Changes-who am I ?

Throughout this semester in sociology, I learned a lot about myself and about the people around me. I learned that you should never judge people by stereotypes or by outside appearance. I feel as though at the beginning of thee semester I didn't know exactly who I was. But throughout Sals class, I learned a lot about who I am and how to read people around me as well. Before I was influenced a lot about what others thought about me. Now I am happy with myself as a person, and who I have become. My name is Jen I grew up in Naperville, Illinois. I had many struggles in my life that have made me a stronger, and more rounded person. I've overcome a lot of challenges, especially when I was younger. I used to have to sleep with braces on my legs because my feet went inward and I wasn't able to walk normally. My mom is the closest person to me In my life. She has taught me everything I know. I also had a learning disability, slower learning and when I was younger I used to have speech problems. I have lived with slower processing my whole life and it takes me so much longer than the average person to learn the material we learn in class. I used to give up so easily because I had to study for hours just to remember things for a test. Now i realize my disability is just a part of who I am and I've learned to live with it. When I was younger I never saw myself going to college or getting good grades in high school. I have proved myself wrong for both.

CRASHH

This week in sociology, we watched a movie named Crash. I have seen Crash before but I never thought about it in the same way. Now that I'm in sociology, I have a whole different perspective about the movie than I did previously. Instead of depicting a main character throughout the film, Crash focuses mainly on race; and how it affects the lives of the characters every day. Its interesting how many people think that Racism doesn't occur anymore; even though sometimes it occurs more today without us realizing it, than it ever has before. The movie demonstrates how racism now is mostly implicit instead of being explicit like it used to be. One of the cops was explicitly racist and he knew he was and he admitted it. But, the other cop was so against him and thought he was a pig; but in reality he was just as racist without knowing it. For example, in the scene where he wants to help a black guy up because he is walking in the cold. So, when he gets in the car, he was talking about hockey he accused him of lying immediately because he didn't think black guys play hockey. Also he was laughing because he had the same toy as him in his pocket.The white officer immediately accuses of him of making fun of him. But things even get worse. When the black guy reaches into his pocket to show him his toy, the officer immediately shoots him. By being implicitly racist, the white officer has to live with regret for the rest of his life.

Race

Race is defined as any of the traditional divisions of humankind, thecommonest being the caucasian, Mongoloid, andNegro, characterized by supposedly distinctive anduniversal physical characteristics: no longer intechnical use. Race is a part of us whether we like it or not. From the day we are born we get judged based on the color of skin we are and how we physically are. Race is not biological; although many think it is. The concept of biological race doesn't exist, unlike what people think. It's all based on perception. This week we watched a Dave Chappelle episode and saw what the stereotypical black race is like, asian, and caucasian. Our society creates these stereotypes for us like how smart asians are or how dominant whites are. We also learned how there are indeed two types of racists people out there; explicit and implicit racisim. Implicit is instilled in our brains and we don't even realize that we are being racist. It was interesting to learn about this kind of racisim because before I didn't even realize it exists. In my life, I have experienced many racisim in my family. When I was dating someone that wasn't my skin color, my family treated him differently than what they usually would act like. They didn't mean to but it was instilled in their brains that because they are a different race than we were, they should be treated differently. I disagree with this and think skin is just  a color and it shouldn't label us as a human being or define us as a person.

Social Class

This week in Sociology, I learned a lot about social class. People who were at the bottom, people who were at the very bottom, people in the middle, upper class, and people who were very, very upper class. The trend seems that the rich will always get richer and poor will stay the same, without moving up or go down even lower, sadly. It was interesting that so many people who were poor were actually very content with their lives. The people who were extremely wealthy usually weren't content with their lives and always wanted more and more. Then, the people below poverty level wanted to move up. Just like the people who lived in the trialor in the movie. It was very saddening to see their lives, and see how hard the Mom was working at Burger King but the reality of moving up in social class is almost no chance at all. It wasn't her fault though; she was born and raised in that social class so she is probably going to stay there for the rest of her life.

Personally in my life, I've experienced actually moving down a class. When my parents were together they were pretty well off, when they got a divorce however, everything changed. We lost our car and home. My mom had no money. Luckily, she had an education to fall back on and was going to start working as a teacher once again. IT is interesting how much more I appreciate everything now that I've been through all of that.

People Like Us

In sociology this week, we watched a movie called "People Like Us". This movie was so interesting to me and showed how much social class really affects our lives. What was really shocking to me, is you could tell what class someone is in by what grocery store they shop at. For example in this small town in Ohio, people either went to the organic grocery store or the regular one. The regular grocery store usually had consumers of working class or lower class; while the organic store was more upper middle class. Who would ever think that even bread could identify what social class were in?! Well appearently it does. There was a "bread expert" at this one store who was an older lady. She said the wonder bread lower class Americans buy more of that; while wheat bread more upper middle class buy this kind of bread because they are more willing to spend money on healthier grocery items. This was very eye opening to me and I never would expect that where we shop or what kind of bread we buy could identify our social classes. In my life, i've noticed more and more how much social class effects my life daily. We live in a very upper class life in my high school and it is hard to see the bigger picture when all you can see around you is people who are very fortunate. I'm sure many of us will be in shock when we see what life is really like out there.

Community Service hours- Special Ed. helper

This week on Thursday the 17th of November, I drove down with my mom to her work to experience working with her special Ed and ESL students. Her name is Kathy Kron and her phone number is (847) 354-8284. We left at 630 am and got back at 430 pm. It was crazy to see what my mom has to go through every single day. Its almost like she is doing community service hours every day! It is very hard work but also very benefitial and you feel really good about yourself after helping these kids. We start out in the preschool room with three severely handicapped ESL kids. So they are both special ed and ESL students. We have to use a lot of technology and support for any kind of communication with them. Rian (one of the kids) is completely mute and communicates through grunts and sounds. He smiles and made eye contact with me because he liked how I was a teenager. And then we do kindergarden. We had 6 classed of preschool, and two sessions of Kindergarden. For the rest of the day we do first through third grade. We saw about 37 students. Kindergarden through third grade we used a lot of pictures and visuals. There was a girl from Germany in second grade and it is really cool to see how much english she has already aquired.

The 8 Drugs

This week in sociology the lesson that shocked me the most was the one where we talked about drugs on Wednesday. We got eight different drugs that were described and we had to rate them. We gave each drug 1-4 1 being the safest drug and 4 meaning illegal and years of jail time. It was mind blowing to me to learn how "drugs" like cigarettes, aspirin, and caffeine can be so harmful to your body. I would have never expected cigarettes to be more harmful than marjuana! Or that alchohal and aspirin can cause liver damage and potential death. This was definitely a very interesting lesson to me because it opened my eyes to see that drugs we may not even define as "drugs" can be so harmful to us. It could even potentially lead to death if taken in large doses. We also talked about deviance and related it to how drugs are deviant. One may not realize this, but maurjuana used to be used as a medicine or drug to treat cancer patients. Now, this drug is deviant or not socially recognized because of the harmful effects associated with the drug.