Moving forward...

One of the main objectives of this class has been to give you some ideas for how to apply sociology to your own life. I hope that you will be influenced by our class and at times I hope you will return to this blog to look again at the ideas that we discussed in class. Just like the ringing of the bell, you are constantly changing, growing and developing. There will be times when you experience more development than others and there will be times of your life when you are more open to learning the lessons of our class.

A parting gift from Stevenson and I...

Here is the history of the Desiderata which explains the connection to Adlai Stevenson,

When Adlai Stevenson died in 1965, a guest in his home found a copy of Desiderata near his bedside and discovered that Stevenson had planned to use it in his Christmas cards. The publicity that followed gave widespread fame to the poem


Here is the Desiderata,

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. 

As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

This Book (and this class) Is Not Required 

U of C Berkley professor Inge Bell wrote the book, This Book Is Not Required.  The book is a manual of how to use sociological thinking in your life to make it better.  It is meant for freshmen in college.  I recommend it as read before you begin college.  Here is an excerpt from Berkley,

This is a book that invites you to look at your college education: what it could be, and what, alas, it often is. It is a book which suggests to you what you can make of this opportunity, given the resources at your disposal. If you want to become truly educated, you will have to educate yourself, and at times you will have to do it in spite of the academy. Perhaps this is good, because knowledge which comes too easily doesn't train one to be an independent thinker, and only an independent thinker is ever truly intelligent.

We will not look at these four years merely in terms of the formal world of classes and professors. We want to look at the larger experience: at your whole environment and your whole life during these four years, because some of the most important learning is always done outside the classroom.

I have tried to make this a survival manual for undergraduates: emotional survival and intellectual survival. I will even say that it speaks to the issues of spiritual survival, if by "spiritual" we mean the capacity to live in harmony with oneself and with the universe.

You will undoubtedly disagree with parts of this book. It is only one person's view. But if it connects with your life at any important point, I shall feel that it has served its purpose for you. I have tried to give you the broadest possible picture of your position as a student in the academic world and in the larger society of which you are a part. To do this, I have had to use a large brush, and I have undoubtedly made mistakes. But I have always considered this broad perspective more important than the fine attention to detail given by the academic specialists.

This is not an academic or scholarly work. It is a very critical look at academia by one who has been through it from freshman to full professor. Occasionally, I will suggest a book which I think you might like. But you will not find an ibid. or an op.cit. littering these pages.

In my years as a college teacher, I succeeded in what was ever the chief ambition of my career: to keep my students awake. Of course, there were always a comatose few who hadn't gotten to bed until four in the morning, or had mononucleosis, or where merely in love. But on the whole, I succeeded because I discovered that students always came awake when I laid aside academic sociology and talked to them about their lives as students -- about the academic institutions in which they labored, and the how and why of how those institutions functioned; about the competition and anxiety created by grades; about their ambitions and difficult choices of major and career; about the travail of those who came from minority or working-class families; yes, even about their love affairs and loneliness. We talked about how you find out what you want to do in life and about how you can keep your integrity and your sanity in this very difficult society.

Eventually, drawing on sociology and Eastern philosophy, I developed a course devoted solely to these questions. I shall describe that to you in the chapter "Adventures in Desocializatioin" and give you some of the exercises and "walking meditations" which I used to help students gain insight into their own functioning.

As I discussed life in the academy with my students, I also listened, and learned a lot. It is therefore to all my former students that I dedicate this little book, because much of what I have written here I learned from them.

It is, perhaps, ironic that after writing a chapter called "Everyone Hates to Write," I found myself hugely enjoying the process of writing this book. After the writing I had done in the usual, stilted language of social science, it was a huge relief to talk good English. I always love to write, and I think I did pretty well at it until I got to graduate school and had all the style knocked out of me by the demands of acedemic sociologese. I always resisted a little. I remember my dissertation chairman asking me sadly whether I had "turned against sociology" because I used too much plain English. In writing this book, I felt that I had regained my writing voice after 30 years.

And here is an excerpt from her last chapter which is about how to use sociology to "Direct Your Own Development".

 
My hope for you

Finally, I hope that learning about the influence of society on the individual (sociological imagination) has helped you to see how you have been influenced by the world. And in realizing this, you can really understand who you are, love who you are and be forgiving of yourself.  And then, you can begin to nurture the person you want to become and nurture loving relationships in your life.   Here is a Ted Talk from Brene Brown that highlights the importance of letting ourselves be vulnerable and this vulnerability allows us to feel both love and pain. But in being open to these emotions, it allows love to grow in us if we have the mindset that we are worthy of love.

Course Evaluation

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One of the main objectives of this class has been to give you some ideas for how to apply sociology to your own life. I hope that you will be influenced by our class and at times I hope you will return to this blog to look again at the ideas that we discussed in class. Just like the ringing of the bell, you are constantly changing, growing and developing. There will be times when you experience more development than others and there will be times of your life when you are more open to learning the lessons of our class.