Habitat for Humanity

Community service is important for many different reasons. However, that statement is a little too blunt to describe my personal expierence. I have had several previous voulunteer works, yet the one I did for my sociology class opened up my eyes in a new way. Sure I've voulenteered at some animal shelters and saw some pretty sad things, yet it didnt hit me the same was as when I went to go help out at habitat for humanity. Mabye I'm just more of a people person. Yet I will admit it was extreamly boring for the first few hours, and I was'nt too happy by the time I was painting my fourth wall after the first couple of hours. Around lunch time I was wiped after hours and hours of hard work. On top of that my shoulder was killing me from my water polo game the day before. Although something happend, the person whom was reciving the house stopped by and then it hit me, I was doing this work for someone less fortunate than I am. Then it became worth while, I saw a person who was equal to me, same DNA same genetics who needed a house. I realized that I was doing this for one of my own, that I now had a point in finishing as much as I could on the house. To provide for another human being made me open my eyes that poverty is so much closer than I ever really realized. Of course I always knew people like her existed, but it wasn't until I actually saw her that I developed some kind of attatchment to me. Its almost as if my duties as a human being decided to kick in and gave me a wake up call that shouted: "Stop sleeping, and go do your duty." I feel that if I would not have done this community service, that I would've not only failed sociology class, but more importantly I would have failed my duties as a social human being in the aspect of helping others.

Social Classes

In American Society there is the Pyrimidal structure. At the bottom there is all of the underclassmen who are just above the poverty line or below the poverty line. These people are the ones who put physical labor into building luxurios complexes or mansions. But if they put the effort into building these luxurious things then why dont they end up with their own creations? Its because the weatlh is so unequally distributed, and with little movement between classes there really is no chance that these underclassmen can imagine of them living a wealthy lifestyle. In the middle of the pyramid we have the working class. These are the people who live in suburbs in average size houses with dead end jobs. Eventhough they may work in the same place as the wealthy, their paychecks are nothing in comparison. And of course at the very tipy top of the pyramid we have the wealthy. We do not see much movement within this class because these people figure: why settle for anything less than the best?

However, there are some strayers who move social classes, my mother being one of them. Mostly growing up in a small town in Alaska, her family was very poor. And from coming out of high school, colllege opprotunities were bleak. She was classified as a part of the working class if not lower. Yet when she had me she decided to go back to college and get her degree. After college she married above her previous social class and moved up the social ladder. Changes like these though are not as common as they should be.

Random Acts of Kindness

This week in sociology were talking about what is normal and what isnt normal in our culture. For instance, this week we had to do what is reffered as a "random act of kindness" for someone we do not know, or we have to do something very unexpected for someone we do know. People dont usually bother with random acts of kindness for it is out of thier own schedule and they have to put in effort for the act. Plus it is seen as unusual to the person who is recieving the random act of kindness.These two factors discourage people usually from doing these random acts of kindness. What they forget to take into consideration though is the person who recieves the random act then feels good about themselves. It brings a sense to happiness to them and a sense of selflessness to the person who is giving the random act of kindness.

For example, my random act of kindness was to congradulate another team memeber on the opposing team we just played in a game.I could tell that she was very upset for they had just lost and that she had done her best. Yet when I complimented her on how well she did she smiled, and all of the sudden her mood changed from a negative one to a positive one. Making not only her feel good, but I as well for making her happy with a simple complement.

How do we view ourselves?

In Soc we talked about how the public generalizes genders. Yet we are taught from a very young age that girls are supposed to be thin, pretty, and flawless. We spend so much time only learning about the feminine generalizaton that the male generalization slips our minds. Sometimes we take it for granted that guys just come off more tough, or less talkitive than girls. Thats why I found the first movie about generalization of guys to be very intresting, and when I went home to observe my little brother to see if he fit the part, I found that everything the movie was telling me was true.
He tends to play with nerf guns all the time, which at first I thought meant nothing. Then I started to realize that everytime he was holding the guns or playing with them his language would become meaner, as well as his attidudes towards certain things or people. Yet when it was just me and him, his more feminine side started to show such as politness seeing that I was not a person who he had to prove himself to.

Day Care

In sociology this week we talked about socialization and how it affects young children. One of the reasearchers said that children that were placed in a daycare are more likely to be mean but smart. Thing that they forgot to include though was that it also stimulates the childs mind to be more social around others the same age as them. So ya they might have a mean side, but they also develop more of a tendency to be more open around others and be more social.
When I was little I was constantly put in a day care. Yet I have continuously made new friends in many different areas, and all of them say that I am generally a nice person. I find it funny that some of the nicest people I know come from day care childhood. Makes me question some of the views in the reading.

England Bar Fights

Universal signs are ways that we communicate with the world, even if we do not share the same dialect. Hand signals are one example of the universal signs we use in order to tell people what we want, or what we might not want. But in different countries the same hand gesture can mean different things. Like how in America we use the "peace sign" but throughout most of Europe, it means the same as the middle finger would in America. Yet people get so offended so quickly without thinking of where the person who is giving the hand gestures culture originates from. They are so used to their culture and their ways that it is almost expected of them to act offended, even if the person giving the hand gestures meant no harm in the first place.

My uncle went to England two summers ago and he decided to go to a bar with a few friends of his. The bar was very loud, so loud that the waitress couldn't even hear what my uncle and his friend wanted. So my uncle decided to resort to hand gestures. He held up two fingers, the "peace" sign, for two more drinks and an ok gesture,which in Europe means a very bad name to call someone. The waitress was furious and walked away, refusing to take anymore orders from my uncle and his friends. Later that evening the manager of the bar came up to my uncle and explaned the situation. But the fault really lies within both him and the waitress. It is partially his fault for he should have been more informed about England's culture before going there. Yet it is also the waitresses fault for not considering that my uncle was from America and not England.

5 year old vs. 18 year olds

It was funny seeing that book again, the one with all of the different cultures and their possesions. My Grandma has the same book that she used to show me all of the time. Back then to me it just looked like a lot of different people with a lot of different stuff in some very different places. Thing was though, I was right, thats all it really was. Yet, how is it that I wasnt suprised when I was around 5 years old, and the entire classroom was shocked at around 18 years old? I belive its because as people get older their minds get more complexed. As well as people grow so accustomed to the same routines within our own culture, that it closes our minds off from all of the different cultures around the world. Where as if you have a 5 year old who doesn't even know all the aspects within her own home, its more easy to convince them that the way of the world is different. Its like working with a blank canvass compared to working with a painted canvass. Which one is more easy to paint new ideas onto? As people grow older though, we are educated by people within our culture that teach us to follow a set of rules. Such as eating with a fork and knive compared to eating with chopsticks. Different people for different places have been taught in different ways. So the more they become educated, the stranger it is to them to see other people with a different lifestyle. Which is one of the reasons why I belive that a child's mind is one of the best kinds of minds. For their simplicity allows them to see the world and different cultures as just another new thing.

A Bronx Tale

Today we finished the movie A Bronx Tale, going into this movie I think the entire class knew that there would be some sort of turbulence for the word Bronx tends to frighten people. They in a sense fear the Bronx for it is classified as a ghetto where trouble arises and danger is a normal. Yet we really dont take into consideration our personal experiences with ghettos to judge places like the Bronx, for most of us dont have a personal realation with areas such as that. We tend to use our second hand knowledge based off of what we know about the South Side of Chicago and try to compare all ghettos across the country to this one particular area that is familiar to us. Yet lets be honest, no two places are the same, so I think its safe to say we overgeneralize a bit when it comes to unfamilair areas that have been labled "dangerous."

I personally grew up on the east cost, atlhough I am a Bostonian, I was born in New York. My mother has lived in New York for her entire childhood up until she had me. One of the areas that she lived in was the Bronx. I asked her questions about it such as: Was there an extreame amount of violence? Were the crime rates out of control? Were you constantly in fear? But the answer to all these questions was the same: "Its just like any place you would live in." And she was right, when I go back to New York I sometimes see the Bronx, and it is overstated when it comes to its notorious reputation. Whats even more suprising is that some very respectable people live there as well. So generally people tend to generalize about this dangerous area without even knowing what the place is really like.  Instead we rely on movies such as this one to inform us and give us our opinions on something we lack personal interaction with.

Misunderstandments

Today we began to watch a short film about a thrid grade teacher teaching her young 3rd grade students about racism. Although we did not get to finish the movie to the end, I have already seeen this movie in my sophmore english class. Towards the end of the movie the thing that I remembered the most was how upset the children were who had the disadvantages were. I remebered them being frustrated and not knowing what they did wrong or how they deserved such a punishment. Some may think its wrong to teach such a lesson on children who are so young. However I strongly disagree, teaching children at such an early developmental stage is a huge advantage. Not only will they rember not to act racist towards ones of different color, but they will also take with them how it felt to be judged by others who are in society: "the superior group." Children at that age have minds that develop so fast that they are able to take in what the teacher was teaching and remember it for a long time to come. Yet they are still at a age where they do not fully understand what is happening and why. But come to think of it do we really understand racism or judgement when is is portrayed against us by others? No matter what age you may be, you still will not fully understand how people can treat you so poorly due to something you have lack of control over.

The other day I was watching the movie A Beautiful Mind, being a huge film fan I pay close attention to the story and how the characters are reacting towards certain kinds of situations. For those who are not fimilar with this movie, the main character is schizophrenic, which means they view things in a different way then what most people would see. An example of this would be seeing dilusions. However, this movie gave you an inside view of his mind and how he viewed the world and as I was watching I even felt part of the confusion that he had to deal with. A lot of the times he would act out in public and others would mock him. This is the same situation with racism, he can't control whether or not he has an anxiety disorder, nor can people change the color of their skin. Which is a lesson all should learn at a very early age so we can overall have a better understanding of those different than us.

Gang Leader for a day

So far I have only read part of this new story we have. Yet I find the majority of the story so far to be repetitive. Ever since we were in school our teachers have been teaching us about black history as well as the social divide between whites and blacks. Then as always we read a short story always involving some character who is courageous and goes out to venture the other side of the social ladder what is now come to be called the ghetto. Following this short story is a class discusion on what we think the story means and how we could improve the situation in real life. Yet from what I see I notice no effort once our class discussion is over to try to change the current situation. Even though we spent about a half hour discussing and making fake promises to our teachers how we would try to change the situation. It is no doubt that the divide between whites and blacks even today still stands as a major problem. But if I started to go into that debate it would be another lecture of one we've all heard before. However, lets open up our eyes to the bigger problem.

The way we think is that life goes on as it should be, we figure in our minds that the lower classmen must have done something to deserve their poverty and the upperclassmen overall work hard to achieve their great sucsesses. How does that type of thinking occur? It starts with overall judgement of others. For example, if a person continuously fails their classes we see them not having a very sucsessful career. Or if a person tells thier peers that they are not going to college after highschool they recieve wierd and dissaproving looks. Yet the reality is that some people are born into the unsucessful lifestyles, and they are raised and brought up in a way that we would never even think to come close to being appropriate.

My freind in upstate New York lives in a very small town with a population of 200. In the middle of the woods in other words. I just had a conversation with her and the discussion of gays came up. She failed to see where calling people gay was morally wrong. Yet when I thought about it, I realized that she is so disconnected with the outside world that she doesnt know any better. She thinks that this is the only way to go about life. Same goes for the lowerclassmen. Their surroundings prevent them from exploration of the outside world, and they think killing and drug dealing is acceptable. Which is what draws the more privlaged back, leaning us towards the direction of staying away from them. Thus creating this big social gap between the two.

Sociological Mindfulness

To myself this was a very easy reading. I feel as if I already knew all of this information that Schwalbe was discussing. Yet I think the purpose of this essay is to remind the reader of past information we have already learned. Its hard to argue that most of what he is saying is common sense, we have been taught ever since we were little to be respectful of others and treat them the way that you would want to be treated. Thats basically what this essay is saying. However Schwalbe seems to have thrown in a few twists by including the wealth factor as how people are sometimes lazy and dont want to add more rules to the way they think. I personally don't blame the average person for not wanting to add more rules to the way they think.

Schwalvbe uses the average person to take the blame for the mistreatments of others. Yet I think we should look more at the demands society places on us. The individual isn't the one to place the blame on, it is more of society and the way that it is run. What he disincludes in his essay is its okay to be a little selfish and think about yourself. In society today you almost have to in order to make yourself and your loved ones available to all the opprotunites that are possible. My mother tells me everyday how fortunate I am to have so much recourses available to me. I theorize that since my mom was selfish by using her rescources to make a better life for her and I, that in the long run its made me think of the bigger picture, and has made me want to go out and help the less fortunate. Yet if she was as selfless as this essay suggests, then I might have never learned about the less fortunate in the first place.Thus diminishing my dream of reaching out to aid others.

Is Scilence Itself Akward?

Today we started of class in scilence. It was the first day of a new class and not a ton of people knew each other, and its interseting because when people don't know each other they tend to keep to themselves and not talk to anyone. Yet in our minds we constantly try to find a way to start a conversation with someone we don't know. We try to find similarities between the person and our selves so that we can relate to them, become more open. This is the way we think and tend to act. It is also partially due to students being trained to sit and wait for the teacher to talk beacause that has been the rules for students ever since way back in grade school. However, I do not believe that this is the main reason why people found the scilence to be awkward. I believe that the main cause of the awkward scilence was that it was the first day of our new class and we rely on the teacher to be the first one to talk. Because if they don't talk then we are taught to think that we shouldn't talk at all either. Yet this only explains the scilence portion, the awkward part is created when we fail to find a similarity between other people and ourselves. We fail at this because we assume that we are not allowed to talk at all if the teacher is talking, and how can we ever find similarities between us to relate to one another if we think that we are not allowed to talk? I have two electives, this class and film. On my first day of film I realized that I was one of the last ones to come in. I noticed that some people were talking because they already knew each other. Yet when I took a second look I noticed that almost half of the class had yearning look on their face, almost as if they were going to die if the class didn't start soon. This was because they are dying to talk, they want their voice to be heard, and for some people the only way they can think to talk out loud is if the teacher calls on you or asks a question. This is the way people are taught to think , any slight change in the way they go about doing things seems unrealistic to them. So they just keep to themselves waiting for an opprotunity to approach them when in turn it really should be them who creates their own opprotunity.

Myself

I am a 17 year old junior who loves water polo, and aspires to become a doctor. Most of my family are in the Science/Medical field and they inspire me to do the same. I love my science class and am one of the few who actually love chemistry. Yet on the weekends I love to spend time with my friends and have tons of fun with them. I cant wait to become a senior so I can go back to Boston for college, where I originally came from. The biggest influences in my life are probably my mother as well as world idols who have changed the world based on their view of how the world should be. Demonstrating that one person can make a huge difference if given the opprotunity. My goal in life is to help the less fortunate and hopefully discover ways to help aid diseases with no yet found cure through my medical dream.