Sociology written assignment - Essay Example

REPUTATION In my high school there was a girl with a bad reputation. She smoked cigarettes a lot in the parking lot. She had a lot of older friends who did not go to the same school and they sometimes picked her up after classes were done. They would hoot and holler and make a lot of noise as the drove away. At school dances, this girl, named Josie, would often bring these friends. They seemed to be drunk at the dances and would always cause a scene. Often they would get kicked out. She wore a lot of make up and had a number of older boyfriends.

She often skipped school and didn't seem to care about studying for her classes. People often said that Josie had a bad reputation. Personally, I found Josie to be a nice person. I was in many of her classes and would often have conversations. I thought she was an interesting and curious person. She never made fun of me and always seemed to generally be respectful. However, other people felt that she had a bad reputation. They didn't know her well, but that was their superficial impression. They heard rumours about her which often were not true.

Her reputation, which spread quickly in the school, seemed to precede her wherever she want. She became a character that people would talk about even though they didn't actually know her in person. People who had never had a conversation felt that they knew everything about her. They felt they were in a position to judge her because there was a kind of story being told by everyone about her. In a sense her reputation made her a public commodity. It is clear from the research that bad reputations are created when people deviate from social norms.

In Josie's case it was clear that a lot of her behaviour set her apart from the other students in the school. She experimented with alcohol before other students and had friends who were a fair amount older. She also took part in a number of disturbance, further marking her out from the social group. All the various things she did to act out in school created “impression formations” for other students (Newman, 160). Each of these impressions began to form a narrative which would create her reputation.

She had formed her own social group which was distinct from the schools' mainstream groups. As such she was cast out. The fact that her bad reputation grew created a vicious cycle which further reinforced peoples impressions. For Josie, at this time in her life, she probably felt that her reputation was a done deal and there was little she could do to break away from it. Treating people with respect seemed to get her nowhere: her reputation stayed unchanged. The good news is that I recently ran into Jose the other day.

She is happily married to a banker and expecting her fourth child. It appears she eventually overcame her bad reputation. Work cited Newman, David M. Sociology: Exploring the Architecture of Everyday Life. Pine Forge Press, 2009.