Study Abroad Journals
Yesterday I met with two colleagues to plan courses abroad for the coming academic year.
In all my courses abroad I require students to keep detailed journals that include both text and daily sketches.
Some balk at this requirement. I assure them I am not grading their art. Rather, I am helping them create something they’ll be glad they have forever.
I still have Mom’s journal from her 1959 travels in Europe with two classmates from Skidmore. What a treasure! Mom has been gone for fifteen years. Her handwritten notes have outlasted her mortal frame.
I’ve now taught something like thirty courses abroad in Poland, Greece, Italy, Spain, Morocco, the United Kingdom, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Belize, and Alaska.
Year after year students’ parents ask them to act as their tour guides. You studied abroad, and we have always wanted to see tha place. Can you show us around?
The students who keep journals are able to do so. They remember the names and addresses of hotels, restaurants, museums. They know how to find reliable guides, they remember the name of the person who helped them out in that distant city. They know the local food and when it is in season.
The ones who don’t keep consistent journals often come back to me and ask, can you remind me of the details of where we went?
To be clear: I always do. And I remind them to bring a good journal with them this time.
As my colleagues and I met yesterday I took out one of my sketchbooks and started to draw the table where we sat, and my colleague’s laptop. The visual practice deepens my memory and helps me to focus my attention.
Perhaps this practice can be helpful to you as well?
