Throughout the Fall 2020 semester, we were assigned to keep a gratitude journal to reflect on three things we are most grateful for each night. While this was a sometimes tedious task, I am grateful for the gratitude journal experience itself because I have gained an insight of what stands out to me most each day. My gratitude journal was a personal, extensive list that if read by someone else may not completely make sense without explanation, however I am going to outline each month and the common themes I saw in my nightly reflections.
August
August started off with the big move to an off campus apartment in DC. I was often thankful for my three roommates and the opportunity to be able to learn and study in DC. I reflected on the memories I was beginning to make, along with the new experiences I was starting to have. I was thankful for my new teammates, new friends that I met through NSO, and that my family was able to send me across the country to study.
September
September was the toughest month for me, as the reality of gaining a college education started to set in. I wrote that I was thankful for different things my family would do everyday, as I suffered from homesickness for the entirety of this month. I was thankful for the opportunity to have a coach and team my whole life, as swimming alone became very difficult and I realized that was something I had taken for granted. I was also often grateful for my friends from home as a facetime call from one of them would make my day.
October
I was able to travel back home twice during the month of October, which was a lot to be grateful for. I was thankful for the good weather in Southern California that I had taken for granted my whole life, the food in LA including home cooked meals which I had also taken for granted, swimming outside, the beach, and most of all being able to spend time with my family. I missed being home very much, and being able to enjoy spending time with the people that know me best, so that was a lot to be thankful for.
November
During the month of Thanksgiving, I made a point of being very specific with my gratitude journal. Instead of just writing for example being thankful for one of my friends, I focused on the “why” a little bit more than previous months, which allowed me to take advantage of this experience and see how deeply these things have impacted my life. While there was not a main theme, I was always thankful for specific people in my life, less so focusing on things. I think that on my fourth month of focusing on gratitude I realized that it was the people that I thought about most when journaling, so it was most important to be most thankful for them.
December
While this was the last month of the semester, I hope to continue my gratitude journal in the future. I am thankful for this semester, the amount of work that certain professors have put in to give us an education despite the circumstances, and for the possibility of a better semester in the spring. I am so glad that I took this gratitude journal project seriously, because it helped me to see during a time of darkness all the positivity that is so easily overlooked.
