You guys! Sorry, I'm about to go on a rant about sociology, my major and easily the most fascinating class I've ever taken in my entire lifetime. But I promise, it's worth it.
Okay, so basically, I just had the reason for so much about me explained. In an hour. No trickery, no jiggery pokery. Because STUDIES.
Anyway, so basically what we talked about today was socialization, which is basically the process by which we internalize the norms, beliefs, and rules of the society we live in. Boring, right? WRONG! Everything about our lives is dictated by socialization, this sort of brainwashing effect that happened to us and is still happening to us now. Right now. This very moment. For like 99% of the population it starts from birth (don't quote me on that statistic). There's this whole big learning about the self vs. other that I'm not going to get into even though it's pretty vital. But basically we learn the social rules and things for various situations and we learn to apply them more generally as we internalize more and more (ex: naivety of a small town vs "street ed" of a big city) so that eventually we can function in this world without the help of others. Social anxiety, as far as I can tell, stems from a lack of rules for given situations. And it's super comforting because that's normal. That is a normal, human trait. Some people experience it worse than others and others can't cope with it as well as others. But it is normal, even though we usually don't understand why we feel anxious. I always did. Not to make myself sound special or whatnot, but I've always had a high sensitivity for societal rules. So I understood why I had anxiety in various situations that were out of my control. But I always thought something was wrong with me because of it. Nope. In that aspect, there is nothing wrong with me. And that was good because while I embrace my individuality or weirdness, I also have this internal strain to follow those rules. Causes conflict, which is another thing we discussed.
But SES (socioeconomic status) plays a HUGE role in socialization. And here's where I got the understanding that explained. Okay, so we have socialization, right? Well, based on your SES, different expectations are placed on you. Middle class children (and up, technically) are basically groomed to inhabit roughly the same sphere of influence as their parents and the parents fill their childrens' free time with formal activities whereas working class parents give their children more "free" time. And here's where it gets interesting. For me, anyway. Because of the circles that I was in because of tennis, I've learned how to interact and mimic people who are in a higher class than I am. (Unless they're sprung on me by surprise (ex: Michael Welch at Comic Con this past weekend) then I have difficulty speaking and crap because I'm trying to exist in two classes at once and it's incredibly difficult for me to do that). There are telltale signs that I'm from a middle class family, but I also have upper class influences because of my father and tennis. My father was resocialized to have an upper class attitude and that's been passed down to me by socialization. Story time!!! So basically, I got the freedom of "free" time of working class (ex: my childhood up until I moved to Vegas, I was pretty much left alone and to my own devices except at school) at which point, my mother (as we were transitioning from working/middle to middle/upper) decided to put me in tennis as what my textbook would call a formal activity. Tennis governed my life because that's what my mother wanted me to do. She still wants me to do it professionally, but that isn't what's in my heart of hearts. Tennis had me involved with the rich kids so I learned to move with them and I can totally handle people who think they're better than everyone else now. It helped that IB also had that mentality, which I will confess I've always had that with my intelligence but everything else, I've been painfully aware of where my social standing in comparison to everyone else. But I also have, as my mother would call it, champagne tastes. Which means that technically the formula for upward mobility is in place for me, which is weird. I can see myself mingling with the elites of society but I can also see myself out in a pasture or out in a barn mucking out stalls. It's weird thinking of myself as a study subject. But it also explains why I want to do what I want to do. Like my entire life has been explained to me. I have these particular dreams because of the circumstances with which I was brought up and the interests that I was allowed to develop. It's incredible to be able to have something like that explained so simply. It's incredible.
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