More on Journal Entries and Reflections

I just wanted to piggy-back on Kate's post from the other day and add a few of my own reasons why I think journal entries and reflections are great inventions. First, you synthesize the materials better than if you just read them or talked about them, and it's all about synthesis, absorbing the classroom knowledge until it becomes part of  you. When you write about what you've read, you add another dimension to learning, and so it becomes deeper.

Second, journal entries are a way to have a sort of conversation with your professor. I'm not talking about boyfriend/girlfriend woes here, I'm talking about ideas relevant to the class. Write about things you don't understand, and write notes in the margins telling your instructor that you really don't get these things. When your professor reviews your journal entries, s/he will answer your questions.

Finally, and I think most importantly, you can use your journals as a sort of treasure trove from which you can pick out ideas for research papers and term papers, even essays. You'll be amazed what you've written down over the course of the semester when you flip back through the pages in search of topics for papers. Things you've forgotten about, ideas you thought were amazing but then went dormant for awhile, all sorts of concepts are lurking in those pages, concepts and ideas that you like. So, you can choose one (or four) and write as many papers as you need, and this way, you know your topics are ones you like, ones in which you are interested, as opposed to what most students do, which is pick topics out of a hat and then suffer through the whole writing process.

So, journal entries and reflections take a bit of time in the beginning, but they pay off royally come the middle and end of the semester.