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  1. Favorite Honors Class

    May 10, 2013 by Michelle Hart

    My favorite honors class was Soc 30H.  I took this class in the spring of 2013, as a freshman.  As an elementary education major, my advisor recommended this class, since I was required to take a sociology class.  Thus, this class fit with my major very well, since it looked at family sociology and how the effects of families breaking apart.  I loved this class because it was interesting in actual life, meaning I can think about things I learned in class in almost every relationship, yet it is also applicable to my major in understanding that the children I am teaching will all come from unique family situations and they greatly affect our thinking and ability to succeed.

    In addition to simply enjoying the class material, I also enjoyed the style of the class.  Since there were only 20 people in the class, we could have very intimate conversations and I got to know people very well throughout out the semester.  Dr. Silver also did a very good job of allowing us to relate our personal situations to the class, and was always interested in what we had to say.

    I also enjoyed this class because our last project that we did was an interviewing/reporting project.  I was able to interview four people (8 for our whole group) about hooking-up and their thoughts about it.  By analyzing what we found in the different grades, we were then able to see that hooking-up is a completely socially constructed belief.  This type of project was very interesting because it is something completely relevant to our generation’s sociology, yet we also wrote a scholarly paper analyzing our research and interviews.  This was not an easy class, yet it has definitely been my favorite class because of this sense of community that you can have in honors classes, when your professor facilitates discussions and sharing.

    Category SHOTIME2013 | Tags: , | No Comments

  2. Final Issue Brief

    April 9, 2013 by Michelle Hart

    Final Issue Brief pdf

    Category Work in progress | Tags: , , , | No Comments

  3. Our Plans for the Summer

    April 4, 2013 by Michelle Hart

    Well this weekend was a blast!  It was great to see my brother, and especially in light of everything that has happened in my life recently, it was great to get away for the weekend.  But for this blog, I would like to talk about the trip out west that we are taking this summer!  For the second time in the Hart family history, the four of us will be traveling past the Mississippi (minus the time we lived out there, of course).  We will be flying into Denver again, as we did last time, but for this trip we are going north.

    For those who do not know, about 6 years ago, my family went to the Grand Canyon, New Mexico, Bryce Canyon, Zion, and basically everything in the four corner states.  But this year, we are heading to other national parks and American monuments.  We are starting the trip by going to Cheyenne, then to Mount Rushmore and then hopping into North Dakota, just to say that we were all there (because, really, why would you go to North Dakota otherwise??).  But after those adventures, we are going to trek across the great state of Wyoming and finally end in Montana/Wyoming/ Idaho for Yellowstone National Park.

    But the fun doesn’t stop there!  A few weeks ago, I called my brother and asked him if he had any input for our trip, and his response was that we should go to a rodeo.  Yup, that’s right, we lived in Texas and never actually went to a rodeo!  But it gets better, since we are going to be our west over Fourth of July week, there are countless rodeos going on in almost every major town!  So, needless to say, we will be attending a rodeo, and we will be having a wonderful time on our trip!  I am so happy that I got to be part of the planning and I’m just excited to continue my trek of visiting all 50 states.  I’m well on my way with 38 already!

    Category Passion | Tags: , , , | 2 Comments

  4. Preliminary Essay Thoughts

    March 28, 2013 by Michelle Hart

    Thesis: We need to socialize our boys to be able to express their emotions and show vulnerability.

     

    Trying to convince: ?

     

    Resources:

    “How I Predict Marriage”

    Men stonewall more in arguments because they are taught to hide their emotions

    Men react more to conflicts than men in a physical sense; they cannot cool themselves down

    Gender socialization: Men are taught to mask feelings and they eventually lead to failed marriages

     

    “The Approach-Avoidance Dance: Men, Women, and Intimacy”

    Men care about intimacy in their lives/relationships

    There are different social contexts and psychology with men, and this affects the way that they communicate

     

    “Girls and Boys Together… But Mostly Apart: Gender Arrangements in Elementary Schools”

    Boys are not as able to cross over gender barriers as girls are

    Girls can be tomboys and are encouraged to play sports, etc.

    Boys are supposed to be more aggressive and less “feelings-oriented”

    Teachers split genders, and unknowingly enforce gender differences

     

     

    Category Work in progress | Tags: , , , | 1 Comment

  5. Gender Double Standards

    March 26, 2013 by Michelle Hart

    For this week, I read an interesting article about how we socialize boys through our choices in life.  Now, since the article is not online, I am going to attempt to describe it to you.  It discusses how girls are praised for wearing football jerseys, or playing sports.  Yet, if boys were to cross into the girl’s social realm and attempt to play dress-up or paint their nails at a young age, they would be socialized by most adults to stay away from those things.  And even if they adults were not critical, they definitely would not be praising the boy!  Yes, I understand that this article seems very one-sided, but when we think about our culture as a whole, this is actually how people act, despite what we have been seeing with those read boxes on facebook recently!

    So, after reading this article, I became interested and wanted to return to something that I voiced earlier, the difference of gender in education.  Now, I do not believe that in early education there is a gender gap, but it is interesting how gender differences are reinforced in every classroom.  You walk into the classroom and all the girl cubbys are pink, while the boy cubbies are blue or green.  It is incredibly interesting how these subtle differences are actually socializing our children without anyone fighting it.

    Yet, the article continues to examine the emotional differences between boys and girls, and how we tell boys to “suck it up and get back on the playing field” where we are much more likely to take the time to talk about the same situation with a girl.  They also discuss how this taught repression of emotions is hard to overcome later in life, and provides issues in many marriages.

    So, are schools doing this?  When I first began thinking about this, nothing blatant came to mind, but as I began thinking further I realized that this concept is also a part of our schooling.  According to the research, boys who have male teachers are considered to be more resilient and repress their feelings more.  This is interpreted to be due to male teachers socializing their boys to the “American boy” who does not show excessive emotions.  I saw this first hand in a class I interned with last year.  The teacher, Mr. Charno, would be much more understanding when a girl came to him on the playground and complained of being hurt, or in the classroom of losing her pencil.  Yet when a boy came to him with the same complaints, he responded completely differently.

    I never realized this was even occurring until I read this article, and now I am incredibly interested to see how I can research this further in my advocacy and policy projects.

    Category Civic Issues | Tags: , , , | 5 Comments

  6. Another weekend in the life of the Hart’s

    March 26, 2013 by Michelle Hart

    This weekend I am heading to spend the weekend with my family at Notre Dame.  As you probably know by now, my brother goes there, and I cannot wait to see him!  But, there has been a change of plans in the last few hours.  As of now, we my parents are coming to pick me up on Friday morning and then we are driving the long and stressful drive of 8 hours out to Indiana.  So then I can spend time with my brother Friday night, just the two of us.  But then, this is the new part, we are going to hop back in the car and drive to Toledo to see a ND hockey game, apparently because we haven’t seen enough?  Or rather just because my family cannot go one whole weekend together without seeing or having a competition within ourselves.

    To quote my mother, “we may need to go to therapy because of our family obsession with college sports”.  But the funny thing is that this is what brings my family so close together.  Because we are able to laugh and have this common love of sports, we can send each other crazy articles that we find on ESPN, or make fun of my mom for asking where the center stands in football.  I know that sports and bracketology has made many reappearances in my blog, but the thing is that when you discuss my family, you can’t really do so without saying something crazy or discussing our uncontrollable fanatics over college sports.

    Category Passion | Tags: , , , | 1 Comment

  7. Possible Gender Ideas for Paper

    March 20, 2013 by Michelle Hart

    I have been toying with countless ideas for my advocacy/persuasive essay project, and I cannot seem to come up with a good idea.  I think that I would like to do something surrounding the idea of gender and the double standard.  But, I am not sure that there would be enough information about this to create a valid argument.  I am not saying that there is not ample evidence that it exists, just that I am not sure that I could create viable solution to the issue.

    Another idea that I have thought about pursuing entails marriage and how it has become less important to the culture as a whole.  People are much more likely to cohabit instead of being, or before marriage.  And again, another idea that I could pursue would be cohabitation and whether it should be a cultural value or not.  I have learned much about the different pros and cons of cohabiting through my sociology class and I could not be more interested in it!

    So, I have not been able to narrow down my ideas yet, but I think I have decided upon doing something surrounding the idea of gender inequality, as cliché as that sounds.  I am planning to put a new spin on it, and not drown on about how women will never be equal to men and the whole “women empowerment” thing.  I plan to make it personal and interesting with new facts and research helping people understand my viewpoint and how to viably solve the issue/comprehend the cultural value.

    Category Work in progress | Tags: , , , | 2 Comments

  8. March Maddness Star Wars Edition

    March 20, 2013 by Michelle Hart

    So, it’s that time again, the time that every group of people breaks out their ESPN accounts and starts making their picks for the best team in basketball.  And while my family does this, obviously, the stakes are a little different in my game.  Much like our football bowl challenge, we always have the stakes be that the winner gets to chose the restaurant and the loser has to pay.  But there is a caveat: if you win both then you get to pick something to do on our family vacation.  So, I have the potential to be able to choose something to do during our two week vacation out west.

    But first, I have to select the winning bracket.  And judging by how I just did it and I have numerous 14 seeds making it into the sweet 16, I don’t think that my prospects are looking too high.  Nevertheless, I never thought that I would win the football one and I did, so I guess there is hope for us all.

    Personally, I love that my family does this bracket challenge just us, because it gives us a way to still connect even though we are hundreds of miles away from one another.  My brother sets up the brackets, my dad chooses the bracket for the mascot (based solely on which mascot would win in a face-off) and then my mom and I just have to go in and fill out our brackets.  It works seamlessly now, which is a far cry from where it started with us all doing them on paper and my dad keeping an elaborate excel sheet, until my brother took over the scoring and automated it!

    But the thing about my family is that there can never just be a normal bracket going on, we also have to have a bracket of Star Wars characters.  Why you ask? Well, Matt found it online, posted it on my wall, and you can guess the rest from there.  So, yes, my family is currently tallying our brackets of star wars characters to see who would win.  What is my choice, you ask? Well, that’s simple: R2-D2 all the way!

    Category Passion | Tags: , , , , | 1 Comment

  9. Drifting into Education

    March 13, 2013 by Michelle Hart

    Please bear with me as I attempt to connect my Civic issues blog of education with my idea for my persuasion and advocacy projects. I have been incredibly interested in this a nonconventional topic, especially regarding gender, recently, and especially after reading an article about, ironically enough, cohabitation.  This first exposed me to the term “drifting” in a way that I could understand, and began my thought process about gender and cohabitation.  Gender is such a huge and controversial topic, so I am not attempting to take the “pro-woman approach” but I would like to analyze the “drifting” aspect of higher education, and hope to continue assessing gender differences in education more thoroughly in my next posts.

    The term drifting in this sense refers to not making an informed decision about the next step in your life.  It is often used to refer to couples who choose to cohabit, because it “just sort of happens” because they are spending all their time there anyway.  Yet, you can see the same occurrence in education.  Many people today choose to go to college because they don’t really have a better option.  They think that it is about time to go to college, since they have finished high school, but they do not know how they want to pursue the rest of their life.

    This choice to go to college, because it “is time” is the epitome of drifting.  Yet, is it a good choice to go to college just for the sake of attaining a degree, or “finding ourselves”?  In earlier times, this would not have even been an option.  Men had to know what they were going to study, and what profession they were going to take on at a young age, and this was often prescribed to them because of their father’s profession.  So, has our culture become one of people who simply drift into things?

    In my opinion, I believe so.  We do not force people to chose a path when they are young, or even regulate their paths as they pursue education.  Anyone can major in any subject they like, even if they are not particularly good at it.  As long as you graduate, you earn a degree and you are just as licensed to perform as the next person.  This is exactly what happens in the teaching profession.  When people fail as a science major, they often pursue their passion of science in a teaching field.  We have all heard the proverb “those who cannot do teach” and it, unfortunately is true.  People drift into this field because it is considered easy, or for those who cannot succeed in the real world.  Many people do not actively say “well, I could be a doctor or a lawyer, because I am that smart, but I really want to be a teacher”.  That kind of deciding and dedication usually, unfortunately, does not go along with teaching.

    Now, there are undoubtedly contradicting examples of this, myself included!  But in the majority, teaching is not a profession that is actively chosen.  And that drifting then persists back to what was discussed earlier, a new generation of children that simply drift into college because “it is time”.  This idea may seem convoluted or jumbled, but I hope you understand what I am attempting to say, because I think this is a very large problem with our American system, not only in the education profession, but with our students as well.

    Category Civic Issues | Tags: , , , | 5 Comments

  10. Sibling Bonding – in a whole new way

    March 13, 2013 by Michelle Hart

    I am incredibly excited to be visiting my brother over Easter weekend.  Although it seems a little preposterous that I am going to visit him when he has both Friday and Monday off and we get no break, I guess that is just the way it’s going to have to be!  Either way, I am very excited to be spending the weekend with my family, especially my brother who I have not seen since Christmas!

    So, while discussing what we were going to do while in South Bend, Indiana visiting Matt, my parents decided that they would let us spend the nights together, having some “quality sibling time” which we all know translates to…. Well, there’s more.  The one glitch in this whole plan is that I cannot stay with my brother, since they cannot have girls in their dorms past 2 am.  So, my parents told me over break that they decided to get a hotel within walking distance of the campus so that I can “return home safely” after our nightly festivities.

    Now, if you know my parents, this is not out of the question for them to do, since they both went to college at big schools and know what happens.  But I simply couldn’t believe it that they were actually condoning this, if you even encouraging this!  In talking with many of mu friends about it, they think that it is hilarious that my parents would do this, but I guess it is just another example of why life is just a little different in the household.  Anyway, I hope you all have a fun and safe Easter weekend, with whatever you decide to be doing.  And however the Saturday night before goes, I hope that you make it to Easter Sunday mass with at least a little dignity left!

    Category Passion | Tags: , , , , | 1 Comment

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