Service Hours 2

On December 10, 2011 I completed my service hours at the Claremont Retirement Home (9am-1:30pm). I did different activities then I did the first time I went. This time I started off my giving the residents their breakfast. I had to open up all their food and give the right person the right food because of allergies. Later in the day I played trivia games with the residents and got to know a little about their lives and what they did as a living. The last activity I did was play catch with the residents and it felt really good to make them smile just by doing a simple thing. I am happy that I volunteered at the Claremont.

Racism

The past couple of days in class we have been talking about racism. The thing that caught my attention the most was how much implicit racism goes around. Our society has taught us to think that white is good and black is bad. Our teacher showed us a video of a girl asking a bunch of little African American kids questions. She had a white doll and a black doll laying on top of a table and asked the same questions to each kid "What doll is the nice doll", about 95% of all the African American kids chose the white doll. Another question she asked the kids was "Why is the other one bad", the little kid replied "because shes black". It is insane how our society imprints those thoughts into little kids and even think bad about their own race. Our society needs to start to realize and try to control how much implicit racism goes around.

Service Hours

On December 4, 2011 from 9am-2:30pm (5 and a half hours), I volunteered at the Claremont retirement home. I was a bit nervous on the way to Claremont because I have never been in a retirement home and I did not know what to expect. For a part of my day, I called out bingo to the residents. When I was calling the bingo game, I noticed how everyone seemed so depressed and was just sitting there staring their cards. I felt bad for them because I kept thinking to myself how I would feel if I was trapped inside this retirement home and my only form of entrainment was reading, bingo, and TV. After bingo I walked around all the floors and gave everyone their daily newspapers. That was a little better because I actually got to interact with them a little. The resident either just looked at me and grabbed the paper or they were really nice and I had a conversation with them. The most interesting part about the day was when my supervisor told me that some of the residents get very happy when young kids come to volunteer because after she told me that, I started to look for it. As I was walking around passing out newspapers, some of the residents had a huge smile when i came up to them and seemed so happy to talk to me. It felt good knowing that I was making someone els happy just by my presence. I am going to complete my Service Hours at the Claremont.

Prison/Drugs

Our society views people with drug problems as criminals and put them in jail instead of a medical facility to get them help. We should be focusing on getting people help instead of just abandoning them inside a cell and after they get out, we wait for them to come right back because they were never helped and fell back into their last patterns. So why doesn't our society help out these people and that way we could have less people in jail and less drug users out on the streets. Also the system favors those with money way more then the poor. How is it fair that people with money get away with more things because they can afford lawyers but poor people cant afford a lawyer. On top of that they get heavier chargers just by where they live because they are usually by a public place. Our society needs to think about how we treat our "criminals".

Social Class

This week in class we have been talking about social class and how that affects our education and who we talk to. Our teacher showed us a lot of graph and statistics about social class and I found it interesting how if your parents have a higher income, you will have a higher ACT score. This shows that if you have a lot of money, then you will a greater chance of getting a better education. Also I have noticed that people with more money mostly talk to people with a lot of money and people of lower class mostly talk to people with less money. No one in our society likes to classify themselves into a class, but everyone knows what class they are in and belong to, but just don't want to talk about it.

Average Girl

For the past couple of days we have been talking about how our society structures girls into thinking horrible things about themselves and making them try to look like someone that is not even real. Our teacher gave us a perfect example, his daughter got new shoes when she was two years old and everyone was like "oh you look so cute in your new shoes". Then next year she got another pair of shoes and then she was the one saying "do I look cute in my shoes". All that is just teaching little girls is that they look cute or pretty by what they wear and not by their personality. No one means to construct girls like this from a young age, but it is happening and people need to start noticing it.

Nothing

Our teacher assigned out class a homework assignment that we had to do nothing. Everyone was confused at first and was asking a lot of question and all he told was just do nothing, don't think, don't talk to anyone, don't move, just do nothing. I decided I was going to do my nothing assignment in the lunch room and at first it was so hard. I could not keep still and wanted to do something. It took me about six minutes to finally do nothing and after I was done, I kept thinking how our society never lets us do nothing. We are always suppose to be doing something and it is even against the law (loitering). I am happy that I did this assignment because I actually got something out of it.

Tuesday with Morrie - Work

I feel like that everyone is so stressed about success because our whole lives we have been told by everyone to work hard and get good grades. There are different ways of being successful, being successful for someone could be to have a healthy family and happiness. But our whole lives we have been taught that success is going to school to get a good job and then grow up to have a good paying job. But which one is truly success? Because success could mean so many different things to different people.

Norms

Our sociology teacher was talking about how we need to recognize norms in cross culture communication because what might mean something to us, might mean something completely different to another group of people. Our teacher showed my class pictures of President Bush holding hands with the King of Saudi Arabia and immediately everyone started to laugh. But if we were in Saudi Arabia not one person in the class would be laughing because its normal there. To us it looks funny but we need to watch out because if we don't acknowledge the differences, we could offend a culture.

A Bronx Tale

In class we have been watching A Bronx Tale, it is a movie that shows a boy growing up in a Italian neighborhood and how he wants to be two different people. In the movie he struggles to be the son his loving parents want him to be or to be with the mob. The neighborhood is socially constructed by the time period because it is the 1960s and racism is still going around. The neighborhood has unwritten rules that everyone knows about, like don't cross the under path into the black neighborhood, and to not date black women. Even though "C" doesn't want to be racist, since he has grown up around it all his life and stressed by his friends to beat up the black kids that ride by, he accidentally calls his dates brother a nigger. Even though "C" doesn't want to be racist, he has been around it so much that it grew on him. There social contrustion is that black people are not equal to them and dont deserve to ride through their neighborrhodd. Everyone can relate to him because everyone has been brought up with certain beliefs and social constructions.

Ingroups and Outgroups

This week in class our teacher told us to prepare for an activity. He separated the class in who was wearing black clothing and who was not wearing black clothing. I was in the group wearing black and our teacher then told us to write reasons why our group thinks the other side of the class is not wearing black. As soon as both groups started writing reasons, everyone all of the sudden just started to judge our other classmates in very bizarre ways. During this activity no one really knew why we were doing it but after our teacher started to explain how we are in ingroups all of our lives and how we judge other crowds (outgroups). Just because our teacher put us in a group just because we were all wearing black, we all felt a connection and started to trust each other and just randomly judge the outgroup because they were different than us. Our teacher made us realize how we do this everyday in our lives and don't even realize it. Everyone is apart of an ingroup and have judged another person just because they talk to different people. So we should all try to realize how we think of others just because they are apart of another group.

Spit vs Saliva

What is the difference between spit and saliva? Nothing is different except for how we think about each of them. This is called the social construction of reality. The reality is how we experience the world and the social construction is how our society influences how we think about certain things. Today in my sociology class, our teacher asked a student to spit in a spoon and everyone immediately started saying "ew that's gross". Then after the student filled the spoon up with spit, our teacher asked him if he wanted to put the spit back in his mouth and everyone continued to scream "ewww". But then my teacher brought up a good point, he started to tell us facts about how saliva is very important to the human body and then asked us... Why does saliva turn into spit as soon as it leaves your mouth and automatically turn gross when you start calling it spit? Even though they are exactly the same... But that is because our society has always taught us that spit is gross even from an early age, even though everyone is constantly swallowing their own spit. So what is "more gross," Spit or Saliva?

College

Yesterday I missed school to attend a tour at UIC. When I was driving to the school, I kept thinking to myself if I really wanted to go here and if this was the best school for what I want to pursue in life. What I was wishing to get out of this tour was to really see if I could see myself attending this University and see myself being friends with the students around me. The tour was about two hours, we walked around the dorms, the rec center, and sat in a classroom to get informed about UIC. After the visit I finally realized that I could see myself walking around the campus and being friends with the students. So now the next step is applying and getting accepted. Then my Life begins..

Silence

On my first day in Sociology my teacher began class by sitting among us and just sat in silence. Every second that went by felt like minutes because there was an awkward feeling floating around the room. After about three minutes someone asked our teacher if he was going to ever give us instructions. And the reason why everyone felt that awkward presence floating around the room was because our whole lives we have been taught to arrive to class, sit down, and wait for our teacher to direct us for the period. We have been trained to expect certain things from our teacher even on the first day of school. The teacher shouldn't have to always be the one expected to teach everyone because everyone has things you could teach each other.

Who am I?

Who am I? I am a student, a friend, a brother, a son, an athlete.. There are so many ways to describe me but the simplest way to describe me is very friendly. I am currently enrolled in a big high school in Illinois and going to pursue to be an architect next year at a college in the city. The biggest influences in my life are my parents because they have taught me so many things that have made me who I am today. I hope that one day I will have a family of my own and be able to pass on what my parents taught me to my children.