because she was African American. This construction came about because as people grow together, especially when their ancestors grew up together, they sort of learn to accept that you should only be around people who are similar to you and you learn to believe that anyone who is different should not be accepted. I definitely think that things like that have gotten better since the 50's, which is when this movie takes place, but still if you look around the hallways of Stevenson, you would notice that many people of a particular race, tend to linger around with others who are the same. I understand that people still grow up learning that people of the same background as you will understand you better, or are more likely to get along with you, but I do not agree with that. I choose the people that I hang out with based on their personalities and attitudes, and not their background.

Abandon Ship

Yesterday in sociology we did an activity called "Abandon Ship," and it was basically that 16 students got different characters that they had to be, and we were all stuck on a life-boat, but only 9 could stay on because it was too small. together, we had to choose who the 7 characters who would be thrown overboard were. The characters were a sailor, the ship's officer, a quarter master who had two broken hands, a self-made millionaire who was over weight, a college student with epilepsy, a nobel prize winner in literature, a nobel prize winner in physics, an ex-football player and his wife the pregnant cheerleader, an army captain with a prosthetic leg, a draft evader aka drug dealer, a peace corp volunteer, a med student, an elderly couple, and a traveling poet. After a little bit of all of us being on the "boat" we had to choose who was going to get thrown off. We figured that because they were getting life vests, the stronger people would survive on their own so we threw off the healthy, strong people, and kept the sick, old, or pregnant people along with the med student, the peace corp volunteer, and the physics prize winner. Today, after a discussion in class, we realized that we were actually the first class to operate that way. Sal said that most classes in the past, unlike us, threw off the unhealthy and the old people, figuring that they were going to die anyway. I found it interesting when looking at statistics from past classes that the Nobel Prize winner in physics, and the med student were never thrown off the boat. We were talking about why this might have happened, and came to a conclusion that sociologically, most people value usefulness and practicality, so therefore they kept the med student, who would be able to help others, and the physics winner, who could make a difference in the world and invent something important.

Freak and Geeks... How Others Affect Us

The past couple of days in sociology class we have been watching an episode from the TV show, Freaks And Geeks. It is about a group of high schoolers who are a part of different social groups and go through a bunch of different events having to deal with people from other groups who do not get along with them. This relates to sociology because the students are affected by the people who surround them. One of the girls, Lindsay, is surrounded by a few different social groups that affect her sociological behavior. Around her group of "burnout" friends, she tries to act very cool and careless, but when she is around her brother she acts tough and protective. Around her parents and authority she wants to seem like she is a good kid, and she ignores her best friend Millie because she is considered to be a "nerd". All these different groups expect different things from her, so therefore, all of them shape who she really is. This relates to my life because I know a lot of people, myself included, that act differently around different people. I highly doubt anyone acts the same around their parents and their teachers as they do around their best friends. This just shows how much our environment really affects who we are. 

Crazy Technology

Today in sociology class we were talking about how technology has evolved and how different our generations are from past and future generations. We discussed how kids who are being born now-a-days, will never know what it is like to watch a movie on a VCR, or to buy CDs at a store to listen to your music with. We took a look at the “Beloit Mindset List” (http://www.beloit.edu/mindset/) which is a list in order by high school graduation year that just talks about how your year differs from years before and after. After reading through the 2014 (my graduation year) list, I found it really interesting how much I could really relate to the points that they made, and how true the facts were. In class, we also watched a video with some young kids from France, who were given old technological objects, such as a cassette player, an old telephone, or a Gameboy and they were completely clueless as to what it was or what it is used for. I thought that the video was really funny, but kind of sad at the same time because of how quickly we are advancing and changing. It got me thinking to when I have kids, what kind of technology will be available for them to use in schools? If today we have iPads, touch-screen computers, and 3D televisions, I can’t even imagine what kind of crazy technological things they will invent 20 years from now. It’s insane how far we have come and how much, as a world, we have accomplished in a few decades. As a young person, I feel really blessed to have all these new advancements that make life so much easier. 

WHO AM I?

Who am I? I don’t know if a question like that could be answered in a single paragraph.  I have gone through a lot throughout my life which helped shape who I am today. I was born in Israel and raised there until I was 9. I would say I had a pretty good and happy childhood, but when I was 9 years old my parents gave me the [what I thought back then was] devastating news; we were moving to Boston. Not only did I not know what or where the heck this “Boston” place was, but it made me immediately angry and frustrated. When my parents told me we were moving to the United States at the end of my 3^rd grade year I screamed at them saying how much I hated them and ran to my room and cried for hours. I didn’t want to leave all my family and friends behind and start a completely new and different life in an unknown place. Now thinking back, the way that I reacted was very dramatic and immature, but how was I supposed to react? I was a kid who didn’t want my life to change. I liked it just the way it was. After living in Boston for 3 years we made the move to Chicago, but this time, seeing how the first move was not as awful as I thought it would be, I was more excited than upset. Throughout middle school I went through my fair share of drama and non important things which back then I thought was the end of the world. I used to think every little mistake I made, or anything bad that happened in my life was going to ruin me. In 7^th grade my grandpa had a very severe stroke and had to be in a rehabilitation center for 3 months and relearn how to function on his own. He’s fine now, but I remember towards the end of his stay there, I went to visit him with my cousin, and he was telling us a story about his childhood and how he would get into fights with kids at school, and one day, he got beat up really badly and had to go to the hospital with a broken nose. The doctor told him that he could have gotten brain damage from that punch, and that he physically could not get into any more fights. My grandpa said that if that fight hadn’t happened, and that other boy didn’t hit him and caused him the hospital visit, he would have kept getting into trouble and fights and he doesn’t know where he would have ended up. My grandpa is one of my biggest influences because he taught me that everything happens for a reason, and that life always turns itself around and even when you think that nothing will ever get better, it will. During freshman and most of sophomore year I dealt with many problems at home which led to me making some very bad mistakes which I now regret, but in a way, it caused me to really understand that story my grandfather told me, and since then it had stuck with me that everything does happen for a reason and things do get better. One of my many goals in life is to be able to deliver that message that my grandpa told me to others. I want anyone who is going through a tough time to know that things do turn around and get better. So here’s to all of my classmate’s or anyone who may be reading this post: if you are going through a rough patch of life, remember that there is a plan for you, and that a little bump in the road shouldn’t stop you from reaching for your dreams and trying to accomplish anything you may want to do.