Task 2a: Reflective Journal

For me this task is very confusing. Surely with it being about your own thoughts and experiences it should be simple and well.. Easy!? Keeping a journal is never something that has appealed to me purely because I don’t feel I would have anything put in it. You could argue that social media sites such as twitter and Facebook are somewhat a ‘public’ journal but I can’t see a status such as; “Excited to go to the cinema later” being particularly beneficial for my own professional development, nor would it be riveting for another reader. Another issue I had is that throughout my three years of training, as part of ‘IPS’ (Integrated Professional Studies) we were asked to complete “weekly reflections” looking back and what we had learnt and corrections we had been given etc. These were the bane of my life, especially at the end of year 3 when I was sat writing 43 in a row and consequently having no effect whatsoever on my development at that time! So, despite my pessimistic approach it was time to give it a go! 

First on the list was ‘how am I going to do this?’ At a past campus session I heard that some people had tried recording a diary to camera. Considering I seem incapable of recording a 45 second video for ‘Task 1c’ I did not need to ‘“try it out” I know this method is not for me. Another suggestion was to perhaps record a diary of pictures. I think this is a nice way to do this because when you reflect back, for me especially, visual images will trigger a greater memory and thus make it easier to evaluate. You can then annotate it the pictures giving you a more detailed account. I tried this for a day but I never seemed to have a camera with me at the time I wanted and it just wouldn’t be practical, for example, to make my class “re-pose” for a picture. 

The third option was just to simple write it down. My immediate thoughts was just to use good old-fashioned pen and paper, however, with the way technology is going everything is being done on either a table or laptop, or even your phone! From reading other blogs I learnt of apps that could be downloaded that were basically a journal for your laptop or other device you were using. This seemed very useful because you are always carrying one other round with you, well I know I am anyway and by saving it ti ‘iCloud’ for example, it can never be lost. I used this for a few days - although I did not download an app I just used pages - I still did not feel this was the easiest way for me and so resorted back to scribbling down my thoughts into my notebook. Although typing out a private journal did not work, I find it very useful typing out my blog onto a pages document before posting it very beneficial. I feel this way I can take my time doing it and find it easier to play around with before I am happy with the final piece.

Anyway, back to the journal. I am just starting the 9 day reflective writing task but before then I would either write down short summary’s of what had happened in my day or just write down thoughts that popped into my head as and when. As I said in my previous blog about the 2nd campus session, the small things I am currently jotting down, may not have much relevance now but further down the line I can evaluate the experiences and as it explores in ‘Reader 2’, “Turn experience into learning”.