Week 1: My Writing Experience

An introduction to myself, an assessment of my writing skills, and sharing some TIME article pieces I enjoyed reading!

Hi everyone! My name is Pallavi and I am from San Diego, California where I was born and raised. I am a current first year student at UCSC. I am pursuing a degree in Computer Science with an emphasis on Game Design, in hopes of working in the gaming industry.

The current situation with Covid-19 has definitely been a struggle for all of us. Almost all of my classes have been online for these past three quarters with the exception of one or two in person classes. This has made it difficult to communicate and collaborate with my peers. Outside of school, Covid has restricted my ability to go outside and enjoy nature as I normally would. With the counties slowly opening back up, I have once again been able to partake in those activities I have been missing out on.

One of my favorite outdoor activities is walking on the beach and here's me doing just that over Spring Break!

Writing 39C is the first writing class I have taken in college and I am looking forward to developing my reading, writing, and researching skills during this course. Although I haven’t taken a writing course in college, I have taken two quarters of my college’s core class: Stevenson 1 and 2. In these classes we practiced writing and reading skills. I would not rate my writing skills very highly because many of my most recent writing pieces have been creative writing, rather than traditional essays. However, during these courses I spent many hours annotating and improving my “close reading” skills. Over the past two quarters I have annotated a great number of pieces, noting down important pieces of information and excerpts. With these annotations I have participated in group discussions and written reading responses. Reading comprehension is definitely one of my problem areas, but I have been getting better the more pieces I have been reading and annotating. Although my writing and reading background does not include research, research is something I look forward to partake in and get better at.

This first week of Writing 39C has been filled with new material and has allowed me to exercise my reading and writing skills. We were given six TIME articles to read and annotate, all revolving around animals.

One article I found particularly interesting was “Cats” by Temple Grandin. In this article, Grandin addresses the relationship humans have with cats. He relates the domestication of cats to the relationship they have with humans. Historically, cats and humans have had a convenience type of relationship where cats would kill mice and rats and humans would provide mice and rats for cats to kill. This trait has carried over because the domestication of cats did not lead to many major changes in both their behavior and appearance. For example, some pictures of wild cats are indistinguishable from domesticated cats. The article also expresses why it is so hard for us humans to read cats and communicate with them. Cats are nearly expressionless and we cannot read their faces as we do with other house pets like dogs. I chose this topic of cats because I hope to own a cat one day and reading about their relationship with humans and where it stems from was really beneficial. The article even mentioned the best way to train cats: with positive reinforcement. Since cats are used to a relationship that has some sort of benefit or convenience for them, positive reinforcement is essential in training them because they gain something from doing what you are asking of them. I also really liked the end of the article where Temple Grandin gave readers three tips when it comes to buying a cat, which I hope to follow in the future.

The second article I found interesting was “Communication” by Jeffery Kluger. In this article Kluger addresses the different forms of communication animals partake in and he explains how oftentimes these forms of communication are incomprehensible and silent to humans. For example, animals can communicate through chemical signals, vibratory signals, or echolocation, all which cannot be detected by the human ear. These complex and numerous communication methods lead to the lack of understanding and appreciation people have for the communication animals participate in daily. Additionally, the article talks about the main reasons animals communicate among themselves. Animals use communication as a means for survival. They communicate in ways that will allow them to fend for themselves, obtain food, and reproduce and care for their young. I chose this topic of communication because I had never really read in depth about animal communication and it was intriguing to learn about. Many people forget that animals have a countless number of ways to communicate because we simply cannot understand their forms of communication. This article reminded me that animals are very smart creatures. Just because it may appear that they don’t know how to communicate due to their lack of understanding when we speak to them, doesn’t give us the right to discredit their intelligence.

I hope you were able to learn a little bit about me, my experiences with writing, and read about some TIME pieces I found interesting. Thank you for tuning into this week's blog post!

All the best,

Pallavi Rajeev