Placement Preparations - The Reflective Journal

As one of my many placement requirements, I am required to keep a reflective journal documenting my experiences during this period. By the end of this, I should have 10 complete entries.

Featured below is the paragraph from our placement handbook, a sort of checklist for what each entry should contain.

However, this journal will not be my first experience with reflective writing. Last semester I had to complete a reflective journal for a single unit. This was not my favourite activity and since I had little experience with this form of writing, I didn't end up putting much effort into this task. My entries were very brief and ended up sounding rushed, incomplete and didn't dig very deep into my learning. I want things to go differently this time, I don't want any of these entries to be like my previous...

So in comes my placement journal. Very similar to my previous journal, I purchased a white faux moleskin leather journal from Colette Accessories for a mere $3.00 (RRP $9.95, available here).

For such a price, these journals have the look of luxury and an unmatched functionality. While each journal has 120 feint lined pages in a light sepia tone, a ribbon bookmark and an inbuilt, reinforced pocket located at the back of the book, I also customise these journals for increased organisation; I add tabs and number the pages.

The tabs allow me to split my entries into 5 sections, one for each round of placements I will undertake. By adding the numbered pages, I can easily note pages for later reading while also making the pages easy to refer back to in further entries or for referencing in writing.

The last piece of the puzzle is the template. The admin have left it up to the students to decide whether they want to use a template or note and to even design their own template. This leaves me with some questions.

'Should I use a template or just write?' 

'What template would work best for this?'

'Should I design my own template or use a pre-existing one?'

I still have some time to think about this but in the meantime, how do you think I should approach this journal?

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Miss Tracy xx