Thursday, February 8, 2018

Looking Through My Notes: A Journal Reflection.

Looking Through My Notes: A Journal Reflection.
            When I first heard that I had to do a journal for English, I was surprised. I have never done a journal, not because I didn’t want to but because I usually forgot to do record an entry, I could also be considered a bit inarticulate at times, but now that we were going to start writing on a journal and I couldn’t wait to have the experience of writing and maintaining one.
Albeit as we were getting ready to begin writing our journals, the professor began to give some rules that we had to follow. Some were basic, such as using an ink pen for all entries, don't worry about spelling, punctuation, grammar, and keeping your hand moving. Those rules were easy to understand. Then there were some rules that I didn’t understand at the moment such as lose control, don't think, don't get logical, go for the jugular, and write your first thoughts, out of these the ones that I had a hard time following were the ones of not thinking, not being logical and, the one of writing your first thoughts like, how were we supposed to write a journal entry without thinking what to write about or the ideas that you write about in that paper not being coherent with each other. Yet, as the teacher explained it more it made more sense. This wasn’t going to be your typical journal where you start with “Dear journal…” or “Dear diary…” The purpose of this school journal, unlike a regular journal, was to do a sort of psychoanalysis on ourselves with the thoughts and ideas that you’ve had during the day. This is better shown when we begin to do the daily compass, as its purpose is for us to analyze how we’ve been feeling during the day. 
Before we started doing this project I would take my time writing and thinking of the correct way to put my ideas together, dropping the pen and thinking. But now that we were in a time limit, and we also had a rule to not stop moving your hands for the time limit helped me to think of words quicker and to memorize them. This also helped my grammar since if I would forget how to write specifics words I replaced it with a synonym.
Ever since starting this project, I believe that I have been writing more about how I’m feeling as well as the thoughts and ideas that I have during the day, something which I didn’t do much or at all. It’s something beautiful and yet so fragile seeing these entries filled with those raw emotions that someone can have and yet it kind of makes a person vulnerable, after all its all your emotions and thoughts that are trapped in that in that thin white paper, marked with the ink of a pen that helps you express what you’re feeling on that day. For me, just the thought of someone reading the notebook terrifies me, the fact that they can know who I am, the real me, what I feel and what I think makes me feel so vulnerable, I guess that’s why many people don’t write in journals and if they do they hide it, since they’re afraid to be known to the world but yet it’s nice to see who you are and all the stuff that you thought and you did when you look back and read through it.
Works Cited
Goldberg, Natalie. Writing down the bones. Shambhala, 2010.

Pittmann, Cynthia. Journal Reflection work. 2018.

No comments:

Post a Comment