Abandon Ship...

During the boat activity in class, I was a sociologist. I was able to observe the group dynamics. After watching, listening and later discussing this activity, it is very easy to see the macro and micro sociological values, and apply  it to my life. The macro sociological values showed in the ship activity when we compared our class's choices of who to eliminate from the ship to past year class's choices. All of the students who participated in this activity were American, teenagers, and from the upper-middle class. The pattern emerges when similar characters were voted off the boat many times throughout the 54 times this activity has been done. We all made similar choices because we have similar values because of our common grounds, mainly because we are all American. The micro sociological values didn't show as much in the ship because everyone knew that this was just a game and not real life. But if it was real, and the people on the ship could see each other and really talk to each other, there would be more of the micro sociological values of the face to face basis and interactions. I can apply the two levels to view sociology to my life. When I worked as a camp counselor over the summer, the macro level of sociology was the large group of all the different camp sites and groups of counselors, when we all had orientation together. We were all teenagers or people in their 20s, camp counselors, from the upper-middle class, and American. We were all influenced by each other because of these similarities as part of macro sociological values. The value of the macro part that influenced us was age and experience. In general, the younger and less experienced people looked up to and listened to the older and more experienced people more. This interaction influenced the large or macro group dynamics. Then, the micro part of the sociology in this group was my smaller group of counselors. We were able to have a one on one conversation because it wasn't such a big group. My small counselor group demonstrated the micro sociological dynamics because we interacted with each other on a more personal level. Each small group of counselors was able to have this micro sociological dynamic when we were separated from the large group or macro part.