Breaking a Social Norm

     I have been thinking about this assignment for a few months now. I have several friends who took this class last semester, so I knew it was coming. I thought it would be so easy to think of something and do it for a whole day. Boy was I wrong. It was easy to come up with a few ideas, but actually putting them into action was a different story.

     All throughout my years I wore a uniform on the days when we went to school. I went to a private Christian school and was also homeschooled. (I totally fit into that Tim Hawkins’ video about homeschoolers.) On the days that we were in school, I wore typical school uniform. Girls wore plaid skirts and polo or peter-pan shirts and guys wore khaki pants and polo shirts. I never thought it was weird because that was all I had known and it was what everyone wore to school. Whenever I would go out after school or to an appointment during the day, I would wear my uniform and people would stare at me as I walked by. No one ever said anything, but you could tell they saw me as different and thought I didn’t belong. I never really thought too much about it because as a private school kid or homeschool kid, there were always comments about what I was wearing, what we learned in class, or why my mom didn’t think public school was good enough for us.

     I decided to wear my high school uniform around campus one day. I really wasn’t sure what everyone else would think. Would they just pass me by without a thought or would there be chatter about what I was wearing? What happened really surprised me. First to see me were my residents. They gave me all sorts of looks. Even though they knew me, some of them just gave me looks and kept on walking. Quite a lot of them asked me why I would ever wear that at college. It really surprised me how my own residents surprised me. Next I was around my coworkers. They weren’t so judgmental as they had a great time making jokes about what I was wearing. When I went out to class, many people just stared at me. No one really said anything, there were just many looks given my way. The next thing that surprised me the most was showing up on Yik Yak. I was called schoolgirl, white girl, stuck up, rich girl, and high school/ college wannabe. It really did make me second-guess how I looked and dressed.
     This activity made me really think about how I judge other people. I am quick to look at someone and judge them, even though I know that’s not the right thing to do. Just because I was wearing something out of the norm, I was judged quite a lot from many people I don’t even know. It really made me think of making sure I get to know people before I form an opinion. This will especially be important in my classroom, as I need to get to know my students before I form an opinions about them, because I will either help set them up to succeed or fail. I really did enjoy this activity even though it pulled me out of my comfort zone.