Patrick Ballinger
Professor Stacey Carnes-Reyes
Sociology 101
20 November 2014
The three broad sociological perspectives affected me under one very important class in my high school life. The program JROTC, had all 3 sociological perspectives, Functionalist Perspective, Conflict Perspective, and Symbolic Interactionist Perspective. We had at one point covered all 3 of these perspectives, our instructor wanted us to see a different view on how society/things work. We would be given different tasks, on a lower grader level (let) would ask us what to do in a situation. Being an older cadet in JROTC we would have to look out of our perspective and into theirs. I have a life event that uses all 3 perspectives perfectly. I’ll use our military ball for this perspective, the senior class is tasked to schedule and run the ball. That goes form calling in to hold the event to setting up the tables in an organized fashion. We divided up the tasks, I was placed into the seating arrangement and overall management of ball events. This meant I had to see where the tables where placed and where the seniors (let 4) cadets will be siting. The seniors will be spread out to keep younger cadets quite. For managing the ball events was more of a last minute job, I had to make sure everyone was here and at their place they were assigned.
I was to be feed information from the other committees as the weeks came to a close. So that way I would know what’s going on and when. We came close to the last week and about half of the committees came to me with what they were doing. That went smooth, no time of arrivals bumped over one another nothing. Then about 2 groups came to me that needed someone, the same person, to get something at the exact time. I noticed it right as it happened. I told them one of you have to find a new time or a new driver. They began arguing about why their group need to change, why can’t the other one. So I jumped in and said ill drive somebodies stuff up there that morning to help out. That was the only major bump in the road of planning it.
During the ball we had our respected ceremonies, color guard posted the colors, the honor guard did the POW MIA table ceremony, and then we proceeded to have our guess speak. During our guess speeches, the younger cadets started to talk. We planned ahead of this and had some Let 3 and 4 (juniors and seniors) go up quietly and ask them to be quite or we would escort them out. After the guess spoke, it was time to eat. The guess would go out first and would go to a separate area to eat, while the cadets ate then about 45 minutes later, the music, dancing and other festivities start. There was at one point a small argument that happened between a cadet and their date. I was asked to talk to the male cadet about what happened while a female talked to his date. The problem was resolved within minutes of it starting.
There were more minor problems while the ball proceeded. The way some of the cadets and their dates dance was taken into question. All of those problems were immediately sought out and fixed by ether instructors