Sunnies?

My favorite part about summer is going to Summer Camp.  I have been attending/working at an overnight camp for the past seven years.  I absolutely love it.  One cool thing about camp is that we have counselors from all over the world including: Australia, England, China, Germany, South Africa, Ireland, Scotland, Mexico and Israel. All of these countries have completely different cultures and see things so differently.  One thing that is a huge boundary between all of us is how we speak.  Every country has slang words, but America has a lot that we do not really notice, as said in the article "Bemused in America."  My first year on staff, I was co-counselors with a girl from Australia.  She's been to America before, but with friends so she did not really know our slang terms. She referred to the garbage, as a bin, sunglasses were sunnies, bathing suits were bathers, flip flops were thongs, friend was mate, just to name a few.  I thought she talked soo strangely and I could not always understand her because of her accent and I did not understand some of the words she would use.  I realized I was being ethnocentric by thinking that she was talking strange because of how she talked and what words she used.  I was comparing our slang words to hers.  Using our culture as a basis to judge other people's cultures.  I ended up being extremely close with this girl, and she is now one of my best friends.  Yes, she lives in Australia still, but we keep in touch all the time.  I ended up picking up on some of her words, now I ALWAYS use the word sunnies instead of sun glasses.  You have to be open to other people's cultures and not be ethnocentric.  Or if you realize you're being ethnocentric, don't be because you can create a great bond with that person. 

What I've Learned...

I have already learned SO much from this course.  We have covered three main topics already: Sociological Mindfulness, Social Imagination, and the Social Construction of Reality.  By learning about these three things and by thinking like a sociologist I've been looking at things quite differently.  Sociological mindfulness is the practice of tuning-in on how the social world works.  While being sociologically mindful, I noticed that people easily feel awkward and unconformable. When someone or something is out of place, we as Americans try to avoid it, so we do not feel even more uncomfortable.  Sociological imagination is all about realizing the cultural meaning of the social sciences.  This weekend I was at my cousin's wedding, and a family member had brought our family tree that she has been working hard on for a long time.  In this HUGE binder, she had all the information on our family going way way back to my great, great grandparents.  She had pictures of everyone, and all this interesting information.  I got to see what my great grandparents looked like.  And to see how they dressed and what they did for fun.  In my grandmother's childhood, it was "cool" to have big hair and glasses, then my mother's age to wear high wasted pants, and then I get to see my generation like skinny jeans.  All of us were aware of our surroundings which made us, us.  I was able to draw these conclusions because I was using my Sociological imagination. The social construction of reality is how we interact with each other and look at each other's actions.  It's how we draw conclusions to things about other people. 

Overboard

This week, I really enjoyed doing the Abandon Ship activity. It was really interesting to see how my classmates chose to pick people to kick off the boat.  I was an observer, which I really liked.  Some of the things my classmates said were just straight down to the point and I agreed and disagreed with some of their decisions.  One of the first things said was, "the drug dealer needs to go" which I agreed with.  Because as Americans we value our positions in life, like jobs.  And this guy was a drug dealer for a living which was unacceptable to the people on the boat.  Another thing I noticed was that everyone was going against the old people.  To kick them off the boat.  If I was on the boat, I would of kept the old people.  They have a huge family and I couldn't imagine how upset their family would have been.  But our class is young, so being young we value our youth and the potential that the young people will bring to the world. As Americans we do value family, but only to a certain point. As a class we did value family when it came down to the football player and cheer leading pregnant wife that we decided to keep on the boat.  Overall, I noticed that Americans are selfish people.  Everyone was secretly looking out for themselves, weather it was not talking much or automatically picking others to kick off the boat.  I learned just from this activity that Americans value a lot of things in life, including, youth, education, usefulness, health, patriotism, morality, control, and individuality. I was able to tell all of this just by the people the class chose to keep on the boat.