He Zhang
Professor McClure
Writing 39C
26 August 2015
Reflection Essay
First, it is my honor and my pleasure to have Professor McClure as my writing 39C instructor. In this class, it seems to be a mountain climbing that I should always build on firm ground step by step until I finish all assignments. To be honest, as an international student, English is not my mother language so I always feel anxious and kind of clueless when I need to write a 10-page historical review or advocacy project, but I really enjoy every moment of writing. Although it is the final destination of writing 39 series, it does not mean the end of my writing journey because it not only improves my writing to attract different specific audiences and but also provides me an opportunity to use what I have learned in my future study. Writing 39c is quite different from the other writing courses that it teaches me how to use various social media platform to express and support my idea. Writing 39A teaches me how to analyze and writing 39B teaches me critical thinking and rhetoric choice is. However, the 10-week process of writing 39C gives me a new feeling about writing that social media campaign, every week blog, assignments, etc. all make me feel interested in this new course and I am very glad to show my changes and improvements I have achieved in this summer.
Before beginning talking about my work of writing 39C, I want to convey my deepest and most sincere gratitude to professor McClure of being a student in his class that what I have learned from your writing class benefits me a lot.
At the first week, it is really surprise for me that I am asked to build a website on weebly or wix because although I am a computer science major, I have never built my own website before. Besides, there are more interesting for me when I heard to create a website, so I choose wix.com to show my future work case after I see several samples of some former students’ works. I can say that I pay my whole attention to make the website seems cute and easy to see. Every week’s blog with various topics every week not only helps me to remember what I have done in the entire week, but also improves my working skills. I can write and talk whatever happened in the week and say everything from my innermost thought and actually, it stimulates my interest of writing a blog. At first, I feel nervous and aimless because I do not what to write; maybe I do not how to write. I always spend a whole day to think context of the blog. Nevertheless, time after time, I am more confident to write a blog and I even add some pictures to reflect what I talk about in each blog. Moreover, what professor says before reminds me that study certainly is not a process of learning and forget; instead, it is circulative procedure that requires me to remember what I have learned and learn new knowledge at the same time, so blog is a good way to help me keep what I have done in memory.
In addition, the two-week social media campaign leaves a deep impression in my mind. Two other group members and me work as a group that we need to make a 7-day plan, use social media, and finish a presentation. There is no denying that it is really fun to do the project that I enjoy the passage of time with my group mates. During the process of social media campaign, I can experience various parts of the campaign to have a comprehensive learning of ending animal cruelty. The first day of my work is do the twitter part, the second day of my job is finish the instagram and I need to do some changes on our wix website on the third day. When one of us has any problems about login or task, we email to each other and figure out the problem together. It is really helpful and effective to do a group work. Besides, my other two groups are very passionate of the social media campaign that they always finish their parts early and move to the next day, which stimulate me to catch up their temper and try to do the work as good as them. To be honest, at first I think it is a challenge for me, but eventually it teaches me how to make a plan about campaign as well as learn more about the issues of animal cruelty. At the first couple days of the work, I am kind of worry that I cannot figure out how and what should I do, so I email them and they are very supportive and warm-hearted to reply me as soon as possible to help me go through the whole project, and finally I am in the same step as they are. We separate our work and focus on different part of the job and each day we switch our job so that we can also get used to other one's work. Each of us need to create a new account or website so I choose to create a twitter account, keep posting some useful resources and videos on the twitter, We can say that each one has done some attributes to twitter, instagram and website because we all need to post something useful on these three platform. When we do the presentation, I decide to finish the reflection part of presentation that I analyze what each of us have done and reflect everything appears in our project. In addition, I also choose what is most favorite post on both twitter and Instagram to show the reason why it is so popular. It is really good to use prezi to present what we want to express in the social media campaign. When we finish the whole social media campaign about animal cruelty, I feel very proud of our groups work because it seems not only attractive, but also very complete. There is no denying that it condenses our group soul that we try our best to make the campaign to be perfect. From the social media campaign, I not only learn how to work as a group, but also know the efficient and effective of social media that help us make a wonderful campaign. The following screenshot are the part of my work during the project.
Last but not least, the two assignments AP and HCP really widen my horizon of writing that I have never touched such kind of writing style before. However, doing the researches for these two essays let me rich my knowledge of animal testing. To be honest, AP and HCP are a different kind of essay that I have never written before. At the beginning of the process of both essays, it is a quite tough task to choose what topic I should focus on and how to develop the essay. For HCP, it is a historical review that shows my sense of what scientists talk about this topic while AP is a problem-solution essay that requires me to write a existing significant problem and how to solve it. Basically, HCP is kind of first step to get ready for AP and it is better to combine the two essays in a coherent way. When I decide my initial idea, animal cruelty comes to my mind first because there is lots of news reporting people treat animals like crap. It is very hurtful for me. However, it feels more controversial about animal testing and animal testing is another way that make animal go through pain so I decide to write animal testing for HCP and AP. In order to find some creditable sources, I search the Internet by the keyword "animal testing" end with an important range "scientific articles"; thus, it helps me find many animal protection organizations, scientific articles about animal testing. Beside, when I write the AP, it needs solutions so I use the keyword "solutions animal testing". Both are really useful. During the process of writing, I choose articles that can make my essay more specific as well as can increase my reliability of essay. Peta, navs and pinterest are some useful website I use for my essays. I always search the writer to see whether he or she is a scientists or professors before I cite the sentences from their articles. Moreover, talking about my structure of my essay, I prefer to write sub-titles in my HCP because it gives readers a brief understanding about what I will write next and it also reminds me to focus on the titles instead of not catching questions. For my AP, I choose to write one paragraph for each point of the prompt for the reason that it can clarify my ideas and fulfill the requirements as well. Before writing AP, I have written the what's problem draft, I change my way to talk about ineffectiveness of animal testing and make a clear assertion that I think it is better to put animal testing to an end. I combine the reflections from professor and peer reviews in order to add some more specific details to show how vital the problem is and I use the correct citation format to quote from other resources. I also change the way of expression and use multiple elements in my AP to have a more comprehensive problem and solution essay. I write the problem from perspective of government, journalists, and scientist because it not only shows readers how vital the problem is and different views of it but also makes my essay more creditale.
With the continuation of learning, this course is not just a new style for me but teaches me how to write a research paper step by step as well as tells me what kind of resouces is reliable and useful. The social media campaign for a group work lets me get openness. In my group, we use different platform as twitter, instagram, and prezi to show our work about ending the animal cruelty. I need to find differnet ways from the website, like inforgraphic, videos, scientific articles, even some animal rights orgnizations, to match the anticipation of the viewers and attract more people to care about animal testing. Furthemore, during a week of the social media campaign project, I collect various information about different agencies' opinion about animal cruelty and post them on twitter to allow people to leave their comments freely in order to help our project have a open and extensive mind and I also acquire responsibility in the process of project. In addition, writing HCP and AP stimulates my curiosity, openness and flexibility. I find it is very interesting to research something about topics I care, and feel curious to know more about the world, not just animal testing.We must admit that using helpful resouces in essay can also good for creating a general understanding of animal testing.