Final Blog

In the beginning of the semester we were asked to define ourselves in our first blog post. To be honest, back then I thought I knew who I was, but this semester has truly changed me. I don't think I could say that about any class. This class has taught me to think differently in ways I would have never thought, and has also showed me that I have such a huge impact on the world that I didn't even know about. I never really believed the phrase "one person can make a change.", but after this semester I truly believe in it. This class has also changed the way I think about community service as well. I always thought it would be a pain going out and completing 10 hours of community service, but after I found Feed My Starving Children, I realized how much of an effect I have on the world, and now I go there and volunteer just for fun! If everyone in the class feels the way I do, which I believe they do, I've got to say Mr.Salituro, you're one of the best teachers I have had in years. Thank you for making this class so enjoyable.

Feed My Starving Children Community Service #2

I loved Feed My Starving Children so much that I decided to come back on 5/24/13 to finish up my hours! There wasn't as many people as when I went on 5/22/13, but the experience was still the same. They played fun music and we all sang and danced while packing our food. I had the same job as last time where I bagged and weighed the food. I've never had such a great experience doing community service ever in my life. This food that we are packing is going all around the world saving lives, and I never thought I'd have that kind of impact on the world. Participating in Feed My Starving Children changed my whole worldview. I also went back yesterday, 5/29/13, even though all my hours were done because I had such a great experience, and that is something I never thought that I would ever do. This organization changed my life.
Feed My Starving Children
742 E Park Ave, Libertyville, IL
5/24/13 & 5/29/13
Person in charge: Sarah
Phone: 847.984.3846

Feed My Starving Children Community Service

On Wednesday 5/22/13 I volunteered at Feed My Starving Children in Libertyville, which is an organization that packages food and sends it to certain areas in certain countries where they need food. I had never done something like this in my life, so before I went I had no idea what to expect. I did not expect to have as much fun as I did. The experience as a whole was so amazing. I was the bagger where I held the bags while someone placed the food into them, then I weighed them to make sure that they were a certain weight to be sent out. The environment was so fun. They had music blasting and everyone was singing and dancing while packing their food. Everyone there was so kind and helped me if I had any questions, especially the staff. They are very outgoing a easy to talk to as well. I was definitely surprised with how much fun I had and how much the experience affected my life. That night we packed 80 boxes feeding over 17,000 children. I never realized that I could play such an important role in these children's lives. Driving there was about 30 minutes, then we volunteered from 8-930, and then drove back home totaling 2.5 hours!
Feed My Starving Children
742 E Park Ave, Libertyville IL 5/22/13
Person in charge: Sarah
Phone: 847.984.3846

A Safe Place Community Service

I volunteered at a walk for the organization "A Safe Place" which helps children or adults who have been abused, and gives them a place to stay. Before I went, I wasn't sure what kind of work I would be doing, but I knew I was going to support the cause, and donate $50 to the organization. The walk was held at Independence Grove. I went there 1st semester when I volunteered at the "Making Strides" walk for breast cancer. It's a great environment with a lot of open spaces. I worked with mostly adults in the beginning who were teachers that my mom works with from her school, and that is how I found out about this opportunity. They were all very generous, and happy that I came out to help them with the walk. When I got there I help set up the area by blowing up the balloons, and once the runners started coming I worked the food stand for a little, handing out fruit. Once the walk/run had started I was assigned an area in the middle of the walk, to direct the runners to the finish line. It really meant a lot to me to help A Safe Place because I personally know a few people who have been abused before. It surprised me the amount of people who came out to support this cause. I didn't think there was going to be as many people as there was. The entire day was about 5 hours, which seems like a lot but it flew by.
A Safe Place
Independence Grove, Libertyville, IL
8A.M.-12P.M. 5/4/13
Person in charge: Kate Stephan-Cothell
kcothell@asafeplaceforhelp.org

Crash

This week in Sociology we watched the movie Crash. Out of all the movies we have watched this semester this was by far my favorite. Race is a huge aspect throughout this movie. After watching this movie, it made me realize whether we know it or not, we are all racist whether it be explicit, or implicit.  During one of the scenes of this movie a cop pulled two black people over, because they were black driving in a nice car, in a nice neighborhood. He publicly harassed them to the point where his partner felt uncomfortable and asked to be reassigned. Yet when his partner was in the car with a black teen, when the teen reached into his pocket he automatically thought he was pulling out a weapon so he shot him "first" before the black teen could shoot him. Little did he know that the teen wasn't pulling out anything close to a weapon at all, but he actually was pulling out a religious figure that he kept with him in his pocket. What the cop did showed implicit racism. Even though that cop was trying to hard to not be outwardly racist, the fact is he still was because race shapes us, and as much as we try to not believe it, it's always in the back of our minds. Even though our society is obsessed with race, towards the end of the movie you began to see that all the different races depended on one another in different ways. Like the persian man thought of the little girl as his angel, and the white woman realized that her true friend was her asian housekeeper. It just shows that even though our society is obsessed with race, we need it.

Race

Last week in Sociology we talked about race. I learned that different cultures think of race in so many different ways. Here in America we think of race as usually white, black, asian, or latino. In Brazil they have 134 terms to describe "skin color" such as, ebony, deep bluish, off-white, greenish, yellowish, reddish, honey toned, cinnamon, tawny, cashew, chocolate brown, tint of coffee, milky, etc. They is no way to group human into distinct racial groups. It is all in social construction. In class Sal talked about how when he went to Japan he asked the people there what the different races were, and they said "Japanese people, and foreign people" so you are either Japanese or you're not, and that's all. Seeing how each culture describes their races shows that we create race ourselves, placing people into certain groups based on skin color. He also talked about how some Japanese people identify themselves by earwax! You either have dry/flaky earwax, or wet greasy earwax, depending on where your ancestors came from. So many people create race themselves, that there are no rules on race.

Social Class

A couple weeks ago in sociology we talked about social class. A lot of us don't realize how good we really have it because we have been living this way all our lives. Our district exceeds the average wealth percentage of the United States yet we don't even realize it. We are divided into three social classes, upper, middle, and lower. The upper class holds about 90% of our wealth, even though they are the smallest in population. It's unfortunate that the larger, and more populated social classes don't have as much wealth. This lesson showed me how fortunate I truly am to be living where I do and to have the amount of opportunities that I do. This lesson really helped me to open my eyes and made me so grateful for what I have.

Deviance

A few weeks ago we learned about deviance in sociology. Being deviant is when someone goes against the social norms. For example in school you're supposed to come to class, sit down, be quiet, and pay attention. Someone who comes to class being loud and obnoxious would be considered deviant. We were given an assignment where we had to complete an act of positive deviance, doing something we normally would never do, that could benefit other people. I decided to cook dinner for my family. I admit I'm not the best cook in the world, but I made a salad and chicken piccata. They were really surprised that I even offered to cook dinner. It made me feel good inside knowing that I made my family feel good. Even though it was a small act of kindness, it made a huge difference. If everyone did one act of positive deviance a day the world would be a better place.

Tough guise

Two weeks ago in sociology we watched a video about how boys and men think they have to be tough in order to be accepted in society. From such a young age boys are introduced to toys and products that are very masculine, because if you were seen with dolls you were considered "girly" or "gay". These stereotype of genders have been going on for many years. If we want to change that it wouldn't happen right away, it would take years to change the overall images what is considered male and female. This all shows just how much media truely effects us as people. If you aren't doing what's advertised you're considered "different". Media shapes us the day we are born and as of now it's almost uncontrollable.

Media's Effect on Society

This week in sociology we watched a couple different videos about how media, such as television can shape the way we think. I thought it was ironic that we were watching a movie on tv that talks about how we watch too much tv, which was brought up in sociology as well. The show talked about how company's were making toys for little children based off tv shows or movies that they watched, such as ninja turtles, Spiderman, transformers etc. It also stated how girls from a young age were starting to get the impression that the only way you could ever be pretty was to be skinny. We read something off of sal's blog that said women in Fiji thought being big and round was considered beautiful, but after shows like 90210 came out, girls from Fiji claimed they had purged at least once to try to lose weight. We don't realize how much media effects us. Especially from such a young age, it almost brainwashes us right away. The show we watched also talked about how people who create commercials, measure the amount of times children blink during certain commercials. They aim to have children not be able to blink at all because they're so mesmerized by what they're watching. There are so many ways media shapes us, but since they start at a young age, we hardly notice.

Socialization Matters

This week in Sociology we talked about how socialization was just as important if not more than anything else with growing and developing. We watched an Oprah episode about this 6 year old child who was found neglected in a room for most of her life with the skills of a 6 month old infant because nobody had taught her how to do any of that. Her mom barely fed her and pretty much left her in there to die. When child services found her, she was wearing a soiled diper, with no other clothes, and insect infested hair. They took her out of there immediately and brought her into their care. A lovely family chose to adopt her, but little did they know how underdeveloped she really was. She couldn't walk, talk, feed herself, dress herself, and do all the normal things a 6 year old child should be doing. Just this case alone shows how much other people really effect our lives, and help us to develop. It's not just our brain or our genes that make us who we are but the people surrounding us as well. I'm so thankful for the family I have, and I wouldn't do anything to change that.

The Nothing Assignment

I never had my opportunity to blog about the nothing assignment we had to do a couple weeks ago, so I thought better late than never. I chose to do my nothing assignment at home just around my family, because to be honest I was way to nervous to be doing it in front of other people. I felt extremely uncomfortable while doing it, but I think I thought it was worse than it actually was. My family was too zoned out to really notice. My mind kept wandering, and I tried to get it to stop but it was almost physically impossible to do. For a couple minutes I was able to actually focus on the assignment, but then other things would come to mind and I would forget that I wasn't allowed to do that. Overall, I think this assignment was something fun and interesting to do. It was definitely different than any other homework assignment I've gotten. It was a cool experience all in all.

Tuesdays With Morrie

The week before spring break in class we watched the movie, Tuesdays With Morrie, about how an older man named Morrie was diagnosed with a terrible illness that started by paralyzing his feet and slowly moved up his body. He always had a positive outlook on life, even in the toughest times of his disease. The story is about a man named Mitch who used to have Morrie as his coach back in high school. They shared a very special bond. So when Mitch found out about Morrie's illness he decided to give him a visit since he hadn't seen him since he graduated. He ended up visiting him every Tuesday and grew a very special bond. At the end of the movie, Morrie ended up passing away. This movie taught me a lot about how no matter what the circumstances I should live everyday like it's my last because you never know what may happen a day, week, month, or year from now. This movie definitely taught me a lesson about life, and I was definitely able to connect emotionally to this movie.

Cultural Values

This week we read an article that Stefan Schirmer wrote about how the american values are different than the ones in Germany. America likes control, and to have ridiculous rules and regulations whereas in Germany they have more loose limitations. He claimed that the 24/7 grocery stores were strange, and that in Germany the grocery stores are only open certain hours of the day, and they aren't even open on Sundays. Living with my mom, I've definitely experienced the American way of control. I have restrictions on what I can do and when I can do it, and when I don't follow those, the consequences are harsh. So I definitely can understand how he sees we need control as Americans.

Culture Shock

Last week we watched a film about the lost boys in Sudan. They walked many miles without their parents. Once they were settled in a new area, a refugee camp was set up for them, and some got to come to America. Living here, it seems like everything we do is normal but after watching this film, I realized we have a very different culture. The lost boys had never used electricity or had eaten simple foods such as chips. I never thought such simple things could be so confusing. This movie taught me that we as Americans take so much for granted, and don't realize how good we have things. The lost boys sometimes had to even drink each others urine just to get by. Yet we eat what we want, and then throw out the rest. It just doesn't make sense. This was a complete eye opener.

Freaks and Geeks

In class this week we watched an episode of a show called "Freaks and Geeks" which was about this teenage girl named Lindsay, who has always been a straight A student, who starts hanging out with the burnout kids, or the "Freaks". She also has a younger brother who is considered the "Geek" he hangs out with his two other friends, always getting made fun of and pushed around. I thought that the burnout group was dysfunctional because they really aren't doing anything to help each other out, and they're only bringing each other down. They ditch class and do drugs. That can't be a functional group.

Sociological Imagination

Last week in class we learned about sociological imagination, which is to explain sociology and its relevance in daily life. Mills defined it as "The vivid awareness of the relationship between experience and the wider society."It can help to see the bigger details and pay attention to things you normally wouldn't, and see the motives behind peoples actions. It requires you to see things from another point of view. The things around people shape what they do to create an outcome. Sociological imagination seems so simple and obvious, but none of us take the time to actually think about it, so when we do, certain things stand out, and we see things we maybe didn't see before.

About Me

I'm from a small town, going to a big public high school. I did cheerleading there for 3 years, but senior year I didn't try out, and got a job at a retail clothing store. Working there, hanging out with my friends, and watching desperate housewives is what I do with all my time, oh and eating. Honesty and trust are two traits that are very important to me, and if someone breaks my trust, it's hard for me to forgive them. Getting sushi with my friends and venting to them about everything, happens on a weekly basis, and I love spending time with them. In fact it's time for lunch now. Xoxo