Discussion Questions
I once experienced role conflict when I once had to accompany my younger cousin’s class on a field trip. I knew him personally but my role on the day was as a supervising adult and so I had to take on a responsible and mature mantle to stop my cousin and his friends doing silly things and misbehaving. I felt awkward and told my cousin that on the day, as long as he and his friends didn’t misbehave then we could have fun together, to reduce the strain. Another instance was in a job I had where we also saw each other socially – my boss would be buying me a drink one moment and then be telling me off in the next. I ended up changing jobs for a less sociable one and still see my friends from my old job.
I experienced role conflict once, in a class, I repeatedly raised my hand to answer and ask questions and later overheard some of my peers saying that I was a teacher’s pet and so I lost confidence and didn’t want to lose favour with my friends but also didn’t want to fall behind in class – it was an awkward situation but I chose to just reduce my input in class so that I hit a happy balance between the two. Another instance of this was when I did some teaching work experience and I had told a girl that she would have a detention and then their usual teacher said she didn’t have to: I felt undermined but spoke up and said what the girl had done and the teacher agreed and the girl had a detention.
My taste in music is extremely eclectic but is probably best described as being ‘alternative’ which is generally a bit different from that of my friends, parents and other relatives. Growing up, my older cousins often listened to heavy metal and rock music and as I hit the age of 12 and my early teens, I began to listen to some similar things. Initially, I only ever listened to rock and then began to branch out into listening to classic rock, punk, alternative and indie and as I grew older, I began to listen to some folk, blues, jazz, classical, trance, dance, trip-hop and drum ‘n’ bass: I quickly realised that I’ll happily listen to most things as long as it has some substance.
The interesting thing is that because I like a lot of ‘older’ music too, I invariably share a very similar musical taste with my father – my mother, less so but my father and I like a lot of the same bands – Queen, Roxy Music, Dire Straits to name but a few. My grandparents, however, being that much older again, always listened to artists such as Elvis Presley, Pat Boone, Glenn Miller and Acker Bilk – they generally preferred more instrumentally-driven music with gentle, inoffensive lyrics. I sometimes feel like I’m ahead of my friends in terms of musical taste somewhat; when I said I liked the Foo Fighters at age 12, they all mocked me and then a load of them went to see them live a few weeks ago. I think I’m more broad minded than my friends and as such, I listen to a far wider spectrum of music than them.
References
Henslin, J. (2011). Essentials of Sociology: a down to Earth approach 9th Ed. New York: Pearson Education.
