EGEE 495
Energy and Sustainability Policy Internship

Journal Assignments

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You are expected to submit personal journal entries throughout the semester documenting the work you've completed and the learning that's occurred through your internship/project experience.  You can see more about what content is expected in each journal entry assignment.

Why Journaling?

First, let's clarify, your journal is not a "diary; it is not merely a log of what you did each week. While we want you to have a record of what you accomplished this semester, this exercise is meant to be so much more! We want you to do some profound thinking and execute higher level reflection. What this means is that the journaling prompts are not provided for you so that you can fill in the blanks, check off an assignment, and move on. You're far enough along in your educational journey now, that you should be experiencing some deeper learning and connecting your coursework to your life outside the classroom. The prompts are provided to help guide you to digest what has happened, analyze and process the learning that is occurring, and then share it with the world. When you're looking for a job and the interviewer says, "I see you did an internship, tell me about that", these prompts are designed so that you can say more than "It was great! I learned a lot." You need to not only be able to recount your job duties, but it'd be advantageous for you to be able to say how you developed as a person. The prompts provided were developed to help you think through how you're developing now, as it's happening.  

In addition to helping you process the learning and the experience, the online journal will provide a record of what you encountered! Additionally, your journal can serve as a product that you can use to demonstrate to future employers and academics your accomplishments, approach to work, and ability to communicate. You may also find the contents to be a useful reference for future projects and research.

Journal Requirements

Students are expected to set up a blog site to journal about the internship experience. You can use sites.psu.edu to set up a personal blog space, or you can choose another blogging site. If you would like to use the Penn State Sites, first you need to Activate Penn State Personal Webspace, and then you can create a blog at sites.psu.edu.

Grading and Submission

Content

In addition to addressing the individual prompts provided for each journal entry, they should always also include the following information (as applicable):

  • Summary of weekly events, providing details regarding your role and responsibilities.
  • Personal Reflection:
    • Personal learning objectives: Review the objectives you wrote in your first journal entry. Evaluate if and how your internship work this week is helping you (or not) achieve each objective. 
    • Summary: What did you enjoy doing this week; what responsibilities did you dislike? What did you do well? What do you need to work on? Are you learning anything new? Are you growing your skill set? Your confidence? Are there assumptions you've made in the past that are being challenged by your current experiences?
    • Challenges: What responsibilities were challenging to complete? What are some of the roadblocks you encountered this week? How did that affect your ability to do your job? What areas do you need to learn more about in order to do this job more confidently?
    • Discuss ideas or theories related to your experiences/observations: How does what you've seen/experienced connect to what you already knew? What was surprising, and why? Have you drawn any new conclusions? How does what you've seen/experienced connect with material you've learned in your coursework?
    • Photos, links, pdfs, and any artifacts that help make your journal more visually appealing and will serve as examples of your work that may be of interest to potential employers. Be sure to state your role in creating or using the artifact. If the artifact is the result of a major project you were involved in, reflect on the creation process, quality and utility of artifacts. (e.g. If you created a flyer for an event, was it effective in recruiting attendees?). Include complete annotations for each artifact including date, description, purpose, intended audience, and your role in creating or using the artifact. 

Grading

Each Journal will be graded out of 40 Points.

A detailed rubric is available to you on the Dropbox pages in Canvas. Below is a summary of how you can earn full credit. Your journal post must:

  • be submitted on time - no late work is accepted and no "extra-credit" is provided;
  • adequately address the assignment prompts;
  • be cited properly (in-text and as a reference list), if appropriate. A link can be found on the Citation Styles page of the Resources menu in Purdue's Online Writing Lab; and
  • be well-written and largely free of any grammatical or other typographical errors;

What do we mean by "well-written?" Your submissions should always be a scholarly piece of polished work. Your post should demonstrate that you've not just simply typed it into the text editor box as you went, with little regard for organization, syntax, or spelling mistakes. It should be written with the tone and style that is appropriate for college coursework, not a text message. In summary, it should be work you'd be proud to share with a potential employer.

Submissions

Submit the URL to the appropriate week's Journal Dropbox in Canvas by the date specified on the course calendar (unless you've established an alternative calendar of due dates with the instructor). Once your original draft is graded, if you earned less than a C, you will have the opportunity to edit your journal and resubmit for a higher grade.

For the journal entries themselves, please provide as much detail as you can without compromising any proprietary or private information. It is expected that if you adequately address the requirements as outlined, your post will be 800+ words in length. Please refer to the syllabus and grading rubric (in Canvas) for further information regarding the level of effort that is expected for your journal. In short, it should be a formal, polished product that you would be proud to hand over to a potential employer as an exhibit of your abilities and experiences. The prompts should be addressed in paragraph-form responses and the reader should be able to understand the prompts you're addressing without you repeating the prompt itself; meaning, provide context. If you can't address the prompt perfectly because your internship project/work situation isn't exactly applicable, use the prompt as a guide to think about what is relevant and what information you can include that a potential employer may find interesting! Don't be afraid to brag about what you've accomplished, ways you've grown, challenges you've tackled, etc.