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May 4, 2019

Kefan Yu
1237 Humanities and Social Sciences Building
Santa Barbara, CA 93106

Dear Kefan:

Compared to high school, life in college is difficult. I cannot spend my college life as I did in
my last semester in high school. Overwhelming schoolwork and activities can sometimes
become huge burdens. However, the four-year college life cannot be lived by surviving but
thriving. An important way to thrive in college is to set up goals. There are many objectives
needed to be achieved, including learning skills related to my future career, improving my
literacy skills, and doing more extracurricular activities.

The first goal in college is to learn skills that are related to your future field. As a freshman of
Mathematics major, I have already searched for internship opportunities. Nearly all the
companies in the field of science and engineering require competency in programming. Since
I have decided to find jobs in the engineering field, learning such skill is essential. Although I
learned a little bit about programming language in high school, I need to relearn it because I
completely forgot programming. In college, after a long time without learning programming
because I had to take many general requirement classes, I had to be patient, waiting for the
time to relearn it, which was similar as Jahren’s mother’s experience. In Lab Girl, Jahren’s
mother was once a college student in the University of Minnesota. However, she returned to
her hometown and became a mother without graduating, but she was not panic at that time,
and finally she re-enrolled in the college and studied literature again (Jahren 15). I need to be
patient and pick up programming skills in high school; just like Jahren’s mother spent a lot
time before she re-enrolled in the college. There are many ways to learn such a skill.
Specifically, I can go to Campus Learning Assistance Services (CLAS)’s computer science
workshop, where people there can personally teach students how to use programming
software called Python. Also I can take online courses like Khan Academy, where the
professional tutors there upload their videos about how to write commands in Python. By
picking up programming, I will be able to be prepared for my future engineering-related jobs,
which can make me be successful in the future.

I should set up my second goal to be improving my literacy skills. In college, reading and
writing are important. I have to be able to write tons of paper for many classes. However, my
effort and ability on such literacy skills, especially for reading, are not enough. While reading
books or assignments, it is easy for me to forget the content or main idea. Therefore, in order
to be successful in college, literacy skills are one of the primary goals. To achieve it, I need to
solve the problems of easily forgetting content by making notes and outlines, also I can read
the assignments with critical thinking such as “Why author includes this in his or her essay?”
This method is included in “active reading.” Hjortshoj talks about “active reading” in The
Transition to College Writing, which includes ways that can apply to college reading. For
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example, the method of “Note, Outlines, and Summaries” is quite useful because it can help
people know the main point, supporting ideas, and details in the assignment (Hjortshoj 45).
By studying his “active reading,” the efficiency and accuracy of reading will enhance a lot.
Also, reading and writing are essential in American university. English is my second
language here; therefore, improving my literacy skills can help me be easier to talk and write
in English in mundane life, which is not just limited to assignments writing and reading
books.

My third objective is to attend more extracurricular activities. It is true that college students
should focus on their school work and academic aspect. However, activities do not simply
mean play; it also plays an important role even for our academic life. By attending activities,
it is easier to meet with different kinds of people and make friends with them. Friends are
essential through not only college life, but entire life. Academically, friends can help to teach
me the concept and content that you do not understand; socially, friends can spend the most
beautiful youth in college with me. A friend can be the type of person like Lydia in Lab Girl,
who taught Jahren “the difference between drugs in stockroom (Jahren 37).” Also she helped
Jahren a lot including driving her home at night (Jahren 38). I have some friends that like
Lydia who help me both academically and personally. They helped me when I had problems
on understanding materials; just like Lydia taught Jahren about different medicines. Also,
they listened to me when I was upset, which was like Jahren and Lydia’s chat in the break. In
addition, more friends mean more opportunities. Because of the enlargement of social web, I
can get chance recommended by friends, which can help me be successful including
internship.

The skills about future jobs, literacy skills, and enlargement of social web are all important
not only for my college life, but also my entire life. Although these three goals seem easy to
achieve, it is hard to do it. These goals are the most basic goals to help me be successful in
college, which means that it is important to achieve them. One way to fulfill these goals is to
make plans everyone; by doing that, large objectives can be divided into small piece into
everyday life. From now on, fulfill these goals and be the person who master programming,
literacy skills, and relationship with others in the future.

Best of Luck,

Kefan Yu
1237 Humanities and Social Sciences Building
Santa Barbara, CA 93106
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Works Cited

Hjortshoj, Keith. The Transition to College Writing. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009.

Jahren, Hope. Lab Girl. Vintage Books, 2017.