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Have you tried gratitude journaling?

grateful-forScrolling through my social media feeds, I can’t help but notice a sudden burst in pretty twenty-somethings professing themselves to be wellness gurus, promoting some kind of “healthy” practice that “Everyone Should Add To Their Routine!” Things like yoga, meditation, vitamin supplements, and innumerable recipes using organic foods fill my screen. As someone who tries to stay holistically in-tune with her wellness, I like to try a variety of these cool things I’m seeing online. There is one approach that I have found more beneficial than any other—gratitude journaling.

Gratitude journaling is the daily practice of writing down at least one thing you feel grateful for and why. This can take many forms—bullet points, full journal entries based on gratitude-themed prompts, drawings, or photographs with captions. There are many creative possibilities. The goal of this journaling is to create a deep sense of appreciation in one’s life.

In a world with so much inequality and struggle, it is often easy to overlook something as simple as being thankful for warm socks or the way the leaves on your favorite tree change colors. Competitive and academically challenging environments can make it easy to forget to be grateful for internet connection or supportive friends and family. Gratitude journaling focuses the mind on the present and generates a more appreciative view of the world.

There are even some proven benefits to daily gratitude journaling. The University of Minnesota and the University of Florida teamed up for a study in which participants were instructed to write down a list of positive events that occurred throughout their day and why these made them feel happy. At the conclusion of the study, the participants reported lower stress levels and a greater sense of calm at night. Psychotherapist Amy Morin has identified some key benefits of gratitude journaling, such as an improved quality of relationships, physical health, self-esteem, mental strength and resilience, and a decrease in aggression and anger.

Gratitude journaling is something I have come to look forward to every day. By positively focusing on the things that matter to me, no matter how small, I generally feel happier and more content with everything around me. I am more receptive to friends, family, even strangers; and I’m more resilient when faced with uncontrollable, stressful events in life. The physical act of writing down my gratitude helps to permanently capture these important things, and reading back through all these entries is something that brings peace to my life.

gratitude-journal

Images:

https://www.tckpublishing.com/how-and-why-to-keep-a-gratitude-journal/

https://positivepsychologyprogram.com/gratitude-journal/

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Lessons about Writing – Inspired by Oliver Sacks

Sacks-Island-coverOliver Sacks claims that he wrote The Island of the Colorblind  “in a sort of swoop, a single breath, in July 1995, it then grew. . .” (xx). He makes writing sound easy, as if already-formed sentences tumbled out of his head onto the page in the correct order.  Yet, when he clarifies the process of reconstructing memories, we get a hint at the behind-the-scenes work required of communicating his Pacific island experiences:

“Writing, in these past months, has allowed me, forced me, to revisit these islands in memory.  And since memory .  .  .  is never a simple recording or reproduction, but an active process of recategorization—of reconstruction, of imagination, determined by our own values and perspectives—so remembering has caused me to reinvent these visits, in a sense, constructing a very personal, idiosyncratic, perhaps eccentric view of these islands . . . .” (xvii-xviii)

Like Sack’s exploration of the islands, his writing process follows a journey from discovery to synthesis or “reconstruction” and provides an example of important concepts about writing.

Concept 1:  Writing is more than a transcription from the mind directly to paper.  Writing is thinking on paper.

Concept 2:  Writing is messy. Making meaning requires work to tease out what we really want to communicate.

Concept 3:  Writing is re-writing.  Because writing is a process of discovery, new ideas might erupt at any time.  In the messiness, ideas collide and produce new ways of thinking about a subject.  Re-visioning our ideas can lead to a more sophisticated structure.  Look what happened to Sacks: his new ideas took the form of pages and pages of endnotes, creating a text of their own.

Concept 4:  How we shape our ideas is influenced by our “values and perspectives.” Each reader brings unique experiences to a text. That’s why “write about what you know” has become a truism – if we connect what we are reading or researching to things we know or have a passion about, our writing stands a better chance of capturing our readers.  Through our writing, we have an opportunity to share our perspective and challenge readers to think in new ways.

By writing Island of the Colorblind, Sacks has given us a glimpse of writing as thinking, as a process of meaning-making. Our challenge is to embrace the process.

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Writing Centers Grow Up, Too

writingThe transition from high school into university is a large leap for many: students, parents, teachers, administrators, and, yes, even writing centers. Adjusting to the higher quality of writing and topics in numerous subjects that aren’t found in typical high school papers is a daunting task for both the consultant and the consultee, but it’s a necessary leap in higher education that fosters personal and intellectual growth.

High school is often the first time students encounter a a group of people dedicated solely to helping them improve their writing. But high school writing centers are often not valued to the same extent as writing centers at the university level. When I was a junior in high school, I helped found my county’s first in-school writing center, comprised of about thirty students and one very dedicated advisor.

To be honest, it was very slow-going. First, we had to get the word out that we now existed. Then we had to prove our value. The students had no prior experience with a writing center and were wary not just of our authority, but also of our ability to help. The center was only open during lunch hours, so sessions were crammed into 15- to 30-minute chunks and focused more on quick grammar and punctuation fixes than on content and analysis. More often than not, the only students who came to visit were those who were required to by their teachers.

For me, the biggest adjustment to working in a writing center at the university level has been the significant increase in working with students who come in on their own accord—students who truly want to improve their writing and value the consultant’s perspective. Not only that, but now we have an entire hour to sit down and work through the piece together, which is something that allows for a deeper conversation about the topic and arguments.

What I have found most rewarding, however, is the ability to work with more international students. These sessions pose different challenges for both the writer and the consultant. Working with students from a variety of countries has helped me see writing in an entirely different way—every culture, every language, every person has a unique voice and view of the world, and helping these students develop their ideas in their writing is a very rewarding experience that isn’t found often in a high school setting.

A higher education, especially at a liberal arts university like William & Mary, encourages students to gain a broad perspective on subjects in multiple disciplines. University writing centers have adapted to the different levels and expectations of writing, giving students a place to find support as they grow as writers.

Image: https://medium.com/an-idea-for-you/the-two-minutes-it-takes-to-read-this-will-improve-your-writing-forever-82a7d01441d1