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In this module, I learned about the concept of individualism, which says that everything begins and ends with individuals. In The Forest, the Trees, and the One Thing, Johnson states that "individualism
affects social life by isolating us from one another, promoting divisive competition, and making it harder to sustain a sense of community" (Johnson 9). He suggests that by perceiving ourselves as purely individuals with individual concerns, we separate ourselves from our peers and forget about others in our societies. This sense of individualism is deeply engrained in our culture, and Johnson states that our social positions are solely based on our personality, life, stories, feelings, and behaviors, not on societal factors.

Additionally, I learned about many of the negative sides of the individualistic ideology. For starters, individualism promotes the idea of meritocracy (also known as the American Dream), which states that the harder you work and the better you are at what you do, the more successful you will become. This idea completely dismisses the struggles many minorities face in the workplace and job market, such as racial and gender inequality. Also, individualism divides us by encouraging excessive competition for jobs, housing, and other basic resources, making it difficult to establish a sense of community. Lastly, individualism suggests that social problems are collections of individual flaws. For example, it promotes the idea that drug addiction is a result of an individual's low self-control, that racism is due to a natural need of white people to behave in oppressive ways, and that poverty is caused by a lack of responsibility.

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The most interesting concepts I learned in this module were the idea of social norms and paths of least resistance. Both refer to forms of societal expectations or "rules." Norms describe general things or behaviors that are unspokenly expected of every individual in a society, such as weight, facial features, and specific mannerisms such as raising your hand or not rolling your eyes. Paths of least resistance are very similar, as they describe fixed paths set out for people based on the positions they occupy in their social systems. The easiest choice is to follow that path directly because deviating from it leads to deviation from social norms, which itself can cause social conflicts.

These social ideas are significant because they outline the ways each of us live our lives. Every individual, when faced with any decision, considers the consequences of not following the norms and path of least resistance set out for them. The two structures work together because "when you take a cultural value and turn it into a rule enforced with rewards and punishments, then you have a norm, a value
'with teeth' that can bite if you don’t choose the path of least resistance." The consequences that arise when you deviate from social norms or paths of least resistance can be anything from a dirty look to criminal charges, but either way, a drift or statement against those structures results in a negative response from society.

It is important to learn about and acknowledge these social structures to better understand why we do certain things and why society responds in certain ways to our behaviors. Knowing that norms and paths of least resistance exist does not mean we need to begin deviating from them. They just indicate to us that society may push us to act or decide things that might not be very truthful or self-fulfilling.

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I've spent my entire life living in the Bay Area, and I have visited very few states or countries outside of here, so I am pretty well accustomed to the social structure around me and what can be expected of the people in my society. I know that the drivers here are ridiculous, not tipping will get you spit on your food, and I will never sit through a high school class period without hearing a racist slur yelled out. So anytime I leave California, or even the country, it takes several days to adjust to a completely new society and culture. The most recent and most dramatic change I noticed between societies was when I traveled to Japan. On our very first night in Tokyo, my mom wanted to go for an evening walk and explore the secluded neighborhood we were staying in. I was extremely hesitant to this idea, because as a teenage girl I am well accustomed with not walking outside alone at night, and our area was a bit more run-down than other parts of the city. I agreed to go anyways, and I was shocked to see that not only was it completely safe to walk alone at night, but there were a large number of people taking evening strolls all around us. This was the first of many things on that trip that displayed to me just how different my society is to others around the world. Japan is known to be more crime-free than the U.S, but it was still extremely surprising to see how normal it was for individuals and families to take walks in the evening. This can be attributed to a number of things, but I think it mostly has to do with resource distribution. Not only does Japan have less income inequality than the U.S, which contributes to their lower crime rates, but they also prioritize establishing walkable cities rather than ones built around car transportation, which both create a safe, welcoming environment to walk in at night.

Transportation is a resource that Japan focuses extremely heavily on, showed by their massive, elaborate subway system. Especially in larger cities like Tokyo, taking the subway is the general norm in Japan as apposed to California and most of the U.S which revolve around driving. Because the subway is fairly cheap to take throughout the country, Japan is able to provide more equal opportunities for its people to travel, connect, and especially work, leading to more equal income levels and general equity.

Both examples highlight the larger distribution of transportation Japan provides over the U.S, which ties into the discussion of resource distribution in this module. Johnson writes in The Forest and the Trees that "the larger the gap is between the distribution of what people
are encouraged to want and the distribution of legitimate opportunities for achieving it, the more likely deviance is to occur." All around the world, people are encouraged to want good jobs and high pay, but the opportunities provided to achieve such goals are vastly different across societies. In America, the idea of the "American Dream" is practically shoved down our throats daily, but access to the proper education, funding, and transportation needed to accomplish this goal is very limited and only a small percentage of people get those resources. On the other hand, in Japan, many of these resources are better distributed throughout society (specifically transportation), which may contribute to Japan's lower income inequality (Gini Coefficient 2022, World Inequality Database)

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A personal example I have with understanding the "self" and different selves I have was when I first began to notice my different personalities around other people. Around the age of 11, I started categorizing what I acted like around different people. With my parents and family, I was more introverted and quiet, but with friends I was extroverted and chatty. Going even further, I would act a certain way with one friend and a completely different way around another, which is why it was so difficult for me to fit in with large groups, as I would always try to balance my separate personalities.

In his writing, Johnson states that "the self is an idea we have about our own existence," meaning that each of us has some idea about how other people perceive us. When I was beginning middle school, I quickly learned that I could not understand which of my selves was actually me. In one specific example, I had hung out with one of my friends earlier that day who was very flamboyant and liked to reference current Tiktok trends frequently. Later that day, I was talking with another friend who is basically the complete opposite; she had no social media and most of our conversations were pretty mild. When she told me about a good test score of hers from that day, I responded with "oh my god slay!!" and both of us quickly paused when we realized what had just been said. She started laughing and asked "where did that come from?" and I mentioned my previous hangout. After that incident, I began to clearly notice how my speech mannerisms and general conversation would vastly differ between my friends, and I couldn't figure out which of those voices was really me. After several years going through this process, I realized that I was none and all of those people, and my 'self' was fully characterized by whatever social situation I was in.

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The idea of medicalizing socially deviant behaviors and the panopticon make me feel extremely concerned and worried about my future and the future of my society. Peter Conrad and Joseph W. Shnieder describe these processes as "medical solutions [...] sought for a variety of deviant behaviors or conditions. [...] Medical definitions of deviant behavior are becoming more prevalent in modern industrial societies like our own." Essentially, it is the idea that certain non-conformative traits or behaviors must be treated as medical issues that need to be treated. Many times, these behaviors are not actually hurting the individual or anyone around them, but when a person has certain characteristics (both physically and in their personalities) that drift from social norms, it leads to people around them believing that they need to be 'fixed.'

Medicalization scares me not just because of the somewhat ridiculous fear of government mind control, but also because I might not want to see a world where so many of my peers' unique traits and personalities are diminished to fit into the social norm. For example, my younger brother (8) was recently diagnosed with ADHD, and doctors suspect that he may be on the autism spectrum as well. None of those labels change who he is as a person or the way he acts, but now society will treat him as an outlier. He may likely be medicated in the future, whether it be to suppress his outgoing behavior or just to help him concentrate in school. Regardless, medication would change him in one way or another, and I am particularly scared to see what it would do to him. While part of me is relieved that he may get to live life a little bit easier by conforming to social norms and expectations, the other part is scared of losing the sweet, kind, energetic kid I know now.

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I think it is very interesting and saddening to not only learn about the strict gender roles in our modern society but also to experience them. I was very lucky to grow up with parents who did not push these standards on me. I was always allowed to wear whatever clothes I wanted, play with whatever toys I could get my hands on, and, in later years, identify with whatever gender I preferred. There was obviously a decent amount of pushback from my older relatives, who criticized my mother for not properly "training" me to be a woman. I was always complimented for my feminine features, like my long legs, long hair, and skinny physique, but my grandparents would make rude comments about my broad shoulders and wide jaw, qualities they considered to be masculine. They were also aghast when, at age 9, I told them I didn't want to get married. As a child of a very messy divorce, I decided very early on that marriage was not something I wanted or needed in my life. Hearing this, my relatives immediately concluded that I would end up completely alone, ignoring the possibility that I could grow old with a partner without marrying.

I am a few years older now, and my grandparents have somewhat moved on from trying to push those traditional ideals onto me, but, of course, the expectations that society places on me as a woman continue. For Thanksgiving a few weeks ago, I was invited to spend the evening with my boyfriend's family, which I accepted. The night before, he told me about an interesting conversation he had with his grandmother, which went something like this:

Grandma: "So tell me about this girl you're seeing"

Boyfriend: "Well, she's very smart, plays volleyball, goes to a community college -"

Grandma: "No, no, I don't care about that. Can she cook and clean?"

I met that grandma at the dinner, and as sweet of an old lady as she was, all of our conversations followed the same topic: whether or not I knew how to run a household and raise a family. My boyfriend tried to remind her that we were both 16 and had no inclinations or opportunities to live together or raise a family any time soon, but she had no interest in listening.

Throughout my life, I have experienced countless examples of the standards my society places on me as a woman to look a certain way, marry, and fulfill my household responsibilities. No one cares that I play sports, get straight A's, or am working to get a degree, only that I can clean and be a mother. Luckily, pretty much all of these pressures come from the older generation, and I am happy to see that my parents and peers seem to have drifted away from those expectations. Part of this shift came with social media, as platforms like TikTok and Instagram expose users around the world to groundbreaking examples of gender deviance. Several popular influencers today like Dylan Mulvaney and Veondre Mitchell use their platforms to educate their followers on trans issues and the reality of what it is like to push gender boundaries. The reading on performances talks about Jaden Smith's 2016 Louis Vuitton womenswear catalog and how he "[took] the brunt of [the hate]" laid out against him so that children in future generations could comfortably wear whatever clothes they want without fearing social ridicule. I think the author of this reading said it best: "When we’re exposed to children and adults who resist gender rules, like Jaden Smith, we begin to see more flexible possibilities for ourselves." Hopefully, with the rise of gender-non-conforming media, more people in our society will see that choosing to dress or behave a certain way will not affect one's own gender identity, and it will certainly not "infect" the people around them.

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When I was about 12 years old, my mom took me out for ice cream one evening, sat me down, and told me:

"I've been seeing someone"

"Ok" I replied

"His name is Tam, and we've been together for a couple of years now. I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner"

"That's ok, I understand. Tell me about him"

"Well, one of the main things you should know is...he's married."

"Mom...you're a mistress?!?!"

As a child, I was taught pretty traditional models of love and marriage by my immigrant family. I was told that men and women belonged together, marriage needed to revolve around childbearing, and the only deviation I had seen from these norms was with my parents' divorce. I didn't learn about homosexuality until age 9 when my sister came out, and I couldn't fathom non-monogamy until my mother told me about her relationship.

Following a messy divorce after years of pressure from her family to stay with my father, my mother decided she couldn't do another committed relationship again, and she discovered polyamory with her current boyfriend. They have been together for about 6 years, and while my mom has no interest in pursuing another partner, she is very happy to not be chained to him for the rest of her life. She has also fostered a very healthy friendship with Tam's wife and her partners as well. It took me a couple of years to fully understand and accept this situation, but I'm glad I did because it showed me an entirely new perspective on modern love and relationships.

The sexuality module also provided a different viewpoint on modern-day sexuality, especially since it highlights the history and development of sex patterns. Obviously, heterosexual marriage was the norm long before the 20th century, but events such as the World Wars and the Great Depression really solidified the importance and urgency of getting married and "going steady." With the devastation of the early 20th century taking the lives of millions of American men, women felt a sense of criticality when it came to marriage. In Lisa Wade's writing "How Sex Became Fun," she mentions that "facing this kind of uncertainty, women dropped dating in favor of monogamous relationships with men that potentially led to matrimony." So, rather than 'playing the field' and dating, American women pursued risk-free relationships that would ultimately lead to marriage and therefore stability. I always thought that this idea that marriage = security was a little bit farfetched, and I'm glad to see that many women (and men) nowadays are pushing these boundaries by dating more, initiating divorces, and exploring non-heterosexual ways to love.

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In this module, I learned two new concepts I had previously not heard about: institutional racism and Asian American labeling as the "model minority"

Institutional racism essentially refers to the racism that is seen in actual policies rather than just in social situations. Some common examples of institutional racism are in housing, the criminal justice system, education, employment, healthcare, and environmental policies. For starters, decades of government-enforced redlining have pushed Black and Hispanic American families into specific, zoned neighborhoods that can be found in nearly every large metropolitan city. This was heavily pushed in the 1930s, with government agencies like the FHA and HOLC enforcing color-coded maps of "hazardous" neighborhoods to push high-income White families out of those regions. Redlining is one of the main causes of the massive disconnect these groups have from each other, as its creation of solely low-income, Black/Hispanic neighborhoods allows other racist policies in the education and healthcare systems to make their way to fruition. Educational opportunities and quality near these zones tend to get much less financial support, and children in redlined areas end up not getting as many opportunities for colleges and jobs. In addition, institutional racism can be seen in healthcare. Not only are low-income families less likely to be able to afford basic healthcare insurance, but Black and Hispanic patients are less likely to get the proper care they need. For example, infant mortality rates in the US are 2-4 times higher for Black/Hispanic people than they are for White people, and doctors are less likely to admit children of these groups into emergency care.

I also learned in this module the history behind society's perceptions and expectations of Asian Americans. When I first started kindergarten, I quickly bonded with a girl in my class named Alyssa over our shared interests in school subjects and academic motivation. My family was certainly shocked that I had made friends with a second-generation Asian girl, and throughout my life, I was constantly compared to her in terms of our intellectual abilities. My parents and relatives believed that she had all these opportunities and natural motivations to excel in school and that I needed to follow that same model to achieve academic success. But I knew that she had that success because of her own interest in learning, not her natural 'smartness' or her culture's pressures on her to do well in school. Her parents were not as strict on her about these things as society portrays immigrant Asian parents to be. In this module, we learned about how modern media "portrays second-generation Asians as academically exceptional," a trend beginning in the 20th century following the 1965 Immigration Act. This act created a preference system for granting visas/citizenships, and it mainly emphasized employment needs by allowing workers with specific skills and training into the country. The Immigration Act increased immigration from Asia and Latin America, and its requirements for incoming workers led to only a select handful of educated Asian workers being given citizenship. Because these workers were already educated and trained, they were given better job opportunities, and thus their children did as well. So this myth that Asian Americans nowadays are innately more intelligent and superior than all other race groups is completely untrue, since these patterns of academic success stem from historical patterns of immigration in the US.

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One of the key things that stood out to me about this module was its discussion on the alienation of students in college because of social class.

As a junior in high school and a community college student, college is practically all around me. Society places such a large emphasis on the importance of college and how I absolutely 100% need to dedicate all my time and efforts to building my resume to get into the top schools. By freshman year, I had already gathered a pretty extensive list of colleges I wanted to apply to. These included local UC's, UPenn, USC, BostonU, Cornell, UMich, and several other top schools around the country. However, as application season draws closer and closer, I'm realizing that I could not go to about 80% of the schools on my list, which is ridiculous considering that my family is considered middle to high class. Most of the schools I wanted to apply to have about a 65k yearly tuition and cost about 80-95k a YEAR for housing and other expenses...that's nuts. My only options now are UC's because my family's placement in the FAFSA system grants us a lot of financial aid. While I would be super happy to attend one of these schools since they are still very high-performing, I hate having my options limited so much. However, I am still incredibly grateful that my family can afford to send me to college at all.

Karen Sternheimer's article, "Does College Alienate Low-Income Students," describes the effects this steep increase in college tuition costs has on college students. She writes that when asked about some of their biggest stresses in college, most students responded with "stress about financial aid documents, paperwork for student loans, and interacting with students and faculty who might not understand the challenges that they are facing." These financial stresses take away from the students' abilities to focus on their education, as many have to work and severely cut down on their budgets throughout college. Additionally, they often get less financial and emotional support from their families, who may not know about the serious time and money commitments that college entails. Overall, even though our society still pushes young kids to work hard their entire childhoods to attend the best colleges they can, the financial burden that comes with college leads to only a select few high-class students in high-income families getting degrees, attributing to this harmful cycle of removing educational opportunities from the majority.