Service

The community service project really stuck with me. I never really was interested in partaking in community service but im really glad we had this project. Going to winchester house really showed me a different type of person. I have never really been around elderly people..other than my family members. Seeing how they acted around eachother was very intersting. One lady wasyelling at a man because he kept hitting the ball before it got to her in table ball..and seeing the competitiveness of bingo was interesting. I will definatly continue doing community service!

Poverty

The movie with we watched this week really has had me thinking. I've been thinking about how good we all acutally have it here. We dont live paycheck to paycheck and we get buy food whenever we are hungry. Morgan Spurlock (i think thats his last name..) and his girlfriend's experience has really opened my eyes. The past couple days I've been concentrating less on the matieral things I have. Ive really thought about how lucky I am to have 5 computers in my house, when many dont even have one.

Also, our discussion about drugs was very interesting. I do agree with Sal on his frustration on not understanding why weathly middle class teenagers feel the need to do drugs. We have everything. I myself have never even thought about ever doing/trying a drug or even smoking. I think its all very stupid and pointless. I think the students at Stevenson who use drugs are just wasting their parents money that they have worked for and using it because they are selfish and want the high.

Location

I am blogging about my experience at the badminton state tournmant from this weekend. When I was there, I was looking at the various teams school names. I realized that every single team was from northern Illinois. For this competition to be the "State" tournament, you would think there would be teams from all over the state. A strange example is my teammates played their semi-final game against buffalo grove. So we had to travel 4 hours to play a team that is 10 minutes away from Stevenson. I guess this means that badminton is acutally only located in northern Illinois. There has to be some sort of sociological explaination to this why badminton is only played around here. Why arent there teams in southern Illinois? It just doenst make much sense to me.

money

I think what we learned about with the social class was very internesting. I always knew that buffalo grove was weathly, but I never would have guessed it is in the upper 90% of the nations money. That really makes me think about how poorly people live. I dont think of my family as rich at all, but we do live comfortably. We never think about the price of our dinner check. But around the country, people have to. I guess we really are lucky for where we live and what are parents do to allow us to live without any fears of not having money tomorrow.

drugs

The experiment we did today I think had a lot to do with sociology. We catagorized things through their characteristics and basically all of my groups were wrong. I think this relates to sociology beacuse it shows how people catagorize other people with only knowing a few things. Lets say i meet someone. I instantly put them into a group (in relation to todays activity...group "c".) but, once i find out who they really are, they should be in group A. It shows how we guess things and realize later that we were completly wrong.

Men

I think men do have a straight sterotype they must achieve, and if they dont they are abnormal. These boys who dont fit the mold then get picked on. I think a great example of this is when I was in third grade I befriended a boy, Eric, with a mental disability. Children would constantly make fun of me saying we were "married" and things like that. They would make fun of him because he was different. He didnt fit the mold on the normal average boy. Even in third grade the traits are expected. So then in highschool, it becomes even more necessary to be in the norm. That is why there is so much bullying in todays society because NOT everyone is the same. I think that is crazy how some people can be so closed minded that they cant accept differences in people.

fear

FearMoore mentions fear in a few different scenes. What agents of socialization promote fear in America? How do they do it? Do you think there is something to fear?


In my public speaking class my target audience for my speech about online predators was Barry Glassner who was in Bowling for Columbine. Basically he thinks that we americans are afraid of everything. We are afraid of our neighbor robbing us. We are afraid of dying. We overreact to everything. I think the news has a big impact on our fear. With them constantly reporting on the latest murder and killing and robbery, how can we NOT be afraid? Even though nothing has really happened where I live in Vernon Hills, things are happening in Chicago which isnt too far away. I must admit, any time I am home alone I am afraid. Why I am i dont know. All the doors are locked by I still think about the possible kidnapper who could take me away. I think we are all afraid of what COULD happen instead of what is realistically possible. What are the chances that in this area someone will be shot. Very small. I think that if the news wouldnt report on all the horrers of the world, we would be a much calmer society.