'Journal Writing Experience'
As I said in my previous post http://lizzieuniblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/task-2a-reflective-practice.html; at first I found the whole journal writing concept quite hard, and have ended up utilising a 'Description', 'Analysis/Reflection', 'Evaluation', format.
I experimented with graphs, charts and diagrams (inspired by ‘My Life in Graphs: a guided journal’, KnockKnock,) as suggested in the tasks outlines; I drew a bar chart of how good my mood and emotions were at different points through out the day, and also drew a mind map of my emotions and critcal reflections about a specific event that happened. However, I am a very organised and extremely neat person (my friends regularly call me a 'neat' or 'clean' freak) and this quite unorganised and free way writing, didnt help to reflect particularly well. By giving headings eg: 'Description', to my journal writing and using a set of questions eg: What was my emoitional high? Did I fail at anything? etc ... to aid my reflections of the day, I found it much more effective and clearer to understand and I will definatly use this method for the forseeable future.
When I was reading through the first few enteries in my journal, one pattern I noticed was that the emotions and moods (I felt when the children arrived) I instinctivly wrote first were all very positive; 'enthusiastic', 'energetic' 'happy', etc... I know that I am a very positive person, however when I actually reflected on what I had written I realised that when the children arrived whom I was teaching, I probably did have parts of me that were stressed, pre-occupied, tired, etc...; yet they were emotions I had failed to record. On reflection I think as a peformer your default setting is always happy, smilely, entertaining, etc..., and you become extremely accomplished in putting on a brave front or a 'show'. I think this is something that I do alot, especially when I am teaching children, which is obviously something that as a professional is expected of you. Having noticed this though I will be careful when writing my journal in future to reflect more honestly about my emotions throughout the day.
Well ... all this 'reflection' on my own 'reflection' is givin me too much to think about at one time; so I'll leave it there for now I think!
This is fascinating, because with a lot of dancers and dance teachers the opposite has been true; all anyone is focusing on is the negatives and are having to learn to positively reflect on their practice. Its so interesting to see everyone exploring how their mind works with regards to reflection. In your case, you're putting on a "brave face" within our own journal, and I do a similar thing, not being completely honest about how I'm feeling. It's something I need to work on, because after all, if we can't be honest with ourselves in our own private journals, where can we!? Not only that, but I need to explore WHY I am feeling those emotions...your post has made me think about honesty in journals from a different angle!
ReplyDeleteYes I totally agree about exploring further into WHY we are feeling the the way we say we are in our journals. Although as artists and performers we tend to be very open about our feelings and aren't scared to show our emotions (we're known perphaps to be a tad dramatic?!?!); i think as a performer or a teacher you really can't indulge in how you are feeling whilst working- they really are jobs where you are constantly 'putting on a show', despite what mood you may be in. But I agree that if we can't be honest with ourselves in our journals; where there's no audience, no children or parents, no teachers, choregraphers, directors, etc ... watching our every move; then where can we be? So I definatly will be analysing and reflecting more about WHY i am feeling how I am/was, and try to be brutally honest!!
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