Jing Response

Last Essay

During the last two quarters, I have learned ways to maximize my learning ability as a student. While going through hardships, I learned how to stand up and improve my essays in the class. Getting comments on the essays, looking at the weakness of the essays, and reading several articles, helped me to improve as a reader and writer. With those skills I learned in this class, I hope I can apply to other classes that will impress the teachers. I can see the change in learning skills since the first quarter. The essays I wrote needed to be prepared in advance in order to be ready. Such essays became a learning tool for me to improve my writing and reading as a way to get ready for the next English class. Over the two quarters, I have learned essential skills that achieved the student learning outcomes in this class, which can help me to remember those skills and apply to the future classes.

By the end of this English class, I have involved in the larger academic discourse communities that helped me to become a better learner. With the articles and chapters we read in class, I learned how to identify and synthesize the sociological terms into one big idea. Such skill let me to change into the next level in learning that helped me identify myself into a larger discourse community. By looking at the blog, I have learned how to synthesize the ideas and combine into one big idea, interrelating crime, deviance, and criminal justice system. This essay identified me as a part of the discourse communities. Getting peer response from another and giving comments on other essays helped me to become in a part of the communities. With such discussion, I not only interacted with different styles of writings, but also improved my writing as well.

Jing/Video Response

Webcam video from January 27, 2014 10:43 PM

Personal Dictionary/Poem

Escape from Control

   

As we look at our world, we can see various social problems and sociological theories in play all around us. Such theories help us to better understand our society, people’s behavior, and  social issues we currently face. One of the main sociological theories, social stratification, defined as a classification of people into groups based on shared socio-economic conditions,

occurs in every society. An inevitable part in the society, social stratification leads to a society in which people are grouped into a set of hierarchical social categories. In every society, we see the classes of poor, middle, and rich. We can also see other class criteria such as religion, ethnic heritage, and other distinguishing traits.  Because such a hierarchical structure exists, its inherent inequality can lead to unfair treatment of some members of society. Egyptian politician Mohammed Morsi once said, “The world is not uni-cultural. We must live together rather than seeking to dominate each other. The people in the world cannot accept domination anymore.” As people gain power, they wield greater control and authority, leading to an imbalance in power and then to rebellion by those who have less power and seek to gain it for themselves.

            Another sociological theory that we encounter is the influence of media, methods of spreading opinions and ideas across the world, which help us to understand every part of the society. Through print and visual media such as newspapers, magazines, posters, and books, and television, ideas are passed and spread through society. The effects of the media lead to pervasive and visible forms of culture within societies. Today we depict those sociological theories and issues in movies as a way to portray a message to people regarding the social problems we face. With such theories, one of the movies, Hunger Games: Catching Fire, directed by Francis Lawrence, not only provides us entertainment with its fictional story, but also expresses important sociological concepts that give people an opportunity to think about the connection to real life’s sociology.  

Living under Lies

           Throughout human history, people have faced racism, sexism, and the inequality of social classes. Even though today’s society has become less judgmental, we still can see the inequality of people as a flagrant imbalance in society. Wherever we go, inequality will continue to exist as long as human beings live in this world; however, the ways in which we treat each other have been improving over the years. The most important issue we face in inequality has always been racism, a belief that certain races as superior or inferior to each other. Holocaust survivor, author, and human rights activist Elie Wiesel once said, “No human race is superior; no religious faith is inferior. All collective judgments are wrong. Only racists make them.” Often based solely on skin color, segregation and other unfair policies have been a painful part in our society. Such inequality stems from judgment and hatred of people based on an arbitrary physical quality. For example, African Americans have long faced the challenges of discrimination.  Another inequality issue in our society is social class, based on the status of income. As rich people become richer and poor people grow poorer, unfair treatment is inevitable as the wealthy do not see the poor as their equals. We can see those sociological theories interrelate through reading Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, which reveals truths concerning cancer research and medicine in the scientific world, but also provides readers opportunities to view the interconnection between the inequality Lacks’ family faces and humanity sociologically.  
            From a sociological perspective, we can see racism arise as a major issue in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. The book discusses the life of Henrietta Lacks, recognized as the savior in the medical world, who experienced many hardships as a result of her identity. According to Chapter 9, “You May Ask Yourself”, Dalton Conley defines racism as “the belief that members of separate races possess different and unequal trait”(327) and applies the theory to The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, which takes place in the 1950s, when discrimination was prevalent in American society. Henrietta Lacks was lucky to receive treatments at Johns Hopkins Hospital, which did offer treatment to black people, but segregated them from white patients. Because of racism, there was limited healthcare available to people of color.  In the 1950s, segregation was law and black people could not question white people’s judgments without being seen as defying the law, so “many black patients were just glad to be getting treatment …since discrimination in hospitals was widespread” (Skloot 64). Even though Lacks received the same treatments as white people, the studies have shown that black patients were treated and “hospitalized at later stages” than white patients. Lacks’s doctor assured her she was fine, but she still felt “discomfort”; however, the doctor told her there was no evidence of reason for her discomfort. Because of her racial identity, her doctor did not provide the same treatment he would have given a white patient, causing Lacks her more pain and causing tumor to spread.

Criminal and Deviant Behavior

When people hear the word “crime”, they often picture robbery, rape, murder, or other forms of violence. However, in today’s society, crime, also known as a deviant behavior that violates norms, occurs everywhere and is almost unavoidable in society. Nelson Mandela once said, “When a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in, he has no choice but to become an outlaw.” When the society becomes unbalanced, criminal activity occurs.  In this society, the criminal justice system is one that should guarantee the citizens it serves a safe environment by preventing an excessive number of criminals. However, if the system fails to reduce crime, the society can become unbalanced. People not only commit crimes as a deviant behavior, which breaks the law, but they also exhibit other deviance that violates social norms, both formally and informally. Such behaviors can exist in everyone and are often reviled, but in fact, thinking as a sociologist can reveal the reason why these behaviors exist in society. The interrelation of the readings on crime have helped me to understand the relationship between crime and deviance from a sociological perspective, as well as changing my perspective on crime.

Criminal behavior exists as an inevitable part of society; therefore, we should see crime as part of a normal pattern of behavior in society today. In the article of “The Functions of Crime”, Emile Durkheim outlined his theory that crime plays a normal role in the evolution of society. Durkheim believed, as a sociologist, that crime should not be avoided because it is perceived as detrimental to society. As most people believe crime is a scourge on society, Durkheim holds “crime must no longer be conceived of as an evil which cannot be circumscribed closely enough” (150). Even though crime contributes to disturbance among people, it helps us to balance society. According to Durkheim, the function of crime plays a huge social role: as a necessary factor that promotes change to the society, crime provides, through social reaction against it, the basis of morals and law. As the time goes on, crime changes as a functional value that can influence our society. The morality in our society changes continuously to reflect the crime that exists in every society. Even though laws exist in every part of society, crime does not disappear. To keep society evolving, there must be constant change, so we should consider criminals as performing a normal role in social life, instead of as “utterly unsociable creatures”. Thinking as a sociologist, I believe crime should be perceived as normal behavior because it happens in every society, and there is no place that is free of crime. Durkheim's article gave me a better understanding of crime, as well as its function in society, helping me to think sociologically.

Revision

To write an A paper, one needs to understand the errors in content and organization in order to make edits and revisions. The first draft of the essay always contains a number of mistakes to be fixed. As one completes the next assignment, one must review the errors made in previous papers to avoid the same mistakes on the next assignment. For each new assignment, one must prepare to invest more time to ensure not repeating mistakes. When preparing to write, after reading the prompt, one needs to decide what steps one needs to take to best inform the reader. Knowing the previous essay’s errors, one needs to conscientiously make edits to remove such mistakes from the current and next assignment. After writing the essay from last quarter, I received feedback and comments from my teacher, which will help me to take the next step: to make revisions by identifying my strengths and weaknesses so that I will make improvements on future assignments.        

Proofreading can be the most important strategy in helping people can find their mistakes. In the essay “History and Me” from last quarter, I wrote a good essay overall, but if I had proofread better, I could have organized the content and revised the sentence flow in the essay. Proofreading helps me to find grammar mistakes and to evaluate whether the essay is focused. Understanding both grammar errors and focus problems can help me improve the next essay. Overall, the strengths from my last essay include not having many errors or sentence flow problems. In the next assignment, I will remember to proofread after writing so that errors can be minimized. Most mistakes from essays are missed when writers choose to forgo proofreading; proofreading is a crucial process that can address major sentence flow problems and grammatical errors.