1. For prompt 2, I can talk about the time I was raped and how it made me feel displaced emotionally.
2.  For prompt 3, I can talk about my grandparents house in Florida
3. For Prompt 3, I can talk about St. Thomas as being basically my second home.

1. My family and I moved to the United States in the hope of a better life while being displaced from my homeland and the nurture of my own culture.
2. A place of great significance for me is where I was born in.
3. Having to learn a language is a barrier to me. After coming to the USA, I faced difficulties communicating with others and I still do.

1. The numerous memories that flow through my head when I see my high school.
2. Feeling of displacement in my family and with family friends due to being unable to roll my R’s and communicate clearly.
3. The emotional backlash when my dog suffered from dog paralysis.

1. Moving back to New York City and having to adapt and adjust to this new environment
2. Visiting the neighborhood that I use to live in when I was a childhood.
3. Be able to speak two languages, and what do they mean to me.

1. An experience in which my family was displaced was when we moved to America.
2. For the third prompt, I want to write about my hometown and how it helped raise me.
3. For language and family, I thought of writing about how being trilingual affects my daily life.

1. For the first prompt, I could talk about when I moved to the United States 5 years ago. I could talk about how excited I was to move to a new place where I can meet new people and see new things. Back then I really didn’t think about the challenge I would face here. This displacement changed a lot in me and made me who I am today.
2. For the second prompt, I thought of when I left my old house and moved to another one. I have no emotional connection with my new house whatsoever. I remember when we had to go to Egypt to move our stuff to the new house, it the worst feeling. Now I can’t even go back to my old house because it was gentrified.
3. For the fourth prompt, I could talk about how language plays an important role in my life. When I speak a whole conversation in one language whether Arabic or English I feel like part of me is missing. I like to speak a mix of the two languages, but that could be hard sometimes when I speak with someone who only speaks one of the languages.

1) My first idea for my personal narrative is to talk about how my room has become a very spiritual place for me and how when I step through that door, it feels like I’m going through a portal that transports me to all the places that are home for me. Much like Aciman, I relate to multiple places feeling like home and my room allows me to feel put all the puzzle pieces together.

2) My second idea is to discuss how when I went to San Juan Del Sur in Nicaragua, I felt most at home. Although I haven’t lived there my whole life like I have in my little home town on Long Island, I was happy in the purest form there. I found myself in a very weird way and found what I valued more than ever. It’s a very special place for me and when I’m away from it, I often feel displaced but I have to find a way to incorporate it to my actual home.

3) My last idea is to write about my experience in Rize, Turkey, seeing my father the first time in 6 years.  I felt so extremely displaced and detached from my culture. It was a quite sad experience and all I did was long for home.

1. When I was six, I immigrated to United States from a small city in Brazil. I felt displaced living in an entirely new environment and culture.
2. I lived in the Bronx for most of my childhood. After moving to Brooklyn, I had to transfer school and adapt to a new place.
3.  A few years ago, I went to Covina, California during the Summer. The palm trees, the environment, and the tropical weather reminded me of my hometown in Brazil.

1. Most of my childhood years were spent here in NYC. However, when I was 8 my family and I moved to England for about a year. We definitely experienced displacement, and preferred living in NYC.
2. In high school, all I seriously focused on was sports. I dedicated a lot of time to practice and games and gave it my all. However, in my senior year I tore my ACL and required a surgery that took away my ability to walk for about 2 months. This is an example of leave taking, because I had to say goodbye and turn my back on the single that I cared the most about in high school.
3. Not to far away from my house, there is a park that I spent much of my childhood in. The park is named after the famous baseball player, Phil “Scooter” Rizzuto, however nobody calls it Phil “Scooter” Rizzuto Park. Everyone refers to it as smokey park. All the summer I’ve spent at that park, on the swings, in the playground, on the grass field, and playing basketball are very special to me. I am fond of those happy childhood memories, and smokey park has always been a place of joy for me.

Everybody can have their own interpretation and definition of the word “displacement”. Displacement can have an array of meanings depending on who is speaking on the subject. For me, displacement means a sense of not belonging or fitting in. It’s to not be comfortable with being uncomfortable. However, displacement is an opportunity to learn about yourself, and your peers. I experienced displacement in the beginning of my college career. High school was a breeze for me, I always gave half my effort and always managed to get by. I always waited until the last minute to do an assignment, and everything was all fun and games to me. Ultimately, I wasn’t wholeheartedly committed to learning and growing as a person.

I had very little time to transition from high school to college because I took summer courses. In the end of June, when I graduated from high school, I had just 3 weeks to shift my mentality and work ethic. However, I wasn’t aware that college was nothing like high school. I soon began to realize how committed every college student was to his/her classes. I knew in college giving half an effort would not get me through like it did in high school. More importantly, I learned that college isn’t about “getting through”. College is about investing in yourself, and learning about yourself as you learn about the world around you. I want the most I can get out of college.

The first month of college was hard on me. I was not used to being so independent, and college helped me realize how dependent I actually was. My biggest issue was planning and time management. I always forgot about assignments that were due because of poor planning. I tried cramming through work because I was running out of time but that wasn’t helping much. I learned I needed to look out for myself, and that the first major learning experience at college is to be independent and organized. I invested in a daily planner, I started setting alarms for everything and started working on assignment long before the deadline. It took me a while but I learned that college is the best facilitator for personal growth and I dedicated myself to getting the most out of college.

Stripping “displacement” of its negative connotation can make a world of a difference. Displacement doesn’t have to be unfortunate, it is stressful and exasperating, however it’s a process. The same way college is a process. I say let’s trust the process and learn to be comfortable with being uncomfortable, so displacement can shape us into the successful people we all want to be.