My Crucial Semester In My Academic Growth

Immediately after we are born, we start picking up sounds; the sound of our mother’s voice, the music playing in the elevator on the way to the car, and the happy cheers from a small child seeing their new sibling for the first time. We are always listening–picking up on conversations not meant for our ears, eavesdropping on the gossip of the adult world, and finding the meaning in the portentous silence. From all these auditory stimuli, we piece together the world around us to better understand what is happening to us, around us, and the secret happenings that were not for us to know. Great writers are the ones who listen and say nothing–who take it all in and save their classified information for a day when all the right words flow and form one epic story of the wondrous world we live in.

Today’s society sees college as a very fundamental step to obtaining success. Carmen Lugo-Lugo argues that instead of being focused on education, college is beginning to convert into a marketplace and a business. She states that colleges are now more interested in making a profit from their students than the actual education they are there for. Due to this mindset, the flow of the classroom environment and how students treat professors is affected. She also makes it known how prevalent systematic racism and racial profiling exist and tells the readers by her first hand accounts. In her essay “A Prostitute, A Servant, And A Customer-Service Representative: A Latina in Academia”, Associate Professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender, and Race Studies, Carmen Lugo-Lugo uses emotion and language to communicate her claim. Throughout her writing she demonstrates strong emotion-evoking words, and hyperboles.

In the upcoming semesters, I am planning to take a social research methods course. This course will teach me how to implement my research ideas into a research design, as well as preparation of research reports. I will be continuing my work on a research project which I began in Fall 2015 during the Fall 2016 semester. Additionally, I will begin my own independent research study with another Sociology mentor and professor, Dr. Cecile Yancu, that will expand over two semesters (Fall 2016 - Spring 2017). During the Spring 2017 semester, I also plan to participate in a Sociology internship.

Throughout this entire semester, I have learned many different aspects of society that I had a basic understanding of originally. I never would have imagined the amount of knowledge and real life stories I would gain in this class. I want to start of by saying that I am grateful to have taken this class and appreciate each and every story that was shared. These stories opened my eyes to a world I wouldn’t have normally seen. For that fact alone, I believe sociology was one of the most insightful classes in my college career so far.

As a freshman college student I did not expect that through a fulfillment of graduation requirements, I would stumble across this particular Latino studies curriculum. When I registered for this course my mind was just focused on the fact of attending and perhaps learning a thing or two about my heritage. I also expected to find myself in a position of easy success for this course, and while I believe that I was quite successful, it was not as simple as I projected. The reason behind some of the challenges that I faced were because, unlike most college courses were students are just mindlessly completing homework assignments or writing essays for the purpose to be critiqued, this course engaged emotion and made the students truly immerse themselves

Although the subject of education, study behavior, has been viewed as a personal matter, we believe race and gender played a role in it. We interviewed a Senior Latino student named Irving Alvisurez. Alvisurez is a first generation college student that came from Los Angeles, California. When he first came to UCSB, he lived in FT and there was only four Hispanics on his whole floor, this gave him more opportunity to expose to foreign cultures and experiencing culture shock. He first majored in computer science and later changed to Chicano studies. As a first generation Latino, he felt more pressure from family rather than social pressures. His statement was supported by the arguments within his family based on his change of majors multiple times,

During those semesters, I relapsed in my battle with depression. I was originally diagnosed at the age of nine but learned to manage the disease with the proper tools of guidance of professionals. The transition from college to the next step presented me with many new challenges that reignited my triggers. After having the disease in remission for so long, I had forgot how to handle my struggles on a day to day basis, so my academics took a hit. The process of learning to cope, build myself back up, and continue moving forward has been tough but has made more confident in who I am as a person, a student, and as a future

Currently, we have yet to see adequate accommodations to Latinx culture within the public preparatory education system here in the U.S. Speaking on my behalf, I did not receive much enlightenment relative to this field as our history courses were simply focused on the founding fathers of our nation (and revolved around the American Revolution against the British.) In fact, it was until my undergraduate years here at the university where I enrolled myself as a Latinx/Mexican-American Studies minor and began to familiarize myself with my identity and the long history behind my culture. Even then, it has come to my attention that there are a select few universities that offer Latinx studies and courses similar to A&M’s. As a first-generation minority student enrolled at a pre-dominantly white institution, I can vouch for myself to say I carry a different perspective of the world that may differ than most of my peers due to my upbringing. Coming from a low-income community with inadequate resources and conditions, I found myself closely relating to the narrative that

Thinking of my time at Keuka College I would have to credit my increase in cultural capital to the emphasis placed on finding the right major however set in it a student may seem. Starting my college career as a Psych major and transitioning to a sociology major has largely contributed to my out look on the professional and diverse world that we all live in both in and outside of Keuka College. For this I would like to thank Dr. Steve Hallam for steering me in the direction of the Sociology field and Dr. Jessica McNamara for helping me through it.

In today’s society college is seen as a very fundamental step to obtaining success, Carmen Lugo-Lugo argues that instead of being focused on education, college is beginning to turn into a marketplace and a business. She states that colleges are now more interested in making a profit from their students than the actual education they are there for. Due to this mindset it affects the flow of the classroom environment and how professors are treated by students. She also makes it prevalent how systematic racism and racial profiling exist and tells the readers by her first hand accounts. In her essay “A Prostitute, A Servant, And A Customer-Service Representative: A Latina in Academia” Carmen Lugo-Lugo uses emotion and language to communicate

In this week’s lecture Justin Lee came to speak to speak to the class on Careers in Social Work. He led the lecture by discussing his career choices and pathway in which spoke a lot about his academic’s. Justin received his PhD at a college in Richmond, VA and when he was eighteen years old he traveled to Guatemala for academic study. In Guatemala Justin taught classes and visited orphanages where children where. As he grew older after obtaining a PhD he decided to teach classes at Barton College in Wilson, NC for undergraduate students. In his earlier years before the PhD his career wasn’t quite what he expected today. He told the class that he choose to study Sociology because the professor teaching it at the time was really good. Justin

Eric Hoover, a staff reporter for the Chronicle, profiles a community college student in Philadelphia. Wrote an article for The Chronicle of Higher Education newspaper titled ( title ) “ An Immigrant Learns Two New Languages.” In the article, Eric Hoover (tone) sets an informal tone when describing the personal hardships and achievements of Ms. Maldonato. The author (audience) targets men and women over the age of 50 who are still fixed on attending college. Ms. Maldonato, a part-time student at the Community College of Philadelphia, learned two languages after emigrating from colombia. ( Purpose ) The author intends to entertain his readers by sharing the journey that Ms Maldonato took to become a successful immigrant. ( Thesis ) To learn a language is to piece together a puzzle that is never quite done.

This week’s readings consisted of The Forest and The Trees: Sociology as Life, Practice, and Promise by Allan Johnson, as well as “What is Applied Sociology” by Dr. Zuleyka Zevallos. Both readings address “doing something” as a sociologist, however, Johnson’s writing is more focused on the theoretical ideas behind movements while Zevallos’s writing focuses on the actual discipline of applied sociology (Johnson, 1997; Zevallos, 2015). These readings serve as a good source of guidance for individuals who are still undecided about what to do with their Sociology degree. While they do bring a certain call to action, it is different from the one brought by Liberation Sociology. Johnson’s call is more about working for change both within individuals

Author Anne-Marie Nunez, examined and researched how students who work while attending college can influence learning in different domains. The article focuses on how higher education could expand opportunity structures from Latino, first-generation, or other historically marginalized groups to improve their socioeconomic status and increase societal equality. “Compared with other racial/ethnic groups, Latino college students are most likely to report concerns that their financial situation will adversely affect their ability to complete their postsecondary degrees (Longerbeam, Sedlacek, & Alatorre, 2004).” (Pg, 92) I believe this article is a perfect example of the population at FIU and the impact it has on higher education. In this critique, I will be discussing what I believe the research should have focused on, the points I agreed with and disagreed with as well as what points could have been touched on.

I can relate to Learning by Degrees by Rebecca Mead in many ways. One way in particular is, growing up I have heard from many family members and friends that if I am going to go to college I need to go for something that will make me enough money to pay back all of the debt I am going to obtain while perusing the degree. My mother always told me to be smart when picking my major; to choose something like Engineering or a major in the scientific field, you can imagine her face when I told her I wanted to major in Sociology and Criminal Justice. For weeks, even months, all I heard was “What are you going to do with that?” or “Did you know sociology is one of he most wasted degree’s in the world?” I could answer her first question, I told her I wanted to be a correctional councilor at a state prison, still my main goal today. Surprisingly I also knew the answer to her second question, yes I know that sociology is a very much wasted degree; actually, according to thesimpledollar.com, sociology is voted the fifth out of ten for the most wasted bachelor’s degrees in 2015. This website also says that employment opportunities are slim. Knowing this, I still chose to choose sociology as my major because I believe that I can make it something more than it is said to be. Learning by Degrees relates to personal experiences that I have had because in this