Abstract
When students ask me how and why I became a
sociologist, the question always forces me to pause and reflect. The pause and
reflection may surprise many students, since my road to sociology was a zig zag
road with many unforeseen detours and dead-ends. As a pre-teen, I was a tinker
and fancied myself a fixer and technician. Taking apart working clocks and
radios was a challenge I could not resist, and being punished for such
inquisitiveness, since I usually did not have he skills for making the once
working items work again, did not cause me to desist in such behavior. It was
about this time when I decided that I wanted to become a physician. Looking
back, I had a vague recollection of our family doctor, Dr. Hoffman, once
telling me that I had a technical mind and might become a physician. In my
youth enthusiasm I might have thought he said should, rather than might. In any
case, the thought of becoming a physician stuck in my mind even as would
venture into other areas of interest, the chief of these being music.
