A letter to my instructor

Dear Dr. Schonberg:

How are you?
My First Year Seminar class last quarter was a science related class, called Models of Computing. In this class we studied automata. Automata are some kind of virtual machines which model computation. In order to increase the capability of computers, automata are termed deterministic finite automata (DFA), pushdown automata (PDA), and Turing machine (TM) three major branches. Compare to other first year seminar classes, I didn’t have much writing assignments in my class. But my professor was extremely strict about our writing. He wanted us to be able to write out statements to explain our solutions good enough, so that anyone who doesn't have to have a computer knowledge background can understand and know how to solve the problems. In another words, he only accepts papers with high quality writings.
Last quarter all the classes I had were science classes, the only time writing skills could be used was on lab reports. But I found out that it is easier to write out a lap report than free writing. I can write better when I have a goal to aim to. And it is easier to write when you understand what you are really writing. I learned a lot from my first year seminar professor. But my practices are far away from enough.
I was a sophomore in high school when I first came over from China. Because of my international student status, I have gotten many “passes” for my writing assignments. And now I have realized how much time I have wasted these three years.
To me, writing is a fun thing to do, if I don’t consider it as homework or assignments. I write journals daily, it is fun to just sit and write down what happened that day. It makes me laugh so hard reading what i wrote a while ago. I used to write in Chinese when I first started writing journal three years ago. It’s easier to write in my first language. But after staying here for long enough, I slowly started writing in English instead. It was so nature. I didn’t even notice it at the beginning. Now I find myself having a harder time writing in Chinese than in English.
Everyone used to write letters to communicate with one another decades ago. But with the technology these days, we mostly use phones, webcams or e-mails to replace letters. And there are smiley faces in between sentences, not too many of us still use written English fluently. We write down how we would speak. It’s easier to understand each other that way as well. Today’s writing is very different than old days’.
I don’t think I have had enough preparation from first quarter for my writing. As a writer, I am lacked of vocabulary and the ideas of writing, and I know these two things takes a long period of time to make up, but my goal this quarter in writing is to improve my ideas of writing and to build up my vocabulary capacity. And I am looking forward to graduate your class with a huge improvement in writing.

Best wishes.
Haixiang Hu