Whats Normal Anyways

There are millions of new genres, technologies, and innovative

thoughts being created everyday. However, as an observing college student,
it has come to my attention that the originality that every person once
seemed to have is now disappearing. It seems that almost every other day
there is a new trend or fab that people in my age group and older and some
older groups become compelled to take part in. But for what reasons do we
have to follow others so much that we lose our own uniqueness?
Psychologists and sociologist have spent decades studying human behavior
to determine that these trends that we follow are called social norms.
The term social norm refers to a rule in society that everyone follows
to avoid ridicule. These rules are typically unspoken mutual agreements and
arent written down . But when did we start abiding by norms? According to
the fourteenth volume of the Current Direction in Psychological Science
social norms go as far back as our hunter-gatherer days.(Kameda, T, Where Do
Social..) Hunters wouldnt offer meat that they had scavenged to non-family
members. It was normal for the time since meat was such a rarity; and while
fruits and vegetables where relatively stable, hunters had only around a forty
percent chance of bringing home meat.
Of course these arent the same norms that we deal with today,
considering times have changed drastically since our hunting for survival

days. We now focus on abnormal actions of a smaller group of people who

break the trends and leave the people following the our social rules alone.
You may be wondering why we pay more attention to a smaller portion of the
population? The answer is really within the question. Why would we? Normal
is not entertaining, or something to talk about. However, we need rule
followers to keep the world turning. Without these law abiding citizens we
wouldnt have some of the fundamental utilities that we rely on. For
example, we need cops to follow the rules of an officer in order to keep
criminals off our streets. In return, we as citizens are expected to follow the
law so that we are not seen as outcasts or criminals.
To narrow the reality of social norms in a college students life a
psychology class from Brigham Young University put together a blog.
(Brigham, Archive) Students posted in this blog with stories where they
went against a social norm. As I read through their posts it dawned on me
how little changes in certain actions can stand out as a break in a social
norm. An example that relates closely to my personal life at the gym comes
from a female blogger named Tatianna Herman. While at the gym you will
notice how everyone usually wears the same style of clothes, athletic and
non-restricting. Tatianna decided to wear Sunday clothes instead and ended
up receiving more attention than usual. Another student, Tianna Freeman,
explained the rules of sidewalks, discussing how she broke the rules by
walking on the opposite side. Now obviously these two students didnt reap

total chaos with their petty disobedience, but their minor actions did draw
attention from others and could have possibly led to a dispute.
While some social norms are communal, I feel that a lot of social norms
are age oriented. Younger generations are not expected to act in the same
way as someone who is twenty years older. So when it comes to the article
on CNNs website by Kelly Wallace Binge Drinking 101: Learning to curb the
college trend I think that she has a biased perspective on college drinking.
(Wallace, Learning to..) Granted, underage drinking does cause problems
with human development and it has been known to ruin a few students lives,
but its almost a social norm for college students to drink and party. Its what
most students look forward to the most, because once they graduate and
start their career they wont have much time to go out and party. Reading
this article as a college student is somewhat enraging since we are being
told to do something that we know previous generations have been doing
since the beginning. I get that school is a place for learning, but there needs
to be time for fun and adventure while were young. I think if Mrs. Wallace
would have written an article on how to keep students safer while drinking, it
would have left me with a better impression.
A great advocate for my theories on social norms is Christopher
McCandless. Chris was a college graduate that dropped everything to go find
himself in the wild. Jon Krakauer wrote a novel on McCandlesss life which
gave insight into the struggles and decisions that McCandless had to live

through up until he died on the Alaskan frontier. (Krakauer, Into the Wild)
Through out this journey Chris broke many social norms, some big and some
small. What stuck out to me in his venture to find himself was how accepted
he was with the new people he encountered, even though he went against
what I thought was normal, I expected him to be shunned by the people that
he met. However, as I read further into his story I realized that there were
many others like him disobeying social norms.
Seeing Christopher McCandless stand-out and do the unexpected gave
me a new insight on how someone should live their life. While it may not be
a very common trend for college graduates to drop out of society like Chris, I
do think that we need to break the guidelines that are set in place by our
peers. It seems as if we are letting society shape us when in reality we need
to be shaping society. Im not implying that everyone should reap havoc to
the world and change our entire way of life. But in this day in time change is
what we need since there is only finite amount of time given for all things,
including social norms.