blog post #6

Last week we started by learning how to create an outline (thanks Julian!) in order to organize our thought for a paper. I really appreciated it. That’s the one thing I usually had the most trouble with, but at least now I have a better idea. During last weeks discussion we spoke about different disabilities and to be honest, it really hit close to home. Im going to be honest, for those of you that were there, you heard me say how I had an IEP and and that I had a 504 plan when I was in school. It got me a bit emotional, mainly because at the time that I did this I didn’t realize what I was doing all those tests for, my mother had just asked for me to do them. I didn’t realize I actually had a learning disability. It hit me until I got into college, I’m not sure why, but my mother was never upfront with me about it, maybe she didn’t want me to feel bad? I’m not sure. I had to have a complete stranger tell me in my face I had a learning disability all along so I’m still coping with it. I know it may be not be as severe as other people, but it is there and it does affect me. Last week I had an exam and I almost started to cry because when I saw the exam my mind went totally blank, because right before that someone had asked a question in class as my professor passed out the test, that made me lose my train of thought completely,  as I handed the test back to the professor and walked out I started to say all the answers out loud to myself. It really bothered me because I knew I couldn’t go back and change my answers. This was also the first time I shared anything about my learning disability to anyone besides my mother knowing. It’s really great to be in this class and get the chance to vent.

This weeks readings mainly focused on gender inequality. The “Beyond a Binary” reading really had me thinking right away, when we fill out paper work we usually check off male of female? Why isn’t their an “other” option or fill in the blank? It must be very hard for people to make that decision. Imagine, I feel that gay, lesbian, transgender already have a hard enough time coming out, fitting in and coping with being treated differently, now, even have trouble being able to identify themselves!?

I also found the reading in the textbook in chapter 9 interesting. All I can say is why is the enrollment decreasing for men? I jus assumed more women were enrolling making it SEEM as if men weren’t, but apparently they aren’t continuing their education. It spoke about gender segregation, speaking from the viewpoint of a soc major, I had a professor that did her masters at UCLA in Sociology and she said out of 20 women there was only 1 guy.  Why is this going on? I mean what are your viewpoints besides the ones stated in the article? Without taking the statistics in mind what would you assume?