I have now taken Intro to Sociology 1 and 2 and I wanted to reach out to you just to let you know how much I enjoyed both classes. You have made the learning process very enjoyable for me. I appreciate your willingness to create courses that don’t conform to the typical structure. You challenge students to think critically and not to simply accept the social norms that too many people take comfort in. Thank you for opening our eyes. I also thoroughly enjoyed your book “Rocket Scientists Guide to Money and the Economy…” It was an excellent way to simplify our capitalist society. I may disagree a bit on the necessity for spirituality in changing the system but that could be my bias as a non spiritual person. It was still an exceptional book and I have already lent it out and recommended it to others.
Anyway, I’m looking forward to more of your courses as I pursue my Sociology degree. I do have Social Statistics starting in March, but am not expecting it to live up to the material in your other classes. Who knows, maybe you have found a way to even make statistics interesting.
Thanks for an excellent education.
The most fascinating revelation came through David Noble’s “The Religion of Technology,” which exposed something completely absent from my CS 492 experience - the deep spiritual and religious underpinnings of Western technological development. This course went beyond “utopianism and dystopianism” in computing, examining the millennial Christian expectations that Noble demonstrates have driven technological development for centuries.
When I enrolled in SOCI 460, I thought I would be learning about algorithms, digital infrastructure, and maybe some history about computers or the internet, I didn’t expect this course to it so close to home. I had no idea I would end up thinking about the Catholic Church, the masculine foundations of science, spiritual longing, Facebook content moderators, or the invisible ands that curate and control my daily life. More than that, I didn’t expect to be sitting with guilt, grief, awe, and a renewed sense of responsibility.
My most significant realization is that personal transformation and political awareness are deeply interconnected. Caring is not enough—we must critically analyze the systems we operate within, the narratives we perpetuate, and the assumptions we unconsciously hold. I now feel more committed than ever in questioning dominant narratives in my work and creating space for truth-telling, relational accountability, and systemic change.
What I expected of this course would be examples of the most successful social movements of all time and I was not wrong on this count. What I did not expect was that the most successful social movements in our living history were social movements created by massive multi-corporate alliances.
By the time we explored the public relations industry and propaganda, I was beginning to see that nearly every institution I had once trusted—church, school, media, government—spoke a language of compliance. The assigned chapters from A Century of Spin were almost comically dark in how they pulled back the curtain on PR’s role in manufacturing reality. I began noticing it in everything - how political campaigns reframe policy as “freedom,” how consumer brands adopt woke messaging to sell soda, how even well-meaning institutions use symbols to signal virtue instead of engaging in real reform. The Matrix analogy felt less like a metaphor and more like a documentary.
I would like to say that the course exceeded my expectations. The material offered a learning experience that goes beyond the classroom and the examples provided; it is practical learning that the student can apply the concepts to everyday life. This practical applicability is what truly captivates me and makes me feel happy and fulfilled. Realizing that the concepts of social movements are not just relevant to large-scale protests, but also to the small things in daily life, made me feel more connected as a human being and a citizen. It gave me a stronger sense of how I can help and contribute to the society I live in. For me, SOCI288 brilliantly combined theory with practical application, allowing students to link each unit to the readings and their own individual experiences.
Initially, when I reviewed the course materials and the website, I felt overwhelmed by the sheer volume of resources, readings, and course deliverables. It seemed like an insurmountable task to read through everything and internalize and retain the information. However, as I began to dive into the material, I found it deeply engaging, informative, and thought-provoking, which made the learning process much more enjoyable than I had anticipated
If I can be entirely personal in this part of my answer, I would say that this course has given me a great chance to examine the belief systems I was raised in. I was raised Roman Catholic, a faith I rejected long ago, but I've never really sat down and thought about the fear that religion caused in me. This course made me do that. I had to answer questions that caused me to remember the horrific bloody portraits on my grandmother's wall, and the whispered threats of the priests and nuns who taught in my Catholic elementary and high school. I was always afraid. Afraid of the God I had disrespected by not eating fish on a Friday, afraid that I hadn't fasted long enough before taking communion on a Sunday, and afraid, most of all, that I had unwittingly committed a mortal sin that guaranteed my place in hell. What a terrible thing to do to a child. I'm really glad I've had a reason to rethink it all.