Displacement in First Year of College

High school is a totally different environment from college. In high school, it was so easy to socialize and get away with trivial things such as being late to classes. College is all about studying and research; so, when I started my first semester in August I felt like I didn’t belong here. I still had my high school mentality of being relaxed, so when I encounter all the research papers and homework I couldn’t complete it on time. During my first semester, I noticed that I was surrounded by students who wore business attire to school, I felt out of place because I was wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt almost every day to class. In college, students seemed as if they have their future already planned; I was the only person who was still exploring career paths. My second semester is coming to end, and I haven’t decided on a major yet. This semester has taught me that college is all about experiencing new things, and that I have to ignore my surroundings in order not feel displaced.

In response to Trump’s immigration policy, many immigrant families began to fear for the worst. Immigrant families such as my own began to make arrangements in case one or both of my parents were to be taken by ICE. My family even before Trump’s immigration policy feared of being deported, but now the immigration policy has made them fear even more. At first, they were scared of going outside or even ride the subway as a rumor spread that ICE was around the subway station. This doesn’t only happen to my family, but many others around in the United States. Now they can’t even ask for help or go to court without fearing for ICE agents. ICE agents are now taking drastic measures such as appearing in courthouses with or without their uniforms catching the person by surprise.

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-ice-courthouse-arrests-20170315-story.html

Yesterday the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals heard the arguments for and against the Travel Ban. In these arguments, the executive order against Japanese American during WWII was mentioned. For this blog I want to talk about the displacement that Japanese Americans went through.  About 110,000 Japanese Americans were displaced in this time period. They were forced to move to the western side of America, leaving behind their homes and friends. During WWII, Japanese were separated from the rest of society and were forced to live in interment  camps.  Additionally only American-born Japanese were allowed to hold positions of authority causing conflict between the Japanese.  The Japanese culture involves a lot of pride. When the children of Japanese Americans held positions of authority, their parents were deprived from respect. As a result of this displacement in roles 5,589 American born Japanese renounced their American citizenship.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/appeals-court-weigh-trumps-revised-travel-ban-47412785

http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/japanese-american-relocation

I recently finished a book called Everything Everything by Nicola Yoon. This book is basically about a young girl, Madeline,  who has been completely separated from the world due to a sickness called SCDI. This enables her from stepping out of her home, because she is in other terms allergic to everything. Inside her house, her room walls are painted white to avoid any sort of trigger, and her house has a decontamination device that keeps the air clean. Her mother is her personal doctor, even though she also works in the hospital. Throughout the book we see her normal life, which included lots of time with her mom, and a lot of reading. However, a new neighbor moves and she falls in love with him. She is then open to the curiosity of wanting to explore the world. From then on, she breaks her mom’s rule of leaving her house for her own safety and takes a voyage to Hawaii. She was amazed by how the world appeared. Because she has never been out of her household, she did not have an idea of how people were, or how certain foods taste like. She is abruptly encountered by the world, and she somewhat tries to assimilate. Maddy now starts to buy her own clothing in real stores, and she is open to tasting foods she never had before. However she struggles looking for the best best, in terms of clothes and purchases a small bathing suit.

Throughout her journey, she gets sick and is hospitalized. There she finds that in fact she was not sick with SCDI, and that her mother made it up to keep her inside of her house and away from the world. Even though it seemed right to her mom after her son and her husband died, Madeline was completely wrecked by that. After assimilating to not being outside, she had discovered that in fact she was isolated by force and had to now assimilate to a world she could’ve been part of. Not only that, but because she had 18 years of her life away from any sort of bacteria, her immune system was weak and very much like an infant’s. Therefore, she again had to decrease her frequent visits outside. In other terms, she was displaced many different times for various different reasons.

Last year when I graduated from high school, it was a big realization that now the path I am going down is towards my future career. The question was what occupation did I want to succeed in? I had no idea what major or career path I wanted; it was irritating because most of my friends had a set plan already. Although I was told a lot that that decision takes time, I was being obnoxious and wanted a plan now. I was feeling displaced because I felt like I was the only one who did not know what to do with her life. I can remember the conversations with my friends where they would talk about their future jobs and salary. It was hard to talk about with anyone because my family would say “Follow your heart. It is what you decide.” The counselors at my high school were not very helpful to be honest. During the SEEK Summer Experience, I was slowly able to understand and explore the different majors for each career. Due to my first semester, I was still undecided for Business. I was stuck between International Business and Finance. Honesty since I was lost from the start for my future, I discovered that if you’re undecided to just go to the Business world which is why I picked Baruch College. By the end of my first semester, I was set on International Business. During my second semester, I realized that I don’t like business at all. The major was not for me; it bored me if I am being honest. What I did not realized what that I had Biology & Psychology always in the back of my mind. Now, I switched majors to biology and will be having related classes for the fall. The feeling of displacement returns because now I am a STEM major in a Business school. It is not where I belong, so if I decide to continue on in STEM I am considering to transfer schools where Biology is more popular and focused on major in that school. A big help to deciding my major goes to my present counselor, Monika. She gives the best advice and is just great.

In my first year of college, I experienced displacement as I was soon going to college. Not only was I going to a new school, but I was also going to move to a new neighborhood as well as apartment. Moving from my calm neighborhood in the Bronx to the noisy streets of East Harlem. I had to make new friends and start everything all over again. I also had to get used to my aunt’s rules since it was her home I was staying at. At first, everything was fine until I noticed the differences in her family and mine. Almost every day, I would get into an argument with my cousin over who would wash dishes and clean the room. Having to deal with passive aggressive comments from my cousins and aunt as well as invasion of personal space made me feel displaced. I felt as if I were a disturbance in their daily lives. There were times where I just wanted to go back to my apartment in the Bronx in the comfort of my own house and family. As for school, I felt displaced at first because I was used to my usual routine of high school and used to being surrounded by my friends. My schedule was different and the rules of the school itself were different. It was a good type of different which made the entire process of assimilation easy. This is an example of displacement because I had to move from my old house to a new one and get used to my aunt’s house rules which were different from my own house rules. As well as get used to college life.

In 2007 I visited my homeland country Mali for the first time with my family .Mali is located in West Africa and the city that I am from is known as Bamako.As soon I arrived in Mali I immediately felt displaced because the scenery was so different from New York City,where I came from.The first thing I did when I saw all these people who seemed to know who I am was cry. I wanted to go back home to a place I was comfortable .As days went on I had to adjust to the Mali lifestyle .In Mali there is a big families per household so there was about 20 people living in a fairly large house.Since it is okay in Africa to have multiple wives I was confused when I had to call two different women grandma and had to know the difference between my first and second aunts and uncles . This was not easy but as time passed I got use to it .As for the food in Mali ,about 6-7 people eat together in one bowl.I was so shocked that this was happening and could not adjust to this displacement so I was served with my bowl and a utensil since they ate everything with their hands.During my stay I tried to fit in with the lifestyle of my cousins like playing games outside such as jump rope since I am familiar with that and I learned some games that I did not know about.Considering I was young when I attended Mali I do believe it was harder to adjust to their lifestyle .The next time I visit Mali God willing I think I will not have the feeling of being displaced as much because now I am more familiar and understanding of my culture.

In my early childhood, when I was around 6, I experienced an event that can be considered a displacement. Growing up, most of my mom’s side of the family lived around our neighborhood. Therefore, we spent most of our time together. In addition, my mom side of the family is very light in skin color and they inherited dirty blonde hair. Because i was the only one form that side of the family to have darker skin complexion, I was often bullied and placed aside. They often mimic the way I would talk, because I became very shy. This essentially  triggered me to act a certain way in order to get their attention. For example, I started to dress very formal and preppy all the time, because thats the way I saw their lighter complexion friends dressed. I adopted their mannerisms, for example being completely self cautious about everything I did.

In other words I wanted their approval. I had to assimilate to them. However, I still stood out because of my appearance. After a while, as we grew older my cousins began to see that I had the talent of singing. That helped me tremendously because for once they started to see that being different was alright after all. They began to want to hear me sing, and they didn’t push me aside anymore because I looked different.

This is a displacement of appearance. Because I looked different I stood out. People noticed and some would judge because of it. However, my talent is what essentially gave a good impact towards our relationship, and it triggered us to become closer.

My topics are :

Amish Culture:

How is Amish culture affecting the people around them, and how is it affecting them?

Orphanage:

What is the role of orphanages in poor countries, and how are they aiding the child’s development?

Adoption:

To what extent are adopted children expose to their real biological ties?

I came across this article because the title “UNHCR says death risk from starvation in Horn of Africa, Yemen, Nigeria growing, displacement already rising” made me curious as to whether the article had statistics to back up the title. Since displacement rates are rising, the UNHCR were forced to update their displacement estimates. They stated “in Uganda we are revising planning from 300,000 displaced to 400,000. ” At first I thought 100,000 was not a big increase, but after I imagined seeing 100,000 people in person, I changed my mind. I realized that 100,000 was a bigger increase than I had anticipated. This huge increase was only for Uganda, the numbers would increase as the displaced amount are counted for more countries. Another statement that they made, “internal displacement dynamics are shifting too. Of the half a million people displaced since November, 278,000 were displaced in the first quarter of 2017.” Over 50% of a half a million people were displaced so far in 2017. My naive self was only thinking about displacement in the United States, so I forgot about the fact that displacement occurs all around the world. The rates are extremely high and they seem to be getting higher.

http://www.unhcr.org/news/briefing/2017/4/58ec9d464/unhcr-says-death-risk-starvation-horn-africa-yemen-nigeria-growing-displacement.html