This semester in sociology has taught me a lot about concepts I already knew about but this time, I was learning them in a much different way. The idea of race or gender to me was something I took for granted. It was a social norm to think of race as the color of ones skin or gender as whether you're a boy or a girl and this is exactly how I thought too.
When we were given the prompt in the beginning of the year about who we are I only talked about the individual that I am. Although many of the characteristics I had listed were probably true, there is a lot more to me than what I wrote. I did not talk about all the other aspects of my life that made me the person I am today. I didn't talk nearly enough about my background, the different enviornments I've lived in and the ways that those enviornments made me who I am today. I also left out a lot about the people around me. I have learned over the course of this semester that while you might be who you are or percieved in such a specific way, there is reasoning behind it and that reasoning is almost just as important as the actual charateristics itself.
I have began to think in a much different light about this than I did before I took sociology. I question more and find myself thinking more outside of the normal social box now. I think this is because of all of the lessons I've seen in the last 18 weeks. They have made me realize that although people perceive the world to be a certain way, it is ok to question it and find out more because you might take a whole new approach to an idea after learning more about it which can help and individual grow tremendously.
