Artifact 4
Assignment
"Reflective Learning Journals are tools which offer an opportunity for you to demonstrate what you're learning and thinking each week. These Reflective Learning Journals can also serve as a foundation for the material you might incorporate into your ePortfolios at the end of the semester.
Your learning journal should utilize appropriate language usage, and should reference our readings and assignments from the past week with examples and good detail. You can also ask me personal questions and ask me for clarifications in your Reflective Learning Journals. These are a great opportunity to have a private learning conversation with me."
Each week we were required to write in a private e Journal to Professor Ogden about the topics we learned each week. I wanted to include one of my learning journals and I think that the example below is from week 1. I remember being very excited about free writing. I feel like free writing is the most important activity we did in class and I do not mean to slight the other assignments by saying that. Free writing is helping me to develop my voice and I encourage everyone who is going to be writing to do it. Free writing can also be painful like we talked about in another artifact. I did not know that free writing could end up being painful when I wrote the journal entry below. However, I still feel really excited about free writing even if t can be scary.
Your learning journal should utilize appropriate language usage, and should reference our readings and assignments from the past week with examples and good detail. You can also ask me personal questions and ask me for clarifications in your Reflective Learning Journals. These are a great opportunity to have a private learning conversation with me."
Each week we were required to write in a private e Journal to Professor Ogden about the topics we learned each week. I wanted to include one of my learning journals and I think that the example below is from week 1. I remember being very excited about free writing. I feel like free writing is the most important activity we did in class and I do not mean to slight the other assignments by saying that. Free writing is helping me to develop my voice and I encourage everyone who is going to be writing to do it. Free writing can also be painful like we talked about in another artifact. I did not know that free writing could end up being painful when I wrote the journal entry below. However, I still feel really excited about free writing even if t can be scary.
Learning Journal Entry
Free writing seems to be a bit like brainstorming. Nothing is wrong or right and the crazier the better. Brainstorming is concerned mostly with coming up with ideas, free writing is just a process to enable writing. Where free writing and brainstorming are the same is that we need to turn of the editing process and just give in to the activity and do it.
A misconception I had about free writing at the beginning of this week is that free writing would be the place where the author generates his ideas. Now this may be a possibility but after reading a good chunk of Writing Down the Bones I understand free writing differently. Free writing is more like a muscle memory exercise. When I played tennis I would spend hours working on my serve. I would work on top-spin serves, side spin serves, power serving, serve and volley, placement, trying to hit the bucket, trying to his a small triangle of tennis balls. In a match though I would usually just use one or two serves and try to place it where I wanted. All those makes and misses I had in practice meant nothing in the match except that I had confidence in my ability. Before I got really good at serving and had mastered a variety people would just get my power serve. If I missed it the first time I would give them the same serve on second serve. A lot of times people would remark that I actually served harder on my second serves that the first. The point I am trying to make is that free writing is like all of that practice on the tennis court, it keeps the mind and body sharp until the time we have to perform.
In one chapter, Natalie Goldberg challenges the writer to see everything as if it were new, for the first time. She says that unless you do that you will enter a situation with preconceived notions of what to expect. She tells a story of being a new teacher and having to teach an all black class in Detroit. She could have chosen to be afraid and listen to those voices in her head about what the experience would be like. Instead she read the class a poem that she loved and put her heart into it. The class was eager to learn from her. It is important to recognize what she said about fear. It is probably the strongest human emotion. Sometime we feel like we cannot control it so we avoid things that can turn out beautiful for us. Free writing is designed to let your brain vent all the steam it builds up over the years so that we recognize ourselves and know when those voices in our head are protecting us from something great.
A misconception I had about free writing at the beginning of this week is that free writing would be the place where the author generates his ideas. Now this may be a possibility but after reading a good chunk of Writing Down the Bones I understand free writing differently. Free writing is more like a muscle memory exercise. When I played tennis I would spend hours working on my serve. I would work on top-spin serves, side spin serves, power serving, serve and volley, placement, trying to hit the bucket, trying to his a small triangle of tennis balls. In a match though I would usually just use one or two serves and try to place it where I wanted. All those makes and misses I had in practice meant nothing in the match except that I had confidence in my ability. Before I got really good at serving and had mastered a variety people would just get my power serve. If I missed it the first time I would give them the same serve on second serve. A lot of times people would remark that I actually served harder on my second serves that the first. The point I am trying to make is that free writing is like all of that practice on the tennis court, it keeps the mind and body sharp until the time we have to perform.
In one chapter, Natalie Goldberg challenges the writer to see everything as if it were new, for the first time. She says that unless you do that you will enter a situation with preconceived notions of what to expect. She tells a story of being a new teacher and having to teach an all black class in Detroit. She could have chosen to be afraid and listen to those voices in her head about what the experience would be like. Instead she read the class a poem that she loved and put her heart into it. The class was eager to learn from her. It is important to recognize what she said about fear. It is probably the strongest human emotion. Sometime we feel like we cannot control it so we avoid things that can turn out beautiful for us. Free writing is designed to let your brain vent all the steam it builds up over the years so that we recognize ourselves and know when those voices in our head are protecting us from something great.
Reflection
Free writing is both a blessing and a curse. The act of free writing gives us the freedom to say and do whatever we fill like as writers. An activity is like a blank canvas for an artist. We might create a Mona Lisa or just a bunch of gloppy paint stains on white fabric. Free writing enables the process of writing. However, free writing, by its very nature, can lead us into places where we do not want to go. I have learned that I still have unresolved issues from my childhood. I also learned that I am not ready to share the details of my childhood with others. I do not want people to feel sorry for me. However, I can free write about that subject and get it out of my head. It is funny how things come up that I do not want to remember and other things come up that I thought I had forgotten. Free writing is for the writer. It is a bit like writing in a journal. We do not have to share it. Sometimes during a free write, we may find things that we would like to explore more, things we would like to share. I think I will continue to free write about things that make me happy, things that upset me, things I aspire to, and things that I want to forget. I included this learning journal on free writing because I felt that it is the single most important skill we have learned in this class.