Changing Perspective

As part of the internship curriculum, I have to write daily journals of my internship experience at SMU to capture instant feelings and thoughts I process through new environment.  Many would claim that blogging is similar to daily journals, but I would argue that they serve a different purpose.  My perception towards daily journals is very skewed due to my experience in Korea.  In middle school, many Korean assignments involved daily journals but there was a constant pressure to not record exactly how we feel.  The more truthful a journal gets, no matter how negative the experience might have been, the more glares you get from teachers.  What’s the point of writing a journal then? So yeah, my idea of daily journals was never positive. 

However, I find this new, and yet nothing new, exercise to be quite enlightening.  I no longer feel the pressure to generalize my experience because whatever I write is what the professor will get, and I know she will respect my thought process.  Therefore it has become a more pleasant experience as I gradually notice a development of my learning experience.  It’s Week 7 of my internship now – even though I spend only 2 days of the week out here – it has broaden my perspective of student services and fields of interests I might want to pursue.