My Writing Journey

Apr 2, 2016
3 min read

Welcome to my blog!

I am a first-year majoring in Biological Sciences focusing on the pre-med route where I hope to attend a health-professional school or graduate school and pursue a career in the health industry. I also hope to incorporate music into my career as well, possibly in the form of music therapy of as an occasional performer in hotels or festivals.

I have only dipped my toes into the world of university-level writing courses as the only other writing course I have taken at UC Irvine is Writing 39B. My high school experiences with composition include AP English Language and AP English Literature, where writing primarily focused on responding to a prompt while referring to the specific text at hand. Those essays were merely testing the ability to compose a piece of text that could analyze a very narrow aspect of the given passage's overall message in a matter of forty-five minutes. In Writing 39B, I learned how to incorporate primary and secondary resources and how to use research to help me answer the prompt more thoroughly and be more credible. I learned how to incorporate the use of different types of persuasion and write more effectively within a shorter amount of space allotted. Fortunately, I earned a high grade and I feel that it accurately reflects the fruits of my hard work.

However, as optimistic as I am about my writing abilities, I am very much concerned about Writing 39C because of the heavy workload involved. Research does take a considerable amount of time and the research that I conducted in the previous writing course was not very extensive but still took up a good deal of time. Combined with all my other coursework, including chemistry labs and academic clubs, I am stressed about finding adequate time to do as well in this class as Writing 39B.

Reflecting on my current abilities and a communicator, I feel that I am quite adept for my age and ability, although, of course, there is always room for improvement. I have been reading novels at a very young age and I grew up with reading books. Reading for two and a half hours a day was the norm for me since I was 5 years old. With great reading comes then great writing, or at least the attempt to write. Because of my love for reading, I have internalized different techniques of writing and ways of phrasing words and manipulating syntax. I pride myself on my ability to organize my thoughts in a manner that sounds quite elegant, even the message is completely meaningless. However, throughout my experiences in my writing courses, I have developed the ability to deliver my thoughts in a more concise , direct manner whilst still using an appropriate level of vocabulary to elevate my presence. Some of my problem areas are procrastinating on papers and making half-hearted edits and hoping that my first draft is passable, due to the fact that rereading some of my old works is slightly mortifying. As I mentioned before, I excel in organizing my sentences in a way that sounds elegant enough without having to use archaic vocabulary words. I have done only small-scale research not to advocate a certain or point but only to supplement what I have already said to give myself more credibility.

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In the "Animal Minds" article, there were several topics that I found to be particular riveting. One topic that was compelling was how some groups of animals seemed to display pity and grief for any members in that were injured or dead. The fact that elephants can also cry just like humans is even more moving. They seem to take care of their injured by extending more energy and care for them rather than leaving them behind at the cost of their own survival and perform elaborate rituals and ceremonies for their deceased. I found that this act of companionship was even better than people, because it is human beings that seem to harbor a grudge long after an incident and cannot display the same ability that these animals have. It is saddening that animals can even perform these acts of care but some people can not let go a long past grudge. This makes me curious as to whether animals are as socially complex as human interactions.

Another interesting topic from the article was some animal's capabilities in language. For example, Alex, the African Grey Parrot, could combine words it knew previously to describe an object that it did not know ("bannery"). This shows the potential for it to grasp grammatical rules and convey meaning in an organized fashion. Primates have shown this basic ability with sign language, which is also particularly fascinating because it proves that animals are not purely savage beasts, but capable of organizing their wants in human-like manner.