This is Me

Who am I? That's a good question. Looking back at my very first blog, pretty much all of that is still true about me, except for a couple of exceptions. Ever since I have taken Sociology I have truly opened up my eyes and mind to the world in a whole new way. I take situations that occur regularly and examine it in a totally different perspective. I try to explain to my friends that I see something differently, but I could never fully explain what I'm thinking/seeing. Just by briefly examining people and the topics we've gone through like teens, gender, social class, race, etc. Everything we have been taught was for a reason, now that I look back everything ties in together now. It fits like a perfect puzzle. I can't even explain how differently I see everything now. I can almost say I have more respect for more things now. Also this experience had made me look at the world as a whole and what we have created and how we just keep digging deeper holes for ourselves so we can't get out. Social Classes do exist, Race does exist, more than half the things exist only because we've made them exist. How we have shaped the human mind and this shaping has been starting ever since we've been born. Wether it's being treated differently cause of gender or race this we have all created in our minds. It almost like we are playing Mind Wars with ourselves and others.

T.V. Party Tonight!

Race, does it even matter? The answer is yes, very much so. Sadly most Americans judge people on their race and have created stereotypes for almost all of the races that exists here in the U.S. In class this week we talked about how we have convinced ourselves that race is biological and cannot be changed, but is that really true? Sure, we can't change our roots but when we go to different places of the world we are each considered something different to that country. So in a sense our race can change and I never thought about it like that. I'm not sure if I'm totally convinced if that's true or not, but it makes sense.
What's funny is how we just look at people and we "know" their race automatically. We did a similar activity in class were we looked at someone and categorized them into different races. Our end results were not so great, we got only three right. So lesson learned; you can judge a book by it's cover.

Money, Money, Money!

Today in class we split up into groups of 4/5 and played monopoly, but it wasn't your average board game rules. In my group the 5 of us each rolled the dice for a social class and decided fairly. I got the lower middle class status. We each started out with an amount of money and i started out with about $675 in my pocket. At first it seemed as a pretty decent amount of money to have and as the game started playing out I found myself in difficult situations, deciding to buy something, in order to gain more money, or deciding to pass on it. I decided to be a good spender and not buy everything i landed on that was up for grabs, except the electric company, which ended up being a mistake. I mean I stayed at a good amount I just lost about 5 or 6 bucks, but still I could of made more. And now looking back if that was my real life I would have to obviously spend more for food, clothing, housing, etc. With having about $600 in your pocket a month for all your daily needs I have a feeling that wouldn't last me a month. Especially with my life style being raised as an upper middle class, $600 is certainly not enough for the other 3 people in my family including myself. Although I have been raised as an upper middle class, my parents and grandparents were not. They had all came from Poland with barely anything in their pockets with just the minimum clothes, some food, and money. With the lack of money they had to find a living place for my grandparents and my mom and aunt and save enough for my mom and aunt to have a decent education. As for my dad he was born and raised in Poland in a poor community with a house that they had to share with another family living upstairs, so basically an apartment. Leaving Poland and coming to America was a pretty good choice for them. My parents and grandparents had to build their way up from the lower class to, what we are now, the upper middle class. Not too shabby if I do say so myself.

Don't Be So Stuck Up, Please?

With most of Stevenson being upper middle class, when do you have time to associate with the ones who aren't? Hmmm....let me think, not a whole lot. And just by saying most of Stevenson is upper middle class I just separated the different classes there are in the world. So, I believe that separating people of different classes is just what people do naturally. It's what most of us have lived with and been grown up with. Sure, it's a horrible thing to put people in categories when it is known that "all men are created equally", but it IS what we do even if we like it or not.
With all the talk about the insanely rich movie stars there's never enough time to talk about those of the lower class. They sometimes feel they are "invisible" in today's society because no one really cares or wants to talk about someone that is of a lower class than they are. I don't blame them. That's why volunteering is a great way to see things in a whole new perspective. Plus it gives you time to communicate and associate with the different classes of people.

So, Which Cell Would You Like to Call Home?

30 days in prison doesn't seem that long until you're actually the one serving it. Sal had showed us a movie today where a man had spent 30 days in jail, and was treated like any other person that gets sent there. At first, it didn't seem that bad. They gave you a mattress, pillow, and they told you to pick your own room. Sounds nice of them, huh? Yeah, it's nice when most of the cells are already filled with 3 people or some just don't want you there since it's such a small room and you spend a good amount locked in there for the night with the people you chose. Sounds like they are living the life. The funny part is you don't even have to think in jail. You have 3 meals a day and if you are lucky a visitor every once in a while. Me, personally, I think I'd go crazy after just spending a week in the slammer. Speaking about going crazy, a good amount of the people that are in prison have a mental problem that, in my opinion, shouldn't even be in prison! I mean what is this? If the judge had sentenced them to X amount of years to a mental institution for them to get better, then it would make just a little more sense instead of stuffing them into the already filled up jail cells we have in America. When I found out the statistics about the amount of prisoners we had, that was a shock, but an even bigger shock was the fact that most of them need mental help not just to be locked away and forgotten about. The laws that society made up needs some revising, big time. Most of them don't even make sense, I mean I understand if you did a horrible crime like murder then, of course, you should be locked up for good, but not when there's something wrong with you. Oh, and another thing most of the criminals are in jail for drugs and have longer sentences than the ones who committed murder, which is the most ridiculous thing I have ever herd in my life. Yes, I'm aware that some drugs are illegal in the U.S., but come on, life sentence plus another life sentence plus 16 months on parole for taking a drug or selling it. And these murderers get away with just 20 years in prison and are set free to kill again? This sure does not make sense to me, but i guess it does in court.

Toga Party, Anyone??

A week before Halloween my friends and I decided to do something fun and different then we normally do on a Saturday night. Yeah, you guessed it, we had a Toga Party. And yes, you guessed it again, wearing a toga was a must. The main purpose of this party was not actually having a party, it was more like a game. My friends and I split up into 4 groups of 4 people and we had a list of things we had to do, some were on the stupid side, but most of them were an act of kindness that most of us wouldn't do on a normal basis. For example, one of the tasks was to help an old lady cross the street. We had to video tape us doing the task for "points" that would be added up at the end of the game. Oh, did I mention we were wearing togas this whole time? It was strange, especially for the guys. We kept getting weird stares/looks from random people about the guys wearing the togas. To me it was just funny, but I thought it tied into what Sal was talking about in class today. When he showed us a piece of clothing that a guy had to wear for an Egyptian Wedding, just got me thinking about the guys that were wearing the togas and how "out of the norm" it is for that to happen around here. Another task we had to do was to help someone out with bags or a large object that they were carrying. This, I considered a positive deviance. Even though it was something to cure our boredom I felt good about myself after going out of my way just to help someone which i normally wouldn't do, obviously.
P.S. My Team won ;)

McDreamy

"Come on son, be a MAN!" says a father to his son. If you're not a man and can't stand up to others then you're obviously a "fag" says almost everyone you ask. Stand up for who you are, come on, get into a fight, knock someone over, or put them into a hospital;that's what parents are telling their kids now a days. Not only do boys get a speech about it, it's publicly advertised everywhere you look. Can't believe it? Yeah, either could I, when children have been growing up with this message in Classic Disney movies. I have never stopped to think that a Disney Character, like Hercules, is portraying the way men should look now a days, with their tough guise and muscular bodies. Please, give me a break, if EVERY guy looked like that then, well, the world would be just too boring. It would be like a where's the real waldo type thing, with everyone looking the same. I mean masculinity can be advertised in a different way, a little less suddle and a lot less violence. People don't understand that people in movies are digitally made to look "tough" with their fake accents and fancy suites, for example The Godfather. Yet, everyone treats tough guy actors like Arnold Schwarzenegger like a god. What a world we live in....