Stereotyping - I Was a Teenage Brain
It was a Friday afternoon, and I was waiting for my history class to start. The students sitting around me were talking about a big party that a girl was having that night. A guy sitting across from me turned and asked me if I was going to go to the party. Before I could answer him, he broke in and said that I would probably go home, do my homework and study all night. That Friday is one time I remember very well that being stereotyped as a brain limited what I could do. Just because I was not going to be at the party, it bothered me that my classmates assumed I would be at home studying. His assumption was caused by the characteristics associated with the stereotype of a brain.
A brain is a person who does well in school, gets good grades, always has their homework completed and likes to be on top. A brain is usually neat and organized. People wrongly think brains spend all of their time studying and doing homework. They think brains do not care about their appearance and are not involved in athletics. A brain is expected to wear thick glasses held together with tape, wear a pocket protector, be skinny and zit-faced and always have a calculator. A brain is usually associated with not being well dressed and being unattractive. Television and movies have helped contribute to this unattractive picture of a brain. Some examples are Screech from Saved by the Bell, Carol from Growing Pains and Steve Urkel from Family Matters.
I think the reason that people have placed me in the stereotype of a brain is because I have done well in all of my classes throughout school. I like to learn new things, and school is not very difficult for me. I always hated to get a test back because my classmates would ask what I received on the test. When I showed them my "A," I knew they resented that I had received a better grade than they did. They did not understand that I had to work hard to earn the "A." Because of my good grades, I am stereotyped as a brain.
Everyday we experience stereotyping in one way or another. Over the years stereotyping has become such a large part of our society that it is a vital part of our everyday communication. It has caused many of us to not really think about who a person really is, or what they are about, but to accept instead a certain stereotype that has already been created by our society and given to an individual. Stephanie Ericsson makes an excellent point in her essay when she says “they take a single tree, and make it into a landscape.” The statement she was trying to make by saying this is that many times, a stereotype is made by an individual because of something done by one particular person in a certain group, but is then given to the whole group as a result. Our society has given a stereotype to practically every form of human being out there. Some examples of this are the blond that is said to be dumb, the kid with glasse...
Stereotypes are everywhere and can often create problems for people, however they become even more detrimental to teens, especially at schools. Writer and science correspondent for the NRA, Shankar Vedantam, in his article, “How a Self-Fulfilling Stereotype Can Drag Down Performance,” explains that stereotypes can hurt the performance of the person that it is associated with. He supports his claim by first explaining that how well people do on tests are determined by who administers the questions, then he explains that studies show that when people take tests and they are reminded of negative stereotypes that associate with them, then they don’t do as well, and finally he states that the studies are being widely ignored by all the people who should take heed of the findings, such as test makers and college acceptance people. Vedantam’s purpose is to tell you about the research conducted by Huang in order to inform you that stereotypes can affect performance on tests. In my 9th grade class at Point Loma High School, we were given questions about stereotypes from our teacher to interview two students.
Have you ever made an assumption about someone due to a stereotype? In the realistic fiction novel, The Outsiders by S.E Hinton and the short story “Geeks Bearing Gifts” by Ron Koertge, stereotypes often come up. In The Outsiders, the town that the main character, Ponyboy, lives in is separated into two rival sides. The rich and wild Socials, or Socs, and the poor outcasts, the Greasers. The characters are defined by what side of town they live in. In “Geeks Bearing Gifts”, Renee’s school is separated the same way, with the preppy and popular students, and those who are labeled ‘outcasts’. By reading both of these stories, the reader learns that our thoughts about people revolve around stereotypes and assumptions, but everyone has an individual
I opine that people perform poorly when they feel they are being stereotyped. They face obscurity when making rational decisions. Stereotype people also build in aggressive action towards others. Thus, stereotyping should be controlled and those who are being stereotyped should have different ideology. There are different ways to deal with stereotypes.
Fred Edmund Jandt (2003), the word “stereotype” was first used to show the judgments made about individuals on the origin of their racial background. Today the expression is more commonly used to pass on to events made on the basis of a groups association. Psychologists have attempted to give explanations of stereotyping as errors that our brains make in the judgment of other people that are related to those mistakes our brains make in the view of illustration illusions. When information is blurred, the brain frequently reaches the incorrect conclusion. (p.77)
There is no doubt that at some point in life, we have all been guilty of judging somebody before we really got to know them. Perhaps we judged them based on their weight, their gender, their hair color, their clothing style, or maybe even all of those things combined. We were guilty of making that person into yet another stereotype. Or perhaps we have been on the receiving end of that judgment, and we may not have known it. At some point, everyone has most likely been a stereotype in one way or another.
Stereotyping is used in our everyday life in things such as advertisements, movies, books, magazines, and other types of entertainment. It is pointed out to be negative and causing too many problems, but it can be used to motivate us to act a certain way, or buy certain things. Stereotypes are the most useful way to influence people to change and better themselves.
In the modern era, stereotypes seem to be the ways people justify and simplify the society. Actually, “[s]tereotypes are one way in which we ‘define’ the world in order to see it” (Heilbroner 373). People often prejudge people or objects with grouping them into the categories or styles they know, and then treat the types with their experiences or just follow what other people usually do, without truly understand what and why. Thus, all that caused miscommunication, argument or losing opportunities to broaden the life experience. Stereotypes are usually formed based on an individual’s appearance, race, and gender that would put labels on people.
What is stereotype? The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines stereotype as “believing unfairly that all people or things with a particular characteristic are the same.” Stereotypes are everywhere. Stereotypes cover racial groups, gender, political groups and even demographic. Stereotypes affect our everyday lives. Sometimes people are judged based on what they wear, how they look, how they act or people they hang out with. Gender and racial stereotypes are very controversial in today’s society and many fall victims. Nevertheless, racial and gender stereotypes have serious consequences in everyday life. It makes individuals have little to no motivation and it also puts a label about how a person should act or live. When one is stereotype they
How have my own experiences conforming to stereotypes equipped me to deal with stereotype threats that may be present in my sessions with students as a Speaking Fellow? My past is inundated with the roles I have adopted. As the single female in a combat unit in the military this stereotype manifested as I forfeited my femininity to become one of the boys. I had no desire to be seen as a woman who needed to be coddled (as the men I served with presumed) so I assumed the role of tomboy, eating as they, sporting baggy, unfitted pants to cover my womanly curves, and sacrificing my use of silverware in my efforts to be “just one of the guys.” As I matriculated to Barnard, my identity changed again. Barnard’s slogan is “bold, beautiful, Barnard women,” and as a newcomer, in efforts to fit in, I wanted to assume that “bold” identity. I reverted back to my feminine persona, I ate my food with a fork and I rehashed my old dresses. I was going to be the stereotypically Barnard woman—or at least, what I thought the stereotype was.
3. Waldrop, S.; Wojciechowski, M. The “bionic” warrior: advances in prosthetics, technology, and rehabilitation. PT Mag Phys Ther. April 2007;15(4): 60-66.
Thermodynamics is defined as “the study of heat transfer and its relationship to doing work.” Specifically, it is a field of physics that has to do with “the transfer of energy from one place to another or from one form to another” (Drake P.1). Heat acts as a form of energy that equates to a total amount of work. Heat was recognized as a form of energy around the year 1798. Count Rumford (Sir Benjamin Thompson), a British military engineer, observed that “numerous amounts of heat could be generated in the boring of cannon barrels” (Drake P.1), which is where a cannon’s firing port is enlarged using a drill and immense amounts of heat to make the metal malleable. He also observed that “the work done in turning a blunt boring tool was proportional
According to mechanical physics, a force is an effect that may cause a body to accelerate. Also as stated in Isaac Newton’s second law of motion, force is a vector quantity (has magnitude and direction) that is proportional to the product of the mass of a body and its acceleration.
What is Biomechanics? It is the study of forces and their effects on the living system (McGinnis, 2013). In this essay, I will be looking at the biomechanics of running. Running, as well as any other sport requires skills for which advancement is due to consistent deliberate practice and effective development. However, runners should establish a training system that actively builds their original running pattern instead of basing it on what works well for others. Understanding the biomechanics of running gives a better knowledge of their running techniques and points out areas of concerns that require improvement. Despite the fact that running is dependent on the interaction of the whole body, breaking down the running pace into single components allows us to further understand how minor changes can increase improve performance and decrease injury risk.
The wrong in stereotyping comes when our judgements and preconceived ideas about individuals guides our encounters with those individuals in a negative way. For example, we look at the well-known stereotype, “Blondes lack intelligence”. This type of idea leads to an unfair implication on a wide range of individuals that is used to judge instead of describing based on our experiences. On the other hand, there are examples where we encounter a stereotype that is not initially viewed as negative but rather positive. One of the more common examples of this is the notion that “Asians are good at math”. Now you may be thinking isn’t is a respectable thing to be viewed a smart? Yes, yes, it is, but where this type of stereotype trends towards negativity is when it feels more like a judgement than a description of a person. To convey that example, say you put yourself into the shoes of a person of Asian descent, who happens to be below average when it comes to mathematics. Knowing of this stereotype wouldn’t you feel less