Before this class, I’ve never written journal entries so consistently and so often. At the beginning of the semester, I thought it would be a major pain to write journal entries almost every single week. Turns out, I was pretty wrong. Not only has it sharpened my analytical skills and how to process my thoughts into words, but it has taught me to actively read instead of passively read. I used to just read the words in a book without fully digesting what they meant but now I can gladly say that I am able to fully understand what I’m reading (most of the time anyways).
While I’m reading, I actively take notes and think about what the author is truly trying to convey to me as a reader. This applies to movies as well; I am able to fully grasp a scene in a movie better now. It’s interesting to find out what the hidden meaning is and not just what the words are literally saying. What I like about my entries is that they delve into the aspects of the passage that I just read and causes me to think even deeper about the passage itself. In many of my journals, I used direct examples to further demonstrate my analysis. I find that without examples, my entries would not be successful at all. What I dislike about my entries is that they usually don’t go as deep as I want them to go. After writing the entries, I usually find something from that passage that I may have overlooked and want to analyze it more. If I had analyzed deeper and realized this earlier at the time that I was writing my entry, they would have been much more interesting and thought provoking.
For me, note taking is completely different than journaling. Note taking is a singular task where you just write down what’s on the board or write down what the teacher says. There is usually little to no thought process while note taking. While writing a journal, you are required to think deeper than what the author or director is explicitly telling you. You must find and analyze something that is unique to the story or character. We may think of it in our heads after reading a passage, but completely analyzing something and writing it down allows us to complete our thoughts and create something great.
