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Jade Alison Lim

Linda Haas
Writing 39C Loving Animals
31 May 2016
My Journey Through Writing 39
Throughout the course of Writing 39C: Argument and Research, we focused on
examining and researching scientific literature created by experts and researchers. In order for us
to succeed in these things, we learned how to use the library database to our advantage through
by attending a workshop held at the multimedia resource center at the Ayala Science Library.
With this knowledge of where to begin with research, we were required to apply this into the
Historical Conversation Project (HCP), Social Media Campaign (SMC) and Advocacy Project
(AP). Aside from these projects, our classes were taught as workshops because it depended on
what we took away from it and how to apply it more than making us do work in class and see
how much we get done. This class did require time outside
of class in order to succeed but I think it was crucial for us
to understand that we are independent from our classes and
it is up to us to make sure that we know what we are capable
of in the sense of writing.
Coming into this class, I already knew the workload
that this course requires me to do. Some of my friends who
have taken this course were just not the biggest fans of it. I
came into this course not feeling very comfortable or
confident about my writing skills and I was looking forward

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to improve and advance well enough to succeed in this course. In order for the discussion in class
to benefit us, I think it was helpful for us to get feedback through the use of google docs when
we were presenting, either by ourselves or with our groups. I also thought the mandatory
commentary on certain things really made us think and become more open-minded to certain
presentations.
Our first group activity was to present the topic of mourning.
Our first major project is called the Historical Conversation Project (HCP). My project
focused on the cognition and emotional capabilities of elephants, including elephant culture for
both Asian and African elephants. With the use of Ask the Librarian, Hal helped me where to
begin in the research like which authors seemed credible for my project. From the workshop that
was held at the Ayala Library, we had time to do our own research for the topic that we assigned
to present. we were able to do our own presearch for our topics that our group has to present.
As for my group, we worked on the topic of animals in mourning. Some of the keywords that
helped in when I used the search engines were grief AND animals AND King, B* or
Marzluff, J*. With the addition of the known authors that the article provided was a way for us
to know that the articles we were searching for were in the same subsection. Without the
knowledge of who are experts on the topic of elephants, I wouldnt have known where to begin
in writing the essay. I immediately thought of writing about elephants and their family structure
and cognition behaviors which also included their emotional capabilities. We were shown how to
use Wikipedia to our advantage of understanding the topic we've chosen. One of the helpful tips
was to search in Wikipedia the topic and then go down to the 'References' page which provided
all of the sources and possible sources that I can use for my own project. I thought that was very
clever and definitely efficient. One of the problems I had when it came down to applying the

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skills we learned in class was making sure the historical conversation was actually a conversation
between authors and researchers. Some of the weaknesses I have is creating the big picture for
my scholarly audience which I think is most
important. Some of the main priorities I have to
focus on is organize in a way that my review
flows from one topic to the next and the other
priority would be making creating questions that
I get to answer along for my audience to follow
with, which would make it easier to know which direction I'm going in the review itself. One of
the biggest problems I encountered while writing this draft was that I didnt know where to
begin, I tried to start with an outline of what my review will be composed of but that didn't really
help either since I didn't know how to separate my main idea
into multiple topics.
We conducted a social media campaign for a week.
Initially I had mistakenly misunderstood of what we were
required to do like we assigned a person to take charge of
the social media accounts for two or three days. We also had
trouble figuring out the topic for our campaign because we
were initially thinking that working with domestically
abused dogs was a good topic; we switched to dairy milk
and factory farming. I worked on the infographic, which
helped me learn the most about factory farming and how
much the production of milk has grown over multiple decades. In order for the viewers to

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participate, I thought taking selfies with a clipart of a cow and posting it on twitter or Instagram
tagging us on and using the hastag #UCImalts would help increase the number of viewers we
had throughout the week.
Our second major project is called the Advocacy Project (AP), which is a continuation of
the Historical Conversation Project, where we advocate the topic we started with. For this
project, I was having trouble researching a solution more than the problem. Unfortunately, I have
failed to reach the required pages for my drafting process of the Advocacy Project because I had
to redo my solutions part of the essay. I wasn't able to find the proper sources that supported the
advocacy until I dug up more research throughout the rest of the week. In order to keep up with
the course, I decided to rewrite my entire essay and organize it the way I thought it would flow
well.
From my journey through Writing 39C: Argument and Research, there are a few things I
have picked up from the past two and a half months, Ive learned how to adapt to multiple
situations and working with multiple groups and different types of people with different work
ethic. Ive learned how to take into consideration of timing and making sure to get work done on
time. Unfortunately, I hate to admit that I may have lost track of everything for a moment
because I was figuring out what method works best for myself and for certain projects. Getting
back on track was crucial in order for me to not be left behind. With the skills that I have adapted
to learning and applying to my writing skills inside and outside of the classroom, I think Ive
become more curious of what other possible topics to research more than just the category of
Animals. This can be easily applied to science, such as conducted experiments, undergraduate
research opportunities and knowing where to begin when introduced to a scientific literature
review.

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