POL S 390 (A1)

Fall 2006

Journal Assignment

Your assignment (worth 10% of your course grade) is to keep a journal, on a regular basis, related to this course. You need to make at least two journal entries per week – at least 26 total entries -- in addition to any free-writing that I ask you to do in class and add to your journal. (Note that we will be doing free-writing in class at least once a week, but it won’t always be for your journal.)

•          Journal writing is a form of free-writing. It is also "low stakes" writing: it is mostly for yourself (see below); it will not be edited for style, grammar, or content; and it is not worth much of your grade (26+ journal entries = 10% of course grade).

•          Journal writing serves many purposes. In your journals you can:

            ►          observe what you are reading, what goes on in class, what you are researching

            ►          define what you are doing in an assignment, in specific classes, in the course generally, in your major/minor

            ►          express confusion about anything – where you are not understanding, or are frustrated – and perhaps become unconfused as your write or pose questions to me

            ►          speculate about what you are studying

            ►          give insights – your ideas, your conclusions, your putting things together

            ►          connect readings to other readings, this course to other courses, what we are talking about to your life

            ►          respond to readings (controversial ones, for example), whether negatively or positively

            ►          react candidly to what happens in class

            ►          be self-aware about what you are studying and why you are studying it

            ►          refine your thoughts as they progress throughout the term, whether on particular readings, particular topics, the course generally, or your assignments

            ►          evaluate the course, including the task of keeping a journal.

I will ask you to turn in several pages of your choice a couple of time during the term (with at least one class’s advance notice), and you must turn in your journal in the last day of class. I’ll let you know in December how many pages I want you to turn in at the end.

You will take out journal entries that you don’t want me to read. You can keep a private journal along with your course journal, and keep those entries separate. You can move journal entries around. You can add them in. The key here is, in some sense, volume – that is, you should be writing a lot, because part of the process is keeping ourselves writing for the purpose of exploration and learning rather than just for evaluation and grades.

Hence, a loose-leaf journal is best.

POL S 390 Journal assignment, cont.

If your handwriting is unreadable, you can write your journal entries as e-mail messages to yourself. E-mail them to yourself, print them out, and add them to the journal.

Rules

•          at least two entries a week (26 in all), in addition to anything I ask you to write in class and add to the journal

•          try to write for at least several minutes each time

•          express yourself freely

•          take the assignment seriously

•          but have fun

•          no lecture notes!

•          it must be legible to me

•          no word-processed entries

•          mark every journal entry with the date/time when you wrote it

•          start each entry on a new sheet of paper              

•          "Write in your natural voice with your most comfortable language.... Otherwise you may become distracted by form rather than content...."

A few examples

"Unlike math, where you must learn how to add and subtract before you can multiply and divide, philosophy is a smattering of different things with no exact and precise starting place. In philosophy we could start anywhere and end up anywhere without ever having gone anywhere, but we would have uncovered many rocks along the way. Ah Hah! This is our task: uncovering rocks along the way." (Defining)

"Of course, I’m not a scholar, but if I had to sit and listen to a speech like this I wouldn’t be able to figure out what the heck he is talking about. Even after reading it for the third time I still can’t figure out half of what he’s saying." (Confusion, about a Ralph Waldo Emerson essay)

"I am really amazed at myself! I don’t every recall writing this much in my life—especially in a journal. I write down a lot of ideas I get, I write in it when a class is boring (usually chemistry lecture) and I write in it because I want to. It helps me get things off my chest that are bothering me." (Reacting)

"It is beginning to pull together. After reading the articles for the second time I’m beginning to see a sequence or passage of ideas...." (Connecting)