See the Writing Program s guideline on plagiarism for further clarification. Most of all we want to know what YOU have to say, not what you read somewhere. Writing and thinking are closely aligned. If you find yourself thinking, start pushing a pencil and get it written down. You can always revise it later, cutting it, adding and filling in, or rearranging.
Writing leads to more thinking and more writing.
The journal is not for finished writing, but rather for exploring. The journal will not be graded, although I will look at it from time to time. It s raw material, captured fresh when the words seem to flow, the first step in the process of writing. The length of essays is usually determined by how long they have to be to say what s important to the writer and satisfy the reader. Most undergraduates stop too soon rather than too late.