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.

Topic: Homelessness

How does being homeless, result in less job opportunities? If an individual who was homeless didn’t look like your stereotypical homeless person, would they be treated better?

Topic: Immigration

How much has the daily life of illegal immigrant changed since President Trump took office?

Topic: Language

What role does the language barrier play today? What are some disadvantages/setbacks individuals face, as a result of not speaking English?

Phil of the Future

In this TV series, the main character, Phil, and his family, time travels from the future and they get stuck in the 21st century, because their time machine malfunctions. Whiles Phil’s dad tries to fix the time machine, Phil and sister is forced to go to school and try to “blend in” with the “normal” children their age. This show fits the same theme as The Fresh Prince and Superman because, the main characters are trying to hid their secret and also trying to “fit in.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uL0NacNzSjs

Art-A-Thon Review

The event that I attended was the ‘Improv Theater Session’ which took place at the Mason Hall. This event was hosted by Professor Debra Caplan, who was friendly and a great instructor that made learning improv interesting and easy. The session began by each student, which was a total of five, introducing themselves and the activity of pronouncing the letter ‘o’ differently. This activity may sound simple, but each time it was your turn to say the letter ‘o’ you had to say it with a different meaning and a different tone, this could be saying it as a question or saying it confused. After concluding this activity, I found it astonishing that there were so many ways to pronounce a letter. The activity that Professor Caplan planned next was, doing the opposite of what she said. There were different stages to the activity, first she used the word ‘stop’ to make us start walking and she’ll say ‘go’ out of nowhere to make us stop walking. The second stage she added the pair of commands ‘clap’ and ‘jump’ which made it a little bit more difficult to follow her instructions of doing the opposite. The last stage she added the pair of words ‘knees’ and ‘head’ to make it extremely difficult to complete the activity. At the end of this activity she explained that the purpose of it was to prove how difficult it was to complete a task even if our brains are thinking about it, she further explained that we are ‘programmed’ from a young age to do this and that’s what makes it difficult to do the opposite. The final activity Professor Caplan planned was an improv game called ‘Party’, which is a game where one individual is hosting party, he/she has guest invited and these guesses play a made-up character that the host must guess their relation to. This was a difficult one, because the guess had to make up stories of how they knew the host to help the host guess who they were. The session ended with this game, this event taught me how to think quickly and how to improvise. Prior to this event, I had no idea of how improv was used and I also never knew how interesting it was to take part in. Summing up, I was satisfied with the experience I gained from attending this event, it has sparked an interest in theater for me now and it has also persuaded me to take a theater class next semester.

1. At the beginning of story, Dina seems as if she doesn’t trust individuals easily, why does it look as if she trusted Heidi so easily?
2. Dina talks about memories she experience with her mother, why is it she doesn’t provide information about her father besides the fact that she doesn’t like him? Why does move in with her aunt and not her father?
3. If Dina felt bad for her poor word choice when trying to comfort Heidi, why did she choose not to attend her mother’s funeral? Dina also daydreams of visiting Heidi, do you believe she thinks she made a poor decisions by not attending the funeral?

The feelings of not being able to “fit” in isn’t an unfamiliar emotion for me, moving from State to State can cause a person to feel different and not welcomed. Growing up, my family moved from three different states to cater for my father’s demanding job. After each move I noticed a reoccurring feeling that I had, which was not being able to feel comfortable and accepted. These feelings would only last for the first month, after spending a considerable time in each State, I began to think I was “fitting” in and that people were beginning to accept me into their community. This cycle would repeat itself after and during every move my family made, the feelings of displacement generally last during the time period where a person doesn’t feel welcome but overtime this feeling would disappear. Looking back, I realized that the feelings of displacement can be hard on someone, but once you overcome it, it’s the a huge relief and it makes you feel better about yourself.