ReflectionPaperHere

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!