Community Service-Ushering the Orchestra Concert

Last Monday, I volunteered to usher at the Spring Orchestra Concert. I got there 45 minutes before the concert, with two other volunteers, and we watched the concert orchestra rehearse while we waited for instructions. We made sure no one came into the Performing Arts Center before the directors wanted them in and, after that, we passed out programs that mapped out the concert for parents and peers. Finally, when we were allowed to let people in, we continued passing out programs, greeting people, and wishing them a good time at the concert. The night of the concert was also the night of the Art Festival/Show and so many parents were confused on the locations, so I helped them and even walked some of them halfway to the fieldhouse. Then, this mother came up to me and said that her phone had died and that when she was calling her daughter before, she hadn't been able to get a hold of her. She was scared because her daughter walked home from school that day and was supposed to call her when she got home, but she didn't. I let her use my phone and thankfully, her daughter picked up the house phone and assured her that she was fine.

I felt really helpful at the event and I felt like I made a difference when I helped some people. Even just a simple smile or greeting can make someone's day, especially when they are a parent who is going to their child's concert after working all day. I was really glad that I could help calm down a worried mother, especially when I knew that I would want someone to do the same for my mother in that type of situation.

People are like M&M's

This week in class we discussed race, focusing on categorizing race, racism, and the social construction of race. Sal showed us a group of objects and asked us to categorize them in groups; some objects didn't fit into a definite group and some objects overlapped into different groups. These objects represented race and it showed us that it is nearly impossible to define everyone's race, especially when someone is a mix of different races. Also, in class we discussed how society and your surroundings affect your race. My roommate next year is Caucasian, African American, Chinese, and Native American but since a large population of people living by her are black, she classifies herself as African American.

We discussed implicit and explicit racism, explicit being obvious and implicit being hidden. There are some online games/tests that are supposed to determine your implicit racism. In AP Psychology, we played a game where we matched races and words very quickly, to measure our implicit racism; the more you associate the darker race with negative words, the more racist you may be. We also played a game where either a black person or a white person appears on the screen with an object in their hand and, as quick as possible, you have to shoot them if you think the object in their hand is a gun. The more times you choose to shoot a black person with an object other than a gun, the more racist you may be against blacks.

One of my favorite youtube videos is a video regarding interracial dating and biracial people. He compares different races to M&M's and basically asks "If we don't discriminate against the M&M colors we eat, why should we discriminate against people of different colors?"

Girls are like M&M's

This week in class we discussed race, focusing on categorizing race, racism, and the social construction of race. Sal showed us a group of objects and asked us to categorize them in groups; some objects didn't fit into a definite group and some objects overlapped into different groups. These objects represented race and it showed us that it is nearly impossible to define everyone's race, especially when someone is a mix of different races. Also, in class we discussed how society and your surroundings affect your race. My roommate next year is Caucasian, African American, Chinese, and Native American but since a large population of people living by her are black, she classifies herself as African American.

We discussed implicit and explicit racism, explicit being obvious and implicit being hidden. There are some online games/tests that are supposed to determine your implicit racism. In AP Psychology, we played a game where we matched races and words very quickly, to measure our implicit racism; the more you associate the darker race with negative words, the more racist you may be. We also played a game where either a black person or a white person appears on the screen with an object in their hand and, as quick as possible, you have to shoot them if you think the object in their hand is a gun. The more times you choose to shoot a black person with an object other than a gun, the more racist you may be against blacks.

One of my favorite youtube videos is a video regarding interracial dating and biracial people. He compares different races to M&M's and basically asks "If we don't discriminate against the M&M's we eat, why should we discriminate against others?"

Community Service-Cancer Walk

Yesterday, I attended a cancer walk/run hosted by the Wellness Center in Palatine. There were several tents set up: a volunteer tent, a registration tent, a food tent, a DJ tent, and a raffle tent. Dana, the coordinator of the volunteers, set me up by the starting line and the 5k run began first. Most of the runners had white Wellness Center Cancer Walk shirts and the cancer survivors had on purple ones. I was one of the few volunteers at the starting line and while the people were running, we monitored the walkway and made sure no cars happened to drive through. Then, when people were finishing up the run, we cheered them on, congratulated them, thanked them for coming, and offered them gatorade. This was the second year the Wellness Center has held the walk/run and there were less walk-on runners this year due to the extremely cold weather.

Then, the walk began. We continued monitoring everything and a volunteer drove around in U-Haul van, to make sure all the runners were done and that no cars were on the walk again. People walked with their family members, with their friends, and even with their dogs. Some had on their own specially made shirts, remembering love ones that lost their battle to cancer and some were walking with the cancer survivors in their life. One cancer survivor participated in the walk on his scooter, with his granddaughter in his lap. It was a very welcoming environment and the faces on the walkers/runners at the finish line were amazing. They were so happy and passionate about what they were doing and one family even took turns hugging us, the volunteers.

During the walk, I met Therese and she told me a little bit about the Wellness Center. They're an organization that provides many different types of free therapy to those with cancer, giving them with a supporting environment and showing them others that are going through the same things. She decided to help volunteer at the Wellness Center a while after her daughter was diagnosed with cancer. A lot of the survivors participating in this event were members of the Wellness Center and when you saw them talking to other survivors, you could sense the genuine happiness they were experiencing while being in this environment.

After the walk, there was a balloon releasing ceremony and while the balloons were flying in the sky, a lot of people got emotional. I had volunteered at a cancer walk before, but I hadn't come out feeling as great as I did yesterday. Even though I was freezing and could no longer feel my hands, I was content because I had met some great people, and I hope to someday participate in the run in tributes to my aunt who lost her life to ovarian cancer.

Community Service-Keshet

Last Sunday I visited Keshet Sunday School, a Jewish sunday school for people with special needs. I had never really interacted with people that have special needs, except for this man that comes into Walgreens to buy cigarettes every once in a while, so I didn't know what to expect. I met with Rana, the coordinator of the Sunday school, and she assigned me and the other volunteers to specific rooms. In my room, I met Rebecca, Tomima, Matt, Marissa, and a few others. Matt and Marissa had their own volunteers that had worked with them before, Rebecca was paired up with another volunteer, and Tomima was paired up with me. Tomima is one of the nicest girls I have ever met; she was covered in pink from head to toe, pink skirt, pink shirt, and even a pink wristband and she kept smiling wide at everyone that passed by.

The day consisted of singing songs, doing arts and crafts, and snack time. In the lunchroom, I helped Tomima make an Israeli flag for the Walk for Israel walk she, and the others, will be attending a week from today. I gave her strips of paper to glue and I helped her put the strips onto the correct spots on the paper. Then we made a handle for the flag and she signed her name on the back, with a pink marker. Talking to her, I found out her birthday was the next day and she will be turning 30, that she loves the jokes the Rabbi makes, and that Matt is her boyfriend. Rebecca and Tomima stayed near each other and kept complimenting each other on their sense of humor and they kept making everyone laugh, with their great personalities. Rebecca, the outgoing and talkative one, turned 27 that day so she brought cupcakes for everyone and felt really bad that the Rabbi wasn't in that room with us to share them. After cupcakes and snack time, we went back into a different room to sing songs. We clapped to every song and when it was all over, I walked her out to get picked up.

I had a lot of fun going to Keshet and meeting all of these great people; everyone was so friendly and I was disappointed to hear that their sunday school only went until the beginning of June. I feel extremely comfortable talking to people with special needs now and I will definitely volunteer at places helping those with special needs again.

Poverty and its Stereotypes

People are usually quick to label, quick to assume. If you go to a school where most of the population i upper middle class and you live in a trailer park, with no way of transportation other than your two feet, you'll probably hear names being thrown at you such as "trashy", "ghetto", or "white trash". People use these words so nonchalantly that they forget how offensive they truly are. People who live in poverty are usually labeled as "lesser" or even "lazy" and people often question why they don't choose to get a better job. It's not that easy.

In the movie we have been watching this week, they introduce a woman named Tammy and let us take a glance into her lifestyle. Tammy lives in a trailer, with three sons, and a car in need of repair just resting on her lawn. She works at Burger King, never takes off her work uniform, and walks 10 and a half miles to go to her brutal job. At Burger King, she greets most customers, kindly, while cleaning the restaurant. Then, after her long shift, she has to walk 10 and a half miles back home. She mentions that people often yell out names to her while she's walking on the side of the road, judging her instantly. Her eldest son looks at her life and automatically knows that he doesn't want to be stuck in this low-pay working class when he's grows up, so he tries everything to dress differently, teach his brothers to act "preppy", and even judges his own mother. He battles with this desire to break the social class system and work his way to the top. If he succeeds being working class, he will most likely not be accepted in his new class because society doesn't see that as where he "belongs".

Social Class

In class this week we learned about prison and how the increasing population of prisons relates to social class and income. The Henry Horner homes in Chicago are filled with violence and drugs and people from that area are constantly taken away to jail by the police, without question. Kids from Naperville were found in that area buying heroin and when caught, their licenses pended suspension and the police called their parents. Why is it that the poor are taken to jail almost immediately, but the rich get away with the same act and little consequences?

When reading Courtroom 302, the author successfully shows the reader the general population of these jailhouses: low-income minorities. These people weren't even charged with anything yet, they were in jail waiting for their court date. Low-income citizens are being dragged to jail for anything they can be charged with because the police know that they cannot afford their own lawyer to free them, unlike the rich. Someone who has been in prison before is likely to end up there again so the poor people are being caught in this constant cycle and cannot build their lives. We claim we don't believe in social class in America and that everyone is free but what is actually happening is that the poor are getting more miserable, acquiring help from no one, while the rich are having the road to freedom paved for them.

Act of Deviance

For class this week, we were assigned to take part in a positive act of deviance. Deviance is when someone goes against social norms or what is expected, either in a negative or a positive way. I went against what was expected of me when I helped an old man walk around the store I work at, picking out every item on his shopping list for him and offering coupons with those items. He asked if I was getting commission for what I was doing and I laughed, thinking he was kidding. He was serious.

When people do something outside of what is expected, especially if it's a good thing, people around them get confused. They aren't used to these acts and don't know how to respond. I try to be really friendly to every customer by smiling, asking how they are doing, or how their day is going. I always get responses like "why are you so happy?", "why are you smiling?", or "what's going on". It's so strange to me that they don't expect people to be friendly, but once I started paying more attention, I noticed that people are usually minding their own business and shopping on their own. If someone helps them or tries talking to them, they think that that person wants something, that there's something in it for them. If people commit more kind acts of deviance, our world will be a friendlier one where people don't think strangers buying them coffee for no reason is odd, wishing them a good day is strange, or giving a stranger a hug to brighten his/her day is not normal.

Parent-Teen Conflicts

This week in class we were asked to read an article about parent-teen conflicts. It made me realize a lot about issues that blossom between teenagers and their parents; differences in society and economics have a huge impacts on relationships, parent-teen relationships specifically. Teens are expected to act more responsibly, more like an adult but they are treated like children more and more each day.

Back during our parents' generation, teenagers had specific places they could meet and hang out at. Teenagers these days don't really have that and the media portrays us as "troublemakers", so finding teens a place to hang out isn't really important to anyone. Also, back then, males could drop out of school during their teenage years and support their family while working a tough job with coworkers that were older than them. I work at a clothing store now and everyone who works there, besides the managers, are around my age. We are all asked to do easy work and I feel like not much is expected from us; it would be impossible for us to try supporting our families on that job and we don't really have anyone there to be our mentors. However, at my other job, I feel lucky to be the youngest worker there. I receive advice regularly from all my coworkers, even those that are only a few years older than me, and it's extremely helpful. I learn from their mistakes and I feel more comfortable making decisions on my own at college because of all the advice they have given me.

More teenagers should understand that our parents lived through a different era, where different things were expected of them and society labeled them differently. They had more mentors that helped them become adults, helped them become more independent. Hopefully, more teenagers can find these mentors and adjust to adulthood more comfortably.

Media's Portrayal of the Perfect Human

As we learned in class this week, each person is exposed to about 20,000 ads per year. Even though we may say these ads have no affect on us, they do. They make us unconsciously shape a picture of the ideal body for both men and women, a body everyone must strive for. However, what some people don't understand is that these bodies aren't real. The bodies of supermodels, no matter how thin or beautiful, go through edit after edit to create the best, flawless product. Magazines publish pictures of pencil-thin girls with large breasts that are over sexualized, when in reality their bodies are impossible to have naturally. The media is creating this self-conscious society where no one is proud of what they have. If you're skinny, you can always become skinnier. If your breasts are large, you can always make them larger. If your muscles are huge, they can always get bigger. Thousands and thousands of dollars are being spent by people on plastic surgery to create this material body that isn't theirs; a body they didn't even want until the media made them think they wanted it.


Shows and movies add to the drop in self confidence and also add to the stereotypical gender roles. They portray the perfect man to be tall, muscular, confident, and not afraid of using violence when necessary. If a man shows a feminine side, they're labeled as "fag", "gay", or "girly". Thousands of kids who don't fit this "ideal" masculine man are bullied to the point where they fight back to gain their manliness. In the article by Kimmel, it even said this boy's dad labeled him as "gay" and "queer" for not fitting this body type. What hope do you have when even your family is putting you down? A good example of these images about masculinity and stereotypes about women are Disney Movies. Disney movies portray a great man as tall, masculine and a bully such as Gaston from Beauty and the Beast. Also, in a scene we watched from Beauty and the Beast, girls are portrayed as weak and are supposed to be worshipping a masculine man, like Gaston. In AP Psychology class my teacher made a good point when she said that mothers aren't involved in Disney movies. The only Disney movie I can think of, where the character has a mother, is Bambi and the mother eventually gets shot in the middle of the film. Disney sends out a message that women aren't important.


If these messages are continuously sent to people, drowning their daily lives, our society will only be going downhill from here. No one will learn to accept themselves and others for who they are, what they look like, or comprehend that everyone is different. Being a skinny girl is just a body type and so is being muscular male; just because you have that body doesn't mean you're a better person. People need to start thinking about what is more important in life, rather than these fake looks that we're exposed to all the time.

Is Television Really Entertainment?

Television is a huge part of the American Lifestyle. We watch tv while doing housework or homework, we watch tv with friends, we even use it as a way to bond with our families. According to Nielsenwire, "82% of homes have more than 1 television set"; Americans even have multiple television sets in our houses so everyone can watch their own show.

This week we talked about television and we were asked to watch TV while counting the technical events, watch the news without the sound, watch someone else watching TV, and then watch the TV set without it being turned on. The results were interesting. 

A TV set is just another inanimate object, but what's on it is what entrances us to keep watching it. We even label it as a form of entertainment even though all we do when we watch TV is sit there and just stare. The sports games, the talk shows, the reality tv shows, and all the other shows we enjoy watching trick us into being interested by adding many technical events such as voice overs, fade ins/outs, zoom ins/outs, and cuts to different scenes. This way, there is so much going on that you don't even realize what you're watching really isn't that exciting. You just sit there and stare at a screen, mesmerized by all the "exciting" things going on before you. 

Thrive!

In class this week, we were assigned a reading on thriving, focusing on happiness. Buettner, the author of this novel, claims that six factors will determine whether you thrive or not; your community, workplace, social life, financial life, home, and self. Limiting the work week and shopping hours and adding on vacation time and taking a maternity leave will help you become more social. Doing so, helps you create stronger interactions and connections with other people, leading you to that happy life you've always dreamed of. Finding the right job for you, one that you are passionate about, will help you become satisfied with the life you are living, as well. So many people choose their career due to the salary they will earn, but most of those people quickly lose interest and gain a confusion of their role in life.
I was relieved to find that, even though he talks about financial life being important, Buettner never says that money equals happiness. He mentions that "individuals who thrive tend to possess enough money to cover their basic needs, but rather than striving for more cash, they focus their time and energy on developing a caring group of healthy friends, working at meaningful jobs, engaging in enriching hobbies" (210). In America, even if we have enough money and materials to live, we want more and more...and more. Instead of doing so, we need to realize that the gaining bonds with the people around us is more important.
Overall, he talks about how we should reach out to different types of people, prioritize what's most important to them and value that, and get involved in their community/environment actively. Americans could learn a lot from this, and following these rules would be ideal, but we are shaped by our surroundings to want more, to have that desire for instant gratification, and do what the media and money tells us to do instead of what we want to do. These factors are great and beneficial, but the most important thing that can determine what "thrive" means to you and your life is where you live.

Hard work, Achievement, and Success

In the movie Tuesdays with Morrie, the values consuming Mitch's life are hard work, achievement, and success. He is always going from state to state, rushing to cover the latest sports news and rushing to meet every deadline. He wants his work to shout "perfection" and his values lead him to ignore everything else in his life. Not only is it true for my parents and myself, but I believe these three things are values our whole country finds important. Even if some people don't act on the hard work and achievement and never reach success, they like the idea of achieving something through hard work and may even envy those who have succeeded in something. I believe we learn to glorify hard work, achievement, and success at an early age. In Elementary school, we start learning to spell and eventually are given the choice of working our hardest and competing in the Spelling Bee. My teacher persuaded my whole class to do so. The winner of the Bee ended up receiving all kinds of medals and recognition for his success; he became the coolest kid in school. From then on, my classmates and I were programmed work hard to get what we want, whether it be receiving a reward, being recognized by others, or just having the ability to know we can succeed at something. This message has never gone away. The goal has just changed, though. It used to be the Spelling Bee, now it's getting into college, and later it will be landing a stable job in our field of work. There are a lot of different types of success, though; success doesn't always have to lead to a good, well-paying job. You can succeed in love, putting others before yourself, being kind to everyone, and being loyal to your family and/or significant other. You can succeed in understanding, knowing that different cultures have different values, being open-minded, and never judging others. Of course there are more, and sometimes they may overlap, but I believe school only teaches us how to succeed in graduating school. Sure, that's what their job is. However, these other things we can succeed in may give us the ability to achieve all we can achieve. For example, lack of success in love can lead to mistreatment of others and potentially ruin our success in school and success in getting a job because of that. Learning how to succeed in areas other than getting a job can help our society become a well-rounded, more understanding generation and lead us to more accomplishments. 

The Values Americans Live By

In class we read an article, "The Values Americans Live By". It discussed 13 general values that Americans live by and described how each is an important part of our lives and our country, as a whole. The value I believe is the most important to our country is "competition". Our culture, unlike many other cultures in the world, stresses individuality to an extreme. Ever since Elementary school, our teachers have taught us competition and to do things all by ourselves. Stickers were rewarded to us for the best picture drawn in Kindergarten, candy rewarded to us for getting a "-0 wrong"on a spelling test in the second grade, and now we are rewarded with good grades when we study in high school. Some high schools post class ranking and some post the Honor Roll list out in the public, to glorify their best students. Students fill their schedules up with AP classes in order to obtain a stop in their favorite prestigious school and possibly become valedictorian of their graduating class. We go on, after graduating from school, to compete with each other for the best job. Even our entertainment stresses competition. "Celebrity Apprentice", "The Bachelor", "American Idol". These shows are flooded with the big picture and goal of winning, becoming the best, beating everyone else. This idea of rising to the top has been pushed on us for so long that, if someone asked me to define America, "competitive" would definitely be one of the first words to pop in my head.

Differences in Culture

Throughout this week, we have been discussing the differences we encounter from culture to culture. We talked of differences in language and daily lifestyles, we read an article regarding how cultures value time differently, and we even compared and contrasted toilets from different cultures. This reminded me of something we learned in AP Psychology recently. Researchers placed a basket with food, clothing, tools, etc. and asked a tribe in Liberia, the Kpelle tribe, to sort these items. Of course, we would sort the food with other food, the clothing with other clothing, and so forth. Members of this tribe didn't do this! Instead, they sorted a tool and a food together, the knife and the potato, because the knife is used to peel the potato. Then, the researchers asked them to sort the items the "fool's way" and they sorted the items exactly as we would. This shows that cultures develop different ways to see things around them. When we look at that basket, we place items together that are similar. When they look at the basket, they pair the items based on their functions. We respond differently, than other cultures do, to almost everything. In order to comprehend the world around us and avoid developing ingroups and outgroups, we must remind ourselves to see things cultures do/think as "different", not "wrong"

Gang Leader for a Day

This week we read an excerpt from the book Gang Leader for a Day by Sudhir Venkatesh. Venkatesh was interested in studying the poor living in the projects of Chicago. He was just beginning to learn the procedure of interviewing someone and he set up a list of impersonal multiple choice questions he expected would be answered easily. To his surprise, he was not welcomed to the neighborhood by a gang, called the Black Kings. The part of this chapter that really surprised me was when the leader of the gang told Venkatesh he could meet him and his gang members at the same spot the following week, and that Venkatesh actually accepted his offer. Eventually, he ends up hanging out with them and learning a lot without interviewing them directly. It was really brave of him to do this for his career and it was shocking to see that he would go this far. Relating to Charon's article regarding categorizations and generalizations, Venkatesh uses his natural skill of categorizing when he hangs out with these gang members. Since he was studying to become a sociologist, he had the advantage of knowing that using negative assumptions when categorizing makes them his categorizations inaccurate. If you notice, he never judges or racially stereotypes people in the gang or people in the neighborhood. When generalizing, he makes intelligent ones. For example, even though the gang members wouldn't let him accomplish his goal when he first came into the neighborhood, he shouldn't try to harm a gang leader or gang members because he could risk getting hurt. This shows that no matter who you are, sociologist or not, people generalize others naturally. These categorizations are useful because they protect us and help us understand our surroundings. However, we should be careful to prevent these categorizations from becoming racial stereotypes or negative assumptions about a group of people.

Complex You

In class, on Wednesday, we sat in a huge circle and we were asked to classify ourselves in groups we are a part of. Whether we put down that we're apart of a certain sport, a family, a group of friends, or a certain sexuality, we were also asked to list our status within each group. Finally, we placed a star by the status we saw as being the most important, the status we define ourselves as. The people who thought their role/status in their family defined them said so because they were so close to their family members that, without them, they would be a different person. The people whose top choice regarded their status in sports, believed their lives are the way they are today because of the sport they play; they believe they have the type of friends they have because of this sport, they manage their time the way they do because of this sport, and their attitude is the way it is because of that sport. This activity showed me how complex people are because of one thing; one group they were involved with had such a large effect that it has made them the person they are today. People are used to developing schemas about people in their mind, and by using confirmation bias, if they see one person in their schema group that fits that schema, they will see everyone in that group as the same. This activity really showed that everyone is different; no two people are ever replicas. We should open our eyes and realize that everyone is their own, unique individual.

The Social Construction of Reality

In class this week, we learned about the social construction of reality; our reality is what we create. Our society creates the "norm" and the norm is different everywhere you go. At Stevenson, we've constructed a society where we sit down at 8:05 every monday-friday morning, watch the announcements, take out our notes, and stare at the teacher until he/she speaks. We get 55 mins to eat lunch and, if we leave campus, we usually just go to a fast food restaurant. In Europe, it's completely different. They get enough time to go home for lunch, because they have constructed a reality where eating with family and friends is really important. Going back to what Sal was talking about in class, regarding the bathrooms we have in America, we have constructed a reality where we have the toilet, the shower, and the bathroom all in one room. In Japan they find the fact that we bathe in our own filth when we take baths is disgusting. In Iran, they believe that our toilets are unsanitary. Their norm is a toilet that is built into the floor so you can avoid the germs that come from sitting on a toilet seat. When I visited my family there, about five years ago, I was so shocked to see that and I even thought it was weird. However, everyone uses that type of bathroom so they've constructed it to be normal. In the diverse community we live in, we should become more open-minded of the realities other societies construct, in order to understand people better.

Iranian-style Toilet:

Sociological Mindfulness

In class this week, we spent our time discussing sociological imagination and sociological mindfulness, along with the importance of the two. Sociological imagination is recognizing how our surroundings and our relationship can shape us into the people we are today. Reading "Outliers: The Story of Success" by Malcolm Gladwell, I was surprised by the results Wolf, a physician in the town of Roseto, obtained regarding the Rosetans' health. He found out that the death rate of citizens in Roseto was "thirty or thirty five percent lower than it should have been" and that no citizen below the age of 55 acquired heart disease or suffered from heart attack. Normally, this phenomenal result would be due to consistent diet or exercise. However, Wolf found that the lifestyle Rosetans carried out, being kind and caring to everyone in the town, was the reason the death rate was so low. Rosetans were shaped by their environment. If they lived in a town polluted with cruel, ignorant citizens, the death rate may in fact have been higher. It gives us something to think about; Do you think the community you live in and the people you interact with have actively shaped you into the person you are now?

Sociological mindfulness is understanding that our actions have consequences and have a big part in affecting people around us and even affecting us. In the excerpt from Michael Schwalbe's "The Sociologically Examined Life", Schwalbe mentions that sociological mindfulness "is especially important for helping us see that the consequences of our words and deeds often escape our intentions". Basically, he says we need to step back and notice how everything we do/say has an affect on other people, even though we might not mean anything by what we do. By understanding and taking a part in being sociologically mindful, we will learn to become more compassionate people, leading our world to a more peaceful future.

A great example that involves sociological imagination and sociological mindfulness is the movie Mean Girls. Karen, Regina, Cady, and Gretchen are a part of the popular clique, that go by the name "The Plastics". All they do is terrorize other people to make themselves feel superior. In the beginning, Cady, played by Lindsay Lohan, comes to a high school in North Shore as a polite and innocent home-schooled transfer student from Africa. Dared to become friends with The Plastics, she ends up becoming a corrupt, self-absorbed snob due to the people who surrounded her. In the end, after a burn book that her and her friends created gets exposed, she becomes sociologically mindful. Cady thinks about everyone she's hurt since she's been there and apologizes sincerely. By becoming sociologically mindful, she becomes a better person and becomes more aware of her actions when seeing how they directly hurt her peers and how her actions came back to haunt her. She also realizes she's changed as a person because she moved from a place where she was mostly with animals and her family to a place where everyone else in her clique were snobby, shaping her into a snob.

This clip shows how Cady is shaped by the high school "girl world" she is exposed to and this, along with her individual motives, leads her to forgetting about sociological mindfulness. Not being sociological mindful, her actions have the consequence she didn't want and make the situation worse for her.

Is Technology Really Making Us Grow?

People are always mentioning how our society is growing rapidly each day, once a new piece of technology is introduced. There's the phone, made to make long-distance communication easier, but it has made us avoid conversations with people who aren't so far away. There's the internet, giving birth to myspace and facebook and other social networking websites. However, those have just pushed us away from communicating with individuals face-to-face, as well. Why start a meaningful conversation in person when you can just go on your smart phone and post a youtube video on that person's wall to express your feelings?

Recently, in English class, we read an article entitled "The Future of Creativity" by Jeannine Ouellette. The article mentioned how, due to technologic advancements, we are no longer creative and lack a sense of imagination. When there were no computers or television, children voluntarily played outside with other children, inventing their own games and expressing their sense of imagination. Contemporary times portray that as "boring" and inferior to playing a bowling game on the Wii or staying on the couch, watching a movie marathon. We've been brainwashed into having entertainment and technology do all the thinking and imagining for us.

Instead of consuming ourselves in all this technology, we must take a step backwards and put ourselves in the mindset of children, allowing our naturally creative minds to let us grow.

About me :)

Everyone has a different definition of what they want in life, that certain image that floods their mind and pushes them to want to leap and grab it so badly. Traveling back and forth between Iran and Italy until age three, life seemed like a breeze. Writing songs about braiding my hair and about how jealous my mom's friends would be not having my messy, braided hair was just about the hardest thing in my life. I moved to the US at age three and life really began from there.

When people ask me about my dad and his death, I really don't know how to respond. I was still a toddler when he passed away and don't have much of memory of it. When someone close to you dies, people expect that stereotypical, dramatic reaction whenever the name of the deceased is even mentioned. However, like it or not, everyone will lose someone they love and care for at least once in his/her life. It's an unfortunate part of life and it hits you hard every time. Even though it sounds cliche, being happy for who you still have and what you still have is all you can do. I'm more than happy to have my mom there for me every single day. I look up to her so much, raising a child single handedly, knowing nothing but broken English during the toughest of times.

I've always loved animals and, after many fish and a golden retriever, my mom brought me home two kittens named "Romeo" and "Juliet". I had them for three years and they had even had kittens of their own. Romeo became very ill one summer and acquired a urethra blockage. The surgery costed more than we could afford so we had to give it up to a no-kill shelter that would pay for his procedure. That was the day I decided I was going to work hard and become a vet. I've never wanted anything more in my life and on the day I graduate Veterinary School, I will give all the credit to my mom for showing me that working hard for what you believe in is worth the drain it first brings.