Zachary Noack, The Sociological Imagination Reflection Assignment, 1/30/2022

When thinking about an issue I am facing caused by larger forces, there is a major one that

immediately came to mind. I’m guessing a few other students will write about this and that is

the current situation with online schooling at MiraCosta. There are several factors we face that

caused this to happen and similar circumstances in other areas have a completely different

reaction.

I want to start with how this change has affected me then how this change was brought about

by outside forces. I have been homeschooled my whole life and have only done online classes

at MiraCosta. I was excited to finally get a few classes in person. However, the college decided

that, with how the world was going, classes would be moved back inside. This was very

disappointing for me since not only was I looking forward to school, but I also had to get

vaccinated for this semester which I only did because of school. Now while I like online classes,

the ones I was going to have in-person were ones that needed to be taught in person. They

were recording and live sound mixing classes. In the recording class, we are supposed to all

learn together at the board on equipment we could only dream of all owning at home. We are

supposed to record together as well as mix. Now, we can only mix songs sent to us and don’t

get any hands-on experience till part-way through the semester. (Assuming they allow us back

by then) As for the live sound class, it was hard enough last semester, but this is even worse.

This spring, we were supposed to start using the system at the school and even start mixing

bands and each other. While both my professors do a great job transitioning to online, I still feel

I am missing some of the stuff I would learn.

Now, this is how going online affected me personally but what led to this decision? What social

factors led to this? In late 2021, Covid seemed to be lightening up. Cases started to flatten out
Zachary Noack, The Sociological Imagination Reflection Assignment, 1/30/2022

and fewer people were getting extremely sick. However, as the Delta case emerged, more and

more people got sick. The more people that got sick, the more people ended up in the hospital

and dying. Delta seemed to spread extremely quickly especially among groups and masks didn’t

do much to stop it. People could get the vaccine, but it really does nothing to stop you from

getting sick. Triple vaxed people still get sick. The vaccine did help lower symptoms to the point

where many people that got Delta either didn’t even know they had it, or their symptoms were

very mild. Still, the college decided to stay remote until this wave passes over.

Even when we do go back, we must wear masks all the time. This is something decided at the

state level and, while most masks don’t do much to stop Covid, our state still sees it beneficial

to mandate them. This is another example of something that affects me that I don’t really have

control over.

I want to go even deeper for a second and show how the virus went even further to make

people decide to shut down schools. Delta is the fastest spreading variant of Covid. At the same

time, it is also the least severe with most people getting only a mild cold. However, the hospital

and death rates continued to skyrocket even though it was statistically less severe. This was

because such a large number of people were getting sick. So, while the number of deaths per

day doubled during Delta than in the previous months, the number of cases per day rosy by

over 25 times. While I can’t be sure, I wonder if these numbers and ratios would have anything

to do with the decision to cancel in-person class.

In conclusion, these are probably the biggest things that have affected my life that had to do

with outside forces. It is also very interesting to me that if I were to live in other states like
Zachary Noack, The Sociological Imagination Reflection Assignment, 1/30/2022

Florida, I would see a similar sickness/death rate as we do in California however, those social

forces there decided to have a different outcome than they do here, often with not much

disadvantage and even sometimes an advantage. This paper has gotten me really excited for

this semester. I have rarely thought about how each action the government, society, and nature

takes affects me. It reminds me of the Butterfly Effect which states that a butterfly creating a

breeze with its wings in America can trigger a typhoon in Malaysia. I can’t wait to see how

actions have a similar effect on my life.

*All Covid info and stats were obtained from the California Covid website:

https://covid19.ca.gov/state-dashboard/#ethnicity-gender-age