Norm Violation - Assignment Example

Men should wear at least long trousers, a shirt or t-shirt and women should wear at least a pair of trousers, a blouse or t-shirt or a dress. To violate the norm, I went to the city in a short and a vest. My choice of the norm was based on the thought that the consequences will not be so severe and in case of any punishment, the impact could not take longer. On Monday morning when the city happens to be so busy, I dressed in my short jeans shorts and a vest and left the house for my lectures in our city campus.

Before starting off, I was feeling excited. I thought of what I was doing as an adventure despite the fact that it was an assignment. I was eager and enthusiastic to experience the whole idea. Everything by the time I was leaving the house was normal. I was sure majority of the people that I met on the way thought I was just going for something in the grocery shop. I was sure that many people would take little attention on me and my dress code since it was a Monday morning when many people are focused to start the week.

I left the house and walked for about a kilometer to the train station to board a train. On my way to the train station, I picked my colleagues John, Mary, and Joan my girlfriend. First, each one of them was shocked to see me dressed like a beach tourist. My response to every one of them was that I was trying to test something. I did not reveal to them that it was part of a class assignment. However, my response did not deter them from cautioning me against my actions on violation of the dress code norm.

They warned me that I might not bear the consequences especially doing such a thing on a Monday morning, Friday could have been better. Some of them, especially my girlfriend did not want to be associated with. Actually, one of them commented that I look like a clown. This was in contrast with what I got from my neighbors. They did not look so much surprised instead, they moved on with their jobs and a few of them wished me a good day. These two reactions made things look normal and I discovered that violation of norm is punished either in a real way or by the way of people’s reactions (Maxwell 86).

In the streets, as well as in the college, people were seriously staring at me and a few were even pointed fingers towards my direction. A feeling of fear and discomfort started growing in me as I received mixed reactions from people around me. I realized that the norm violation had started becoming clear to everyone around me including my classmates. This affected my concentration in class and worse was when a few students giggled amongst themselves about my dressing. People’s looks on me and the discomfort expressed on the faces of everybody around me made me feel terrible.

I did not believe I had the courage to do such a disgraceful thing. I started wishing that nobody will remember or rather remind me of the incident any time in my life. I felt the odd one out among many people I interacted with. From that incident, I concluded that no matter how trivial a norm may seem the consequences of violating it are unbearable. What I considered trivial brought repercussions, which were too hard to bear. Those who break norms are assumed insane and nobody wants to be associated with them.

Regardless of our personality differences, as social beings, norms define uniformity in the way everybody should do things. They control how people should behave and relate to each other