Final Journal Reflection

I’ve always found two parts of writing to be particularly painful: Starting and finishing a piece.  Finding the right words to introduce my ideas to an unfamiliar, but eager, audience is mind-melting.  Once I’m firmly entrenched in a new setting, ideas can flow, free from worry of the kind of judgement which suppresses and stifles creativity.  I have found that my academic career has run parallel to my writing process.

As a freshman at Morningside, I had trouble acclimating myself to a new environment; However, once I settled into my majors, I had the stability and comfort to express my ideas more fully.  As our class, and my academic career, winds down, I’m starting to realize a few things.  The first is that I feel woefully unprepared for whatever the future holds.  I think this sort of disillusionment with reality is common among college graduates, but it is nevertheless frightening.  The prospect of not having a job seems ridiculous when looking at things objectively, but I’m nevertheless terrified.

The second thing I’ve realized is that I feel much more confident in my ability to successfully pursue a career than I did when I first came to Morningside.  I know that this may seem to run in opposition to what I just said, but I really feel confident about the progress I have made while at Morningside.  I think a lot of this has to do with pursuing two subjects that I wasn’t the most comfortable in and learning to grow because of it.  I know that we haven’t known each other for my entire college career, but I feel like it’s worth knowing that one of my weakest subjects coming into college was English.  I had always considered myself creative, but had always resisted the idea of sharing my ideas with other people, because I didn’t want my ideas to be subject to a grade.  Working with the professors here at Morningside has been a pleasure because everyone, including yourself, has been not only willing, but eager to work with me.  Thank you for that.

As I move on from my time here at Morningside, I will take many of the skills I have learned here with me.  The English department has taught me how to clearly and effectively communicate my ideas.  I’ve also learned a lot about taking time to separate myself from my work and look at the things I do more objectively.  I feel like these are skills which hold great significance outside of the field of English, and that I will be using these for the rest of my life.

One of my regrets from my time on campus is that I could not have been more involved in English activities.  I’ve always held a passion for writing, yet I have never submitted any work to the Kiosk.  This is a mistake that I hope to rectify.  There have been many student slams on campus, but I have never read at one.  This is another mistake that I hope to rectify.

As I end my time here at Morningside, I’m having trouble finding the right words to say.  I’d like to finish with a flourish, deftly mustering my ideas into form as I prepare to leave a safe and familiar place for new horizons, but I’m left grasping at the wispy contrails of my thoughts as they fly by, instead.  My departure from the cozy terminal of Morningside feels a lot like this sentence.  I’m trying a little too hard to make something beautiful.  In the case of school, I’m worried about making sure I leave on the perfect note, performing well in swimming, expressing my ideas in writing to great enthusiasm, whether they been in a class or otherwise, and creating good final memories with my friends.  In the case of that sentence, I carried the airplane metaphor a little too long when I began describing terminals as comfortable.

Regardless of how my time here at Morningside ends, I appreciate all that has happened while I was here.  The people that I met and the experiences that I had prepared me for the rest of my life in a way that I’m not sure would have happened in many other environments.  Thanks you for facilitating this class, for putting up with my consistently late assignments, and, most of all, for being supportive and enthusiastic about my work.

-Jacob