Your “Social Class Autobiography” (adapted from Wendy R. Williams)
Each of us comes to the table with a different experience with social class. Think deeply about your own story with social class. In this assignment, you will have the opportunity to tell your “Social Class Autobiography.” By taking time to analyze your own story, you may find a level of understanding and acceptance that you had not previously recognized. Moreover, by sharing our personal stories, we refuse to share in the “code of silence” around social class. In your own social class autobiography, make sure to link your experiences to class privilege or deprivation (or both), as well as to connect it explicitly to some of the ideas we have discussed in class like poverty, wealth, mental illness, stress and illness, and identity development. Finally, reflect on what you have learned from the experience of examining your personal “Social Class Autobiography.”
This paper should include an introduction and a conclusion, and it should address the following questions:
1) Pick at least two events from your life that are related to social class and describe what occurred. These should be compelling, not trivial, events. Together, these two events should tell one cohesive story.
2) After explaining what occurred in a separate paragraph, take time to analyze the meaning of each experience. What does each event reveal about poverty, wealth, inequality, or privilege (i.e., topics we discussed in the Social Psychology Unit)? Then, make connections to at least one other specific class topic from another unit (e.g., stress and illness, anxiety and/or depression, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs) that were illustrated in this experience. Be detailed and thorough.
3) Reflect on what you have learned from examining social class in your life.
Your paper must be typed in Times 12-point font, double-spaced, with 1-inch margins on all sides, and follow APA-style guidelines. Create a title for your Autobiography. Submit via Canvas on the due date. Your autobiography must be at least 1,500 words long (~3 pages).
**This exercise has been contributed to APA for the Resources for the Inclusion of Social Class in Psychology Curricula. It may have been edited for length. For additional resources, visit apa.org/pi/ses/resources/publications/social-class-curricula.aspx**
I would say I was in between mid and high social class, coming from a Middle Eastern household where my friends and the people I hang out with were of higher class. Their families would have multiple houses and businesses while I was just the son of a diplomat, and my family was a middle-class
the first experience i would like you to talk about was when i was diagnosed with a type of epilepsy when i was 11 around middle school my doctor explained that i was have thease miny sezures where i would zone out completly and my body wopuld go into auto mde and i for a few minutes where i would not know what was going on i was concious and unconcios at the same time my faimily would notice and shake me to get out of this trance i hade to do a few mri and ekg tests and i was prescribed kepra at all was going well for a few years until i 13 was traviling around turkey with my faimily and had two seziurse one was in the i honeslt dont remember much except a few flashes but i was told i was found on the floor in the bathroom passed out one time and the other was i was found on the floor before reaching my bed both times i was in the hotel alone as my faimily 1 mother 3 sister would just go out shopping constinly as guy did not have much intrest my father could not join us because he was working back home in Kuwait the first time i had a seizure it was taken lightly scheduled a mri and ekg was sent home after a overnight ion the hospital second time i had to stay in the hospital until they figured out why i was having these seizures as they were a few days apart with no warning all i could rember was me being weeled out into the ambulance the second time this time i had top stay in the hospital for a week and went to see a doctor and the only thing they could think of was it was because of my malnurshgment was not eating much during that time my med were also switched to depakin where they were weening me off of them starting with a full pill of kepra and half a pill of depakin for half a month then 1 pill depakin half kepra for another month this happened when we ruturned home and untill i stopped taking kepra and switched to pill and half of depakin for a year until my conditoned calmed down and switched to one pill then until i was 17 after like a ekg evry 3 months i started stabilizing no more sezures they just happened when i was on the trip and now i am all good nothing is wrong with doctor stated stopping the med when i was 18 as they did not want it to affect my kidneys. this had a lot of effects on me. The first was school during middle school. Before I was diagnosed, I was at a 2.9 GPA. After I was diagnosed, it dropped to 2.4, and I was very depressed during that time when my condition started to improve; I was maintaining a GPA of over 3.2, and when I got to high school, I think I averaged around 3.60, another effect it had on me was I used to enjoy gaming still do but because of my diagnoses my doctor recommended I lower the hours I played so I only played 1-2 hours every weekend it felt l; like I was grounded for no reason which caused me to be depressed and stressed because gaming was my only out during this time, you can add some shit to this fill in the blanks and such and connect it.
For the second talk about how I was able to attend a private school that was supposed to have good college prep, but they failed us because, during my junior year, they brought in speakers from multiple colleges all of a sudden with no explanation as to what they were talking about and most of our info was collected from cousins and friends siblings who taught us everything we need to know, and our college essays were also taught to us by the same people the only thing that my school gave us was a paper with some guidelines as what to write about on our college essays for this one if you want to talk about something else just tell so I could approve it first.
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