I would investigate the factors that determine how many AP courses a student in Stevenson takes. I think that the most important questions to ask in this type of study would be about family income (quantitative data), family education (somewhat quantitative), and student life goals (qualitative). I think that family income is important to look at because i think that students who grew up in affluent households tend to be able to afford the tutoring that may be necessary in succeeding in an AP course. Family education history would be important because depending on how far your relatives took their education, students would be more or less encouraged to take challenging classes. Though life goals aren't quantitative, they would probably be the most influential factor because I think that kids who want to go very far with their education would be more encouraged to take challenging classes. I wouldn't be able to create a causal conclusion because there wouldn't be enough quantitative evidence to support my conclusion, but my results would be an interesting observational study.

Blog #2 - This week in class, we talked about our sociological imagination, or the societal factors that contribute to making up who we are. The things that I wrote about in my first blog post about what made me unique, were all a consequence of my sociological imagination. Not to say that I personally didn't have any say in what I like and dislike, its just that I grew to enjoy things like playing sports and community service because of the environment I grew up in. We also talked about sociological mindfulness. Sociological mindfulness is about self awareness and our understanding of how our actions impact those of others around us. For example, we've all had the experience of a very moody substitute teacher. In an ideal situation where every student in that class is sociologically mindful, we would all understand that the teacher might just be having a bad day, and we would do everything in our power to not make it worse (being rude towards the teacher). But because we are not always sociologically mindful, we tend to react in a way thats very self centered and beneficial to our personal interest. This leads us act harshly towards the sub. This is an instance of how sociological mindfulness can impact others. In class we watched a few clips, but the one that stood out the most in capturing the essence of the show was Freaks and Geeks. The biggest take away from the show was that we each have our own person "gigantic drum set". That drum set is a result of how our environment has helped to shape our views.

Blog #3 - This week in class, we learned about how different groups (specifically the ones we belong to) and how our roles within those groups, shape how we view the world. We looked at one document, in particular, an excerpt from the book Gang Leader for a Day, by Sudhir Venkatesh. In the first chapter of the book, Venkatesh describes his upbringing and how because of having never been exposed to an environment like the projects of Chicago, it was difficult for him to understand essentially "how the other half lived". After graduating from the University of Chicago, he decided to study the inhabitants of the then Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago. He believed that he was trying to put truth to some of his beliefs about an outgroup (people living in the projects) as a member of an ingroup (privileged Americans) when in truth, he was trying to become part of the in-group. I can relate to Venkatesh's desire to understand a society that is outside of what he knows. It reminds me on a much smaller scale, of how at one point in my life I did not understand football or why the fans were so in love with it. I could only make generalizations that often lead me to believe that all football fans were hyper-aggressive and savages. It wasn't until I decided to actually watch a game for myself, that I began to understand the incredible athleticism required to play the sport and the incredible team spirit that each player on that field demonstrated, and it was only a matter of games before I found myself screaming at the TV and becoming a "hyper-aggressive savage". I was so in love with the sport, that I decided to sign up for the school football team myself. In class, we also looked at different research methods for studying sociology. Sociology is best studied through observational studies - researchers observing groups of interest in their natural habitat. This type of study is usually associated with qualitative data - data without numbers. This is a good way of establishing association, but it is hard to draw conclusive information from a study like this because it lacks numbers and statistics. If researchers were to take quantitative observations, then they might be able to say that a certain event is not due to chance and is a causal relationship.