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Victor Zhang

Professor Marie Webb

Linguistics 12-MW / 11 A.M.

11 February 2019

Fiction and Imagination

There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no

effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments

seen all at one time. ― Kurt Vonnegut

Reading and writing were never on my to-do list when I just entered elementary school.

At that time, I preferred watching lively television shows rather than recognizing the meaning of

each word within a sentence. Also, writing about how I enjoyed the weekend was my most hated

homework to the point that I constantly thought: “Can I not spend my time on these boring

things?” That was my attitude towards reading and writing. However, my attitude towards

reading and writing were suddenly changed on the day my parents bought me my first Chinese

fiction.

It was the day before I became a second-grader. On that day, my parents took me to a

bookstore and let me pick up some colorful covers for my new textbooks. After I chose the

covers I liked, my parents went to check out and I started walking around and looking for

interesting stuff. At that time, I was interested in the books that had cool pictures on them

because these pictures might be the only thing I would look at.

Soon, on a shelf, I found a thick book with a cover that had a soldier wearing shining

gold armor on it. It grabbed my attention and I thought to myself, “Wow, what a nice drawing!”

With that in mind, I opened this “big guy” and tried to find some more pictures. To my
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disappointment, there was only one page that had a similar drawing to the one on the cover and

the rest of it was all words. However, when I flipped through the pages of this book, I kept

seeing some fancy weapon names such as monkey king bar and divine rapier. This made me

wonder the content of it so I randomly turned to a page and started reading. After I finished a

couple of paragraphs on that page, I was attracted by the story that this book talked about and I

just couldn’t stop reading. I felt like there was a magic power in this gigantic book that forced

me to read every single page. At that moment, I knew I wanted it. When my parents saw me

holding such a thick book in my hands, they were surprised.

“Is this what you want?” asked my mother.

“Yes.” I replied.

“Really? Can you understand it?” she asked doubtfully.

“Not really, but I want to give it a shot.” I said confidently. And so, I got my first

Chinese fiction.

During the next couple of weeks, I spent all my free time finishing the book. Since it had

so many words that I didn’t know, I had to have a dictionary by my side so that I would read and

understand this book fundamentally. Using a dictionary wasn’t a fun activity and it even made

me want to throw the book away. However, after finishing a chapter with the dictionary’s help, it

felt like this little achievement was great enough to drive me to finish the rest of the book. Soon,

I started reading more fictions and appreciated the fact that I stepped into the world of literature.

To leave a comment on my first Chinese fiction, I would say that it wasn’t a good book at

all. In general, it just talks about how a guy becomes a hero and defeats a monster with his magic

power, which is one of many hero stories you can find on the internet today. However, this book

entirely changed my impression on reading. It made me realize that reading could be a fun
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activity, and there was a type of happiness that came along reading that I rarely experienced

before.

When I entered the fourth grade, it was easier for me to understand fictions since my

vocabulary got greater. As a result, I read many more books that year than I read the year before.

As I read more and more appealing stories, a question kept echoing in my mind: “Why is fiction

so fun?” This question wasn’t answered until I met my friend Alex whom I shared all my reading

experience with.

Alex was my classmate at the time and he loved all kinds of books. Sometimes We would

meet each other after school and discuss some interesting stuff that we found from the fictions

we were reading together. One day we were talking about a story that we just finished reading

the weekend before. The story itself was insignificant, but when we talked about the ending, it

spurred quite an argument between the two of us because we had different opinions on this open-

ended story.

Alex expressed his feelings towards open-ended story specifically stating that it

provokes one’s imagination and that’s what makes it intriguing for the readers. Meanwhile, at the

moment I didn’t really think about imagination all that much. To me, the dissatisfaction from not

knowing what happens really threw me off. At the end of our discussion, Alex almost shouted,

“My dear friend! IMAGINATION! That’s what makes this book so interesting. Can you see?”

That moment was the first time I really thought about what imagination meant to fictions.

After this discussion, I started reading fictions in a different way by adding my own imagination

to the part that the author didn’t clearly state. To my surprise, my imagination neither screwed up

my reading experience nor complicated the stories too much. Instead, it even helped the stories

make more sense.

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Besides that, imagination also made fictions vivid. When I pictured various characters from

different books in my mind, they became some lively figures that I could really feel. With

imagination, it seemed like fictions were not telling a made-up story but an event that had really

happened before.

After getting the missing parts of my reading experience, my understanding of reading

became deeper. At the same time, I also started thinking about what might happen if I

incorporate imagination to writing because I didn't want to only be capable of writing something

dull and plain. The first thing I tried was adding sensory details to what I wanted to express so

that readers could picture it in their minds. For example, instead of saying “This is a cup of

water, a very ordinary cup of water.” I would try to write about the shape of the cup, the

temperate of the water, the taste of the water, and other details to make the readers really

understand how it would feel as if it were in their hands.

The next thing I tried to do was to read my paper over from the perspective of a reader.

As a guy who had some decent reading experiences, I had a little knowledge about what readers

would like to see in an article. Therefore, after I finish writing a story or a paper, I would read it

as other people’s work and see what should be added on top of it. These two applications of

imagination didn’t make me become a good writer but they somehow improved my papers to a

level that is readable and understandable for other people.

Now, even though I spend most of my time writing English academic essays, what I

learned from reading Chinese fictions is still useful and valuable for me. It not only helps me

understand fictions and articles that are written in English but also assists me when I try to write

essays for my college courses. After I graduate from college, I might obtain a job that doesn’t

require a high-level literacy skill. However, I would keep reading. Since the day when I got my
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first Chinese fiction, reading has become part of my life and an entertainment that I enjoy so

much. Perhaps someday in the future, when I am spending a long time waiting for an

international flight, I would open a book to read. As I am immersing in the story of the book, the

memory towards my first Chinese fiction will arise in my mind. In this memory, there is only

happiness, enjoyment, and pleasure. To me, the habit of reading Chinese fictions and the benefits

that come with will always have a place in my heart for me to carry on forever.
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February 11, 2019

Victor Zhang
Phelps Hall 2536
University of California Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara CA 93106-3100

Dear Victor:

I hope that you are doing well in college. Recently, I read your narrative about your early life
experiences. In your narrative, you talk about how Chinese fictions affects your reading and
writing skills, and I was impressed by your story after reading it. As a current college student
who majors in actuarial science, I am glad to hear that you want to be an actuary in the future
and I want to introduce a plan for continued academic and literacy success to you. The goal of
this plan is helping you become an actuary after you graduate from college, and this plan can be
divided into three parts. During the first part of the plan, I will show you how to increase the
chance of being an actuary by reflecting on the experiences of learning how famous actuaries
become successful in their career fields. In the second part of the plan, I will focus on helping
you efficiently prepare actuarial exams. In the last part of the plan, I will give you suggestions
for how to enhance your communication skills since it is inevitable for an actuary to negotiate
and work with various groups of people.

By learning how famous actuaries become successful in their career fields, there is a higher
chance for you to be an actuary in the future because these famous actuaries’ stories and
memories will support and motivate you to be an actuary when you later reflect on the
experiences of reading them. In Lab Girl, Jahren asserts that the time she has spent in her
father’s laboratory when she is a child is a crucial factor which motivates her to become a
scientist (17). In other words, Jahren believes that when she reflects on her early life experiences,
her career path is impacted. Thus, the process of reading famous actuaries’ stories and memories
will increase your chance of being an actuary since when you reflect on this process in the future,
it will influence you in the same way as how Jahren’s childhood in laboratory spurs Jahren to
become a scientist.

To learn how famous actuaries become successful in their career fields, I recommend you to read
books that discuss different actuaries’ stories and how they work. You can find certain books that
explain how an actuary works in his field in your college’s library and they are all worth reading.
For example, Fred Szabo’s Actuaries’ Survival Guide: How to Succeed in One of the Most
Desirable Professions is a useful book for you because it explains some basic actuarial science
terms and shows you how an actuary works in a company. When you finish this book, you will
have a decent amount of knowledge towards actuarial science, which is a good preparation for
you to learn actuarial science courses. If you can’t find books you want to read in your college’s
library, try to search them online. The internet is a powerful tool and I believe you will find what
you love to read on it. As soon as you choose the books that you prefer to read, you need to make
a plan for reading these books. If you don’t finish the books that you choose to read, it will be
pointless for you to reflect on the experiences of reading them. For instance, by having a reading
plan, you won’t find many excuses to stop reading the books because you know you have a
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reading plan to finish. To ensure that you will finish your reading plan on time, making a
schedule of your week time is helpful. When you look at your weekly schedule, you will know
whether you have time to read and how many pages you should read. For example, if you have
attended three classes during one of your college quarters, based on the information that your
weekly schedule provides to you, you will notice that you will have some leisure time at night.
Hence, you should read ten pages of the book you have chosen to read every night during that
quarter since reading ten pages of a book is a goal that you can easily achieve before you sleep.
By finishing reading books that explain how famous actuaries become successful in their career
fields and reflecting on this meaningful reading experience, you will be motivated to be an
actuary and the chance for you to become an actuary will also increase.

Efficiently preparing actuarial exams is extremely important to you if you want to become a
certified actuary since it will improve your grades on these exams. Annotating your actuarial
science course materials is a great method that you can use to enhance your efficiency on
preparing actuarial exams because it not only provides detailed information that is helpful for
you to review your course materials but also leads you fully participate in the process of
preparing actuarial exams. When you annotate the course materials properly, instead of only
reading the course materials words by words, you are also summarizing the key concepts of the
course materials and memorizing these concepts by writing them down, which is the reason that
annotation can lead you fully participate in the process of preparing actuarial exams. In The
Transition to College Writing, Hjortshoj states that notes, outlines, and summaries can help
people to create long-term memory towards what they have read by showing that leaving
comments on his students’ papers helps him create a long-term memory towards these papers. As
a result of that, he can still recall the contents of his students’ papers even when his students start
forgetting about what they have written (Hjortshoj 45). Therefore, annotating your course
materials is a good way to prepare actuarial exams due to the fact that it can help you better
memorize your course materials and generate long-term memory towards them.

In order to have useful annotations to support you when you need them to prepare actuarial
exams, you need to learn how to appropriately make annotations first. There are two places you
can learn this useful skill. One is your linguistic class, and another one is CLAS or Campus
Learning Assistance Services. In these two places, you can find many documents that discuss
how to properly create annotations for your course materials. After learning how to make high-
quality annotations, you need to find a place that you are comfortable to read and write. When
you are in such a place, you will be more productive since it is easier for you to focus on
annotating. I understand you probably don’t want to change the way you annotate an article
because you need to invest much of your effort to relearn this skill. However, in her book, Jahren
says that “Love and learning are similar in that they can never be wasted” (174). Jahren’s point is
that what people have invested in learning will never be wasted because learning is a type of
process that is always beneficial to people from a long-term perspective. Therefore, please don’t
resist the process of relearning how to annotate since it is definitely valuable to you. In all, by
staying in a place that you are comfortable with to correctly annotate your actuarial science
course materials, you will efficiently prepare actuarial exams and more likely to become a
certified actuary in the future.
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Excellent communication skill is important to an actuary because it is inevitable for an actuary to

work with different groups of people and negotiate with his customers to create a financial
product that will produce a decent amount of profit. Moreover, if you are good at
communication, there will be a higher chance for you to make friends with people who also are
actuaries, which benefits your life and business network from a long-term perspective. In one
chapter of her book that discusses fungus, Jahren emphasizes the importance of communication
amongst people by writing about how fungi and trees are closely connected. She points out that
even though fungi and trees can live without each other, the mutualism relationship could be the
reason why they choose to live together, which shows us the importance of communication
(105). Hence, you should attach great importance to communication skill and start developing it.

In order to enhance your communication skill, you need to participate in various social activities
first. During these social activities, you will have many chances to talk to different people. If you
are not interested in participating in social activities, you can also try to communicate with
people by using social media apps such as Instagram, Snapchat, or Discord. Even though there
are many criticisms of social media apps, it is possible that you will meet friendly people and
have enjoyable conversations with them by using these apps. After communicating with other
people more frequently, you need to start observing people’s reactions toward what you have
said to them. For example, during one discussion with your classmates, you may notice some of
your classmates don’t feel comfortable with the offended words that you say to them. Therefore,
when you talk to them next time, you will realize what types of words you should avoid saying
to your classmates so that both your classmates and you will have a more enjoyable
conversation. After having various experiences of communicating with people, you need to find
a quiet place to reflect on these valuable experiences. This type of thinking process will help you
learn what you haven’t done enough and remind you what you should do more about next time.
By participating in various social activities more frequently, noticing what you should not say to
people during a conversation, and reflecting on the experiences of communicating with people,
you will surely enhance your communication skill.

Reflecting on the experiences of reading books that present how famous actuaries become
successful in their career fields, efficiently preparing actuarial exams, and improving
communication skills are the three main suggestions in the continued academic and literacy
success plan that I have mentioned above. By following the steps that I provide to you for
accomplishing these goals, I believe that you will archive your dream, which is becoming an
actuary. Finally, I know that you are patient and I trust you that you can attain your dream.

Sincerely,

Victor Zhang
South Hall 3431-A
University of California Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara CA 93106-3100
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Works Cited

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

Jahren, Hope. Lab Girl. Alfred A. Knopf, 2016.