Question

For Sociology:

C. Wright Mills defined the sociological imagination as the capacity for individuals to understand the relationship between their individual lives and the broad social forces that influence them. In other words, the sociological imagination helps people link their own individual biographies to the broader forces of social life: "Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both" (Mills 1959).

In this assignment, you will use this sociological imagination to analyze a situation that happened in your life and has had a huge impact on you.

Answer 1

• An event that happened in my life when I finished college and started to look for a job.I got the offer pretty quick but didnt take it up because of poor salary and incentives thinking I will find another good one since this is just the beginning but for four years after that I suffered unemployment which lead me to feeling depressed.I was burdened with meeting my expenses and help my parent pay loan but I couldnt do anything for them or for myself. I tried very hard to find a job but nothing happened.This obviously lead to me chronic depression and feeling worthless all the time and kept blaming myself for being not capable enough to do anything in life,comparing myself to others and seeing their achievements made me even more frustrated with myself and even thought of ending my life. Now,from a sociological imagination perspective, then you would see that the larger forces such as, economic meltdown, unemployment, etc., had a direct impact on my life.
• One could have blamed the my personal character if very few people went through the similar situation. But when there is a significant number of youth facing the same problem, then it becomes a social or public problem where government policies about employment and banking needs to be looked at.
• But eventually after a long wait I did find a good job and I am very satisfied with it now but there are still many people who are struggling with unemployment so it wasnt just me who was going through it. This event made me realise the importance of my life and how one should never give up in life no matter what.Life is all about fighting the obstacles,overcoming it and succeeding.