Welcome - Students Read This First!

Welcome to the Sociology Considerations Blog. This blog is meant to add to our in-class discussions and readings. Our face-to-face time is limited and often focused on information "delivery." So this space will provide another outlet for us to interact with the material and each other. As sociologists, we examine what we take-for-granted in everyday life in order to develop a “sociological imagination” that helps us see the connections between micro-level individual experiences and macro-level social institutions. This blog provides a space to take sociological concepts from the course and apply them to examples from our own lives. Here each of us are teachers and students as we use sociology to explain our experiences of the social worlds that we inhabit; here we can engage in the production of sociological knowledge.

You will receive more explicit instructions for setting up your blogs, what you should be blogging about, and how you will be graded in class (hint: check GauchoSpace). But in short, your TA and I will post prompts for you to reflect on and respond to in your own blogs - which are linked here. In your blogs, take the course concepts and apply them, using them to explain and evaluate what you see and experience in your lives. Make "the familiar strange" and "the strange familiar." Your course-mates (and perhaps others - this is a public blog) will be reading your blog (not just your TA and I) and you will be required to comment on each other's work, so have fun with this and make it your own. I encourage you to use pictures and media - be creative! 

Finally - I don't want to sound preachy but I feel compelled to make one quick note about privacy. As you know, nothing on the Internet is truly secure. Do not share details about you and your life that you wouldn't want everyone to know. Your virtual persona will follow you into the real world and may have (positive or negative) effects on your future. So take care with what you post.