"Experience is not what happens to you. It's what you do with what happens to you." Aldous Huxley

Keeping a journal is an excellent way for you to reconstruct, reflect on, and think about your internship experience. In doing this, you will "learn from yourself" about the ways in which theory and practice combine. Writing can influence how you understand society and your own values. Entries should help you make sense of what you are doing, not merely be a record of what you did. They should be a way for you to describe and analyze the activities you are engaged in and the new things you are learning, to note important events, and to relate your learning goals to what you are doing.  They also help develop your sociological thinking.

How you choose to write or develop your journal is up to you. There are really three broad parts to this journal: description, reflection, and the answers to the weekly questions.  While each journal will be somewhat unique, all journals should present some understanding of the agency's organizational structure and its culture. Reflections include your observations, any problems you may encounter, what you think about what you see, and any insights that you gain. This journal is also a place for you to use your classroom knowledge to analyze and interpret what you observe. At the very least, you should become experts on  bureaucracy!

The journal can become a vehicle to explore your own belief system. Entries should be reflective and thoughtful, not polished or formal, although typing is always preferred. It is most beneficial to you to write in your journal after every day at your placement.   This will take some discipline, but accuracy is often affected by a delay.  Use your journal to keep a record of  your  time (e.g., Wednesday, January 15, 12-3 P.M.).  Begin each entry with the date and the amount of time you are at your placement site.  If you fill out a time log for your site, include a copy in your journal if possible.

Write in the way that is most comfortable for you. Some students find it helpful to break each entry into two parts; first, a description of what they did that day, and second, their reflections on what they did. This second part may include the answers to the questions below, or you may want to answer the weekly questions separately at the end of each week.

Remember, a journal is a record of your growth and development, both personally and professionally. Whether you read your entries a week or ten years later, looking back on a journal will probably teach you something about yourself.

Following are weekly questions to be answered in addition to your descriptions and reflections.  They serve apply your sociological thinking  to your internship experiences.   I realize that all of the questions will not be equally relevant to everyone; use your own judgment.

Weekly Journal Questions

Week 1:  Focus on you
What are your goals and objectives for the semester? There are many different kinds of goals--they may be academic, professional, personal, or more likely, a combination of these. What skills do you hope to improve, what insights are you looking for? Why did you choose to do an internship? In other words, what do you want most to explore, understand, or learn during this experience?

Week 2:. Focus on the organization
What is the mission of your organization? What role does it play in the community?  What are the causes and consequences of the social problem that this agency/organization addresses? What are the problems or events that bring clients to this organization, and how do they perceive the organization?  How do you think the staff members perceive their clients?

Week 3: Focus on the Organization
Describe the formal organizational structure of your site. Is there a Board of Directors, Executive Director, supervisors, etc.?  In other words, what does the organization look like? If possible, obtain an organizational chart and mark where you or your supervisor appear in the chart. How does the division of labor affect social interaction?  How diverse is the organization, in terms of both employees and clients?  What is the organization's source of funding?  How do funding issues (the source, the amount, the certainty, etc.) affect the provision of services?

Week 4: Focus on the Organization
Describe the culture of work at the organization.  Work groups always develop some sort of  cultural system.  What are the beliefs, norms and expectations of employees regarding the work place and the organization itself?  Include topics like appearance (how people dress, what the office looks like, how organized it is, etc.),  how people interact with one another (cooperative or competitive, formal or informal, high pressure or laid back, etc.), and scheduling (is everything done at the last minute in a rush?).   Do people like working there?

Week 5:  Focus on the system
 What are some of the agencies with which your site has important relationships?  How does your agency interact with them?  Do you see competition, cooperation, "turf" issues, or some combination of these? How is this organization part of a social service delivery system?

Week 6:  Focus on service
What do you think is the impact of your agency on the community?  Who benefits from what this organization does?  Is anyone harmed by its efforts?  How and why?  Can you envision a society in which this agency is unnecessary?  Is it achievable?  What structural changes would have to take place to help alleviate the problem your agency addresses?

Week 7:  Focus on inequality
How do  forms of social inequality--race, class, gender, age--bear on the work of this organization?  What are the sources and consequences of the inequality of power?  The inequality may be within the organization itself, or it may be in the larger society contributing to the problems your agency addresses.    How does inequality in the larger society affect the organization?

Week 8: Focus on social issues
No organization operates in a vacuum.  What local, state, or national political issues affect your agency and its work?

Week 9:  Focus on you
Now that you have been interning for a while, what have you learned about the population or community that your organization serves?  Have there been changes in your perception of the agency and clients? Did you have stereotypes about either of them that have since been altered?  How do you think you are viewed by clients, your supervisor, and other staff members?  Do you think this view of you is accurate?  Has it changed since you began your internship?

Week 10: Focus on sociological theory
Discuss the sociological theory that you think is most relevant to explain what you've seen in your internship and explain why you chose this theory.   Describe how you can apply it to increase understanding.

Week 11: Focus on the media
The mass media have an effect that is so pervasive in our society that much of what we think we know about different racial and ethnic groups and different social problems comes from media depictions rather than from face-to-face contact.  Your internship has provided you with direct contact.  How do your experiences compare with media portrayals that are relevant to your internship?

Week 12:   Focus on the organization
How successful is your agency in fulfilling its mission?  What exactly is this agency seeking to do and how satisfactory is its performance? As a student of sociology, you learn that things are not always what they seem.   Following this thought,  do you see any differences between what the agency thinks  it's doing and what  it really does?   Do you see any ways that the social problem could be addressed differently?

Week 13:  Focus on you
 There are many kinds of learning that occur during an internship.  How well did you meet the goals and objectives that you set for yourself at the beginning of the semester?  How do you think your new knowledge and understanding of the social service delivery system will affect your future? Do you want to continue to work in this area? Why or why not?  In addition to academic learning, your internship also provides civic learning, learning that helps prepare you for active participation in our diverse democratic society.  What have you learned that will prepare you for active involvement in your future community?  For example, have you learned more about multiculturalism or diversity?  leadership?  the political arena? social responsibility?  In other words, what have you learned through your internship that will help make you a better citizen?

Journal Summary

Your last journal entry should be a summary and evaluation of your experience. To write this, read back through your journal. The following questions should be answered in the summary, if you haven't already answered them elsewhere in the journal.

Has your internship experience helped to develop your sociological imagination?  Could you see the relationship between personal troubles and public issues during your internship?  How?  (hint:  if you don't remember what the sociological imagination is, look in any intro text)

Earlier in the semester, we looked at a variety of transferable academic skills. Has the internship helped to develop your problem solving skills?  Your critical thinking skills? Communication skills?  How?

Would you suggest your placement to others? Why or why not? Is there anything that you would have wanted to know at the beginning that would have improved your internship experience?  Do you have any suggestions for your agency about the internship? What are they? Have you told them, and if so, how did they respond?

What do you know now that you didn't know before? In other words, how has this internship made a difference in what you can now do and understand?

How would you compare your learning in this internship course to a traditional course? Did you learn anything that you couldn't have learned any other way? If so, what?

Did you overestimate, underestimate or accurately expect that which occurred during internship?

What was your greatest challenge during this internship? How did you overcome it?

What did you learn in your other courses that has helped you in this internship? Which were most
 relevant to your internship experience?

Has your experience in this internship helped you in any of your other courses?

Good journals have liberal amounts of the following:
(from The Journal Book, edited by T. Fulwiler)

1. Observations: This activity is primary to scientists, who must witness in order to test, as well as to literary scholars, who must read in order to interpret.

2. Questions: Use journals to formulate and to record questions. It is sometimes more important to have questions than answers.

3. Speculation: Writers wonder aloud on paper, about the meaning of events, issues, facts, interpretations, problems and solutions. The journal is the place to try out ideas without fear of penalty; the evidence of the attempt is the value here.

4. Self-awareness: Writers become conscious of who they are, what they stand for, how and why they differ from others.

5. Digression: Writers may depart from what they intended to say, sometimes to think of personal matters and sometimes to connect apparently disparate pieces of thought.

6. Synthesis: Writers put together ideas, find relationships, and can connect one topic with another.

7. Information: Does the journal contain evidence that learning has occurred?