Tammy's Story- Poverty

We watched a documentary on a woman named Tammy that lives in the middle of nowhere & lives in poverty. She supports her and her family by walking to work everyday 10 miles to Burger King and back home, only earning minimum wage. Tammy does this to keep her & her family to survive. In each class, (High Class, Middle Class, & Low Class), struggle with problems all the time. But if you look back at Tammy's way of life, you want to be thankful everyday that you don't live that way. That you are lucky to be where you are today. And to keep fighting those struggles throughout life, because someone else has it way worse than you do.

JAIL isn't helping

In class, we watched an episode of 30 Days with Morgan Spurlock and how he experienced these days in jail.  From watching his experience, the prisoners that he would talk with more than half were in jail because of a drug related crime. A guy named Travis was in jail because he was addiceted to cocaine, heroin, and marajuana. He had goals for himself, like getting a job when he would get released. And once he was released, he ended up committing two other crimes about 2 months later from his release date. From him being in jail for a long period of time, then already 2 months later he's committing crimes again shows that jail isn't helping these prisoners. What they really need is counseling and other programs that would       support them by becoming drug free. To come clean, and not go back to prison because apparently jail isn't helping.

Deviance

What is deviance? It's an act out of the norm. What you may think is not normal to you, may be normal to others. An example would be carrying a basket of food on your head. To me, this is deviant, but that's because in America you don't see people walking out of the grocery store carrying their food by placing it on their head. We carry our groceries with bags using our hands. Another example of deviance would be walking barefoot into stores. Someone in the store would look at you thinking, "Why the heck aren't they wearing any shoes...?" Whenever we go to stores you see everyone wearing something on their feet. So we define this as deviant.  There are many other examples of deviance. It all depends on who thinks what is normal and what is not normal to them.

Are we ready to be adults so soon?...

Legally, the age to be an adult is 18 years, but when we all hit 18 are we really adults yet? Legally we are, but our readiness is not. People expect us teenagers to become adults right away, but we aren't ready. We still take responsibility, but we aren't as successful as other adults right now. What I mean is that we don't have our own house. We don't have our own bills to pay. Most of us aren't even married or have any kids to support a family. What we're about to do is graduate high school, go to college, and get a reasonable job to pay for student loans and etc. We still depend on our parents to help us out with things financially. Once we graduate college, go for a real job out there, live in our own place, and pay our own bills is when we're ready to be independent and not to be dependent on our parents anymore. We then take care of ourselves. We become adults.