i. My name is Khemraj Jeremy Persaud. I was born in the Bronx, New York and raised in Laurelton, which is in southeast Queens. I currently live in Kew Gardens, also in Queens. I went to Brooklyn Technical High School, class of ’05. After that, I studied theatre arts at CCNY from ’05-’09. I performed in a number of off-Broadway productions before I transitioned to music. I wrote and performed original music around NYC for some time before deciding to go back to school in ’16 to pursue Radiologic Technology at NYCCT. After the Spring ’17 semester, financial responsibilities took priority over my studies, so I was forced to leave school and continue to work full time as a dispatcher in the luxury transportation industry (which is something I have over 17 years experience in as well). It wasn’t until the pandemic hit that I was able to refocus and continue my pursuit of higher education. So, I came back to NYCCT last year, trying to get into the Rad Tech program once more. Unfortunately, I didn’t make the cut last semester so I pivoted and chose to make Professional and Technical Writing my major. My goal is to learn all that I can while obtaining this Bachelor’s of Science and to apply said knowledge in a meaningful way that will also bring me financial stability in the future.
ii. “Shaughnessy’s insight is utterly simple and vitally important: we cannot
teach students to write by looking only at what they have written. We must
also understand how that product came into being, and why it assumed the
form that it did. We have to try to understand what goes on during the
internal act of writing and we have to intervene during the act of writing if
we want to affect its outcome. We have to do the hard thing, examine the
intangible process, rather than the easy thing, evaluate the tangible product.”
Hairston is saying that according to Shaughnessy’s theory, there is more to teaching students to write than just writing on its own. It is important to understand how the writer produced their final product, and why they made the decisions they made to create the product in that way. In order to make a significant impact, the teacher must examine the process and not just the final product. This made me think that not everything is as simple as it seems, and it is important to analyze and understand all aspects of a process in order to be able to produce the intended outcome. This thought process made me feel a strong sense of curiosity. It makes me wonder what are some of the processes in my own life that I could reevaluate, understand better, and ultimately how I can produce a better end product, whether it be academically, professionally or personally.
