As a returning student at the age of 24, I was unsure what I wanted to “do” with my education. I was much more aware of what I didn’t want to do than what I did. I didn’t want to keep working dead end service jobs and feeling like I was swimming against a tide that pushed me further away being the person I wanted to be. I didn’t see any way to get out and felt like I had no one to blame for my circumstances but myself. At 20 I knew I should have gone to college and could see I was getting nowhere fast. I wondered why I couldn’t break out of fast food and into the retail section, other people had and what was wrong with me that I was forced to work fast food jobs? I wondered why I couldn’t get hired to use the office skills I had gone to trade school for. I blamed myself and tried to imagine what I could have done differently and better to increase my chances of getting a better job. I felt that I had only one option –college but, for someone of impsoverished background it seemed pretty impossible and I had no idea how to fill out the FAFSA or interpret my own taxes staements.
Lucky, I landed in college but, not without alot of help. My first year at community college was filled with indecision and uncertainty, would this pay off better than the trade school? Would I be able to find a job after graduation? What career could I choose that was stimulating, paid well and would be in demand in 5 years when I graduated? Would that career bring me more satisfaction than others?
By my second year, I was content to remain undecided until I received my transfer degree and moved on to a four year university. Mostly I was happy to be succeeding at something other than a minimum wage dead end job. Just when you stop looking - you find love, or so they say, and I found my love for sociology after I stopped stressing about my future occupation. I enrolled in History of the French Revolution at Spokane Falls Community College; this class, and Marx, is at the very root of my understanding and love for Sociology.
Taking the course helped me to understand the historical context of Sociology as a discipline and showed me its roots in labor, industrial capitalism and revolution. The professor worked a lot of sociology into the lectures, although I did not realize it at the time. By doing so, he introduced us to many sociological concepts without calling them such. Social structures of the time were outlined and explained as being stratified by class and birth. We touched on Anomie as a result of peoples move from agriculture to industrialization and spent a few days discussing the Communist Manifesto and Marx’s’ various solutions to social problems associated with rural to urban migration and exploitive capitalism. This class prepared me to accept Sociology as a possible discipline because it gave historical legitimacy, concrete examples and interdisciplinary understanding to a subject that I had been very unaware of.
The next quarter I enrolled in Sociology of Race, Gender and Ethnicity and from the first day I felt intellectual stimulation like I had never experienced before. I felt like I was discovering the most meaningful subject in my education. When I wasn’t in class, I was talking about the class and when I wasn’t talking about it, I was thinking about it. So it seemed to me. It still does. I’m hooked and I haven’t really looked back since. Personally, it meant I could stop blaming myself for my failed attempt at entering the workforce without an education or social commection. I gained and understanding of how my situation is linked to political, economic and cultural factors that are both beyond my control and potentintially within societies agency to change. Sociology gave me a platform for addressing inequalities that I had felt but didn’t know how to express. Finally, my perception that society is patriarchal, racist and classist could be acknowledged through a subject that deals specifically with the differential power between genders, races and classes. I was amazed at how my concerns and ideas were shared by others, that I wasn’t “too sensitive” and others were aware and had experienced what I did. It was revolutionary.
What is it about Sociology that sets my mind on fire? I have always been interested in behavior. Sociology is the study of peoples and groups interactions - the movements between people that constitute the world we live in. I believe that I have always been studying Sociology, since I first watched two people interact and wondered, why? I love that I can take sociological thinking and apply it to any subject anywhere and look forward to “the familiar being transformed in its meaning (Berger, 1963).”
Now that I know about Sociology, I find that it permeates daily life and so I believe it to be relevant and worthwhile; two things that keep me returning to the subject. What I loved about sociology the most was how I learned to see beyond my individual experience and place my life within the context of greater forces such as economics and politics. C.W. Mills sociological imagination is defined as the ability to see the connection between the self and the greater world and is perhaps the most powerful tool for guiding and shaping our understanding of life. I no longer fear the tide that made me feel powerless, I use the sociological imagination to recognize the forces that influence my choices and in that recognition I gain the power to exert a greater influence where I am going and who I am.
By my second year, I was content to remain undecided until I received my transfer degree and moved on to a four year university. Mostly I was happy to be succeeding at something other than a minimum wage dead end job. Just when you stop looking - you find love, or so they say, and I found my love for sociology after I stopped stressing about my future occupation. I enrolled in History of the French Revolution at Spokane Falls Community College; this class, and Marx, is at the very root of my understanding and love for Sociology.
Taking the course helped me to understand the historical context of Sociology as a discipline and showed me its roots in labor, industrial capitalism and revolution. The professor worked a lot of sociology into the lectures, although I did not realize it at the time. By doing so, he introduced us to many sociological concepts without calling them such. Social structures of the time were outlined and explained as being stratified by class and birth. We touched on Anomie as a result of peoples move from agriculture to industrialization and spent a few days discussing the Communist Manifesto and Marx’s’ various solutions to social problems associated with rural to urban migration and exploitive capitalism. This class prepared me to accept Sociology as a possible discipline because it gave historical legitimacy, concrete examples and interdisciplinary understanding to a subject that I had been very unaware of.
The next quarter I enrolled in Sociology of Race, Gender and Ethnicity and from the first day I felt intellectual stimulation like I had never experienced before. I felt like I was discovering the most meaningful subject in my education. When I wasn’t in class, I was talking about the class and when I wasn’t talking about it, I was thinking about it. So it seemed to me. It still does. I’m hooked and I haven’t really looked back since. Personally, it meant I could stop blaming myself for my failed attempt at entering the workforce without an education or social commection. I gained and understanding of how my situation is linked to political, economic and cultural factors that are both beyond my control and potentintially within societies agency to change. Sociology gave me a platform for addressing inequalities that I had felt but didn’t know how to express. Finally, my perception that society is patriarchal, racist and classist could be acknowledged through a subject that deals specifically with the differential power between genders, races and classes. I was amazed at how my concerns and ideas were shared by others, that I wasn’t “too sensitive” and others were aware and had experienced what I did. It was revolutionary.
What is it about Sociology that sets my mind on fire? I have always been interested in behavior. Sociology is the study of peoples and groups interactions - the movements between people that constitute the world we live in. I believe that I have always been studying Sociology, since I first watched two people interact and wondered, why? I love that I can take sociological thinking and apply it to any subject anywhere and look forward to “the familiar being transformed in its meaning (Berger, 1963).”
Now that I know about Sociology, I find that it permeates daily life and so I believe it to be relevant and worthwhile; two things that keep me returning to the subject. What I loved about sociology the most was how I learned to see beyond my individual experience and place my life within the context of greater forces such as economics and politics. C.W. Mills sociological imagination is defined as the ability to see the connection between the self and the greater world and is perhaps the most powerful tool for guiding and shaping our understanding of life. I no longer fear the tide that made me feel powerless, I use the sociological imagination to recognize the forces that influence my choices and in that recognition I gain the power to exert a greater influence where I am going and who I am.
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