Journal Entries

Journal entries are typical assignments that college and university professors like to assign to get insight into how you are absorbing the material presented in your course. The writers at Paper Masters will compose journal entries that will illustrate exactly what your professor is looking for. They serve as great jumping off points for your own entries later in the course.

The following is an example of what may be expected out of a student taking a course in environmental hazards.

Beginning early in the semester, the textbook will introduce you to a variety of issues that have the potential to threaten public health. The course requires you to create a reflective journal to record weekly entries documenting three key mitigation strategies for dealing with a potential emergency related to the hazards you’ve been reading about. In addition, you should research and reflect upon your own communities' level of preparedness for such an event. At the end of the course you should have at least 8 entries covering the wide range of environmental hazards presented in the text; each journal entry should be between 500 to 800 words.

You will be required to submit a draft of your journal writing for critique, at which point you should have at least 3 journal entries. Generally, professor’s award no points for this deliverable, but points will be deducted from your final grade on the journal entries if you fail to submit your journal entries by the end of the course. Additionally, you will be expected to account for the instructor’s feedback in the final version of the assignment.

For longer journal entries, you may want to structure your entries as such:

a.In what ways did this course impact your thinking?

b.How have you learned to self-manage, self-monitor, and self-motivate to effectively manage your time and your course workload?

c.Critically analyze this course as an adult learner. How would you improve or strengthen the course content?

d.Do use the word I. It is best to say that “concepts in relationship to scholarship” were learned this semester to opposed to learned the meaning of scholarship.

1. Choose FIVE SCHOLARLY SOURCES search for and select a minimum of five (5) sources to develop you subject. While reading the sources, be very careful that you indicate whether the notes you take are direct quotes or paraphrases. Taking care in the early note-taking stages can help avoid unintentional plagiarism later. Wikipedia is not a scholarly resource. Neither is a dictionary, newspaper, popular magazine or an encyclopedia. If they do get used, they will not be counted toward the five scholarly sources need to be recent within the past five years.
2. The topic should be a narrative reflection of what you learned:
3. Select a minimum of five (5) sources to develop your subject. While reading your sources, be very careful that you indicate for yourself whether the notes you take are direct quotes or paraphrases. Taking care in the early note-taking stages can help avoid unintentional plagiarism later. Most professors, even for journal entries, will be submitting to TURNITIN, a plagiarism detection website.
4. A scholarly paper must include evidence against your argument as well as evidence that supports it. It is your responsibility to explicate at least one argument that counters yours and to explain why the argument you have chosen is a stronger one based on the evidence.