Week 10: Social Change

Since this is the last posting for the honors section of our course, I am happy we get to write about everything we have learned and how we are going to make changes because of these things. One of the bigs things that will stick with me is when we talked about gender and how we actually "do gender" and are not born into it. The picture to the left is of a mom and her daughter "doing gender" in Disneyland. I took this picture because I thought it was funny, and now it has been put to use! Ever since I was little, I thought that boys and girls/ males and females were biologically decided and we just made cultural adaptations to accommodate the sex we were born into. However, I have recently realized that we actually create gender and are forced to uphold who we are by giving into the social and cultural norms that show people whether we are male or female. I hope that in the near future there will be change in the gender opportunities for people who are labeled as "transvestites" or "transgenders." Another big area of change for me would be under the category of race. I learned exactly how race is socially constructed and I will take away one important thing with me. People often ask me, "what are you?" and I respond, "what do you mean?" When this happens in the future, I am simply going to respond, "I'm American." Being born and raised in America, I believe that makes me American. If I am asked what race I am, I would like to try and respond something like "race doesn't exist, take a sociology class!" ;) I would love to see what someone responds to that. Another thing is the bystander effect. When we were discussing this, I said that I am hardly ever a bystander and I always speak up in situations that I think could be harmful in any way. The change that I would make using the way we talked about the bystander effect and all the people who remain bystanders is to be even more assertive in dangerous situations and encourage others around me not to be bystanders as well. Overall, I loved this class! Mrs. Huerta, you are an amazing teacher! You say that you have a strong personality, and I like it! Sometimes, people tell me I have a strong personality too. I'm planning on majoring in Sociology and having you as a teacher for this class really enforced my decision! Thanks for everything.

Second TOUCHH Trip

*May 21, 2009 Trip

First off, let me say that I absolutely love these kids! They are great and I love opportunities like this that allow me to interact with people out of my own peer group who are not adults yet either! This time, I worked with the G.A.T.E. after school class again. G.A.T.E. stands for the "gifted and talented education" class. When I walked in, all the kids turned toward the door and began shouting, "I know you!" and "I remember you!" I love working with kids because you almost always get this reaction. They think it is so cool to have a teenager in their classroom that is not a teacher or solid authority figure. I got to be a lot more involved with the class this time. First, I read to them about mummies around the world and actually taught them a bit about what I know about mummies and went over some new vocabulary words in the stories. I felt like a teacher, but most of all, like I was contributing something important to the class. After this, the kids had silent reading time. During this time, I helped with some of their online reading quizzes that they took through a computer program on the I-Mac they had in the front of the classroom. I was impressed at how well the younger ones (4th and 5th graders) knew how to work the computer and fix it if something "went wrong." Following their silent reading was recess! This was always my favorite time of the school day, and the girls kept asking me if I would be there when they came back from recess and I assured them that I would be waiting. They seemed so excited and it made me happy to know that they liked me! When they got in from recess, the teacher told me she had some papers to grade and other things to do, so I could read to the class again. This time, the boys brought me scary stories and I chose a couple to read. The kids were so funny always saying, "That wasn't scary enough...choose another!" So I read about three of four before our TOUCHH group had to leave for the day. I asked the teacher to take a picture of me with the class and the kids were so happy and ran to where I was standing to pose. It was such a great experience and I hope someday I have the chance to go back.

Week 8: Gender

*The picture on the left is my "tom boy look"

*The picture on the right is of me and my older sister competing in the Miss Santa Clara Pageant in January 2009.

I really like talking about gender and how my gender(female) is shown through my personality and way of life. I would consider myself both a girly-girl and a tom-boy at the same time. It's hard to explain how I can be both, but if you get to know me, I think you'll see how this works for me. First of all, being a girly-girl for me entails dressing up whenever I leave the house. This means putting on make-up, doing my hair, and wearing nice, cute, girly clothes. I love being flirty, going shopping and eating politely most of the time. I also dance and have been competing in Miss America preliminary pageants since I was 13. This is a huge contributor to my overtly female side. However, I can also be quite the tomboy. I love going out in basketball shorts and t-shirts sometimes with my hair up in a ponytail because it's extremely comfortable. Also, a good majority of my friends are male and being around guys often makes me immune to their conversations and the way they talk and act in public and in private situations. If I was born male, I think that I could probably do just fine in the world. I might be more accepted in the workplace and through sports because I feel that males still have an advantage, even in our modern day society. I feel like as a female, there are definitely certain advantages and disadvantages. One advantage is that you get sympathy and care from others more easily and you are allowed to show emotion most of the time. There are so many disadvantages of being a female that I can think of, but I will just name a few. First, I hate that people think I'm delicate or I need to be taken care of all the time. I love feeling independent and I do not like being treated unequally. An example of this comes with my own family. If I bring up a male cousin or close friend that "got to do something" when he was my age they often say something like, "well, it's different because he is a boy." I always hated this and found it to be very sexist because I do not care if he is a boy and I actually think I am smarter and more capable of handling myself in a bad situation if one were to arise. Another disadvantage comes with holding power positions. Females still aren't accepted in high ranking jobs and positions in our society. We have yet to see a woman president and the majority of CEO's of our nation's largest companies are men. Despite the disadvantages, I love being a female!

Week 7: Race

For those of who don't know, my parents are from India and my I identify myself as Indian. I was born and raised in California and my parents, who have been here most of their lives, have adopted the American culture as their own yet still kept a few Indian traditions, values and other memes of culture. When I thought about my first expirience with race, I couldn't believe I remembered all the way back to the fourth grade. The very first time I became conscious of my race was when I was about 9 years old and we had international day at school. The youngest class that took part was the fourth grade, so it was my first year. I had one older sister at the school, and my mom worked there so she was a parent volunteer. One of the countries we got to learn about was India, and my mom was the volunteer for it's booth. I helped her and that was the first time I really remember noticing that I was Indian and my friends were other races such as Chinese, Vietnamese, German, Italian, and Mexican. My mom brought traditional Indian clothes that she had and some food that I was used to eating. I had never thought about what other kids ate at home, but I thought it was similar to what I ate. As it turns out, almost nobody had tried the Indian snacks my mom had brought. This is the first time I became conscious about race and my race in particular.

Week 6: Social Class

For this weeks analysis of class, I went to Santana Row in San Jose to observe the people and atmosphere. Santana Row has an "upper class feel" because of the shops and the people there. Most of the stores are very expensive and often designer boutiques such as Burberry, Gucci, BCBG Maxazria and many other stores that I had never heard of (most of them one of a kind boutiques). There are a couple of mainstream stores such as H&M, Anthropologie and Urban Outfitters that are still on the expensive end of large clothing stores. Most of the stores are small and specialize in something. Almost all of them have elegant music playing and a couple of workers who come up and talk to you about their products which are usually available to test if that is necessary. The stores have simple decor on the walls and windows and the organization is usually pretty spaced out and nothing is clumped in the stores. I would definitely say that almost all of the people in one store that I was in, Shuz at the Row, appeared to be upper-middle class. I would say that most were wealthy as well because they didn't seem to be working people since they were out shopping on a Wednesday at 2:30 in the afternoon. These people were all wearing expensive clothing, (as someone who likes designer clothing, I can tell very easily), and even their children were wearing expensive clothes. They did not have any visible tattoos, which is supposed to show respect and high-class. All of the three that I observed were white or some type of Caucasian and looked physically fit, wearing a lot of make-up and had nice, clean, pretty hair. Also, two of the women I saw had many shopping bags from other expensive boutiques. One of them had a huge diamond wedding ring on her left hand which also showed her wealth. These status markers show that these people are upper-middle class and wealthy because they are willing to show off their assets and wealth by getting a lot of shopping bags and wearing very expensive clothes for an ordinary shopping trip. However, these indexes could be mistaken if the person only has one good outfit or had just gotten his/her hair done that day. But overall, I definitely feel that Santana Row is a place for upper-middle class shoppers.

First Expirience with TOUCHH

On April 23, I went to Watsonville with a group of students to volunteer with the TOUCHH program. I did not know what to expect and I was pretty nervous. I felt comfortable with the group that I went with, so that was a relief. However, as we walked through the door of the front office and the coordinator began to assign us classrooms, my nerves caught up to me again. I have done a lot of volunteering with children and also worked with them as a dance instructor, but this time was different because it was far from home. I walked into the classroom to find about twenty children in the after school program from grades 4-6. The teacher was really nice and she made me feel welcome. The kids were welcoming, asked me about myself, and even told me about themselves. When they started to do their state tests, I began to understand why the school needed our help. Some of the kids were behind, some did not want to take the test, and some were struggling with the language barrier. I wanted to help them all, but there was so much to tell them about how to take the test and how to answer each question and I didn't have enough time. I remember helping on little boy in particular because I saw that he had raced through the test. He had gotten almost all of the questions wrong and I asked him why he raced through it. He said because he hated taking the time to read the sentences and then think about it because it took much more effort since the test was in English. I sat down and told him that this was important and practicing would just make things easier. When I got the chance to walk him through each question, he got about 90% of them correct. I was so happy for him and he seemed really happy as well. I love helping children because I remember what it felt like to have older kids and adults help me when I was younger. The individual attention is amazing and I look forward to going back in a couple weeks.

Week 5: Deviance

When I first heard about this story I felt my heart skip a beat. I have always hated bullies, and these two boys simply sounded like bullies on a much more serious scale.

The Oakland Tribune reported the beating of a local man, Tiansheng Yu, 59 years old, in mid April. He was waiting for his son outside a store when his son came out only to tell him that an African American man had punched him in the face without warning for no reason. The father and son looked for the two African American men and found them on a street corner. Yu, the father of the boy who was punched, confronted the men only to be beat down and left unconscious.

I have no idea why anyone would want to beat up a random person. However, if I were to take a guess, I would take on from Marx's conflict perspective. These two African American men were from Oakland which is densely populated with African Americans. They might have been lower class teens with no real futures ahead of them simply looking for trouble. The situation they are in and their class leads them to be violent and bored on the streets. They have no respect for other people, especially ones of other races. This might be why they chose to victimize a young Asian boy who they thought would do nothing and they could get away with what they did. However, when confronted by his father, they might have panicked. Not wanting to be arrested for punching the boy, they overreacted to the older man and ended up injuring him. This seems like an indirect result of inequality in our class system, but one can never know for sure.

To read the whole story, visit:
http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_14920033?source=most_viewed

Week 4: Group Influence

When people get together in pairs or in groups, I think they are definitely inclined to make bad decisions and influenced in bad ways. For some reason, when friends get together in groups, risky behavior seems a lot less risky because the consequences will affect everyone, so you're not going to be alone. I talked to my older sister's best friend's boyfriend, Brian, when we were all out at Dave and Busters a couple nights ago. He said that whenever he gets with his friends, they get into all sorts of trouble. It's because they are always competing and making bets with each other to do things. He gave me one specific example of how they were all out to dinner at a very expensive restaurant one night after winning the CCS baseball championships. The boys were all very rowdy and fired up from the game they had just won. One of Brian's friends who was playing with the pepper dared him to snort a line of it up his nose and offered to pay for his meal if he did it. Some of the other guys got in on the bet and they all watched as Brian accepted because he thought it would be funny and he did not want to back down in front of his teammates. He did it and afterward he said had never felt worse! It burned his nose for a couple days, gave him nosebleeds and he sneezed a lot. I also asked my sister if she was ever influenced to do something dangerous or risky in a group and she told me a story about college. I often hear about people doing this. She said that she was out with some friends for her 22nd birthday and she had to work in the morning, so she told them she was not going to drink too much. But, her friends did not listen and they continued to buy her drinks and shots all night. By the end of the night she had too much to drink and ended up getting sick when she got home. She stayed up for a couple hours because she was so sick and ended up having to call in sick to work, which is what she was trying to avoid. Last but not least, I was talking to my best friend about what him and I had did one time when we were with our friends and how we don't think we would have done it if we weren't in a big group. We were all at a party in highschool one night and one of our friends had an idea to break into an elementary school nearby to play "drunk tag." We agreed and since we had all been drinking, about 12 of us walked to the elementary school. We had to jump the fence and then we started to play tag. About 20 minutes later, we saw some lights and realized the cops had heard us or seen us and there were 2 cop cars outside the gates. We all ran so fast to get back to the house, but 3 of our friends got caught. They were taken in to the police station, and their parents had to pick them up. I was so lucky that I got away that time. Groups can definitely make people do things that would not normally do on their own. Two heads are not always better than one...

Week 3: Cultural Objects- Purses

The cultural object I chose to focus on today is a purse or bag that is carried around daily. Mostly women, and some men, use these bags to carry their belongings around while running errands and other things. I have so many purses that it's hard to count them all sometimes and I probably have not seen half of them in years because they are stored somewhere because they "went out of style" or are "too young-looking" for me to use now. As far as I'm concerned, purses or bags of this type have been around since the earliest times when cavemen lived except they would carry around things like berries that they collected instead of wallets, cell phones and other necessities that we fill ours with today. I think that as time goes on, we won't even need purses or bags anymore because everything will be so compacted. For instance, the cell phone is an object that is beginning to eliminate the need for a computer, organizer, notepad, music player and many other things that phone's have proven to be able to do. I think that purse's are highly social and cultural because they signify something about who we are and where we come from. For instance, people who buy designer label purses and bags are displaying the money they have to spend on luxuries such as purses. However, low-income families may have to carry around a plastic bag or plain bag that is much less expensive because they only have money for the bare necessities in life. Purses and bags can be very class sensitive because for instance, if a very wealthy woman saw what she thinks to be a poorer woman carrying around the same bag that she has, it will probably lose it's value and she will want something even more rarer and expensive. Situations like this with purses and designer labels show how materialistic the people of our society can be. Most of the time, these purses are imported from other countries who have been underpaid in sweatshops to make designer purses that will be sold for a lot of money in the U.S. Some other countries are just as materialistic with their choices as we are, yet some are more modest about the bags they carry around and some, like Europeans don't carry big purses around. Also, European men are socially accepted if they carry around a purse whereas in America, a man would be seen as homosexual or too feminine if he had a purse or bag of belongings of his own. A man's bag should be black and a backpack, but she only be use if he is going hiking and needs lots of things. In other cases, I feel like Americans just think that men should carry around wallets in their pockets and that is it.

Week 2: Indexes

The other day, I was having lunch at Chili's and I noticed a man and woman eating together and having a very lively conversation. They looked about the same age and seemed very interested in what the other person was saying. I noticed these two people eating lunch together to be an index pointing to them being on a date. I seem to notice this type of index quite often. In our society, if two members of the opposite sex and of the same age group dine out by themselves, we almost always assume that they are on a date. I am not sure if this is because dating is supposed to be a common thing and we find it odd to hang out with a member of the opposite sex if we're friends, but it almost always seems to point to that. Another index that I discovered recently after our discussion on the subject was something that people had been assuming about me and some other people I know for quite some time. I noticed that if you tell someone you go to a community college, they almost always assume you are some sort of "screw-up." By this I mean that community college are often misread as indexes for stupid, lazy screw-ups. Screw-ups who are trying to take classes so that they can transfer to a university or even just obtain an AA/AS degree simply to say that they have a degree. It makes me angry when people assume this about me and read community college as an index for me not being as "good" as them. I went to a private, catholic highschool and graduated with a 3.8 cumulative GPA with excellent extracurriculars and I currently have a college GPA of 4.0. I came to De Anza because of financial difficulties and people who read it as an index for something else and assume things just don't know the circumstances. This shows that our society values education that is well paid for. Any education that lets anybody take courses and is not overly expensive comes across as a poor quality education in most people's eyes. Being sociologically mindful can change this, but unfortunately, most people can't master this skill and do not care to.

Introducing myself!

Hello! I'm Marisa and I am a sociology major at De Anza, which might be why I am so interested in the subject and so excited to be in the honors section! I went to Archbishop Mitty High School and graduated last May. I love to dance and perform in recitals! If you have any questions or comments, feel free to contact me! I am looking forward to reading everyone else's blogs!