CheckPoint: Social Construction of Reality

If I were to start out, it would be with my social status set which makes me not only a daughter, but a wife, a mother, a sister, an aunt, and a student. I am not employed, so this social status differs from my peers who are employed. I see that my ascribed status is that I am a daughter, a niece, an aunt, and a sister. By contrast, my achieved status used to be (but I have voluntarily change is a criminal. I am a felon, and even though it was an addiction to drugs that lead me there, I have still been there, and am now on my way to changing this status to be a productive member of society. At the moment, I have no Master status. I will have to wait for a couple of more months for this status to be something that I can claim. Then, I will be able to say that my master status is Social worker, or therapist (whichever one I decide to do). My status as a student allows me to play the role of completing assignments (on time if not early), devote student, and attending classes.

My status in school does differ from my status with my family. In school, I am a student. In my family, I hold a status set of names; daughter, mother, sister, aunt, and niece. The different ways that I interact with people at school compared to the people who I consider my friends and family would be very different. The people I interact with in school, I only work together with them when I have to, and that usually only means participation in class. I do not usually go above and beyond for my classmates (unless I see them not doing what I think is a good job, then I will try and help). For the people that are my friends or family, I go above and beyond for.

I have shaped my own reality in many ways. Five years ago, I was sitting in prison due to being a criminal. When I got out, I decided to change my life to be a more productive member of society, which has helped me to choose to be a student. I not only changed my status, but the outcome of how my life will end up. If I would have stayed on the criminal path, there would have only been one outcome for me and that would be jail. Now that I have changed that, I have opened up the chances of sitting in many other categories of statuses. Social interactions with the “wrong crowd” lead me down a path that I did not want to continue to head down. The social interactions that I have now, lead me down a better path that I feel will be most beneficial to me.