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

Topic #1: Language and Displacement

Question: How has the displacement with the language barrier affected bilingual students when they are learning a popular language, for example english, as a second language?

Topic #2: Siblings and psychological displacement

Question: Do all siblings experience displacement? If so, to what extent do they feel displaced and how are they affected by it?

Topic #3: Homelessness

Question: Is displacement a factor in homelessness? If so, how does it affect homeless people?

http://kissasian.com/Drama/Hayate-the-Combat-Butler/Episode-1?id=6767

Hayate the Combat Butler is a Taiwanese TV show that is about a protagonist, Hayate, who is broke and in debt because of the debt his parents accumulated while gambling (156.8 million yen or 1.4 million us dollars or 42.9 million New Taiwan Dollar). The big debt causes Hayate to start doing many part time jobs because he wants to help his parents by attempting to pay off their debt. When he runs out of time, to pay off the debt, he considers robbing a rich person, but instead decides to protect them when someone else tried to harm them. In return, the rich person gave him a job as a butler and pays off his debt. Hayate was in a new and unfamiliar place. He had to adjust from his daily civilian life to his new life as a butler for an extremely rich person. Hayate had to improve his house skills to get approval from his master and he had to improve his combat skills to get approval from other butlers. As a rookie butler, Hayate had trouble adjusting to a rich life that is worry-free of debt. When Hayate meets other rich people or other butlers, he try his best to hide the fact that he used to be broke and in debt because he does not want to harm his master’s reputation. This is similar to superman because Clark Kent also trys to hide his true identity from others.

Transitions were never a big deal for me during my early childhood, elementary and middle school, because I never really had to do them. In elementary school, most students stayed and went to the middle school that was a part of the elementary school. Even though this made my early childhood easy, it made the later part of it very difficult. First when I went to a newly built high school I felt very nervous because I didn’t know whether I would have a friendly high school experience or not. However, it was very difficult to join groups that had already been made, all the high school students came from the same middle school because the high school was an extension of the middle school. Then, I started complying to the bullies demands so that I wouldn’t have to deal with to much trouble. To them I probably looked indifferent or emotionless on the outside, however, on the inside I felt very afraid and ashamed of myself for giving in. There were times where I just wanted to give up and stop going to school because I was annoyed at the bullies and at myself. The workload and content of the classes weren’t difficult for me, so I was able to get by without putting in much effort. When I started to fight back, physically, I was proud of myself for standing up for myself. However, once the consequences came afterwards, suspension, I started getting furious and disappointed in myself for acting so quickly. My unassertiveness and low self esteem made it really difficult to ever feel “at home” in my high school, so I ended up feeling displace the whole four years.

Transition into college wasn’t as negative as my transition into high school. I felt nervous and still do feel nervous about being in another new environment. However, since it takes a very long time for me to get used to an environment, I don’t think I can ever belong to a place. Another reason why I feel displaced at college is because I feel pressure to perform as well as all the top students. It is difficult for me to do that because most of my life I was able to get by with little effort. I thought that college was only to require just a bit more effort than high school, but not to much, to do well. Having those bad expectations and hopes, did not benefit me. It is still very early to tell if I will feel displaced all the four years at this college, but I still think that every transition has some feeling of displacement behind it.

During the Art-A-Thon event, I decided to go to the sonnet workshop, held by Professor Laura Kolb,  because it fit perfectly in my schedule. If I’m honest, I went into the event with low expectations because I already had small ideas of what sonnets were, so I thought that the workshop was not going to be so interesting. However, to my surprise, the workshop helped me realize that I am naive for thinking that my “small ideas” were enough to help me fully understand a sonnet. I found this out when Prof. Kolb asked questions about the basics of sonnets , and I knew the answers to almost none of them.

Theres a lot of new information that I learned about, that I did not know about before. For example, I didn’t know that sonnets were usually about romance and that sonnet meant “small sound.” One of the most surprising facts was that Rhymes have genders in sonnets, feminine rhymes have 2 or more syllables and masculine rhymes have only 1 syllable, and that stressed and unstressed syllables play a huge part in how we read the sonnet out loud. Even though sonnets are riddles, where peoples identities are meant to be hidden and not found out, they should be experienced physically first before mentally. This meaning sonnets should be read out loud first, before being interpreted.

The actual sonnet that was reviewed by Prof. Kolb and the class was Shakespeare’s sonnet 20. At first I had no idea as to what the sonnet meant, but with Prof. Kolb’s guidance it slowly became clear what the sonnets meaning was. I thought that the sonnet was for a woman, with Shakespeare expressing his love for her. However, by the end of class it became clear that the sonnet was for a man and Shakespeare was expressing both his satisfaction and dissatisfaction with the person. Shakespeare loved how the man was very feminine, but hated how the man was a man so they couldn’t love each other. Shakespeare was upset that the man had male genitalia, so they could not properly love each other in those times. I was shocked by the meaning because at first glance, the sonnet did not seem like it was written for a man.

Overall my experience with the sonnet workshop was very positive, because I learned new things and had a great Professor who guided us along the way. The professors passionate and enthusiastic way of teaching, I believe, helped make the experience more enjoyable for me. Before the workshop, I would not have known that some sonnets can take over an hour to analyze and they can be extremely complex. I am grateful to Prof. Kolb for helping me gain new knowledge regarding sonnets.

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