This is a narrative —a part of my life story —about the use of student journals as a vehicle for teaching and learning in the course on “ Human Behavior and the Social Environment’’ (HBSE). Over many years of teaching the first-year graduate HBSE course I hadrelied at different times on three traditional modes of evaluating student progress: mid/term and final papers, later replacing them with objective tests that were themselves replaced by take-home examinations. I came to realize that papers and objective tests are poor evaluative instruments. More important, I found that their con tributions to student learning were limited. Papers had the effect of restricting student reading to a particular topic at the expense of integrating the rest of the course content. Objective tests did en courage student coverage of assigned readings but also encouraged rote learning, thereby stifling creativity and critical thinking. The tests were easy to grade and seemed to assure objectivity and relia bility in grading. However, they required relinquishing one class time at midterm and one at term’s end, a serious disadvantage in the face of so much material to cover.