6.07.2009

statistics

have you ever thought about yourself as a statistic?
i mean, i do all the time.
i view my friends as statistics, my family members as statistics, and even how my family functions.
my mind works through conversations, i pre-plan almost everything i am going to say in the morning or before i go somewhere and what conversations i want to have...that is a huge secret i just let out by the way.
however, my mind also works in a way that after i do something, i wonder what stat. category that would fit under.
i am female
i am of legal age
i am caucasian/white
i am a cutter
i am from an upper-middle class society
i go to school at a collegiate level
i am a christian
my name is emily
i am unemployed
i went to a high school that is apart of one of the top five school districts in the country
i am a family studies and human services major


these are just a few generic examples because i am so many things that make me a statistic, and then i think; is a certain part of me a negative statistic? and the answer is yes.
i view my life through the lens of statistics and where i fit in with the rest of the world.
lets say one person equals one percent and each category a person fits into is like .01 percent, or something like that, that's another thing, i'm terrible at math (another stat. category).

but i digress...

so what i put above lets say equals .11 percent.
among that .11 percent, .07 percent of that list equals a negative statistic.
what i mean by negative is this; do any of those carry a stereotype? do any of the above categories listed bring me scrutiny, or do i do something that others may not find socially appropriate? .07 percent of them do.
this is the problem with statistics, there are so many variables involved that most of the above catagories do not even look negative, but because everything is pretty much socially constructed, for example; i get the stereotype of being a snob just because of where i grew up. but anyway...
like i said, i view myself as a statistic all the time and what parts of my life can show up on a graph in a classroom teaching students about the world around them.
from thinking this, i realized i am a negative statistic.
not my family, not my friends, but me as an individual am a negative statistic.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Well....if that's how you choose to look at things, than everyone will end up being a nagative statistic. Whether your are from the slums or projects? Negative because of the rep. Upper class? Negative, because you are privaledged. You choose how you look at yourself. Not anyone else. Not any statistic.