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.

Deviance

This week in sociology we learned what it means to be deviant. Deviance means violating norms of a particular society or culture. Deviance is also very flexible. In one place or culture, one thing may be considered deviant or abnormal. But in another place, it may be considered completely normal. In class for example, Sal told us about how he was in the Caribbean vacationing going for a hike. All of a sudden he saw this guy carrying a stack of mangoes on his head. This was very deviant to Sal and probably most people in America. So Sal took a picture of this man. Then, when they were walking back, The lady yelled at Sal because it was deviant or against their society's norms to take pictures without asking.

At my high school, I feel there is some deviant people; people who do things that are out of the ordinary or against the norms of society. Many people get away with this. Others, who aren't as sneaky don't. Like when people ditch classes. Some people are able to get away with it without getting in trouble. This is because they have a good relationship with their teachers and they are fake and "can't do anything wrong". The other ones don't care what they are thought of and don't hide who they actually are and aren't fake like the others. I don't think this is fair because the people who are suck ups to the teachers usually do more harmful things and they don't get in trouble and will never learn.

Impact Media has on our lives

Can you imagine being in a world and culture where advertisements and media affect your life everyday? Well, many don't realize this; but media affects us more than we notice. In sociology, we watched an eyeopening movie that showed us just how much media has an impact on our lives. I was astonished! We see at least 300 advertisements a day! Who would have thought?! Media has some positive aspects; but probably more negative that we don't come to realize. It influences the how we should look, act, talk and express ourselves. The scariest part is before we talked about it in sociology, I never noticed how much it impacted me. I feel the worst way it affects us though is how they seperate men and women, and have many limitations on what women can do. A lot of the advertisements demonstrate women staying at home with the children  cooking, cleaning, taking care of the house. On the other hand, me have to be tough, strong almost heroic!

In my life, I can admit I have been impacted by media in multiple ways. I remember when I was little especially I felt as though I could never be as good as the boys in our school. They were always strong and did sports. They made me feel as though I could never be as good as them. Whenever we had teams in gym, they always picked the other boys first and then picked me and the other girls last. At such a young age, I was already discriminated against because I was a female.