We are constantly pressured to conform to the 'norm' of life. But can anyone really define what the 'norm' is? In my interpersonal comm class we were discussing social norms. Dr. North said that she makes her nonverbal comm class violate social norms for an experiment. Maybe some of you have even taken the class...
Anyway, her description made me want to run off of campus, into civilization, and test people's reactions to social norm violations. Then I realized that I actually participated in a small violation of the norm earlier this week on campus.
Some friends and I attend a small group that is linked to northern christian fellowship. We decided to use our meeting time primarily for service. We're planning to rake leaves, serve at soup kitchens, visit nursing homes, trick-or-treat with kids in the hospital...just normal service activities to bring us together with people that we love. Anyway, last week we didn't have anything set up to do so we spontaneously came up with the brilliant idea to walk through lima complex and ask people if they had trash we could take out for them. You should've seen some of the crazy looks we got. It was worth it just for that fact.
A lot of people were really nice and were willing to give us their full trashbags, but it wasn't without an initial awkward look at our offer. Roberts hall was the best though. Most guys jumped on our offer right away. One guy asked if we lost a dare. Most others just asked why. We didn't really have a good answer, basically just b/c we felt like it.
So, to tie this into the social norm situation, I feel like we violated a little bit of the norm with our random door knocking/trash taking. People don't normally come to your dorm door and ask to take your garbage with a smile on their face. Oh well, I do. If not just to see your reaction...
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