 What is sociology? According to the American Sociological Association, sociology is the study of society, of people's behaviors and their interactions in groups, and the study of social institutions such as family, education, and economics. A group could be as small as two people or a million. Sociology teaches us that the individual and society have a dynamic relationship. While institutions impact the individual, people impact society by their choices and the way they live their lives. Sociology is about you. You interacting with other people, those people interacting with you, and about all of you interacting with society. Sociologists believe that we don't live in a bubble where we spontaneously learn how to operate in this world. People and social institutions impact our future choices and life chances such as whether or not we get into the college of our choice or whether we even go to college at all. To understand this, let's talk about George and Sarah. George is a 17-year-old junior with a 4.0 GPA who participates in basketball and the marching band. He plans on attending college right after graduation and is looking forward to college life. This is Sarah. Just like George, she is a 17-year-old junior with a 4.0 GPA at a different high school in a neighboring town and participates in soccer and her school's volunteer club. She is also looking forward to going to college. Sound pretty similar, right? Well, George ends up going to college right after high school while Sarah ends up waiting a few years and then quits after an unsuccessful semester. If we took this at face value, we could say that George going to college and Sarah quitting is all about their own personal choices. Sociology digs deeper to understand why George and Sarah have different experiences and looks for social factors that influence their outcomes. If we look at it this way, we see that both George's parents were college graduates and encouraged George to do the same. They also started a college savings plan for George when he was born that made it easier to pay for college. Sarah's parents never attended college and it was rarely discussed in the home. They never saved for her college education. George attended a school that had the latest technology and highly qualified teachers. Sarah's schools struggled to provide updated computers and teachers were ill-prepared. What about George and Sarah as they continue on in life? Will they get married? Will they have kids? All of these choices are influenced by society. Once we understand society at this level, we can begin to explore other cool things such as how college attendance rates compare between genders or socioeconomic groups or how college attendance rates vary from one country to the next. So why learn sociology? The truth is, we live and breathe it every day. We collectively decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You might be surprised at all the different ways sociology shows up. Every time you see a news report claiming a certain number of people experience crime, wealth, poverty, or medical disease, it's most likely a sociological study. And whenever you attend a football game and cheer along with a crowd, you are engaged in sociology. Or whenever you need to look up how many people participate in social media and why, you're curious about sociology. And if anything, you'll learn about a lot of cool guys that started and developed the field of sociology, like this guy, and this guy, and this guy, and this guy. So in addition to understanding the discipline, you'll get to know some pretty amazing people and why we do what we do.