Personal Narrative: Breaking A Social Norm

As I was preparing to come to Saint Mary’s, I told myself that I would do what it takes to stop being shy and to get out of my comfort zone. This new music course has offered me the opportunity I have been waiting for. The group I chose to be apart of was the one that was to break a social norm. The social norm our group chose to break was the quietness of the peaceful Cushwa-Leighton Library. The plan was to dance to “La Macarena,” “Cupid Shuffle,” along with other lined dances. When we were discussing our plan as a group I came up with two hypotheses. The first one was that if we played music in the library, then the students would be shocked because libraries are supposed to be quiet zones. My other hypothesis was that even though the students would be shocked to hear music in the library, they would enjoy the distraction, because it is happy music that we would play. At the moment of the experiment, our group did not communicate well. Therefore, not everyone danced to the songs, nor did we play more songs other than “La Macarena”. Since Melissa and I did not believe we had enough results to write the essay, we decided to follow up in the Student Center. We walked in separately to the library, then spread out in the tables to the right facing the front desk. We had three people recording from different angles. When the music …show more content…
Most of the students were really focused on their work. I felt bad for distracting them, even if it was only for three minutes. But the flash mob at the Student Center was actually fun. What we did in the Student Center was more to reinforce a social norm. It is more acceptable to play music there, since there are students who hang out and relax with friends after class. There were no negative reactions in this experiment. I realize that reinforcing social norms is what I like to do best. Breaking social norms makes me uncomfortable, and can sometimes be a negative

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