Weekly Reading Journal Assignment
The Spiritual Journey – Reading/Discussion Journal Assignment
The purpose of keeping a journal is to help you reflect personally on the concepts and issues we will be reading about and discussing in class. It will require between 30-60 minutes each week. I will collect your journal pages twice as indicated on the syllabus; the second time, hand in the entire journal. Full credit (100 points possible) will be given for journals where you have clearly done the required amount of time writing each week and have responded thoughtfully to the questions; partial credit will be awarded where you have skipped weeks or have clearly failed to spend enough time writing, or have failed to respond thoughtfully to the questions. There are no "right" or "wrong" answers - just answers that show engagement with the reading or lack of engagement with the reading.
Here are some quotes to help you envision what the journal is all about:
• "A. . . journal can be a documentary of. . . . academic. . . . growth, a record of evolving insight as well as a tool used to gain insight."
• ". . . . journals exist somewhere on a continuum between diaries and class notebooks: whereas diaries are records of personal thought and experience, class notebooks are records of other people's facts and ideas. Like a diary, the journal is written in the first person (that is "I. . . ."); like the class notebook, the journal focuses on academic subjects the writer would like to learn more about." Fulwiler's Journals Across the Disciplines
Keeping a journal is intended to help you:
- reflect on, clarify, question, and respond to class readings and discussions
- understand these concepts and issues in light of your own life experience
- raise general questions about spirituality which might add to our classroom discussion.
How to Begin
1. Get a notebook, preferably a three-ring binder. I prefer loose leaf paper or typewritten pages, as it makes handing in your pages easier (and you keep the notebook for further writing). You can also use the binder to organize your class materials. This way, you can also remove or clip together pages that you don't choose to share with me. Please date your entries. Typewritten journals are fine, but the journal can be handwritten too. But please leave ample space in the margins for my comments, as I see the journal as a dialogue between you and me.
2. At least twice each week, spend at least 15 minutes writing in your journal (so, 30-60 minutes per week total). You may write about your reactions to concepts and issues we discussed in class, to the videotapes presented in class, or to class readings or assignments, but don’t use the journal as a place to do reading notes or respond to reading/study questions. (You may want to keep a separate place in your notebook for reading notes.) For the journal assignment, you should put aside the texts and write your personal response to the reading. You may also wish to reflect on events happening in your life or in the public realm that connect to class discussion and readings. However, this is not a diary about your personal life as such.
3. Your comments can be connected to your own experience, but they should relate to things we are working on in the class. The primary focus should be on the course reading, and responding to the reading response questions.
4. Please write legibly and clearly. I won't be evaluating your mechanics of your writing in the journal (though these will be more important in your final project), but clear writing does communicate your thoughts better than garbled or "stream of consciousness" writing.
5. Please conform to the rules governing good usage of quoted material. Don't write down information from a text without using quotes and giving a page number. If you are paraphrasing ideas from the text, you need to mention this informally (as in, "Buber describes. . . . , Black Elk suggests that. . . .), rather than having it be ambiguous as to whether this is your thought or a thought from the reading. (In a more formal paper, you would need to add a footnote for paraphrases as well.) Even though this is not formal research paper writing, please note that if any of the language, even partial sentences, come directly from a text or internet site, this language must be in quotations and cited appropriately. Be sure that you give yourself enough time to do the reading journal, so that you are not tempted to cut corners with your writing. Again, 30-60 minutes of writing each week should be sufficient to do well with this assignment.
If you are struggling with how to do this sort of writing, I encourage you to visit the Metro Writing Center:
http://www.metrostate.edu/writingcenter/.