Guest Speaker Reaction

Kevin Gonzalez

09/04/2013

Tech. Writing: Pre-Professional

Guest Speaker reaction

Our guest speaker, Chen Chin was a writer from Jamaica; he has published eight different books. I found him to be extremely inspiring and motivational. He began his speech by giving an in depth overview of who the man that inspired him was, this man was E. R. Braithwaite. Braithwaite was a former Howard professor who joined the air force when he was 17. His first teaching experience was to teach an all white class, in that class he documented his experiences; he wrote so many journals that he was going to burn them. Thankfully he didn’t, he published the book and became very well known because of it. Braithwaite strongly believes that in order to teach, you must find it inside you to teach.

E. R. Braithwaite inspired Chen Chin at the lowest point in his life, where felt like he had lost everything and that life wasn’t worth living. Chen Chin prides himself in having his own style of writing. Chin gave us the three basic writing necessities, the first one was that one must have a story to tell, the next was that one must have the vocabulary to enable them to write, and the last one was that one must be able to juxtapose words well. One thing that he said that was profound was not to be intimidated by words, instead, embrace them. He stressed that as students we must constantly be training our minds to learn new words.

The part that inspired me the most about Chen Chin was the fact that he found success even without a college degree, his story was the perfect example of how far hard work and a little bit of faith can take you. His life taught me that success is not a given, I must work hard for it. When asked why he never went back to college to get his degree, Chen Chin answered with a profound statement he said, “experience trumps a degree any day.” Basically hinting the fact that he’s learned more about his profession in everyday living than he could ever learn out of...