Positive Deviance

I am friendly with my neighbors. I say 'hi' to them whenever I see them and occasionally chat. We even exchange gifts during the holidays. However, other than that, my relationship with my neighbors doesn't go much farther than that. I feel that it is the norm not to know anything about the people who live next door to you.

For my positive deviance assignment, I bought some cheesecake, knocked on my neighbor's door, and gave it to them. I felt nervous before doing this; it's a little odd and kinda sketchy just giving your neighbor food for no reason at all. It fact, when I told my parents what I was planning to do, they told me that my neighbors where going to think that I'm crazy. But when I finally knocked on their door, my neighbor opened it, and she was very excited that I came by. She happily accepted the cheesecake and then asked me about where I was going to college. I was really glad this assignment led me to do that. While I do now talk to my neighbors often, I know that they are very nice people, and I was happy that I could surprise them with something sweet.

eight

This week in class we studied gender roles and how society constructs them. When I think of gender roles, I think of the 50's and shows like "Leave it to Beaver" where the roles of men and women are obviously stated. The woman was supposed to be a perfect housewife, care for the husband and children, and "stay in the kitchen", while the man was supposed to be rough and tough and be in charge. However, I feel that now gender roles are not as directly stated as they used to be. Through the movie that we saw in class, I realized how much the media develops gender without having to say "A boy or a girl should...".

One thing that was mentioned in class how gender is determined by what classes you take at school. I thought it was funny, because I have experienced this. Throughout high school I have taken multiple art classes, and although there is always a few exceptions, there was always a large majority of girls in the class. On the other hand, when I took classes like graphic arts of web media, the classes were mainly make up of boys. In fact, I was one of only two girls in web design. I guess this is displays a stereotype of gender where girls should take art classes because they are more emotional and can make this deep emotional art, while boys take more design based classes where they are smart enough to work computers and printing machines. This is obviously not true, and both boys and girls should be able to take either type of class without having to feel like they are going against their gender.