I walked into this course thinking I was relatively informed and steadfast on my views of the “reality” of the world. I’m a mom in my 40s, raising three kids, running a business, showing up for clients, and going back to school to finish what I started years ago. I assumed sociology would offer some insight, but mostly just reinforce what I already understood: people are different, systems aren’t always fair, and we’ve all got a role to play. I didn’t expect to be peeling back layers of my own upbringing and questioning the rules I’ve been following most of my life.
One of the first things that really shifted how I see things was learning about social facts. The idea that these expectations and behaviours we take as truth or fact, like the importance of post-secondary education, aren’t just personal or family-based but a curated society enforced, changed everything. I’ve lived my life with the belief that going to university was the mark of success. Not just academic success, but success as a human being. When I didn’t follow that path after high school due to serious mental health struggles, I internalized it as personal failure. But now I can see how deeply that expectation was ingrained, not just by my family, but by the neighbourhood I grew up in, the school system, the media, and even the subtle ways friends and acquaintances spoke about what mattered.
Class content and learning activities on inequality, capitalism, and indoctrination hit hard. Debt was always framed as necessary and respectable in my world. Taking on a mortgage or student loans was seen as responsible, a sign you were investing in your future. But reading Sosteric’s breakdown of debt as a tool of control has had a substantial influence on me and forced me to take a critical look at my own values. I realized how debt has kept me working, striving, and never really feeling like I’ve “arrived.” Add in the fact that so much of my time has gone into unpaid caregiving, raising children, and emotional labour that doesn’t translate into a paycheque or job title, and it becomes painfully clear how invisible and undervalued that work is.
It also helped me understand why school never quite felt like a place of discovery, it was always about structure, performance, and compliance. The hidden curriculum opened my eyes to what I’d internalized: show up on time, follow the rules, memorize the right answers, and look to authority for validation. That experience didn’t stop in grade school. It shaped how I interact in the workplace, how I show up as a mother, and how I feel pressure to perform in ways that have little to do with actual learning or purpose. I really see this now as not only a student myself for decades, but as I watch my children go through the educational system. Each with their own strengths and weaknesses or challenges. It shines a spotlight on some unsettling truths.
Gender socialization has probably been the most personal piece of this course. I’ve always identified as female, but I never questioned how much of what I thought was “me” was actually learned. Being told I could do anything while being expected to stay polished, agreeable, and nurturing sent a very clear message: push forward, but not too far. I was never physically punished, but emotional and psychological pressure shaped everything, how I dressed, how I moved through the world, how much space I was allowed to take up. When I liked sports and avoided dresses, I felt the tension. When I chose dance, I was told to leave my other interests behind because serious girls don’t mix grace with grit. That same pressure followed me into adulthood. I stayed home part-time with my kids and built my business in between, but somehow, despite all that work, I still feel “behind” compared to people who climbed the corporate ladder uninterrupted. Almost as though we are taught to compare and judge as a subconscious and coercive tactic. Looking at media through this new lens brought greater clarity.
Reading about the role of films like Star Wars in reinforcing hierarchy and ideas of power didn’t make me love movies any less, but it did make me more aware. It also has me questioning movies my almost twelve-year-old is watching. I am no longer able to just watch a movie without watching with a critical mind. These stories teach us who holds power, who deserves to lead, and who can be sacrificed along the way. Just like school taught us to follow rules, these narratives teach us to idolize the elite and overlook the people doing the actual work.
When we connected all of this to climate change, it was like the final puzzle piece snapped into place. The communities suffering most from environmental destruction are rarely the ones creating it. Yet they’re the ones told to recycle harder or make better choices, while corporations continue to pollute. It’s another example of how inequality isn’t just happening, it’s structured. It’s passed down. And we’re so used to it that we stop seeing it for what it is. I was always aware that the people who have the least impact on the climate are usually the ones who are asked to change and sacrifice the most. This is evident when the world’s so-called philanthropists fly in their multiple private jets to talk about what the little people need to do in order to save our climate. It’s a sad reality that I feel doesn’t command the attention and thought it should that includes looking at the role of big corporations and elites in the deteriorating climate.
What I’ve really come to understand is that inequality isn’t just unfortunate, it’s intentional. It’s baked into our schools, our work environments, our media, and even our spiritual tools. The version of Tarot I once used in my personal life, thinking it was a mystical and healing practice, has roots in elite European culture. Even that has a class story beneath the symbolism. Nothing is as neutral as it seems. I’m not looking to shift my entire belief system and values overnight. I’m still raising my kids, trying to make a living, and figuring out what’s next. But I am looking at things with more clarity and less guilt. When I feel like I’m behind or not enough, I now stop and ask: who benefits from me believing that? Whose values am I following? What stories have I been handed that I didn’t even agree to?
This course didn’t hand me a new belief system, but it gave me a clearer view of the one I’ve been living in all along. It helped me name the invisible pressures, challenge the stories I used to accept without question, and step back into ownership of how I define success, value, and identity. I’ve realized that the systems we live in were built by people, not for everyone’s benefit, and that means we could (theoretically) rebuild them differently. I fear this is very unlikely however. That, for me, is the most empowering thing I’ll take away from all of this.
As an added thought I would also like to share that your feedback on my essays triggered me at first because you asked me questions and gave feedback that really made me question and dig deeper. It has also allowed me to find greater introspection that I likely would not have done.
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.