Collective Crowd Groups

These are some of the collective groups I’ve experienced or will experience:

Casual: I’ve never really seen a car accident or a fire, but I have seen a fight. The first and only fight I’ve seen in high school was last year. I was leaving study hall with my friend Dillon Krotz and we were headed for the staircase in the math hallway. We got half way there when two girls started circling each other. We were right in front of them. In approximately 30 seconds, a group had already formed and started yelling, “fight, fight, fight!” To me, the cheering was almost the worst thing because why should anyone be encouraging violence? Why do humans always crave action, battle, and blood? The group kept chatting and eventually one of the girls pushed each other. It happened so fast, but then they were on the ground, literally rolling. I looked over at Dillon and he had the same expression I felt on my face, almost utter revulsion. I almost felt sick just because at that moment, I was so disappointed in humanity. If this is what high school is like with violence, how bad is the whole world? I wanted to try and stop it, but I knew with our school’s policy that if I got involved, I would also get in trouble too. By the time the deans got there, one of the girl’s nose ring had come out and there was blood on both of their faces. After that, the group broke apart and we went to our next classes. It must have lasted 2 minutes, top. We were together briefly, and not for a main purpose.

Conventional: Tonight I’m going to dinner with my friends at Chipotle’s (best fake Mexican food ever!). Every time I’m there, it’s usually busy and there normally isn’t a lot of seatting, so sometimes you’re sitting next to strangers. We all come together for the purpose to eat, and when we’re done, we leave.

Expressive: Last Friday, I went to the first and last basketball game I have ever attended at Wego. I don’t like basketball; I generally think any sport but football is boring, and I’d rather be playing that then watching it. That, combined with the fact that I was with my best friends, I didn’t even realize when the game ended. However, I did occasionally glance at the parents that sat next to the squad. They genuinely seem interested in the game. I’m sure to the parents with children playing, any sport is more emotional because that’s your baby playing out there and you want to see them do well and not get injured.  

Acting: The most recent and closest to home acting crowd that I can think of is the democrats in Wisconsin leaving so there won’t be a quorum for the anti-union bill. I even found this picture with the protesters sleeping in the capital. I do agree with you Mrs. Haas, that the teachers should not be leaving school to protest, but I understand why their upset about the attempt to have their unions eliminated, especially in this current economy.  

My Social Groups

My territorial group would be Winfield. The house I live in is easily connected to 4 others because none of our yards have fences, and all our backyards face each other. It’s nice because I like all of our neighbors. The Walsh’s are some of the nicest neighbors, and I love talking to them because they came to America when they were 18 from Ireland and still have their awesome accents that I love. I also like that they still hang towels and sheets on a line outside because no one really does that anymore and it saves energy. I also love the Adams across the street because they are also amazingly kind, especially Mr. Adams. I had to interview him one time when I was on the school paper, and he is just an amazing man. He’s one of those people that I envy in life because he just seems so content and easy going. He’s also one of the most optimistic people I’ve ever met. In all, I love my neighborhood.

My primary group would be my best friends since fourth grade. I moved to Winfield in fourth grade, and was lucky even to fall into one of the best groups of people who conveniently live 2 blocks away. It’s always been us six girls (plus our one male friend, who, in all truth, really is one of the girls cause we treat him just the same) and we’ve been through so much. We went through our extremely dramatic/conflict phase pretty early on, so we’ve had very little problems in high school, which is a God send. I just think of them now, and I have been so blessed. There were so many times when I decided I was going to make a bad decision, and they sat me down and were like, “no, Beth, let’s talk about this and rethink it through.” My life would have been completely different if I hadn’t had them.

One of my many interest groups is badminton. I’ve been on JV for two years now, and I love it. More importantly, I love the team. There is not one girl on there that if badminton was like survivor, I’d kick off.  I like everyone too much. Which is sometimes a problem because although I love to play, I’m not really focused on the game, which is something I really need to work on this year.

My kinship group, is of course, my extended family, but mainly my cousins. I have a lot of cousins of my dad’s side because he has 3 siblings and each has their own family. I love my cousins a lot, but sometimes it’s hard for to connect with them because they’re almost all males. I only have 3 girl cousins in total, and they’re all older than me and starting their own families now, so it’s kind of hard to relate to their lives now. I feel like I’m the black sheep in my family because I have gone through things some of my cousins/other family members will never go through or understand, and I just want different things from life. Many of my family members are really into money, trips, and material goods, but to me, that’s not what life should be about. With that money, all of my cousins went to private high schools , while my brother and I went to good old Wego, so that’s hard to relate to too. It’s also hard because on both sides of my family, drinking and smoking are very common ( like, out of all my 10 cousins that of age to drink, only one of them doesn’t), and I don’t want anything to do with those activities, especially because they contributed to both my grandfathers’ early deaths. I also don’t see drinking and my Irish-German heritage going well together. So it’s kind of hard for me to really get into a conversation with my cousins when all I can do is stare at the beer in my 18 year old (who is only about 5 months older than me) cousin’s hand with his dad next to him saying it’s okay for him to drink because he’s old enough and hey, at least he’s drinking at home.

Wow, sorry, kind of went on a vent with these. Hope you enjoyed it?

Functionalism

Today in World Wars, I learned that in 1914 during World War I, when Germany invaded Belgium, Belgium citizens also joined the cause. Many of the citizens became snipers and would pick off German soldiers (look at the pictures. It would have been easy to shoot a solider because of easy hiding spots in the surrounding buildings). Even when the Germans killed 10 citizens for every one German soldier killed, the Belgium people still muscled on. Their king even joined the battle and personally led armies, while his 14 year old son was a private in the army and his wife a nurse.

It was impressive to me that almost all Belgium society (even the upper class, which usual just start wars, but don’t actually fight them) united to fight for their nation.  It reminds me of that new term we learned, functionalism, because every part of society was contributing in either small or large ways to get rid of the Germans so they can return to stability after the upheaval the war has caused.