Today in class we watched a show called 30 Days, where a guy spent 30 days in a jail while showing its viewers what the system was all about. The show revealed the overcrowding of the prison, the isolation, and statistics of a typical criminal. Most prisoners, over 60%, will return to prison after leaving. That made me ask the question, why do we use this system if it overall doesn't really work? Or why are we spending all this money on people who do more harm than good?

Personally, I think the jail system should be redone. The people with disabilities need to be taken a mentally ill institution and that would solve all overcrowding. Our society always talks of change and this is definitley something that needs change the most. I am shocked to how corrupt it has become.

Am I Normal?

In Sociology today we learned about "norms." What is truly normal? There are answers to this question but they are all different. We learned through a survey that even when asked what our whole society views as normal, all the answers varied. When you go to a different country, norms can be taboos and taboos can be norms. This made me realize how ignorant it is to judge something from a different culture. It comes back to the fish bowl concept we learned earlier, people are always looking in on you. It is important to respect other peoples' views and appearances. Stereotyping is stupid because different identities mean different things to different people.

I cannot wait to perform the random act of kindness. Many people forget how a small act of selflessness can make someone's day. It got me thinking...if everyone did atleast one R.A.K. everyday, the world would be such a better place. We don't realize that the little mean things we do can affect people greatly as well. It is good to always be sociologically mindful.

Stevenson Swine 09

The Swine Flu, as we all know, is an epidemic sweeping the nation. Sure, it is affecting all of us physically but let's stop and look at it sociologically. Stevenson has trained us to believe that we should put education before everything, maybe even health. Students at Stevenson are stressed over their grades so much that they bringing themselves to school so they don't fall behind but they are putting others at risk of catching their sickness. I would know because even though I am definitely too sick to come to school, I did. Why you ask? It's because I simply couldn't fall behind in class anymore; I had three tests and 3 quizzes to make up after missing 5 periods of one day and one full day the next. How ridiculous is that? Not to mention, I had to cut down on my resting time so that I could do all my late homework and copy down class notes. I gave into the Stevenson expectation of all being on top of things and came to school, putting myself and their's health in harm's way. I learned that last Wednesday (November 4, 2009) 27% of our school was absent. I joined a facebook group that day that had over 40 Stevenson Juniors who had stayed home that day because of illness. Stevenson needs to learn that their students can't go on anymore. It needs to close for a week to recover. Our society is so competitive on its "perfect atendance" or individualism that it's not regarding the health out what makes up most of it. It is insame.