Can someone please create a journal and write a Self-Analysis Paper?

1. Journaling and Self-Analysis Paper [100 total points; 50 pts for journals (5 pts per journal), 50 pts for paper]. This assignment is designed with the methods, principles, and values pertinent to the field of counseling psychology in mind. The focus is on self-awareness and developing one’s insight in order to foster your own inner-directed approach of development, helping you think in-depth about your personality, and mapping this understanding onto counseling psychology concepts and the helping methods often used in counseling psychology. As always, clarity, flow, and organization of your ideas will be considered in grading your paper. Also, the more grammatical, punctuation, format, and spelling errors, the lower your grade.

Part I: Journaling. You need to journal about your life at least 10 times over a two-week period of time. As you write, the focus should be on your own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Each journal entry should be typed and should be at least one full page in length. You may choose to double-space if you wish. Turn these journals in with your analysis paper.

What might I journal about? Students generally choose topics that are personally relevant to them, such as mild issues they’re currently having in their lives that they feel comfortable discussing in a journal that will be reviewed by their course instructor. If you do not feel like you have any issues like this you want to discuss, feel free to focus on positive experiences you’ve had, or your career goals and plans. Also, please note that some things would not be appropriate to talk about in these journals, including severe problems that you are struggling with (e.g., trauma, serious family conflicts, addictions) that could leave you feeling too vulnerable. 

Protecting Your Privacy/Confidentiality. Your privacy is very important and will be safeguarded by your instructor. There are times in which confidentiality is limited, though. For example, should a student appear in imminent danger to himself or others, confidentiality may need to be broken to protect that student or others (other limits to confidentiality include abuse or neglect of children and/or the elderly, and any history of sexual abuse). However, please keep in mind protecting undergraduate students’ confidentiality is of utmost importance, and only in extreme circumstances will confidentiality be broken.

Part II: Self-Analysis Paper. After completing your journaling, you need to write a 4- to 6-page paper utilizing 7th ed. APA style (please also include a title page and reference page—these are not included in the 4-6 pages of text in the paper; no abstract required) that focuses on analyzing your own experience as represented by your 10 journals. This paper should be your reasoned insight into your journaling and what that means to you as you consider the helping aspects of counseling psychology. Please address the following questions as you write: DO NOT address these questions in list format (papers that do list will be returned to the author with a 10% reduction in grade). However, please do use section headings (titles) to help organize your paper (the headings/titles are up to you, just make sure they follow APA style and appropriately reflect the section content).

Self-Analysis:

1. 1. What themes emerge from your journaling? For example, are there certain thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that seem to come up more than once in your journals and/or in your life?

   2. What meanings to you take from these themes? For instance, what do they represent about you as a person? What might they represent about the situation and/or environments you are in?

   3. What are you seeing as your strengths? What are you seeing as your growth edges (or weaknesses)?

   4. How might these themes or issues be addressed so that you may live a more satisfying life?

2. Part II: Connections with Counseling Psychology:

   1. If you were to engage in counseling, what type of counseling modality (individual, group, etc.) might work best for you? What type of theoretical orientation would you like in a counselor?

   2. How do you think the “talking cure” may benefit you and others?

   3. What do you think a counselor would need to understand about you culturally in order to work with you most effectively? Or, what might a counselor need to understand about people to help them most effectively? What counseling skills, values, and qualities would be most important? [In answering these questions in Part II of the paper, you need to consider your coursework (readings, lectures, and discussions) in PSYC 340 this semester. Pull in concepts and examples regarding this course concept as you answer this question.]

   4. Reflecting on your own career goals, do you wish to be a counselor some day? Why or why not? What do you think it would be like to be the counselor? What would you need to work on to be an effective counselor?

In grading these papers, elements such as your views about your journaling process, the talking “cure,” and/or your career plans will not be evaluated or judged; rather, the clarity and organization of your arguments as you present your ideas and experiences, responding to all of the questions, conveying accuracy about course concepts and ideas, as well as how you present these things (proper grammar, spelling, punctuation, APA Format, etc.), will determine your paper grade. See the syllabus section on “General Assignment and Paper Expectations, and Late Paper Policy” for more information on paper expectations.