During the term(s) you’re doing your capstone, you should keep a detailed journal documenting your experiences. I recommend keeping two different kinds of notes: one documenting your hours and what you were doing, any observations you made. You could organize these by date and by type of work you were doing, if that’s relevant. The second set includes your interpretations, reflections on your observations, or even how the capstone seems to be going, the progress you’re making or not making, frustrations, achievements, etc. With these two sets of notes, your paper at the end will be much easier to write. Do not include clients’ names in the journal–keep in mind your obligations to client confidentiality and to your commitments to employers.

The journal is a good opportunity to work on your observation skills–few things are more important to social scientists and observers, and in the field of social work, this skill is especially critical. You will learn twice as much by working, then taking notes, and revisiting and processing what happened at work. It is important, as with qualitative research, to make sure that you separate your observations from your interpretations of them. Later on, you may feel you need to ‘re-interpret’ events that occurred. If you don’t have the ‘raw data,’ the observation itself, this will be difficult to do.

I recommend using a string-bound composition book, having observations and documentation of work on the left page of the open book, and your interpretations–what you think any of this means (and, by the way, notes that will help you when you are writing up your paper), on the right side.

Your journal notes should be structured by your learning objectives. These are the things you set out to examine when you signed up. They’re the ones I’ll expect you’ll write about in your final paper.

Protect your sources!!

You have a critical professional observation to protect your sources, to keep information confidential. To do otherwise not only will lead to your possible termination from the capstone (yes, it’s happened, twice—in both cases, the student did not graduate in Anth/Soc). It also jeopardizes others, either those you work with or shadow, or their clients. Obviously unacceptable. So a good rule of thumb is that should your journal get stolen or should you misplace it, no one will be identified or outed in any way. Use pseudonyms, and write in it in such a way that you protect your sources. But more importantly, don’t let that journal leave your sight.