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..