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Yunhan Jiang

Writing 39C

Professor Greg McClure

3/15/2019

Reflection Essay

I am glad that the final week has come, which gives me a signal that I will have the

chance to relax myself. To me, the past winter quarter is one of the most meaningful quarters

I’ve experienced. In this quarter, I finally step on the last stage of academic writing. Writing

39C, the most difficult and most diverse writing course, has taught me a lot about how to

write professional academic essays and research papers. As a matter of fact, at the beginning

of this quarter, I was nervous about the incoming challenges. I once heard about the

difficulties of 39C -- abundant writing requirements and plenty of research to do, but

professor Greg has a different approach to teach his students. He mixes his humor and charm

in his courses, and grabs our attentions. Before class begins, Greg often plays interesting

videos about pets so that we can stay focus. I decide to choose the topic “how do animals

think” is because I also have considerations about animals and their sufferings in the world. I

want to communicate with people who have similar concern and sympathy, and I successfully

strengthen my thoughts about animal rights during the lessons.

In the first week I was asked to read some academic papers about animal thinking and

behaving. Researchers found out that animals were not just low-level creatures because they

had the abilities to think and to react. Through readings I learned animals were also capable
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to have high intelligence. Elephants cared about their crews, dogs had friendships,

chimpanzees were able to identify their own reflections in mirror. For training students to

have better credibility in essays, professor Greg required me to write comprehensive reading

annotations based on key words, key sentences, main ideas and summary. Sources came from

credible academic articles can be much functional and valuable while citing in my articles, so

I took this job seriously. I noted down several facts I read which talked about animal

intelligence and animal relationship such as:

Fig 1. Notes.

By working on the annotations and reading reflections, I built a convenient database to search

for sources in my academic essays. I’d like to admit, although the process was a bit

time-consuming, it was very useful in academic study. I also took the advantage from the

method and used it in my history writing.

Professor Greg gave us an interesting situation to discuss, which was called “Ted or

Lucky”. To sum up, it was a situation while I was trapped in the middle of the ocean with a

man and a dog. The man, Ted, was annoying and was not outstanding in the society; the dog,

Lucky, saved my life days before. Then an alien appeared and I had to choose who to survive
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with me, and who to be left on the lifeboat until facing the death. Such discussion aroused

intense discussing, as nearly half of the class decided to save Lucky, while others chose to

save Ted. Then, Professor Greg let us list the reasons persuaded us, and compared them. In

the comparing process, I started to learn that animals, even a pet dog, contained some

advantages than human. From then on, I started to view animals in a more affirmative way.

Then after several weeks’ study and exercise, the HCP project came. The project required

me to write a literature review talking about an existing problem which was related to animal

right. It was interesting yet challenging, because I was asked to find abundant sources, data,

evidence, interviews and pictures from books, academic essays and websites. It was required

a great effort to finished the writing perfectly. Having a curious heart, I decided to research

commercial whaling, a long-lasting problem which damaged whale species and marine

ecology.
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Fig 2. Websites I marked for finding source.

My first draft reached seven pages, but it completely missed the aspect of becoming a

“literature review”. In professor Greg’s words, a big problem was I did not use correct

citation format to cite my resources. He commented, "this essay doesn’t announce itself as a

literature review and it doesn’t follow the structure established by Jolly’s example (a

literature review I had read).” Having a direct way to revise, I felt it was a great opportunity

to strengthen my writing skills. I separated my essay into clearer structure, with several

paragraphs. I also searched for more English-language resources in order to make my essay

more persuasive and credible than the first one. Although I made a great improvement on my

essay, it still could not reach the requirement of the literature essay. It was not until I spent

additional time on my final draft, and corrected all the existing mistakes pointed out by
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professor Greg he admitted my work and accepted my final draft. I clearly felt that my

writing skills and logical thinking were strengthened because of the revising process. I was

grateful to professor Greg who provided strict requirements on my essay and spent a lot of

time on me.

AP project followed next, which required a more rigorous and academic research. AP

assigned us to analyze and found feasible solutions to solve it. Which sought more serious

sources, such as laws and policies from government and authority associations, places which

were brand-new to me. By searching animal-protecting and whale protecting laws through

government websites, I found out human society already started to put efforts on animals.

The cheerful result strengthened my determination, fulfilled my heart. In my first AP draft, I

only focused on supporting my ideas and listed several aspects, but forgot to state

counterpoints about why and how commercial whaling still existed. Such problem was

pointed in the peer review section by my group mate, and I found out stating counterpoints

and solved those problems would make my essay more persuasive. In my second draft, my

supporting evidence about possible policy solution was not enough, as which was the most

important paragraph in this paper. Policy and law were the voices of official associations,

reflecting the requirement of the society. So it was necessary to talk more about animal

protecting policies in the advocacy project in order to provide persuasive evidence.

More than just writing about animal protection, professor Greg gave us a special mission

which was called the social media campaign. The SMC asked us to post news or videos about

animal protection through Twitter. I followed several accounts which focused on animal right

and animal protection. By viewing their tweets and positive comments from different people,
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I clearly felt the willing of protecting animals from human society. The campaign lasted six

days, and me and my group mates did a presentation showing our effort on propagating

marine ecosystem protecting.

The Writing 39C not only improved our writing techniques, but also exposed the dark

side of the society, and motivated us to think deeper. “Earthling” was a documentary film

about how animals were cruelly treated in the world. The film exposed the existing inhumane

treatment on animals from many aspects, including food farming, clothing, entertainment and

medical experience. To me, it was a valuable experience, which supported my mind of

becoming a vegan. Started from very young, I sympathized those animals which was decided

to serve human society. I believed “every life born equal”, and while seen animals in the film

died in extremely scared and pain, a sense of introspection came up from my mind.
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Fig 3. In the film “Earthling”, death puts a panic on the cow’s face.

“Earthling” was actually a very cruel film, which exposed the inhumane activities human did

to animals. I could not stop myself from thinking how much pain and despair animals

suffered, and started to eat less meat during my meals. I hoped in someday human society can

stop killing animals for foods, clothes, or other own goods. If such situation won’t happen, at

least give animal a kind and humane life before they die.

Through the writing 39C course, I enhanced my techniques a lot about how to write

formal and credible essays. And my heart became more steady to protect animals. I also met

three awesome group mates and had a great participation time. Things I learned weighed

much more than I expected, and most of them would bring benefits to my following writing
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courses. Right now, I mostly want to thank to professor Greg. Thanks to his personal charm,

long-lasting humor and responsibility in class time.