un-inane (I hope)punterschlagenMay 27 2010, 14:43:35 UTC
I, too, have kept all of my journals since I began in 4th grade. My reading teacher had us journal daily in class, and then had individual conferences to go over what we had written. She was the BEST teacher ever - she was more interested in our IDEAS than our grammar, and seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say.
I remember having the worst time coming up with journal entries the first few years (she was the gifted/reading teacher for 4th, 5th, and 6th grade) - I usually wrote about what I had for dinner the night before!
Now I'll have to pull them out of the box under my bed and read them again!
This is a note to anyone who is in middle school now, or knows someone who's in middle school now, who is required to keep a daily journal. SAVE IT.
Hahaha, oh my god, I recently found mine too (6th through 8th grade). The ones I kept in the summer for my own benefit are strangely not much better than the ones I had to keep for school that the teacher would read (even in my 'personal' ones, I was always paranoid about people reading them, so I never talked about anything really juicy, like the numerous boys I was in love with). So they're not as *obviously* great as I had hoped to discover after becoming obsessed with Mortified. BUT they are hilarious for my total failure to grasp reality. I was always really upset about something stupid, and would report really boring things in vast detail, and was always for some reason extremely stressed about school. There was one great entry where I was FURIOUS at my group I was working on a project with, because no one was taking it seriously enough (I think this was a little mini-opera we had
( ... )
There was one great entry where I was FURIOUS at my group I was working on a project with, because no one was taking it seriously enough (I think this was a little mini-opera we had to write for music class), and it's all I talked about for days,Hahahah, I had a shockingly similar incident in my 8th grade one! Except apparently I gave up and quit the group (it was an optional project or something-- I was unclear about that). I had absolutely no recollection of this incident
( ... )
I don't know that I've ever really written without the intention of impressing somebody. Even if it's something I never show to anyone, I keep in mind that I might someday. Maybe that's my problem.
I tossed all my old journals while I was in college in a deep depression and I sooooooooooo regret it. I still have some random writings here and there and I do actually still have all my poetry because I couldn't bear to dispose of that, and those are very entertaining and/or embarrassing.
Thank goodness I never kept a journal when I was in school -- what a horribly dull, emoish bunch of trash it would have been. But as with you, it would have been great if writing a story about someone that age later on.
I never really kept a journal unless I had to, and even then I don't know that I ever put a whole lot of effort into it. And if you read my online "journals," I'm sure you'll notice that the number of posts about my actual life pale in comparison to ones about things that interest me. I find it easy to write about my opinions, but more difficult to write about my feelings, I guess. I DO like going back and reading stuff from when I was a kid, but it's mostly fiction.
These journals actually were more about my opinions than my feelings (excusing boredom). Actually, they're mostly about boredom, early on...
In response to your earlier response, my dad has always been big into geneology, so I always had in the back of my head the idea that this was like A LETTER TO FUTURE GENERATIONS. You (collective "you" that includes me) just have to stop trying to IMPRESS the future generations with your cleverness (which ends up looking stupid) or apologising for writing stuff that might NOT look good (which just calls attention to it and looks fake, anyway). But writing to an audience does help focus your thoughts, at least.
You (collective "you" that includes me) just have to stop trying to IMPRESS the future generations with your cleverness (which ends up looking stupid) or apologising for writing stuff that might NOT look good (which just calls attention to it and looks fake, anyway).
Well, I think there's got to be a BIT of writing to the audience when you're BLOGGING, otherwise nobody would be able to follow along. It's just when you're unsticking your mental pen that you need to turn off the audience!
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I remember having the worst time coming up with journal entries the first few years (she was the gifted/reading teacher for 4th, 5th, and 6th grade) - I usually wrote about what I had for dinner the night before!
Now I'll have to pull them out of the box under my bed and read them again!
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Reading about dinner might make you hungry though!
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Hahaha, oh my god, I recently found mine too (6th through 8th grade). The ones I kept in the summer for my own benefit are strangely not much better than the ones I had to keep for school that the teacher would read (even in my 'personal' ones, I was always paranoid about people reading them, so I never talked about anything really juicy, like the numerous boys I was in love with). So they're not as *obviously* great as I had hoped to discover after becoming obsessed with Mortified. BUT they are hilarious for my total failure to grasp reality. I was always really upset about something stupid, and would report really boring things in vast detail, and was always for some reason extremely stressed about school. There was one great entry where I was FURIOUS at my group I was working on a project with, because no one was taking it seriously enough (I think this was a little mini-opera we had ( ... )
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In response to your earlier response, my dad has always been big into geneology, so I always had in the back of my head the idea that this was like A LETTER TO FUTURE GENERATIONS. You (collective "you" that includes me) just have to stop trying to IMPRESS the future generations with your cleverness (which ends up looking stupid) or apologising for writing stuff that might NOT look good (which just calls attention to it and looks fake, anyway). But writing to an audience does help focus your thoughts, at least.
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Yeah, that's still how I usually write.
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