Journal Writing Experience.

'Reflection involves taking the unprocessed, raw material of experience and engaging with it as a way to make sense of what has occurred. It involves exploring often messy and  confused events and focussing on the thoughts and emotions that accompany them.' Boud - Using Journal Writing to Enhance Reflective Practice.

Task 2B suggests that we use different ways of writing in our journals. I has a look through the list of 9 suggestions to select one. I felt that the first suggestion - Description is something that I do in every entry in my journal and also the second suggestion - Initial reflection. The next suggestion was the use of lists. 

As you can see, the above image of my journal doesn't include a list. However I had underlined in a different colour the emotions I was feeling at the time - including; shocked, not surprised, accepting, sad, upset, worried and positive. I will give a little back story as to why I was feeling all these emotions, as there is quite a variety of conflicting emotions. 

I teach on Saturday mornings for a dance school, and received a call that due to financial reasons they would no longer be able to keep me on, meaning that this Saturday would be my last day there. After identifying how I was feeling about this and deciding to take a positive approach I decided to use a list to explore the positive outcomes that could come from this and the different routes and opportunities that I can take from this.

I feel like I could also use this list as a checklist, to ensure I really make the most of opportunities that could come from this situation. I am generally a big fan of 'To Do' lists, so I think this is definitely something I will use more in my Journal as a way of exploring my feelings, things I have done and things I will do.

The reason I have used a quote from Boud's  Using Journal Writing to Enhance Reflective Practice is because I felt it was quite relevant to the situation I was writing about about. I had a lot of Raw Material that I needed to make sense of that I needed to understand and to turn my thoughts and emotions into a positive way of moving forward.