This is the first time I’ve kept a journal and weekly updated it. After I read a good novel or watch a decent movie, I often feel the need to talk about it to someone; I compare journaling to that. Writing out my thoughts satisfies that feeling. Personally, for the most part, I’ve enjoyed the idea writing out fresh thoughts on a piece of work. I’ve learned that it also helps me better understand and retain what I have read.
I do not think journaling is like note-taking. Note-taking is mostly objective writing, based on texts. However, my journal entries express my thoughts over a subject. Note-taking often gets tedious, and is something I get bored of. However, journaling is more interesting because I am expressing my, often very opinionated, thoughts on a topic.
Looking over my journal entries, I noticed some similarities with the way I write. The structure of my writing is mostly the same. Given that this is free-writing, I often do not fix up or change anything after I write it, other than for summaries. The assignments that I dislike the most are the summaries. They tend to be the longest as I often am conflicted with what to leave out. They also feel similar to note-taking and are certainly the most tiresome. The entry I liked the best was the one for Bread Givers, in which we had to compare Sara and her father. I really enjoyed the novel which is why I loved writing about it.
I actually do not like quite a few of the journal entries I’ve written. At some points, many of them seem like texts written on a whim that have not been looked over at all. At other points, it seems as though I was not properly able to create a flow and am jumping from topic to topic. Also, a few of them seem rushed and I know they could have been better written, had I spent more time on them. However, as I write more and more entries, I am getting more used to them and they do seem to be getting better. Overall, although at some points it does just seem to get tedious, I do enjoy journaling.
