Sociological Life =]

Culture:
Culture is all around us, it is who i am and where my family is from and what my background is, it's who i am and who other people are too. Culture is walking down the street, or your neighbor who lives next door to you or down the street. We see culture everywhere we go. Culture is different for everybody culture is different from my house and my neighbors house, culture is also different at my school and my friends' school and it is also different from where i live and where other people live. Culture is all different everywhere but in different aspects they are the same too just in different parts of culture. What are the biggest influences in my life? Well i have many influences in my life including my parents, my boyfriend and of course the biggest part all of my friends. My parents dont reallyinfluence me in my academics they really aren't the stereotypical asian parents, my parents aren't strict at all they basically let me do whatever i want they just need to know where im going and where i am and what time all be home. they don't influence me in academics however they influence me a lot in my athletics.

Media:
Media is all around us, we can't escape from it from when we were little to now and in the future. the media has controlled our life since the day we were born especially tv media, the day we first watched television is the day media has influenced our life. From day one watching cartoons and movies we see that girls are very girly, and like makeup and dressing up and looking pretty, and boys are tough and ruggid and like to be dirty. The media has brainwashed our minds and now we think pink is for girls and blue is for boys. Girls can get dirty and play sports and guys can like to look good and shop why does that matter? Does the media really have to run our lives or can we choose the path we go towards?

Gender:
I know that im a girl and my brother is a boy. we know that pink is for girls and blue is for boys but does it really have to be like that. i like blue does that make me a boy no it doesn't. it doensn't matter what color you like it doesn't tell you what gender you are. the way we act and the person you are is the gender and person you are today and will be for the rest of your life.

Teens:
Teens now and teens back then were completely different. The eras have changed, we are the era who likes to make the money and definitely spend the money we work hard for. We want everything and we will do anything to get it. The era back then they didn't spend nearly as much as the new millenium of teens do now. There are very different types of teens, if you go to my school you can totally tell different teens and social groups. there are the typical popular kids, the jocks, the people who have the most friends, and all those type but we all talk to one another so why are there so many social groups why can't we all jsut be together?

Social Classes:
we have many different social classes in stevenson. we see different houses and we can associate where we can from and how wealthy a person is our vice versa. my town we have regular medium size houses, we have townhouses, mansions all different types but in a different area we just see townhouses and duplexes and ranches.

Crash

After watching the movie in Crash, I saw that racism is the biggest part of the whole movie it's just not the black and white picture we see so much more racism than we really think there is in the world. Even though there is so much racism in this movie in the end all the characters figure out that even though they are not all the same race or ethnicity they are all the same and one way or another they need help in some kind of way. We also see the different lives each character lives and how each character portrays one another and how stereotypical each character is or can be towards one another even though they know nothing about one another besides the fact that what we fill our minds with and how we think different races and ethnicities act and do.

What is your race?!

Our new topic that we started in class was race, race is really confusing to define. race is a group of persons related by common descent or heredity. The topic of race is really confusing and to me seems very hurtful to some people. Here in America it seems that we all identify people as white, black, asian, european. However, in those countries race is much more identified and complicated it goes farther than being white, black, asian or european. In Asia they identify people as Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, Japanese, Malaysian, Thai etc. The category splits up into so many more categories than just being described and labeled as "Asian."
I am Asian but technically I am more than just being labeled as "Asian," I am Chinese, Taiwanese, Shanghainese and I am also Szechuan. I am Chinese because I am from Hong Kong, I am Taiwanese because I am from Taiwan, I am Shanghainese because I am from Shanghai, and I am also Szechuan because I am also from the city of Szechuan. Sometimes it is very annoying that I am just labeled as being Asian I am much more than that, and sometimes it is also annoying when people say "You ALL look alike, what's the difference?" or "Your all fom the same place, it doesn't matter." The truth is we all don't look alike, we all don't speak the same dialects or languages so how does that make ALL ASIAN people look alike. I speak four different dialects out of like the some odd 150 to about 200 other different dialects and languages from Asia. We are not all alike and race is more than just being labeled as Asian, White, Black, or European etc. It is who you are.

Monopoly?!

It was fun to take a relaxing day in class, we got to play monopoly. However, Sal put a twist into the game. Each piece that a player had represented how much money the player would make and start off with. For me I had the second highest income rating, so for me life was easier and the other players below me because they had to manage their money; however, they also had to take risks to buy things to so whenever a player landed on their place they would earn money. Also, I was in charge of keeping track of the money which was very confusing for me because I am not very good at math, I had to keep subracting and adding all over the place and then I had to read al the cards to make sure everyone had the right amount of income during the game and after.
I realize now once you earn a certain amount in yoiur life it's hard to go up in social class unless you are already rich or it comes from your family. If you start at the bottom it's hard to change your momentum and change your lifestyle and try to better yourself because you work a minimum wage job and it's very hard to make a living if you don't have a degree or didn't go to college.

Change of Faith

In the movie we watched about social classes, there was one family that was going through really hard times. Tammy the mother, had two sons. One of her sons was so embarassed of the way we live and the way his mom dressed that he never invited his friends over to this house to hang out. He considered himself as more popular and preppy and he tried to dress nicer and more clean than the way he lived. He was also trying to change the way his brother dressed and acted too, his brother wanted to grow up like him to be popular and preppy. I think that his mom was offended by the way he acted and the way he sort of treated her. She is trying to make a better life for herself, but as we saw in the video it was very hard for her to change the way she lived. I think Tammy is proud that her son is trying to get out of the lifestyle they are living now and that she is also happy that her oldest son is trying to go to college.

50-50 Chance

After playng the penny game in class, I see now that it is so difficult to earn the money that people do now that have jobs. Playing the penny game, Sal told us that we have a 50-50 chance at first to win pennies everytime we go, but once you keep playing the game you realize only one person playing the game can end up with all the pennies and one person is so much richer than another person. Seeing the graphs in class I never realized that about les than 1% of the population is richer than 99% of the population in America because all the time in the media you see so many people who are wealthier and you think there are so many of them until you compare them to the rest of America, then those top 1% in America do not look like anything to the world. America is the richest of the richest and the poorest of the poor which is a huge difference, why can't we help those that are less fortunate to balance out America? Well, that's not how life works there are those top dogs and those underdogs.
It's so unfair for forgein people because it seems that they have to work twice as hard for their jobs to keep them and keep what they have going for their family, it seems that life doesn't come as easy to them as for the native people of America. My parents are foreigners and when they first came to America they knew some English, but it was still hard for them to get the jobs they have now they had to work basically from the bottom to the top. I feel that if you do not know how to speak English that well in this country everything comes so much harder at you and you have to push and drive yourself to be the best you can be.

Saints and Roughnecks

After reading Saints and Rougnecks and discussing the short story in class, I think that Stevenson has Saints and Roughnecks. The Saints in the story were the students who would get into the least trouble so they could get out of school earlier and cut class; however, they wouldn't get in trouble for it. The Roughnecks were the students who always got into trouble so they had a bad reputation with the school and never got away with anything. I think there are Saint and Rougnecks at school the students, the students that are Saints would be the kids who always do their homework, never get into trouble with the school have better reputations and whenever that student would be sent to their dean they might have a lesser punishment than someone who is perceived as a Roughneck because of their reputation in class and with the authority.