Start the Journal of Animal Science & Who am I?

walk greyhound for a volunteer work

This is the portfolio of my writing 39c class. Let’s get started!

Hi everyone! I am Mengchen Xu, and international student from China. You can call me Helen if that is easier to pronounce. I am a sophomore at UCI and this is my fourth year studying in the United States. My major is data science. I like to play video games and watch anime. On the weekends, I always go out with my roommates to find some delicious food to eat. I am easy going and I am glad to make friends with all of you!

I started with Academic English 20B at UCI and this is my first college level writing class. Even though I went to a high school in Boston for two years, but all I learned there were high school level writing skills, thus, it was difficult for me to start writing college level essay. My writing was not good even if I write in my first language. I thought Academic English courses were difficult enough, however, after I got into the Writing 39 series, I found that Writing 39 series were even more difficult. I know I am not good at writing, thus I studied very hard on writing 39A and writing 39B and my efforts paid off! I was so excited that I succeed in those two classes. For this class, even though I never write a research paper in the past, but I will work hard to learn it and I am confident that I can succeed at the end of this class!

There are several problems with my writing. First of all, I always made a lot of grammar mistakes. Even though I told myself to be careful while writing essays, but I still make grammar mistakes. Also, the paragraphs of my essay are sometimes not in a good logic. I think I have improved a lot in these areas in the past, but I still need to do better. I wrote one research paper for Public Health last quarter, but that one was based on completion, so I don't really know how to write a formal research paper. My close reading skills are not good but not bad as well. I am better at analyzing scientific articles than novels.

I am interested in the TIME article “Animal talk, even if we can’t understand them” because it is amazing to know how animals “talk” to each other. When I was young, I always wondered how ants communicate to each other to take a huge piece of food back to their formicary. I am also interested in animals’ love stories. I want to know how animals “talk” to each other and then become a family. I am also interested in the “Why cats and dogs think differently about you” because I would like to have a cat or a dog in the future. I am not sure should I have a dog or a cat, thus, this article brought my attention and I would like to know their differences.