Meet Writer Haasbi Uddin
by Gabriel Rios-Gomez
This article is about the writer Haasbi Uddin, best known for his screenplay The Last Goal and his short story The Paused Clock. Drawing inspiration from real life to craft his stories, Haabi’s work explores themes such as failure, resilience, and isolation. The Last Goal reflects his high school soccer experience and tackles the emotional aftermath of failure. In the Pause Clock, Haasbi revisits the 2020 pandemic lockdown, inviting readers to reflect on shared feelings of stillness and solitude. The story is about resilience, and at the same time, makes the reader connect to the feelings of isolation that the main character Haasbi faced. In a way, we could all feel what Haasbi faced, as it was a global pandemic, and the feelings of isolation and feeling stuck were felt by many. Without further ado, let’s delve into the behind-the-scenes about Haasbi’s inspirations, successes, and struggles as a writer this semester.
Haasbi is very proud of his growth as a poet and storyteller. This semester he has enriched his writing by incorporating more dialogue and elaboration. He also discovered that writing, like many creative processes, come in phases. It requires time, reflection, and revision to craft piece of lasting value.
One of the challenges that Haasbi faced during the semester was managing his time as he struggled with doing work on time. The way that he overcame this issue was by thinking about where he had free time and managing his free time better to do his academic work. Haasbi worked at CCNY and is also part of the badminton club. He is learning to balance work life, academic life, and social life. Haasbi has learned that it is important to attend class so that one does not miss out on important information. One of Haasbi’s biggest takeaways is not to judge a course by its name. At first, he thought this writing class was going to be easy. Later, he realized the depth of thinking that he was going to be asked to do.
Looking ahead, Haasbi hopes to explore research opportunities that allow him to grow and conduct research.
Meet Writer Haasbi Uddinby ANGELA M ORTIZ
Being able to interview Haasbi gives me a new point of view on how other students viewed creative writing throughout the semester. Haasbi responded to each of the interview questions honestly and was open about his experience throughout the whole semester. Not only was I able to learn a bit about him, but I was also able to see his own reflection both for this class and the semester. What he is most proud of achieving is improving his writing skills. Before, he wasn’t able to write poems, but towards the end, he was able to, and his writing skills improved as well.
His biggest challenge this semester was submitting his work on time by the due date. He was able to overcome this by doing work during his break and was able to submit it on time. Hisperpective on this class has changed over time because at the beginning, he thought this would be a typical writing class, but he noticed how each lecture was broken down into certain sections, which made it easier for him to follow. Skills that he gained that he didn’t have before were being able to extend a story to five or six pages and include creativity in it. Haasbi was able to contribute to the campus community this semester by participating in a volunteer club that did work outside for the community, and was able to join a badminton club. This semester, he prioritized tasks and managed his time by trying to complete his work before the due date and getting work done during breaks between classes. A memorable moment this semester that impacted him both personally and academically was his history midterm.
This was the only assignment this semester that stressed him out because it was complicated, as it included a lot of things from the semester. Advice that he would give to himself at the beginning of the semester would be to attend every class and complete the work for every class. Missing even one day of class, he says, has a big impact, especially since he misses a lot of in-class lessons. His understanding of this class had evolved over the semester because at the end he acknowledged that there was a variety of writing techniques and styles, and they each had their own difficulties. What he is looking forward to for the following semester is finding more research opportunities.
Throughout this interview, I could relate to his experiences through this semester, especially when it came to exams that included a lot of topics, but overall, this class was able to help Haasbi not only grow in his writing skills but also in personal growth, like working on his time management.
