Autoethnographic Essay Draft

Sarah Blythe

Gutierrez

SOC 001

13 October 2015

Autoethnographic Essay Draft

         I decided to come to Davis because I wanted to be as far away from home as possible. Davis wasn’t my first choice, but it was the best school within my financial means that was geographically located at a reasonable distance from where I grew up. The social location of my community plays a major role in my decision making. The demographics can be characterized as the typical white suburban town where everyone exercises conservative values and owns a white house with a white picket fence. It is located within the Inland Valley so the surrounding mountains enclose everything from any outside diverse communities. Being limited to familiar homes, shopping centers, and people made me feel as if I really didn’t know what kind of experiences that were plausible outside my realm that otherwise wouldn’t take place. I expended all possible resources that I could take advantage of in shaping my growth as a person and the only way I could discover more personal strides was escaping the suburban bubble.  

        Within such a structured town, it’s apparent that there are going to be social groups and they are all very distinctive. My high school was the epitome of the spitting image of a school with cliques. The popular kids dominated the school with their designer brand clothes, high end cars, and constant complaining because their father bought them Steve Maddens instead of Louis Vuittons. The center of campus was known as “Ethnic Street” where groups of people who identified themselves by race and dominated a sectioned area. At the south end of campus was where the outcasts resided, or as I liked to call it, The Land of Misfit toys. It was the most diverse side of campus and we came together because we were exiled for defying the norms.  To escape from the conformity of these secondary groups, I clung to the same primary group since I was little. Since they knew and understood the adversities that have shaped me, I felt comfortable being emotional towards them because I know they’ll stick around during any troubling time in my life. I’ve never wanted to open up and become friends with new people for my true self was already stamped with a name that was deemed not within the boundaries of how a “normal” relationship among friends functioned. Therefore, I wouldn’t feel comfortable expressing my emotional vulnerability which quintessentially makes up my true character. However, I’ve learned that my out-group bias towards these particular social groups could have easily prohibited me from potentially meeting some pretty cool people that were the complete juxtaposition of the social norms within their group. It strongly disconcerts me that my perspective of other people was so close minded. Being within the confounds of the valley entrapped me in a functionalist perspective which was constructed by upholding myself to the clear constitution of the suburban lifestyle.