My research will be a reflection on my first alcoholic experience as a teen. As sociologists, we can uncover the decisions, influences, and potential motives behind adolescent and teen alcohol use. We should care about this experience because if can offer data and perspective on how salience can prevent alcohol use. I plan to use personal recollections, primarily, as my source of data during my research. In my research project, my personal experience shows how teen alcohol use is affected by family influences and the presence of salience, social location, and peer culture. Then I will explain how family influences may offer salience when engaging in delinquent behavior as a teen. I will discuss how age and social class are variables of social
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My first encounter with alcohol occurred during the summer of 2005 when I was 14-years-old. I am a half African-American, half Japanese-American male that comes from a middle class family. My father was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army in 2005 and was in the midst of an 18-month deployment to Iraq. Meanwhile, my mother, a dental hygienist, was at home with my older sister and I. My sister was 17-years-old and had a similar upbringing the catholic-private schools and was attending St. Francis High School. The role of not having a father figure physically present due to his deployment and the Iraq war contributed to my encounter with alcohol. Growing up, basketball and my family were the most important salient roles in my life. If I ever lost my way, basketball or family would help me refocus and maintain consistency. My parents were the definition of stability and positivity to me. Meanwhile, basketball was my outlet for anything negative or deviant. I had hoped to take basketball with me into high school and college. In 2005, technology wasn’t nearly as advanced as it is now. There wasn’t Skype or FaceTime, there weren’t iPhone’s and I had …show more content…
I was accepted into Jesuit High School, a private-catholic school in the Sacramento area. Jesuit is considered academically and financially prestigious as it administers an exam to applicant students which will largely determine if the student will be admitted. Because of this, the families of students whom were accepted and chose to attend the school often came from middle to upper class socio-economic backgrounds. They were the families that could afford high tuition, potential prolonged transportation time, and the additional time and effort of getting their children to the vast amount of extra curricular’s that Jesuit offered. Social location is the key theme behind this introduction to Jesuit and the families that decided to attend the school. For the students, social class was often a concept that was overlooked and lacked awareness. In fact, Annette Lareau explained in her book Class Differences in Parents’ Information and Intervention in the Lives of Young Adults, that middle class families often are unaware of their social class. As I refocus this back to my first encounter with alcohol, social class became a large factor in our ability to have access to alcohol at such a young age. During the summer of 2005, I became very good friends with a boy named Mike. Mike and I had met the summer before in 2004 at a summer camp we attended at Jesuit.
My first encounter with alcohol occurred during the summer of 2005 when I was 14-years-old. I am a half African-American, half Japanese-American male that comes from a middle class family. My father was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army in 2005 and was in the midst of an 18-month deployment to Iraq. Meanwhile, my mother, a dental hygienist, was at home with my older sister and I. My sister was 17-years-old and had a similar upbringing the catholic-private schools and was attending St. Francis High School. The role of not having a father figure physically present due to his deployment and the Iraq war contributed to my encounter with alcohol. Growing up, basketball and my family were the most important salient roles in my life. If I ever lost my way, basketball or family would help me refocus and maintain consistency. My parents were the definition of stability and positivity to me. Meanwhile, basketball was my outlet for anything negative or deviant. I had hoped to take basketball with me into high school and college. In 2005, technology wasn’t nearly as advanced as it is now. There wasn’t Skype or FaceTime, there weren’t iPhone’s and I had …show more content…
I was accepted into Jesuit High School, a private-catholic school in the Sacramento area. Jesuit is considered academically and financially prestigious as it administers an exam to applicant students which will largely determine if the student will be admitted. Because of this, the families of students whom were accepted and chose to attend the school often came from middle to upper class socio-economic backgrounds. They were the families that could afford high tuition, potential prolonged transportation time, and the additional time and effort of getting their children to the vast amount of extra curricular’s that Jesuit offered. Social location is the key theme behind this introduction to Jesuit and the families that decided to attend the school. For the students, social class was often a concept that was overlooked and lacked awareness. In fact, Annette Lareau explained in her book Class Differences in Parents’ Information and Intervention in the Lives of Young Adults, that middle class families often are unaware of their social class. As I refocus this back to my first encounter with alcohol, social class became a large factor in our ability to have access to alcohol at such a young age. During the summer of 2005, I became very good friends with a boy named Mike. Mike and I had met the summer before in 2004 at a summer camp we attended at Jesuit.