To journal or not to journal? That is the question. Journal of course! Journaling, especially during the excitement of the college years, is a wonderful and beneficial activity.
You realize your stupidity If you’ve ever journaled before, you know the wonderful moment of looking back at old life chapters. You flip through pages and come across a freak-out. It’s a page water damaged by tears with messy handwritten rants. Maybe it’s about a friend. Maybe it’s about a guy obsession. Maybe it’s about a professor who made you rewrite an essay. Whatever the topic, you read your words and laugh out loud. The rant about your best friend was an obvious miscommunication. The guy whose name you underlined is completely undateable. And the prof actually helped you become a better writer. Looking back, you see how your tear-worthy problems may be insignificant in the scheme of things.
Journal for your future mini-me… In a journal is you can write to anyone. You can write to your journal (Dear Dumb Diary), your future self (Future me, can’t you tell me what I’m majoring in?), or even a future kid. Maybe you won’t have a 9 season long show about your crazy adventures (HIMYM anyone?), but you can share some of your experiences. And you can better relate to the problems and insecurities of your 19-year-old from a 19-year-old’s perspective.
You learn about yourself Journaling points out patterns. Like, every time you talk with your childhood friend, Stacy, you write about insecurities. Maybe she isn’t a good influence. Or hmmm…curious how frequently you go on rants about your love of probabilities and standard deviations. Maybe you should consider a concentration in Statistics. Journaling gives a place for personal honesty. Without judgment, you begin to learn who you are.
Journaling relieves stress Journal to relieve stress. People cope with stress many different ways. Amazingly, journaling forces you to unplug. No electronics. No thousand emails. Only pen and paper. For a short period of time, it is you and your words. With journaling, you unplug, not only from the world, but you unplug the cap on your emotions. By writing down your thoughts, emotions, hopes and insecurities, the hardships on your mind transfer to the paper. Who is a better listener than the blank pages of a journal? I’ll wait…
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