April 26, 2019

Guanglin Liu
HSSB 1237
UC Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93107

Dear Guanglin,

I know you are not satisfied with the current academic performance. So, let us write a letter to
figure out how to achieve your academic success.

Admittedly, in the past, you focused your full attention on getting America and studying in
America. You were convincing your family to come here to study. However, you took your
health granted. Now, it is time to focus more on self-care.

Health status is one of the most important objectives which affects academic success. I know
before you were in good health status when you were back home, because you went gym very
often. However, an illness took it away from you, which was very unfortunate. You are currently
feeling afraid of being mocked by others in the gym. But let’s be positive to face it. Only in this
way will you do exercise more often and form a healthy status gradually. With a better health
status, you can study more effectively. With a more effective study, your step of academic
success will scale new heights. More importantly, your grandpa will not worry about your health
status and study issue. To fix it, you need to get rid of the hesitation while you are about to go to
gym. Try to be brave to go to gym to exercise. Do not feel shame in feeling that you are too weak
now to go there. You must know that being in good body shape means being healthy, and a
healthy status helps students focus more on tasks in school. Just like Jahren, a biology scientist,
seemed to have the same situation in academic area when she was hesitated to do the chemical
experiment. She hesitated to do the experiment, because she was afraid of failing, whereas you,
hesitate to go to gym because you feel shame in your current self-status. However, she finally
overcame the barrier by encouragement by her father. Jahren’s father taught her a really
impressive lesson that inspired me to make this goal “He taught me that there is no shame in
breaking something, only in not being able to fix it” (Jahren 8). What her father told her indeed
motivated her a lot. I think this can work in the same way on you as well. Like Jahren, she was
motivated by others and successfully coped with the experiment. Therefore, I am here to
encourage you to do some steps to get a better health status. Eat more to assure the calorie daily
intake. Using the app “my health” in my phone to record the daily calorie count is a convenient
way to assure that you reach the bottom line of calorie intake. Then, set an alarm every day to
wake you up at 7am and 11pm to sleep. Ensure the sleep time 8 hours at least. Both options can
quickly make you feel energetic, and you weight will be probably increased a little bit. Next, find
a buddy who is interested in going to gym to exercise. You can find someone easily if you post
some updates on Facebook or some other social network. For example, you can post “Anyone
wants to get buff?” Going gym with buddy can have more motivation to go to gym to exercise.
After two weeks, make sure to eat 4 eggs a day to affirm the protein intake. Egg contains protein,
which can keep people mentally clear during daytime. Use “calendar” in my phone to remind
you to go to gym to exercise 4 times a week. I ever used this method when I was a weak person,
and it worked quite well. Without a good body condition, it is really hard to get focused on study.
Studying in America is really a challenging task for students from other countries, because
lessons are taught in English, and the curriculum requires students from foreign country to
command lots of English words in academic writing and presentations. Therefore, being able to
exploit variety of vocabularies takes you forward towards academic success. Though you
remembered lots of English words when you studied scholastic assessment test, that is not
enough. You still need to acquire more academic words to better approach your goal. I also
encourage you to keep enriching your vocabulary every day. Admittedly, it is really hard to keep
memorizing words every day. However, if you have a strong perseverance, I strongly believe that
you can get it over. Always keep in mind that a good command of words is crucial to academic
writing thereby can also enhance the academic success. Insisting on one meaningful objective
can be a great impact for your future life. For example, Jahren’s experiment got stuck when her
team ran out of funding. However, she did not give up. Instead, she chose to insist on the
experiment by slowing the experiment down. Eventually, they succeed (Jahren 23). If it was not
because of her insist, the whole experiment would not be successful, and Jahren would not get
where she is today. I know trying to remember words is a long and tedious task, but you need to
get used to it. Like Jahren, she insisted on her ambition and worked hard for that. She must have
a time when she felt tough on herself when she could not finish her experiment smoothly, but she
did not give up. Instead, she always kept her goal in her mind. Finally, she successfully became a
scientist. Now, you are supposed to have the determination as Jahren does. So, here are some
steps you need to do. The first thing is to prepare a notebook for vocabulary. Then, set an alarm
to remind you to read book for one hour every day. If you see some unfamiliar words, please
write those down in your notebook. Review all words you wrote down at the end of the week in
order to keep them in mind deeply. Tie back to academic success: If you have a good command
of English words, your academic writing will be improved a lot, and you are one step closer to
your academic success.

In conclusion, as discussed above, even though keeping taking care of yourself and memorizing
words everyday is pretty hard, I still believe strongly that you will get rid of many obstacles in
your future academic life by insisting on following instructions that I provided to you. Don’t
forget your ambition. Now, it is time to move on!

Sincerely,

Guanglin Liu
HSSB 1237, UCSB, Santa Barbara
CA, 93107
 Works Cited

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