5:53 PM - Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2007
I understand.
I am lacking motivation right now. Maybe I'm suffering from burnout. I'm not sure yet. All I know is that I don't feel motivated to do my homework, write an entry in my diary, or do anything at work. Hopefully the motivation will return because I feel like I'm having to force myself to do these things.
It snowed this morning, piling up another 3-4" of snow on my all ready snow covered driveway. At least it's covering up the 2" thick ice that's below it so I'm no longer slipping and sliding all over the place. After taking a dive on my driveway the previous week, I'm in no mood to repeat it again. I still have the bruise from last time. It's black, green, blue and purple... sticking out like a sight for sore eyes. Thankfully it's not summer time because I can hide it underneath my jeans.
I had my first class on Monday, and somehow everything kind of made sense to me. The professor told us we'd be confused the entire time we're in the program so I don't know if its a good thing or not that I'm understanding the majority of what we've learned so far. I hate being confused... but I also want to get my Masters so it's something I'm going to have to learn to deal with.
The articles we had to read for class were a bit confusing at first and I had to read them over again a couple of times before I understood what they were saying. Perhaps its all the jargon they use, or maybe its because people who write articles for publication love to use a lot of big words, words that I know the definitions to.. but when you throw them all together and every single word is a big word.. well, it takes time for my mind to process it all.
In layman's terms... the articles basically said that Sociology asks the question "how" rather than asking the question "why," because you have to know and understand the "how" before you can begin to answer or understand the "why." It's all from a structural standpoint, too, because you're not supposed to be focusing on the individual as the unit of analysis. Rather, you're supposed to be observing, from an unbiased standpoint, the group or organization.
According to the readings, American sociologists are individualists because they put too much emphasis on the individual, meaning, they are more like psychologists rather than sociologists. So, to be a sociologist, you have to train your mind to think in a completely different way so that you're not always focusing on answering why things are the way they are or why things happen.. but observing how they are and how they happen.
Does that make sense? It makes complete sense to me. You don't answer the question why, but instead you observe and absorb the how. And instead of looking at how things are for an individual, you're looking at how things are for an organization or group. You're looking at the entire family instead of just at the mother, the father, or the child. You're looking at them as one unit instead of three individual units. I totally get it, so why doesn't the rest of the class get it?
Time to head off. I've got a lot of work ahead of me. Tally-ho!
