WEEKLY JOURNALS
Week 1 Reflection
This week I was physically out of college for the first two sessions in the week so therefore have been having to try and catch up with work in my spare time to ensure that I stay on top. This was difficult for me as it meant trying to keep on top of work that I may have missed while at the same time trying to complete the work which is being given in class. This has resulted in me getting quite stressed with the workload as it wasnt an interruption which I had planned for.
I am however now at a point where I have a plan and schedule in place to hopefully allow me to keep on top of the work without causing myself too much stress. This is therefore a problem which I have dealt with and allowed myself to remain on top of the workload.
Overall this week hasnt been too great for me but i am hoping that i will enter next week with a refreshed view and head to begin working on the new tasks. I will take what i have learned when it comes to the actual work and also the mistakes i made this week to hopefully better myself moving forward and ensuring that i am not causing myself any undue stress or upset.
Week 2 Reflection
During this week we completed a series of research and analysis tasks which were helpful in broadening my understanding of journalism techniques and therefore this allowed me to write better first drafts for my own work. I enjoyed this week as it calmed a lot of my worries that I had going forward. One of my major issues (which is seeming to be a regular occurrence) is that I am once again beginning to feel burnt out with the workload and am therefore having to resort back to the plans that I have in place to prevent a spiral. The positive in this situation however is that my previous problem solving is working to a good level.
Moving forward however i hope to mitigate this feeling of being burnt out all together so that this doesn't happen in the first place. It isn't a nice feeling when you are constantly going around with the ever looming feeling so I will attempt to have a more positive attitude and outlook on the work to hopefully alter my mindset.
Overall this week has been beneficial but has also been difficult. I will continue to try and make positive alterations to improve my overall mindset with this project so that I am more efficient and happy when working through it.
Week 3 Reflection
The main bulk and focus of this week for me was completing my supporting tasks and also getting all of my required planning documentation uploaded. I enjoyed this week weirdly as it was a break from the other kinds of tasks which I have been doing every week leading up to now. The planning documents allowed me an opportunity to step back and (especially with the pre-mortem) identify areas of weakness and then formulate improvement plans.
I did run out of time towards the end of the week to complete all of the tasks however I fell back on one of the plans that I had in place and have managed to find time in Week 4 to complete anything I missed as well as have enough time to complete the tasks for that week. This should tidy up this issue quickly and mean that when i go into Week 5 i will be ready to start the work without having anything outstanding.
Overall I am feeling much better about the project as a whole due to this week. I can finally enter the coming weeks with a clean slate knowing that I have little to no existing work and therefore allowing me to complete future work, as well as allowing me to feel better in general.
Week 4 Reflection
Going into this week I was in a slightly worse position than I hoped I would be in, I still had some small areas of improvement and existing work from previous weeks. However this was a good week for this to happen as the main focus was evidencing our Magazine Templates and also planning the content we are going to be putting in our articles.
The biggest issue I faced this week was the creative element of our page templates for our magazines, because so many of the other weeks were very theoretical and writing based. I have forgotten the spark for when it comes to creating physical and personal pieces of work. I quickly combated this by looking at previous plans that I have created for physical work and therefore followed the same steps again.
Overall this week was a big turning point for me in terms of workload, i have managed to cut in half all of my existing workload which therefore sets me up for being in a better position in the final weeks. Personally I am feeling much happier this week which has shown me that my previous strategies for combating the negative feelings I had are continuing to work, meaning that when I come to create plans in the future I can be confident that I am doing this in a beneficial way.
Week 5 Reflection
This week we were focusing on completing one of the key and important final outcomes for this project, our magazine. It was important for us to have the ability to tie all of the skills we have learnt so far together so that we can create the best possible outcome.
Going into this week I was slightly behind with some of the pre planning documents necessary to complete it, this put me at a slight disadvantage with regards to the amount of time i had. In order to combat this issue I decided to spend extra time outside of college hours (at home) working on this so that I could catch up and return to where I wanted to be with regards to workload.
Overall I feel this week was a positive turning point for the project and has allowed me some more time to catch up on existing work etc. I am feeling much more confident in my overall standpoint for this college as a result and am ready to go into the final week with a positive attitude and mindset to complete anything outstanding.