During this
course, my journaling outlook and writing has, as expected, changed at least a
bit. Before this course, I did not consider myself as someone who writes in a
journal since it was an infrequent task. My only experience journaling was during
travels, since I would like to remember and read about these experiences in ten
years or more, or maybe I won’t care by then. I also wrote in a journal
regularly, and for hours sometimes, when my aunt passed away from kidney
failure from a hereditary kidney disorder. While she continued to drink and
smoke to her death at 60 years old, I’ve become somewhat of a straightedge
mixed with a Santa Barbaraian hippie: non-alcoholic (90% of the time), smoke-free,
free-range, organic, non-GMO, hormone-free, superfood nut. On a college student
budget though, so there are plenty of days buying pesticide perfect apples, and
antibiotic injected chicken. I probably learned the most from this journal of
emotional explosions, especially about my tendency to over-react, but from this
class, I learned more about what it means to genuinely study and appreciate
writing and how to help your writing improve by learning a bit about yourself
on the way through journaling.
When we read
journals to compare and contrast different themes and techniques, and then
shared what we learned, that was very effective. From listening to what
everyone said, I was able to understood more about how different journals can
be, and that my personal journal could be anything. It meant a lot that my
journal could be about car mechanics, ideas and feelings, projects that I’m
working on, or I could keep multiple journals for different things like I did
for my adventure times and emotional times. If I wanted to, I could draw in my
journal, or write upside-down, which makes sense for a personal journal, but I
would still get confused with keeping it academic. The freedom of not having to
meet any criteria was an amazing feeling, but not too common in college
writing. The Bones book was also a huge contributor to this feeling since we
learned that it’s completely all right to get out anything that is stuck in
your brain before you get to the part you want to write about, and that
choosing a topic is also okay to practice writing.
In my opinion, my
writing has progressed from this course through adding more of my own personal
voice or tone. At the beginning of the class, I still had a strong internal
need to keep my writing, even in my personal journal, academic. That meant
everything was punctuated, grammatically correct, or corrected if it was
“wrong,” but slowly the rules and regulations became less and less important,
even with the structure of writing line after line. I also became less afraid
about writing about the really personal parts of my life and thoughts. My
journal themes were sexuality, freedom and death, which are universal even
though not everyone experiences freedom as we think of it in American society,
but there can be freedom from your own judgmental thoughts, fear, or whatever
it is holding you back. As my writing slowly developed, so did my reading
skills, which started off impersonal, but I began to read by really “listening”
to what the author was saying as if they were an actual person talking, which
they are actual people, but not seeing them disconnects me. There’s definitely
a way that I usually cut off when reading that makes it less relatable or able
to view the writing as artwork, and I’m sure that comes from learning to read
to get it done, analyze and memorize rather than appreciating it and feeling
any emotion from it.
One reading that
stood out the most in this class was the “Biscuit Manufacture,” which majority
of people loved, but I could not stand it at first. I had an extreme anger at
the way that it made this biscuit company appear as if it was amazing, but it
was far from it. The company exploited people’s weaknesses that they found
after studying them, took advantage of them, and encouraged unhealthy eating
and spending on biscuits. Then we later read something about reading like a
writer, and I thought, "I didn’t do this for the biscuit reading!" I just read
and reacted. The reaction definitely comes from the overly dramatic outlook I
have on healthy eating habits, but I now appreciate this reading as a piece of
art that someone was able to write so much detail about biscuits. De Button
really researched the company and it’s employees, and how they felt about the
work they were doing, which is an important lesson for everyone. That takes a
lot of dedication and passion to writing a well-documented piece on biscuits.
As far as thinking
goes, it’s always developing, and that’s one great thing about Antioch and this
course, it encourages you to reflect on yourself and your outlooks. This
writing class helped me develop more in the area of sharing my thoughts with
others, which can be a scary task since your opinions might clash with someone
else’s, but that’s normal and actually healthy. I found that people in this
class were very open and encouraging, which creates a safe environment to share
and agree or disagree. Some journal assignments during class, specifically the
one where everyone went out in groups to observe, was important in learning to
think about and observe a single thing for a period of time instead of jumping
around from sound to sound or whatever it is that is happening around you. Too
often, my thoughts are scrambled and jumping from subject to subject, but
having the emphasis on focusing on a single thing for a long period of time
really helped me slow down to an extent. I also noticed that my outlook on
reading has improved, and I have actually enjoyed some reading this quarter,
whereas I never looked forward to reading since high school unless it was about
a topic that I enjoyed, like dinosaurs and their anatomy, minerals and
gemstones or psychology.
Journaling has
helped me grieve, remember, let out unconventional thoughts and feelings, and
notice details like the circle and striped fabric on the chairs in Antioch’s
lobby, or the dead flies on the windowsill, poor flies. Journaling regularly
decreased my stress, which was surprising because I thought I would be stressed
about remembering to journal, but I ended up looking forward to it and I hope I
make the time for it after this quarter. While I think I took away a lot from
this class, I really “got” being open and attentive, which might seem like it
doesn’t relate to reading and writing, but it does because you can’t write
without exposing a part of yourself. It is too easy to just be present in
class, and sit through it to get it done, but to genuinely listen to your
classmates is more difficult, and I mean listen to them to the point where you
actually care about them. I hope you all are doing well wherever you are!
