How it all began...

I started college like many others; determined to establish a new identity but looking in the wrong places. I figured that my standing as a business major would afford me some academic respect from my peers who were members of 'soft sciences' or communication/public relations. Looking back, it was incredibly shallow to believe that somehow being a business major would place me above the 'soft majors' and afford me jobs right out of college. I never had ideas of grandeur, I didn't want to own a Fortune 500, but I envisioned a comfortable business with the nuclear family.

Having friends in the business school helped me to justify my academic placement. Being part of the 'business gang' felt empowering. Being collectively frustrated over economics or accounting homework somehow made us feel special, as if being challenged was a measure of the solidarity between business students, similar to law students or med students, living the college dream by having late night study sessions before a weekend of binge drinking.

Sophomore year, the 'business gang' was disbanded. My close friend transferred to 'follow his dream', going to a school that specialized in his area of interest. By second semester of sophomore year, he was gone and I was left with my own desire to transfer to a school that specialized in my area of interest. Of course I was slowly realizing that where as my other business buddies could study very little and maintain great grades, I worked very hard and seemed to just be scraping by. This left me in an anomic state, completely uncertain as to the direction my life should take.

Due to long and extensive core requirements by the university, I found myself in a Sociology 101 course to fulfill a social science credit requirement. The course was taught by a young, charismatic, and unorthodox professor. Of course, a 101 course is supposed to be as all encompassing as possible, often times sacrificing depth for breadth. But he wasn't teaching theory, or statistics, or even imposing his breadth of knowledge upon young and impressionable undergraduates. He was teaching us how to think. Sure, rattling off some statistics, or identifying the norms for a specific demographic makes an individual book smart, but not necessarily (to borrow from C. Wright Mills) Sociologically imaginative.

I felt natural in the following sociology classes that I took. Although my vocabulary and theory came to me in bits in pieces, a majority of it coming in my last three semesters, I realized that I could come up with original concepts and projects, and discovered that I had a keen social eye and an ability to write sufficiently enough to covey the wanderings of my mind in an academic manner. My perspective of society and social interactions earned me the ear of the charismatic professor who helped me to channel and direct my intelligence. He would become my academic adviser when I switched majors during the first semester of my junior year.

With his help, I'd discover the ability for sociology to collage my passions and interests into one academic discipline. As my classes provided me with the vocabulary and theory to sociologically define and legitimate my observations, I found my niche at the intersection of my passion for people with disabilities and my background of social justice and community service. I decided that I would focus my research and hopeful graduate school work on the Sociology of disabilities, which preliminary evidence would suggest is a sparse topic in sociology. My exposure to people with disabilities and their culture is extensive not only because of the disability of a family member, but also due to my, as of summer '08, four years of service at a residential summer camp for children through adults with a wide array of disabilities. These experiences have placed me in a unique situation where I have not only personal, but extensive knowledge of many types of disabilities and disabled individuals.

As I approach the final months of my undergraduate tenure, my graduate school applications are in, and my sociological imagination is working overtime for my 499 Sociological Analysis class. This blog will convey my thoughts as I explore my sociological imagination through the exploration of texts and ethnographic observations. Sometimes I play the devils advocate and this can lead to what some would call an 'elitist' or 'insensitive rich boy' perspective. I can be assured that this is not the case, rather, by examining critically the communities and social structure in which I directly live in I find perspectives that bear some truth, even if these truths can transcend my own justice oriented philosophy.