Sociology Week 1

Week One: 9/1/18

Getting to know people prior to working with them is very important in order to understand what type of people you will be working with especially when it comes to a new job, or even new classmates. Learning that sociology is the study of the development, structure, and functioning of human society will help students understand where the concepts of social problems/conflicts stem from, and what the best ways to resolve them are. When learning and figuring out different social problems a wide variety of people are usually needed in order to help solve the problem. For example, when the civil rights movement was happening, or when the holocaust was happening that problem did not get solved by one person, the problem got solved by people working together. Sociologist would look into that problem and see oh well one person started the movement and other people followed. Which happens in a lot of places in society, for example with social media and all of the “trends” that go around like the ACLS ice bucket challenge I am sure sociologist were all over that. Overall no matter how much anyone resists going with the “norm” our society shapes a lot in the way we think, act and the foods we eat. Much of our lives are shaped by society. For example, in our society in America it is acceptable to go out in sweatpants and a t-shirt to Walmart or even out to dinner, but in France that is not acceptable. The words I chose to bold because I am very intrigued about how the definition of these words changes with each topic that you are learning. Like from psychology to sociology these words have vastly different meanings.

One thing I can do to benefit myself and society is I could spread positivity on social media instead of negativity. So not retweeting things that talk about hating certain people, and instead retweeting things that are encouraging to people like for example saying, “You are beautiful, have a good day.” By Spreading positivity, I could be the opposite of what most of our modern society is, happiness and acceptance of other people does not seem like a norm anymore, and it is something I feel like I should be spreading it because it will make a positive impact. One thing I could do that would negatively impact myself and society is if I were to be not willing to donate my time and or money to helping people. For example, I volunteer at Mayo Clinic and by doing that it makes me feel good for helping people, and it makes others feel good to have someone like me around there. I have also volunteered for the red cross, and I feel like if I did not do these things and was not willing to donate my money to various charities I would be spreading the negativity of not helping people and it would not give me that warm fuzzy feeling inside that I get when I help people.

One thing society can do to affect me in a positive way is by the encouragement of older people in our society via in person conversations or social media, or even a book to just simply tell me to follow my dreams and that everything will work out how it is supposed to. I know this in my head but hearing it from other people that just myself and parents means a lot to younger people I feel.

One thing society can do to influence me in a negative way is by continuing to always doubt younger people. This will negatively influence me because then this will make me second guess myself. For example, if there was an article released that said “people under the age of 30 should not be nurses because they are not mature enough” this would make me second guess the timing of me becoming a nurse because I would maybe think I am not mature enough.

A solution for these horrible people on social media who are racist and discouraging to other people should be by not allowing their tweets, or Instagram posts to show up on anyone’s timeline, like the person may think they posted it but the website never published it so then no one will ever get horrible people on their timeline. They could get online bots to do this.