Nationwide, the average teenager text messages, surfs the Net, plays video games, watches TV, spends hours each day with friends, and works at least part-time. They haven’t often been challenged enough in high school to make the necessary adjustments required to succeed in college. Nationwide, students come to college as freshmen who are often ill-prepared to understand the rigors of college life. These pertain to broader matters of organization and process, which are rooted in society rather than in the individual. Larger social or public issues are those that lie beyond one’s personal control and the range of one’s inner life. However, when 50% of all college students in the United States never graduate, we label it as a larger social issue. A college student who parties 4 nights out of 7, who rarely attends class, and who never does his homework has a personal trouble that interferes with his odds of success in college. We have a degree of influence on the outcome of matters within this personal level. Mills identified that we function in our personal lives as actors and actresses who make choices about our friends, family, groups, work, school, and other issues within our control. ![]() Personal troubles are private problems experienced within the character of the individual and the range of their immediate relation to others. In other words, this mindset provides the ability for individuals to realize the relationship between their personal experiences and the larger society in which they live their lives. Mills’ sociological imagination allows individuals to see the relationships between events in their personal lives (biography), and events in their society (history). Mills identified “troubles” (personal challenges) and “issues” (larger social challenges), also known as biography, and history, respectively. The sociological imagination is making the connection between personal challenges and larger social issues. Mills stated: “Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both”. Mills was a contemporary sociologist who brought tremendous insight into the daily lives of society’s members. ![]() Wright Mills (1916-1962) provides a framework for understanding our social world that far surpasses any common sense notion we might derive from our limited social experiences. The sociological imagination, a concept established by C. In this section, you’ll learn to think like a sociologist. Many people believe they understand the world and the events taking place within it, even though they have not actually engaged in a systematic attempt to understanding the social world, as sociologists do. Figure 1. The sociological imagination enables you to look at your life and your own personal issues and relate them to other people, history, or societal structures.
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