Crash

Last week in soc we watched the movie crash. 

This wasn't my first time watching it but it was the first time watching it with a sociological mindset.

The one thing we were told to watch for is race and the explicit and Implicit biases involved with it. 

The big thing I noticed throughout the movie was all the different implicit biases we go though everyday in our interactions with people. The fact that we formulate these negative ideas about people just based on their looks is natural to us. It's how we react to those thoughts is what shows who we really are. I guess the term sociological mindfulness comes to mind here as the movie showed how people who are not mindful of their implicit biases and either reacted harshly or rashly. If we just take the time to think about our actions and don't act on pure instinct some explicit racism could be avoided 

Race

A few weeks ago I soc we learned about Race and how really it's not a true term it's just a word we use to describe someone. 

What surprised me was that race really isn't a true term and that it's just made up. That fact that we had to crate a word to describe someone by their features is amazing. In a perfect society the term race wouldn't be used at all.

What question me is if the word race never existed what would we use to deacripe people. Dark skinned? Light skinned?  But isn't that almost the same i as calling someone black or white? Can we classify someone without it being racial? I guess for me that's the million dollar question.

Community service

For my community service I volunteered at the special Olympics  bocci ball tournament.

I was there from 7:30 to 4:30 plus the hour for training so this covered all 10 hours. And Sal was my supervisor/leader for the event.

What I did was be the judge of the matches that took place through out the day. I really didn't know what to expect going into the day and was really surprised at how good the athletes were at the game. The whole day was a blast and really fun. Every person there was having a good time and having fun whether they win or lost which in the end is always the best to see. 

Post 14: Social Class/ New Money

In class we learned about term called new money. This is the name given to people in the upper class who have recently received and earned their money. This includes people like sports stars and new big company owners like bill gates, etc.
 When i look at the people who are considered the new money i can view then as the role models of the united states and I feel like that't not a good thing. These are the people we strive to be as they are the ultimate vision of success in our eyes. Our own culture has money and power as two of the top signs of social status. Yet to achieve that ultimate success of becoming new money is near impossible. To achieve that these people have done takes a great deal of work skill and luck which is why few make it to this rank. Yet, with so few able to achieve this ultimate success we all strive for it and ultimately end up in failure.  It like the whole population of the U.S going for 2 job openings at the top company. 2 people will be happy but the rest will be left behind depressed and in envy and awe of the people on top. Instead of valuing what we have and being happy with that we see what we could have and what we could be doing and it makes us feel inferior. What we need to do is be able value what we have instead of others even though major success if always shoved in our faces while we are less successful. Just because you don't have millions shouldn't meant you aren't successful in the U.S  


  

Post 15: Poverty

This week in soc we watched a movie showing how hard it is living on minimal wage and about how life is like in poverty and how hard it is to get by living on minimum wage. 

It's hard to think how that life is like that since we arnt the ones who have to live in poverty. To us minimum wage is just the payment we get for some extra spending money. And what we don't realize and what we saw in the movie is that this number is people living money. For only about 8 dollars an hour people work day in and day out working just to make maybe $50 and this their money to buy food, pay bills and do everything that's necessary for daily life. After seeing something like that  it makes me value what I have a lot more and look at those people who work these low wage jobs a lot heigher.  

Post 13 Deviance.

 A few weeks ago we learned about deviance through an activity in which we were supposed to go out and cause a good deviance whether it was doing the dishes for once or paying for somebody behind you. I guess the point of the assignment was to see the impact of what doing something different does.
In my own experience doing it i noticed being deviant is basically frowned upon in this society. What is did was try to pay for the meal for the person behind me at a fast food restaurant and when i handed the cashier the extra money they looked at me funny offering me the money back and almost getting in an argument with me as i tried to explain i was just doing a nice thing.
It's funny to see how in the country that's supposed to be the place where you can do anything you want that everyone what we chose to do is be like others. We are much more of  a conformist nation than one of deviance. We grow up learning to be like your neighbor and that being different is frowned upon, yet we are always getting told to be our-selves but if our selves isn't like the rest then we get yelled at. Most of us live our whole live growing up living basically to be someone else. To fit in. And if anyone strays away from that typical style they aren't looked at as unique and outgoing but as weird and a freak. These differences can be anything from the clothes we wear to how we talk and even how we pay for our meals. And we go to great lengths to fix these deviance's. Using medication and therapy is we have too much energy and spending way to much money to keep everything the same as your peers. The term "keeping up with the Jones's" comes to mined when i look t how our society is. Instead of valuing what we have for ourselves we always are looking at others and if its not the same as them then we are behind and different and that not a good thing.
What gets me is who sets these standards that we all conform too. The media? The Government? Or is it just something that happens naturally?        

Post 12 "Tough" guise

Back in the day in sociology we watched the film "tough" guise. This fils talked about how men are shaped through the media to perform a certain social expectation of being tough and mean and "being like a man". If men don't confirm to these social expectation they are made fun of and called a wimp and other names.

We learn at too early of an age of the "true" image of what a man is and we are constantly reminded every second of how we need to act, look, and behave to be considered "Normal" in today's society.

What doesn't make sense to me is that since we are always reminded of what the true man is then why don't we see more of us acting that way. There are those certain traits that we see here and there that we show but most guys aren't striving For that true man image. I feel that the "tough" guise isn't this complete mask that covers up our true selves but is more of a blanket that only covers up somethings but not everything

Post 10: Socialization

A few weeks ago in sociology we talked about socialization and about feral children. Feral Children is a term used for a choked who has basically grown up without parents or anything. Seeing a child who grew up with no parents they pretty much no nothing. They can barely talk walk or eat normally. It's crazy to see how much we depend on parents to lean basically everything. We would be nothing without our family and it's seen in the cases if the feral children.

Post 9: Thrive and American Values

Back in the day in sociology we read a article called "Thrive" by Dan Buettner. In the article it talked about different factors to happiness and what we need to do to achieve them. Some of them included the work place and social life and how we should do what we want for our selves while being productive at the same time. Looking at that and then comparing it to our own American values of "happiness" it's almost completely opposite. In America if you aren't working you aren't "Thriving". Success is based off of how much money you have and not how happy you feel. People don't do what's right for themselves but do what's right for their wallet. It's just weird to think about about how much of our live revolve around money. It effects all of our every day decisions such as college, food, cloths etc. after reading through this I try now to not look at the price tag of something but it's actual value to me.

Post 9: Thrive and American Values

Back in the day in sociology we read a article called "Thrive" by Dan Buettner. In the article it talked about different factors to happiness and what we need to do to achieve them. Some of them included the work place and social life and how we should do what we want for our selves while being productive at the same time. Looking at that and then comparing it to our own American values of "happiness" it's almost completely opposite. In America if you aren't working you aren't "Thriving". Success is based off of how much money you have and not how happy you feel. People don't do what's right for themselves but do what's right for their wallet. It's just weird to think about about how much of our live revolve around money. It effects all of our every day decisions such as college, food, cloths etc. after reading through this I try now to not look at the price tag of something but it's actual value to me.

Subculture

Today in sociology we talked about subculture the different things that are involved with them.

Looking at my self i have my own subculture with my job at wrigley field. Instead of just writing out a paragraph im just going to list off the different features like we did in class.

Material Culture: Our uniform, Id badge, Carrying cases, Location.

Mores: Dont go into someone else's area, dont leave until after the 6th, dont go in the same ile as the person who's selling the same item as you.

Folkways: selling in the bleachers, "last call",

Unique language: "1s" "2s" "loads"

Unique symbols: the Unifirms, our carrying casses. Hot dog cart.

These were some if the features of my subculture at wrigley field. When looking at it we all have tons of different sub cultures that we are a part of and all the different mores folkways and language we have.

Last week in sociology we watched the film God grew tired of us, a film about the lost boys, refugees from sudan, who were sent to the United States.
During this film we were able to see the different terms we talked about the week before. the biggest ones I noticed was the level of culture shock the refugees experienced when they made the move to the US. Their previous culture was pretty much a complete 360 of what our is and when they made the move here it completely changed their lives. At first their culture shock was good, such as their amazement of the food and the technology they saw. But as the movie progressed some of the culture shock turned into ethnocentrism when they were talking about how the community is a lot more private then what they had experience and they were almost mad about it. They had quotes talking about how their culture was better and how they couldn't understand how ours could be so different. This movie also showed how culture is so important to us and how we can't survive without it. This is seen where one of the boys goes insane and ends up getting arrested and sent to a mental institution because he couldent handle the american culture.
  It's weird to think about how important culture to ourselves and to others and how a big change in it for some people can drastically change their lives

A little behind

So today I am finally getting around to getting my blogs done. A few weeks ago in sociology we began our new unit about culture. We learned about egocentrism or the feeling like your culture is dominant when faced against a different culture. We used the example in class of the Danish mother who left their child outside of a restaurant on how she felt it was the right thing and was upset that she got in trouble for it.
I have been egocentric when I had  gone to china a few years ago. When I was there the group I was in went to one of the local market places. This place can be compared to an american version of a mall but it was different in many ways. The different stores were all very clustered together and the merchants in the shops have very aggressive efforts of trying to get you to come to their shop. I remember that when I was walking through this i was thinking about how better and organized this was in america and how much better it was then this. I never took intro account that this was the normal way of life for the people down there. I feel like being egocentric is a good thing as long as we keep it to ourselves. If everyone went out and expressed their egocentrism there wold always be a never ending argument on who's culture is better than who's.    


 

Putting it all together

Last week in sociology we watched the movie A Bronx Tale. This movie follows the life of coloduro or C, as he grows up in an Italian neighborhood controlled by a mob. Through out the film C is part of different social groups that all inpact him in different ways. C 3 main groups that he was apart of during the film, his friends, the mob, and his family. All of these groups impacted who C was as a person and also caused different social constructions of reality. Take for example each groups view on racism. His family and his friends were racist twords blacks because of how they grew up, especially for his friends. Early in the movie we saw them at a young age yelling at a black person on a bus chasing after them and calling him names. This same action carried in into their leter years becoming a social norm for them to hate blacks. This sort of action is pushed onto C as he is sort of shaped to hate blacks as well because of the social construction of his friends.

Leedle

Soc Week 3

This week in sociology we learns about socially constructed groups. Theese are the groups that we associate ourselves  with that make up who we are. We wrote down different groups in class that we associated ourselves with and our own personal roles in them. We also determined what me considered our own master group that we see ourselves.
After writing down all the groups thr I saw myself a part of I started to think more about how all these groups affected me and realized that they all affected me of very different ways. Things I would say/do when I'm at wrigley field then at school and vise versa for school. When even looking at wrigley alone I act different depending on who I'm with. These sort of things happen because the people around me in the group I'm in.  When I can be the smart guy in my radio group because I know how to run all the equipment I can also be the new guy who knows nothing when I first started at wrigley. It almost feels like your identity completely changes depending on the social situation/group that you are a part of.

This week in sociology we learned about the social construction of reality. This is how our views and actions are all shaped by the society that we live in. To me this term reminds of "social norms" the we talked briefly about at the beginning of the semester. An action such as the teacher staring a class by just being silent may just be considers normal in some other culture yet for us it was uncomfortable and awkward just so sit there in silence.
 I had this sort of experience a few years ago when I went to china. One of the few things I clearly remember is that they had a rating system for every bathroom.  It was just a simple 5 star system and there were signs posted outside of every door that showed the star rating of the bathroom. Ourtour guide   told the group I was in that most typical public restrooms were 2-3 stars. He also noted that if we ever saw I saw a 1 star bathroom that we should never go into it.  Seeing something like this was really weird to me. Rating a bathroom was something I had never seen before and it was weird for me to see a rating out side of every bathroom. Thinking about it it would also be weird for someone from china not to see a rating out side of a bathroom here since that is something they are so used to seeing. Our own social construction is reality is something we can't really just see without a change In our cultural setting. Places like foreign countries are the best since it is so different and gives us the best feedback for what our own social norms are.    

Sociological Thinking

This week in sociology we learned about about sociological mindfulness and sociological imagination. Sociological mindfulness is being aware of how people and your environment have an effect on you as a person and shape what you are. It's weird to think that so many of the different things that I am interested in formed because of interests of my family and people around me. Take for example my interest in tap dancing wasn't formed though my own mind. I was the younger sibling of two sisters who both danced (One of which is a professional dancer). I was actually forced into going to my first tap class sending me to a dance class was easier then leaving me at home. I then started enjoying tap classes and keep with it to this day. Being a tap dancer provided me with a ton of amazing experiences including, performing in china and at millennium park with Chicago symphony orchestra. All of these experiences would have never had happened if my family life was different and it's crazy to think that I could be a completely different person then who I am now if maybe I had one sister instead of two. So many things have big effects on who and what we are and a lot of the time we don't really think about it. But when you do take the time and think about why you are what you are it's mind blowing to see how others can shape you.     

Who am I?

Hi there! My name is Dylan! I am currently a senior in high school and having an blast! I love radio broadcasting and have already committed to college to major in Radio. I also broadcast my high schools sports games including Football, basketball, hockey and baseball. My favorite to broadcast is Hockey. Although it's tough to do because of the fast pace it's a lot of fun because hockey is one of my favorite sports. I also love playing video games it's one of the main things I do during my spare time. I am also a big Baseball and Hockey fan and I am a big fan of the Cubs and the Blackhawks. I just recently went to the first home game of the year for the Blackhawks which was a blast and the Hawks won.

As I said before my passion is radio. All four of my years in high school I have been part of the radio station. I did a show with my friend Brett every friday and now this year i started up a second show with my friend Ross every Wednesday. I am also part of the sports broadcasting team and try to make it to every broadcast that we do even if im not on the air.

My biggest influence in my life is my cousin Scott. He currently works as a DJ at KissFM in Chicago. Over the past few years I had been able to spend time with him in the studio and learn about how a professional radio station is ran. He was the one that got me really interested in radio and got me to pursue it as my carrier.       

My cousin SpecialK

My biggest goal in life is one day to be a DJ on a big time radio station. I really just want my voice to be heard by people. I like to be entertaining and I never have a bad time when im on the air. It's hard work sometime but the results are always good.