Writing journals is an extremely different process than note-taking, in many ways. Note-taking is simpler in that it requires less thinking. While not-taking, you write things just the way they are. They are often short sentences written to trigger memories when they are re-read. On the other hand, journaling requires more thinking, analyzing, and processing different types of information. A journal can introduce an opinion, argument, detailed analysis, questioning, and so much more. I feel that when one writes a journal, one is required to think deeply about a certain thing and express their own feelings or their own interpretations about the data. Therefore, I think note-taking and journaling require completely different processes to achieve completely different outcomes.
The journal entries that are done for this class are never quite the same. Every assignment has a different prompt relating to the reading/film. The only journals that are similar are the summaries and these actually remind me the most of note-taking. However, note-taking is less crafted and organized than an informative summary. Other journal entries (non-summaries) usually require us to analyze a certain scene, certain relationships in a reading, or camera techniques in a film. These prompts usually require one to go back to the reading/movie to recall what happened. The journals often make me see something clearer than I had seen the first time around. When rewetting a movie scene, there is more clarity and awareness of what is going on and this enables the viewer to deeply scrutinize something. The same thing goes for re-reading a scene in a novel/article.
Journals, for me, are a great way to express myself. The thing I like most about my journals is the way I am able to express my opinion on a certain topic. The one thing I do not like about my journaling is that I often put too much thought into it that I feel it becomes too formal for journal writing. I feel that journals should just flow more naturally but this does not make writing them less enjoyable.
