#1 Immigrant Neighborhoods in NYC
How do immigrant neighborhoods come about and how do they settle there? How do they fit into their society? Immigrant students at school? Adults in the workforce?

#2 Adoption
How do adopted kids feel as they figure out they are adopted? How do they fit into their families? In what way do their displacement affect them growing up?

#3 Gentrification
Why is gentrification occurring in NYC? Where is it occurring? How do people who move into these incoming neighborhoods adjust to the culture? How does it affect those in the neighborhood?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcqNOzfHCvs

In the show, Shameless created by Paul Abbott, one of the main character’s Lip was uninterested in attending college after finishing high school. Lip lived on the South Side of Chicago which was one of the toughest neighborhoods in the country. However, despite those woes, he earned a 4.6 GPA throughout high school and even went as far as offering students to take their SATs as a source of income. Lip’s girlfriend, Mandy saw his potential and applied him to colleges throughout the country without him knowing. However, when he started to receive college acceptance letters, he was angry and upset at her. A man from MIT showed up in front of his door step to interview him. Initially, Lip tried blowing him off, but then the man said that he wouldn’t have made it anyway. Consequently, Lip proved him wrong after writing an incredible essay in front of the man and a few months later was accepted to MIT.  In his first party at MIT, he tried to pick up a girl similar to the way he did back in the South Side, but got flipped off. After having a rough time adjusting to MIT, Lip thought of calling college a quits and just living content with the lifestyle everyone in his neighborhood lived. His friend was disappointed in his left turn decision and tried to snap him out of it. I see Lip’s displacement at MIT conform to the models we saw in class because he feels like the “fish out of water” at MIT as he doesn’t know how to interact with people outside of the South Side and isn’t familiar with people who doesn’t deal with the same issues he deals with at home.

This is a photograph of a five-year-old boy who survived an airstrike in Aleppo, Syria. He was buried alive and pulled out what was left of his home. He was then left in the back of an ambulance, bloody and confused about what was going on. His name is Omar Daqneesh and as you analyze this video of him after being rescued(Boy in Ambulance Rescue), you will notice how calm and lost he is during the situation and it will just make you sad. This five-year-old boy has nothing to do with the Syrian Civil War, but has to deal with the daily destruction, bombings, and terror that goes on in his country. His family is all scrambled under a home that was bombed and everything around him is a disaster. A war that he has no part in, but is being victimized. His facial expressions and silence just say it all. You cannot help, but think of things that were possibly going through his head.
“Where are my parents?”
“Where are my siblings?”
“What exactly happened?”
“What happened to our home?”…
Omar along with tons of other innocent children and innocent families are displaced and helpless. They are forced to reckon with the current situations of their countries until matters get better. It just makes me realize how fortunate and lucky we all are with our living standards in America. While we are all here continuing to pursue our dreams and receive an education, Omar along with so many innocents are fighting to survive.

I think I might’ve had the worst transition from high school to college. My first semester at Baruch was definitely rough, but definitely something I learned from. When I began the semester I thought of it as a brand new and fresh start to the next chapter of my life. I wanted to start everything off on the right foot and I actually thought I was. I started to arrive at classes on time, taking advantage of a daily planner and simply began doing things I have never done before which also includes studying. Well at least I thought it was studying, it was more like read and forget, or take notes and never revise. To be quite honest, I actually didn’t know how to study, it was a skill I developed and learned how to do over the course of the semester.

I thought I was starting the semester strong and did really well, but in reality, I had a very slow start to the semester. I did poorly in my first four exams; four exams I thought I studied enough to do well in. It was rocky. I dropped a class because I didn’t have a chance of doing landing a good grade in it. I stuck by another class and ended up finishing the class on a strong note. I took advantage of having no homework and homework that was due at the end of the semester. I didn’t start my MathLab assignments until the last three weeks of the semester, and I got lucky to finish 98% of the homework assignments.

Even though I had a challenging start at Baruch, I think I’ve grown as a student and person in the past semester. The library and basketball court became my home. I started to take advantage of my learning and networking opportunities. I am happy to say that I am nowhere close to the student I used to be in high school. College makes high school seem like a walk in a park and though my transition was rough at first, I am continuing to improve everyday.

The Art-A-Thon event, I attended was the “Playing the Blues in One Simple Lesson.” To begin with, I had no idea, Baruch had music and instrument rooms. I walked through the 7th floor oohing and awwing over my music room discovery. At first I was expecting it to be a long and large group lecture on music. However, when I walked into the room where the event was being hosted, it was actually a small room lecture with a grand piano inside with a music professor running it. The professor was really nice and informative about blues. She explained how blues had this certain rhythm and melody while being played on a piano. I personally thought the best part about her lecture was the fact that she had students try play blues hands on the piano while she helped and guide us. I learned that the piano, if the pedestal was footed down could actually be played like a harp by the strings inside. Overall, I think the event was a fun and it was a nice exposure to blues music.

1. Dina chose the revolver, what was the reason behind why she chose the revolver?

2. Looking further into the title of the article, what did the author mean by the title “Drinking Coffee Elsewhere”, what is the significance of this title?

3.  How does the therapist help Dina? In what ways does the therapist help?

Rahat Khan