Final Blog

Out of the three mini blogs that I wrote I thought that the one I would most want to expand on would be the first one. My whole project I have focused on the positives and negatives of categories. In the first mini blog I talked about how we often too quickly see a certain scene in life and automatically think that we have the right to put that scene or person into a category. Whether that category is good or bad though doesn't really matter- what matter's is that we are most likely wrong with our assumptions. So why should anyone care about categories? Why am I even writing about something like this? Because everyone does it and since everyone does it, it relates to all of us.

The article I read talked about how categories identify who we are. I agree with this- the reason we categorize everyone is to identify people and ourselves. But my point is that we aren't always put into the right category- sometimes people are wrong, sometimes ever we're wrong about putting ourselves into a certain category. That's why I hate labels; people stick labels on you and don't even know you. Then whenever they see you whatever label they have given you is the category they put you in and you're seen that way to them even if it's not really who you are. So even though categories can identify us doesn't mean that when other people put us into those categories that they are right.

My thoughts are can it be changed? Can we change the way we see someone and the way we automatically put that someone into a possibly false category or is our brain just hardwired to do it? 

Another thing about categories is that everyone has their own assumptions and a lot of the time people differ with what category they might put a person into. Especially if the person making the assumption about someone else is similar to the person. The category they put them into may be better than someone who is not similar. 

I took a picture of a dog more for the scene of it. A man went to the store and left his dog in the car. Some people might say this man is rude and doesn't care about his dog enough. Others may see it that the man loves his dog enough to take the dog in his car for a ride and then stopped to go to the store for a second. The thing is- we don't know if the man really doesn't care about his dog or if he actually does care about the dog or if there's an entirely different reason for why the dog was left in the car. But the people who saw the man leave the dog jumped to conclusions and made assumptions for the man.

I put this picture on here because this was a grumpy woman on the bus. If I hadn't known this was one of the ladies who works in Crown then I probably would have put her into the rude category. But I've met her and I know that she's actually really nice when you talk to her. A random person might have assumed that this was her personality and put her into a rude category not even knowing her. But she probably had a long day of working at Crown and was really cranky and tired because she wanted to go home.

 It's interesting how when you meet someone for the first time you identify them into a category and that's how they are seen to you. I mean if you met a lady who was acting like this:

But was normally like this:

And you didn't know that she was just having a rough day then you might always see her in the category of mad. That's why categorizing people can end up being bad when we don't know someone that well. 

Academic Source: Pachucki, Mark. "Boundary processes: Recent theoretical developments and new contributions" 26 Nov. 2007 Web. 28 Apr. 2013

Mini Project Part 3

     There are pros and cons to everything- so are there any pros to categorizing people? Let's say when we met someone we didn't have the ability to categorize them. We just learned to get to know them. But the thing is, we approach people based on the categories we put them into. Which obviously I have said is not a good thing but then again what if it can be a good thing. I mean think about it- what if you were walking somewhere, by yourself, at night that you weren't familiar with and you see a man nearby.

            If you didn't have the ability to categorize the man then you wouldn't know whether he seemed like an approachable person or if he seemed like someone who may harm you. Obviously, you wouldn't know for sure but trusting our instincts is part of our human nature, and sometimes making assumptions can help us to stay safe.

                There are a lot of different ways we could view categorizing people- but the question remains do the pros outweigh the cons or do the cons outweigh the pros?

Mini Project Part 2

     Categories aren't only bad because they give you a, sometimes false, interpretation of reality, but also because categories are hard to get out of. People change. The elementary school bully might change when they get into high school- but because this bully was put into a category of being a bully everyone still thinks of them that way.



  This girl might be put into the category of being a nerd, or loud, obnoxious, anything. But what if she isn't. What if those are the only glasses her parents could afford. And the reason she's so smiley is because she never gets to at home. Especially in middle school and high school it is really hard to get out of a category that you might not be in anymore.







http://www.icesi.edu.co/blogs/antro_conocimiento/files/2012/02/Hacking_making-up-people.pdf
  In this link it shows how categories so change- usually this change starts occuring after high school years. It talks about social change. That about every ten years a change occurs in society. Sometimes this change can help out awkward people or weird people and make them the popluar ones. It's a different change in high school. It's more of a cover up to me. Social change occurs but it's usually the already popluar kids making the change.

Mini Project

      Categories. Life is filled with categories. We put everyone and everything we come across into categories to identify them- sometimes we do it unconsciously but a lot of the time we judge people based on a sole image or scene that we have scene.
       For example this man on the left. If we had walked by the bus stop and he was crying and cursing we might categorize him as crazy. Or maybe as an alcoholic.
But what we don't always think about, even though we comprehend it, is that every single person in this world has their own life, their own problems and troubles that they face on a daily.


What most people probably wouldn't have figured out if they didn't know this man:
Earlier that day his wife came home and wanted a divorce and they fought in front of their children (below):

                                             Then his wife divorced him (on the right):



Now he's divorced (the left):







                                                    Heartbroken







There is so much we don't see when we just glance at a scene. So why do we think that it's okay to try and put the someone else's life together in our own head when we don't know all the details. If we didn't know the man at the bus stop above then we wouldn't have known anything about his family and what he had been dealing with.





     Everyone sees things differently and I think the picture on the right proves my point- Some people only see a woman walking on a path. Some people only see a man's face in between the trees. And some people see both. They say that a picture is worth a thousand words- so how come we never take the time to see the meaning behind the picture? Why do we put everything into categories and think we know the story behind everything.


                 It's hard to change habits though, and it's a habit for us to judge things, people, and scenes.

merp

     I almost didn't come to class on Wednesday to be honest- I wasn't really feeling like being a mentor to some high school kids but I ended up actually coming and it was really fun. Autumn and I had a really cool group of 4 other seniors who were nice and easy to talk to. They seemed really interested to hear about our college experiences so far and any advice that we were able to give.

    We also played a little activity with everyone that Lacy came up with. We played this four corners game where each corner stood for a different thing and you had to match yourself up with the corner that fit you best. It got everyone to participate and be involved which was good- it also got us to realize that we have more in common than we think.

     Overall, Wednesdays class was good and I'm glad I ended up going. It was really interesting to see how the seniors gave all their attention to us to hear about what we've encountered.


               

     On Monday we did this activity where we went around the CHHS building and looked for random chunks of a sentence to write down. I chose to write down the following words.

After we chose our words we went back to the room and wrote the words on the board. We had to write a found poem with the words on the board- we could only use those words but we could use them in any way to write our poem. I actually really enjoy doing these types of poems. It's interesting to see what kind of a poem you can create with only the words that you have. The poem I made was short and simple with no real meaning, but it still made sense. It's crazy how much can be told with only twenty-six letters in the alphabet. 

College Journey

        In class we looked at a picture online of how the college journey is portrayed. The picture was a straight line that was basically an academic check list of what you should complete before you go to college. What we talked about as a group after we looked at the picture were some things like: not everyone goes to college, what about sports and clubs and extracurricular activities, jobs, and all the other things the picture didn't take into account. After that Lacy wanted us to draw our own college journey. As you can tell my journey was more like a tree that kept branching out because college isn't a straight path. There are so many different bumps in the road when we go on our journey to college and not everyone even goes to college. Some people wait to go, or join the army, or go into their own business. This was a good activity to do because I don't think about this a lot but I'm glad I got too.