Emily Pee
Mrs. Cook
Intro. To Sociology
August 26, 2014

Social Location

A person’s social location can affect a person from the time they are born to the time they actually reach the social location they want to obtain for their adult life. Social location has a lot to do with what gender you are, what race you are and where you are born, how you were raised and if you choose to continue being the person your parents brought up. Social location also deals with a person’s emotional attachment to how society looks at them. Everyone wants to be able to fit into society, which doesn’t necessarily mean they want to be accepted by the world. As we grow up we meet new people, whether it be a family member, a friend, or just a stranger waiting in line behind you. How you feel about yourself and your social standpoint can affect your relationships and interaction with other people. When you are a child on the playground and you look around and notice all of the kids are somewhat bigger than you, you might feel like you don’t fit in. So, to get the attention of the bigger kids you decide to go down the big slide even though you have been afraid of it for some time. You get all the way to the top of the slide, and all the kids are watching you. Your heart starts to race as you realize how high up you actually are, but in your mind you can’t back out now because everyone is counting on you. You make your choice and go down the slide, the whole playground sees that you come out safely and are waiting to greet you at the bottom. All is great when everyone is crowding around you in a congratulatory way, but say the situation was opposite of that. Say you get to the top of the slide and all your fear of heights hits you at once. You back down the steps and walk away in shame feeling unsuccessful and still friendless. Which brings me to my point of social location. You don’t always have to impress people or do things you don’t want to do to be socially accepted. What is my social location? Well, I am currently an unemployed student that lives with my parents, and was raised in the south. That may be how I perceive myself most times as a girl in the south where men usually do the hard labor, but how does society look at me? If I were to meet someone knew, and have them ask me the usually icebreaker questions, what are your interests, what is your status, where are you trying to go in the world? I would say that I have many interests such as art, music, nature, etc. I would also say that I am a student at Holmes Community College in the Engineering Tech. program, and that I wish to someday become a great architect or GPS mapper. Now, the person I’m talking to might think of me as a well-rounded twenty-one year old getting a great education. He also might have some of the same interests I have. Having this conversation with this fellow human being, and finding out that we have things in common or even just had the ability to accept each other enough to spark a conversation means he accepts my social location. How does my social location affect my behavior? Like I said previously I often see myself stuck as a student with no means of providing for myself. But in reality I am going to school for a major I enjoy, I have parents that love me, and I have a group of friends that are there for me. They may or may not be the friends society would choose for me because they did not have the opportunity to get an expensive education or they had children too young, but I accept their social location just as much as other people should accept before they judge. Twenty-one may feel like a century has gone by in my life already, but in reality I have my whole life ahead of me. No matter how I look at someone I first meet, I will always give that person the benefit of the doubt to accept them in their social location as I feel I am.