Sociology and Me

Sociology and Me

Sakib Choudhury

Sociology 111 09H

Ivy Tech Community College

December 9, 2011

Sociology and Me

As a child and most of my youthful years, both of my parents were my primary care takers. My mother was a housewife and my father used to work in Bangladesh Airlines in Bangladesh located in South-East Asia. I spent most of my years there, later migrated to United States for my higher studies. Primary caregivers set the stage for children's wellbeing. My parents, who provided me with an example of a person with good self-image, are the reason behind my accomplishments. They valued good education and are well educated themselves. They showed me, through their behavior, that they respect themselves and are, therefore, to be treated respectfully. Crass language was not heard in our household. Whenever they would disagree, there was no nonsense, no endless bickering: just a simple sentence declaring a respectable human being. That is one of the reason I respect them highly as they not only taught me this but also showed me.

I am the eldest of two. I have one sister 8 years younger. My father was lenient with my sister and me. But mom was stricter, had a lot of rules, and made sure we all did our best in school. My parents taught me how to lead a good and healthy life. They always encouraged me to follow the rules and regulation, and maintain a certain norms. Growing up with my sister we all had quite the imagination, and always were close although we had a big age difference. When I hit my upper teen years, my sister and I lost our strong bond because I got bit mature and used to think my sister was very young and could not share my thoughts with her.

I attended a private school in Bangladesh where I learned a lot about respect for each individual from my fellow teachers. Uniforms were mandatory and the color of my uniform was white shirt and navy blue trousers. I joined the sports clubs because I wanted to make friends with a lot of people in school and I was good at sports. Of course that made me more studious as a student because I had to be good academically, so that I could join the sports events. I was shy at first but that label did not stick well with me because I befriended as many students as possible even in the other year levels. It helped that my parents were active in the school events. They voluntarily went to school events and Parent-Teacher meetings so they were well aware of my progress in school. I was pretty much independent with my studies because I had established good study habits at a young age since that was what my mother emphasized. In school, I had many friends. I was friendly and attracted a lot of friends too. I am lucky because most of my friends were supportive of my progress. I graduated from high school, I had the option to give the GED but I did not. My parents wanted me to go through all the steps for the betterment of my education. My parents used to think GED was a short cut route to get into a University. So instead I took my GCSE Level and A 'Level Examinations.

Peer group is an important role that plays an important role in every step of our life. This is because when we grow older family becomes a bit less important in social development. I had many friends when I was in school, but some of them I considered to be my best friend for the rest of my life. Among 20 to 25 friends 4 of them was my best friend, and they were all boys whom I knew from my childhood. I met them when I was kid, my parents took me with them at their friend house and there I met all of them by socializing. I was very introvert wen I was a kid, but later when I met them I got friends with them very quickly. We used to play games, and go out, watch soccer matches mostly we used to do all kinds of activities. We used to spend about 6 to 7 hours daily when we were in school. We all had different type of personality, one was very funny the other was serious about life, and the other one does not care about life and me always trying to do something to achieve my goal. We were all involved in soccer league from our school; therefore we had to go to many places to play matches and tournaments. In this way we built a strong social network and knew many different people from different places. My parents played an important role because they were my source of encouragement. They used to support me all the way for what I decided to do always, and for that I brought many success in all the activities I performed. Sometime I faced role conflict in the sense that I wanted to be a good friend in the eyes of my peers and play sports with them, but thinking that I should spend more time studying also pressured me. Therefore there was a little conflict between being a good son and a good friend. I handled conflicts in groups pretty well I was calm doting confrontation and that facilitated the progress of the group. I was given responsibilities, rather than have them do things for me. As a child peers have major influence in our daily lives. Good peers could enhance your abilities and mischievous peers could be very detrimental to your school progress. But I believe my peer group had positive effect on me in terms of sports and also in academics. I was the captain of the soccer team so I had many responsibilities to make sure my team was performing well in every aspect.

Mass media has been a part of everyone's life and also mine since I was a child. Since I was in Bangladesh, which is a Muslim country, the government controlled a lot of the western media content that were depicted as sexual or inappropriate for youth to see. When I was a kid I have not read much of books, but I watch many movies and TV shows that where famous well known. Some of them were FRIENDS, which was a TV, show, and some of the movies where Shaw shank Redemption, Godfather etc. Our child was mostly centered on outdoor activities and technology played a very little role compared to children today. Although television was a big part of life as I enjoyed lot of my free time watching cartoons till grade 7. When I was in grade 5 I got my first desktop, and in grade 6 I got my first cell phone, which was a Nokia 3000 series. When was in Grade 6 I started playing guitar, and at grade 8 we formed a band name Crescendo. We used to listen mostly rock music and some of my favorite artists are Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stone, The Doors, Eric Clapton, and U2 etc. We attended many concerts of local bands and underground bands; because our country was third world country so many famous bands did not give a tour at that time. The last concert I watched few months back was U2 in East Lansing