Nothing

For homework we had to stand and do nothing for ten minutes in a busy environment. You can't do nothing its not possible to make our bodies and minds do nothing. Standing is considered doing something. Then trying to think of nothing is just not possible. Most people think of either all black or all white when they think about nothing. Really when you think of black and white you are thinking of something, you are thinking of a color. Also if you are standing still in a busy environment you don't feel right. You feel like you should do something. Be involved in the action. Standing still with movement all around you makes you feel weird. You want movement. You want action. You want to be involved with everything that is going on around you. People in our environment want to fit in and be part of what is going on around them. They don't want to be different from everyone else and stand out.

Gang Leader for a Day

In the Gangs an example of Macro Sociology would be the whole area with all the different gangs. The Macro sociology would be a community of Gangs. An example of Micro Sociology would be the individual gangs. For example the gang that J.T. was a leader of was a Micro Sociology. Mr Venkatesh is observing micro sociology when he is observing the gang. Some challenges of doing field research could be that it takes a while to find the right way that. At first Mr Venkatesh tried to jsut do what he has seen people do before, which is just go straight up and ask multiple choice questions. That didn't end up working so good for him because the type of questions he had prepared the gang that he visited wasn't so willing to answer. What he figured out, after time, is that how he should really figure out what it is to be like in a gang is by just hanging out and spending time with them. Through spending time with them he could observe their actions and what kind of conversations. That turns out to be a really good way for him to learn what it is like to be in a gang. To do field reseach you just need to test and figure out what the best way is to do field research on that specific things. For some things a survey might work. For some things you just have to observe. For some things you might even have to do experiments.

Stevenson Groupings

Since Stevenson is so big I feel like if you aren't part of some group then you are lost. Some different groups at Stevenson are the jocks, cheerleaders, band group, orchestra group, art group, groups of people that were friends from elementarary school, and many more. There are so many different groups at Stevenson because there are so many different types of people forming all the different groups. There are no highschoolers that really hold the power at Stevenson because it is such a big school. The only people that you really hear about that hold power are the deans. You never really hear of bullies. One of the important symbols in school today is grades. Some people get treated differently just because they are a different grade. Another symbol is class level. So many people at Stevenson challenge themselves so hard and take every AP they can fit in and some people that do that do ok but some people that do that don't do so good in the hard classes. The school societiy also constantly changes as new people come in and as the time goes by.