my capstone professor was explaining our first assignment, which is like a paper about the sociological perspective, because he says he often encounters soc seniors who can’t really articulate what sociology is. and he attributed this to having sort of textbook-regurgitating intro classes that sort of cover soc at a basic level and so that understanding of the discipline might get lost, because from then on you just take classes on the sociological perspective of x topic, basically (excepting social theory, i guess). and that at least is true for me - i don’t remember my soc intro class but i also took it online while i was still on vicodin so i don’t remember most of those classes. but anyway, i was talking to my coworker after work today about how my soc degree feels kind of pointless because i probably learned more in sum from classes outside my major than within it. because, just from personal study and the way my brain works, i was never really taught--definitely not by any class--how to think sociologically. i just started to, and now i do. and i bet for a lot of soc majors, this is also the case, and so it’s just ingrained into the way we view the world that we take for granted that this isn’t a default perspective. and i bet that has a lot to do with why sociology majors struggle to define sociology (esp if they haven’t ever really had to, like, my go-to definition to people who ask is “the study of society”). and because it seems intangible as a subject, i tend to discount it--but my ability to look at things from a sociological perspective is why i find every other topic of interest to me so interesting, and how i can understand and analyze them so well. my ability to relate the personal to the political to the historical and understand that there is never a single issue, there are always multiple issues connecting and overlaying. it’s not really until you maybe talk to other people not in that field that you realize it’s not a given to view the social world this way, or even to view the social world as important at all, and that realization makes the study and practice of it feel a lot more valuable.
