Last reflections on the diary

We have been asked to reflect on the experience of having kept a diary for one of the units during the whole academic year. I have been keeping a diary during the whole degree, which I have used as a learning tool, so it is obvious that I find it very useful. To me, the diary has great benefits:

• It shows me "how much" I have learned. I like to have physical evidence and record of what I learn, and the diary gives me that. Besides, since I am afraid I will forget things, it acts as an external memory to which I can come back.
• It reflects the process of my learning, my struggles, my mistakes, my interests, my fears. They are all there, very clearly stated. That's why I don't like editing posts once I have written them, unless it is to add a few things I realise I have forgotten to mention soon after closing the post. What's done, is done, and if I change my mind, or I need to go into something deeper, I do so in another post.
• It helps me clarify ideas, arrange them, "digest" them, as it were. Writing forces me to think better and slower, it is a good exercise for me.
• It gives me an excuse to summarise. In several units where we have had no exams and no assignments which required us to summarise all that we had learned in the subject, I have done that summary in the diary, and it helps me a lot to see the general picture. The diary is a good companion to the notes I take during the lessons, which I also keep.

I am clearly a great fan of the diary, although I can understand that it might be useless for others. Compared to the rest of the diary, where most of the posts were only written for myself, and not for my teacher to read (except for the posts on the school placements), I have to say that there is little difference between the diary I have kept for this unit and the rest. I have been as honest as I am in the rest of post which nobody needs to read, even though there have been times when I thought it wasn't particularly wise to do so. If I had written the diary only for myself, I would have probably described the warmers in detail, and create a label for them, so I could retrieve them easily afterwards, but I think that is about the only difference I would have introduced. Well, and most probably I wouldn't have written about every lesson. In that sense, having the diary as a requirement for the unit has helped me a lot to be more constant, and I am very grateful for that, because when it isn't an assignment, it tends to be left for last.