Violating a School Norm - Essay Example

Running Head: VIOLATING A SCHOOL NORM Violating a School Norm: Reflections and Understanding Violating a School Norm: Reflections and Understanding School norms are inevitable. They help promote camaraderie and unity among students. They make it easy for school administrators to implement rules. In turn, violating a school norm is difficult because it can lead you to a fight or the feeling of being unaccepted. For international students like me, following norms is more of a necessity than a choice. It is an obligation I have to fulfill to myself if I want to live in peace and enjoy my academic years. Being an international student is quite complicated. The difficulty lies mostly in winning the favor of your schoolmates and trying to get accepted for who you are despite the cultural and religious differences you have. Moreover, my religious affiliation as a Muslim leads me to abide by the customs and traditions of Islam. In my religion, we strictly follow certain practices and traditions such as Salah or prayer and worship Allah five times a day. Other practices and beliefs in Islam affect the way I respect rules and regulations. In school, I usually abide by what the administrators and professors say and follow their instructions, as long as they do not conflict with my religious beliefs. Fortunately, my efforts have paved way to win friends and gain confidence to express myself to others. For this reason, violating school norms is quite unusual for me and doing such would make me feel less comfortable. With this thought, I decided to violate a simple norm that will not cause any trouble. I decided to pretend sleeping in the library. This act is a violation of school norms, considering the fact that everyone is expected to use the library for studying and researching, not for sleeping. By pretending to be asleep in the library, I can assess my feelings on violating norms. Likewise, this act will enable me to discover other people’s reaction to the way I misbehave in public. I chose this act because it is by far the safest act I could bear to do without negating my religious beliefs and values. Likewise, I am not as brave as other guys who could get too drunk in a party, make noise in public or kiss a girl in church. Therefore, pretending to be asleep in the library is probably the safest I could do. It was a Monday afternoon, and I was actually feeling dizzy from the escapades I had the past weekend. When I reached the library, it was full of students so I had second thoughts about doing my violation act. Nevertheless, I thought I would not know what could happen if I did not push through so I searched for vacant seat far from the librarian’s desk and settled with my things where two students are reading. The students I sat with were both female. They were quite younger than me so I felt comfortable somehow. I thought to myself that I could not do the violation if I was in front of some guys and that experience would have been another story. When I sat down, the two girls looked at me and covered their faces with the books they were reading. That moment, I almost wanted to give up on my plan but I thought there was no other way and that was the best moment I got. I waited for about 20 minutes before I proceeded with my plan so as to make everything seem real. The girls could be doubtful if I slept right away so I had to wait for the right timing. At first, I acted drowsy, although I was really feeling drowsy that time. I held a book, pretended to read and dropped it from time to time to get their attention. I saw them peeped and nearly laughed when I dropped the book. Then, after dropping the book three times, I finally bowed my head and slouched over the book. I waited for two minutes before making a snoring sound. Indeed, after a long snore, I heard the girls giggled. I continued to snore for about three minutes and heard them laugh and that time I somewhat enjoyed what I was doing. I continued for another two minutes and snored louder so I heard the girls laughed louder. One of them could not control her laughter so she stood up and went to the shelves. The other who was left tried to concentrate in reading. I stopped when she did this and yawned as if I just woke up. When the other girl returned, she was looking at me with a smile on her face so I smiled back bashfully. The experience of violating a norm taught me two things. First, it is difficult to violate a norm especially at the beginning but one could get used to it later. When I was entering the library, I wanted to back out and think of another act. I was nervous and sweaty, I nearly asked a friend to accompany me. Possibly, my awareness of the norm, along with my values, interfered with my decision to violate the norm. If a two-year old child will visit the library, he will deliberately sleep there because of the quietness and his unawareness of the norms. As I let the time pass, I felt that the violation is not really that difficult. This confirms Sutherland’s (cited in Clinard & Meier, 2010) idea that learning deviance is similar to learning other skills. With practice or repeated attempts, a person will learn and master the behavior, thus negate the norms earlier practiced. Second, I also learned that violating a norm can be enjoyable. It was probably my knowledge of the plan that led me to enjoy the violation. I did not expect to enjoy the act but when the ladies laughed at me, I thought it was a way to fool them because while they laughed, I was also laughing inside. I tricked them to believe that I was really sleeping that time, hence I learned that one of the possible reasons that people violate norms is because they enjoy it. The reaction of the girls served as reinforcement to my act but if the librarian woke me up, I would have stopped the deviant behavior right away. Reflecting on my experience of violating a norm, I realized that norms are a way to achieve social control. According to Clinard & Meier (2010, p.11), norms “make crucial contributions to the process of maintaining order.” As experience taught me, violating a norm could be enjoyable and without social control, violators could repeatedly do what they want to do despite it being against the values of a society. Likewise, without social control, people will do whatever pleases them and there will be chaos. The contents of the library also serve as a form of social control to strengthen the norms and regulate the rules. The availability of reading materials suggests the social function of the library. If such materials are absent, students will misbehave, sleep, eat, and not study. Going back to my experience, I mentioned that I enjoyed violating a norm despite the nervousness I felt at the beginning. Therefore, there is a possibility that I will do the same thing in the future, but without the tension. Enjoying the deviant behavior will serve as the reinforcement to do another deviant act, which could lead to another or influence other people to do the same. This illustrates Akers’ (1985) Reinforcement Theory. According to him, deviance occurs when a person learns that an act is desirable. If I do not hold on to my values and if I was not raised in the Muslim tradition, I could have the tendency to repeat the violation and actually sleep inside the library. References Akers, R. (1985).  Social learning theory and adolescent cigarette smoking.  Social Problems, 32:455-73. Clinard, M. B. & Meier, R.F. (2010). Sociology of deviant behavior. NY: Wadsworth Cengage Learning. Read More