Community Service

I've been going nearly every Wednesday from about 4:15 to 6:30 pm since last year to Bernie's Book Bank with a group from my church. Since I didn't start going because of the class I'll talk about my experiences from before I started going. My brother had been a leader for the groups at my church going to PADS and book bank for most of his senior year and around February my parents told me that I had to start going with him. At first, I was pretty angry and confused as to why they were sentencing me to community service with my brother but after going a few times, I got to know some people that I went with a lot better, and also had a chance to meet Brian (the guy who started the whole thing), and Greg, who has been around a lot more this year than last. In understanding what the actual goal of this place was, it helped me to see what my part was exactly in the whole scheme of things. It was pretty eye opening to me to see that some kids even in our area don't have the money to afford books to read. When I was a little kid, reading was pretty much all I did because of how shy I was, and I can't even imagine how different my life would be if I didn't have that opportunity.
At Bernie's, I did a number of tasks, most of them mundane and involving books. I never really expected the work to be fun, but it's so simple that talking with people around you is extremely easy to do and still continue with the work. I learned that the more that I did something, the less I thought about it until I could pretty much do it without thinking. When it got to that point, it made me realize that serving there took little to no effort from me in order to help countless kids. It's cool to know all the people who work there and to know what I'm doing so I can invite people with. I pretty much had to fill my brother's spot when he went to college, so I drive a group of kids there and back to the church every week, and it's even given me a chance to reach out to younger students who I didn't even know went to Stevenson.
In completing the service hours requirement, I feel like it doesn't even really matter how many hours I spent there. It was a lot more than ten, but to be honest, I don't think that that was the point of the assignment. I learned through this experience that there are so many simple ways that we can serve our community that we just overlook every day. We have so much that we take for granted, when there are kids around us who don't even have books to read in school. Community service doesn't have to be a punishment or a homework assignment, and it shouldn't be. It is what you make it, and personally, I like knowing that I can do something to help other people. (Sal - if you want specific dates, have me email you them because I'd be happy to figure it out, I thought you would rather hear about my experience than get a list of dates!)

Social Class

This week in Sociology we talked more about deviance and social class, but focused more on the aspect of prestige and class as opposed to deviance. We looked at the way that people end up based on their surroundings and how it just makes sense that rich people are rich and poor people are poor. While for some people it definitely has something to do with the choices they make in their life, much of the point of Sociology is to find out what drove them to act the way they do. It's not unreasonable to suggest that someone's surroundings exposed them differently to things that could adversely affect their development in society, such as drugs or alcohol. Some people believe that it is possible for anyone to move anywhere in America's social class system, but as we saw in the coin activity, lower class citizens are set to fail. The game was made in a way that would start everyone out as equals, but even that was unlike real life. Even though there was that massive advantage, three or four people ended up with all of the money in the whole class. Capitalism is a really great thing, but the end result truly is one person with a monopoly on every industry holding all of the money and setting all of the prices. I hope that I do not have to see the day that happens. It doesn't have to be that way, but as soon as greed sets in and as soon as people start climbing all over each other to get to the top, people have no choice but to step out because all of their coins are gone.

It wasn't our fault, we just weren't lucky like the others were. This is an excuse that would be really looked down upon in American culture, but most of the time, the one percent of people who end up with one third of the country's wealth are only there because of opportunities given to them because of the fact that they were born somewhere at some time that made it advantageous for them to be in a certain field, and they excelled at it. That's all. It really comes down to the luck of the draw, and we have to live with the life we have been given, whether that means being stuck rich or poor.

Deviance

Last week in sociology we studied deviance and how that relates to our culture, both in our gender norms as well as in our social class. We read an article called "Saints and Roughnecks" about two groups of kids going to a certain school, and how they were both deviant, but it was seen differently by the public due to a few key issues. Specifically, the "Saints" were a gang of well off, book smart kids who would use their intelligence to find ways to get out of school unnoticed to go hang out for the day. They were seen as being the good kids because of how involved with their school's activities they were, while the "Roughnecks," the lower class kids were seen as trouble from the start. The Saints chose to drive far away from people they knew before causing trouble, but the Roughnecks weren't able to get away, so they were right in the view of those they lived with, which brought much more attention to their actions. The rest of the culture viewed the Saints as being just that: Saints. It really wasn't fair that the Saints were, in many situations, doing much worse than the Roughnecks were! I think that something extremely close to this exists at Stevenson. We go to a school that values success and money far above people's worth as human beings, and as a result, there is a huge difference in the groups of people that everyone is friends with as far as income goes. Most rich kids are friends with rich kids, while most only sort of rich kids are friends with only sort of rich kids (let's be honest, our area is extremely fortunate). This cycle repeats itself over and over, and I saw it in my older brother's grade as well. The expectations and opportunities that we are given are so closely related to social class that it would be ridiculous to think that there was no proof that social class and through that, wealth have a strong influence on the kind of life we are born into.