"Can you pay me to roll for you" ?

"Can you pay me to roll for you" was something that i heard someone in my class ask to a rick person. Confused? We played monopoly in class and everyone had their own set of rules. One person was the richest of the rich, another person was the lowest of the low, and everyone else was in between. I was the second richest person so i was pretty well off. One of the boys on my team was running low on money so he asked the richest person, "Can you pay me to roll the dice for you?" It shows that people will really do anything for money. We learned that the richest people stay rich, and the poorer people stay poor. The ones in the middle have the most opportunity to move up, or down, on the social class ladder. It's not right that people can't just work as hard and not make the same amount of money. Social Mobility makes it easier for people to move up and down in their class in some ways, but very difficult, and almost impossible, in others. If your parents have money, it's most likely that you grew up being able to get whatever you wanted, but what happens when your parents aren't there to support you and give you all the money you want? You're screwed. You need money to make money.

Social Class = Happiness ?

You know what really bothers me? When you go to my school, everyone assumes that you are rich, smart, conceited and are going to a good school. That’s not always the case, especially about the going to a good school part. My family doesn’t have a lot of money so I had to pick in-state school. I picked the obvious, ISU, Northern, Eastern, Western, and Southern. Everyone said to apply to a school I know I won’t get into just to see, so I applied to UIC. So after I applied to all my schools on September 1st, not a day later, I waited for my letters. I got Eastern and Western first, then Southern and ISU. I got in to all of them besides ISU. I got in to UIC and no can’t choose where to go. I already sent in my money to Eastern when I got the UIC acceptance letter. I could do the SHS thing and go live in a dorm away from home, which I’d love. Or I can get a car, and commute to UIC. UIC is a better school, but I’d live at home. It’s a push and pull . Today, I visited Eastern again to make sure I loved it. I do. But UIC is such a good school. Stevenson puts so much pressure on you to go on and live in a dorm and be independent. I want to, but I also don’t want to be in debt for the next 30 years. Everyone focuses on how much money you’ll make in the future rather than if you’ll be happy. I have wanted to be a Psychiatrist for eleven years. But I’m not doing well in AP Psych. I was recently thinking about switching to Secondary Education with a concentration in Family and Consumer Studies. I told my family, and they flipped. The first thing they said was I’ll make no money. Does it matter how much money I’ll make if I’ll be happy? Social Class makes your believe that you must have money to be happy.

Deviance

It's actually very annoying how social deviance even exists. If there was no deviance, everyone would be okay with everyone else doing what they're doing. For an Act of Positive Deviance, i went to the mall and said "bless you" to everyone that sneezed that was walking past my store. I got numerous dirty looks for it too. I don't understand why because when you sneeze, don't you expect a "bless you"? I do. I was just confused as to why they thought it was so funny when someone says "bless you" to a stranger.

Miss Independent.

What makes someone an adult? Is it being married and having a family? Or is it just being 18? To most adults, if you're 18, your not an adult. But to us 18 year olds, we are adults. Pretty much from puberty on, you are growing and changing more than ever in life. There are so many things that are going to happen that you need to be prepared for. By age 11, girls are looking at themselves trying to become a 17 year old that theyre not. At Justice, which used to be Limited Too, there are the same clothes that they have at Hollister or Abercrombie, thats not for them. These kids are dressing like sluts, just to try to fit in with society. It seems like everyone is at the same pace, no matter age. Everyone in our general age (10-15) in 2000 ish started wearing makeup around the same time. Its not age, its time.

Dora Dora Dora the Explorer..

The fact that Dora the Explorer is now a "tween" is beyond sad. These shows on channels for kids are meant to be for kids, not teenagers. So why do they make all these TV kids grow up? Dors is now a tween, Rugrats are now "All Grown Up". Its rediculous.

Hey Girl, Hey !

In Sociology this week we talked about what the stereotype of a teenage girl is. 5'10 and 110 pounds. Thats just gross. Thats not even proportional. Girls age 16-18 arent really influenced by media as much as by the girls they see everyday. The guys our age too make it seem that the only girls they like are the tall and skinny girls. Teenage girls and guys are just looking for "eye candy". They just want to look good next to the person they're with. In AP Psychology we learned that people date people that are of the same level of attractiveness as themselves. That shouldn't be right because it should all be personality rather than looks. Media makes such a big deal that all women need to look a certain way that even guys pick up on that and expect all girls to be like the girls in magazines. Since that's impossible, they look for the closes thing possible.

Peer Pressure

Today we watched Freaks and Geeks again. In this episode, Lindsey convinced her parents to leave her and her brother, Sam, home alone while they went out of town. Lindsey made the mistake and told her friend Daniel that she was going to be home alone. Daniel convinced her to have a party and get a keg of beer. Sam heard and decided that he and his friends were going to get non-alcoholic beer and trade it with the real beer. During the party, all of the "underage drinkers" were drinking this fake beer and pretending to get drunk. This just wade them seem like fools because they were victims of the Placebo effect. These kids were saved when Sam's friend called the police to get everyone out. Peer pressure is a very big deal now because either people are very persuasive, or people are too promissive. Teens are stargting to drink a lot more now because of peer pressure. I remember something this week said that the kids that dont give into peer pressure will be the geeks later in their life because they didn't take a chance.

Till Death Do Us Part

Its pretty crazy how all different cultures view death. In our culture, theres some people who cry for months, there are others who go get tattoos of their name. People have differnt ways of viewing it. In "Tuesdays with Morrie", Morrie is dying and Mitch comes to see him every Tuesday. In the end, Mitch ends up making the best of the situation and accepting that he died. In American culture, people have a hard time accepting that their loved one has passed away and can be in denial too. I personally find ways to remember the deceased. My grandpa was the greatest man i've ever met and he always used hearts in everything. To remember him, i got a heart tattooed on my wrist. I know i will always have a peice of my grandpa on me permanently. Everyone has their own ways of remembering their dead loved ones, mine being tattoos. People need to live in the moment. "Life is a gift, thats wh they call it the present".

Six- Fingered Patriot

There are some times that I’m talking to my friends and we’re talking about schools and they start saying, “I heard that at Stevenson…” and then that line usually is followed by some ridiculous comment about either how rich Stevenson is, how big we are, or how much Stevenson focuses on grades. Before I came here, my friends in Wheeling and I were in the car and their mom said, “I heard if you get a B at Stevenson, you get made fun of. If you get a C you get kicked out”. If that was true, I would have been made fun of so much and been kicked out enough times too. That really proves how much Stevenson has created its own subculture. There’s a Facebook group called “You know you go to Stevenson if…” Then there are things like you understand the words Point, Airport, Six-Finger Patriot, West Building, East Building and more. Stevenson is the only place you can say I parked at the point so I’ll meet you at the six-fingered patriot.

Tik Tok

I find it really odd that in some cultures 33 and a half minutes late is considered socially acceptable. In class, the teacher asked what you consider late. Some people said 15 minutes, some said 10 minutes. I said 1 minute. If i tell someoe to meet me a the mall at 5, if they're not there at 5, they're late. Doesn't mean i make a big deal about it, but they're late. In the article we read in class, the boy who went to a class had other students coming in and out whenever they want. I find that rude if someone leaves a class early just because its respectful to listen in class. Also if i came in an hour late to class, it would be awkward walking in with everyone looking at you like you're a foreigner. Also, if you walk in late, you most likely missed information same with leaving early. I don't see how it's socially accpetable to be late to anything.

Culture Shock

The card game we played was a great expirement to find out how different people adjust to different ways of life. It was like every table was another society and we had become acostomed to our "laws" even if we all didnt agree in the begining, we all had enough time to play our games that it was no problem to play without talking. But when we were put in the position to switch, we had a lot of arguments because its like going to a new country and trying to communicate in a different language. When we had someone come to our table, theu just got mad because their rules were different than ours. They had a culture shock and didn't know how to handle it without screaming. It's simmilar to Sal's story about the bathrooms in Japan. If we had more time to introduce our newcomer to our society, they would have had to adjust. Sal had to adjust to the bathrooms in Japan, because if you gotta go, you gotta go.
- J

Sonny

This week we watched a movie about an Italian naighborhood and how everyone in the neighborhood is influenced by one main character, Sonny. The other main character, Collodro, or as society has named him, C, has been greatly influenced by everyone. He was influenced by everyone except for the ones he should look up to most, his parents. His parents forbid himn to see sonny because of his reputation and C's father said, "People dont look up to him, they fear him". That seemed apparent in the begining of the movie, but then i realized that sonny genuinely cared about C. I am influenced by many different people too. My friends help me pick out cloths to wear, places to go, things to do, and i go with them. But everyone does. It takes one person to lead a bunch of people.

Abandoned Ship

In the activity, we were very focused on what someone's title was to determine their fate on the ship. The people who had a title that proves that they have experience, stayed. The macrosociological aspect of this was that we are all high school students trying to figure out who needed to stay on the ship. The microsociological aspect was everyone's individial role. My role was the Traveling Poet. That was just my title; in the description, it said that i spend a lot of time by myself on the carribean. So i would have been helpful on the ship because of prior experiences. Everyone was so concerned about what everyone's title was, they never took time to dig deep into people's discriptions.

Geeks or Freaks ?

Can you imagine a world where you were either catagorized as either a geek or a freak? There are so many different people in the world that you can't just give someone a label. If someone plays a lot of sports and thinks the world revolves around them, you can't call them a jock. What if they also are really good at math, then they must be a Geek. Can they be a jock and a geek? What if a cheerleader wears a lot of black clothes? Is she an emo cheerleader? Our high school is so labled that we forget who we really are. If someone is labled in school, and then their parents treat them like a child at home, who are they really? Parents are too involved in their child's lives that their child forgets that they are a secon semester senior and will have to face the real world very soon. In just 4 months and 6 days, we will all be out of high school and will have to start acting like adults. Believe it or not, we're 18 and are adults by age. We rely so much on our parents that when we graduate, we will be so reliant on our parents that we will have a hard time adjusting to college life where parents aren't there to do out laundry and go grocery shopping for us. Good luck to all !
-J

Awkward Turtle

For some people, silence can make them uncomfortable, so they say its an awkward silence. I feel that its only awkward when you make it awkward. When you just meet someone, it can be weird when you run out of things to talk about because you don't know eachother yet. Once you meet someone, it becomes less awkward because you find things in common so you can talk without having to make an awkward moment. People can make jokes about the awkward silence, but that can sometimes make it more awkward because neither you nor the other person have though of something to talk about. Then once you do think of something, you both end up starting to talk at the same time and that makes it even more awkward because you both start saying, "you go ahead". and that can go on for a few minutes. It can also be the awkward silence when you tell a joke and no one laughs.

Peace
JKL

About Me

I'm Jenny. I'm a senior in sociology. There really isn't a simple definition that can describe a person. I'm the first person who was born in the country from my family. The rest was born in what was USSR, but now is Ukraine. Except, we don't speak Ukranian. We speak Russian. I stopped speaking Russian when i was about 8. I still know it, i just choose not to use it. My parents give me crap about it a lot. But it's fine with me.

My biggest influence in my life has been my grandpa. I actually have no clue why he's such an influence on me because he died when i was 3. The day i really started to remember my grandpa when i was at a family dinner at my aunt's house. My grandpa told my cousin, who's 31, that when i was born, everyone will still love him the same way. I'm not sure why that impacted me so much, but it did. When i was 12, my brother was born, who's named Mark, after my grandpa. I also have a tattoo in memory of my grandpa.

I'm going to Eastern next year to major in Psychology. Then after, im going to Argosy to get my master's and doctorate. My major goal in life is to get married, have a family, and become a clinical psychiatrist. My purpose in life? I'm not sure.