I was the one who began this thread on journals when we were 1 month into rotation.
Since then, we have become very loose in our journaling time, practice and expectation.
While I agree with the idea that the act of writing something down encourages remembering something (like leaving your grocery list at home and remembering what's on it), our age group "shepherds" have said that sometimes discussion or prayer is what naturally occurs. And I'd rather see relationship building rather than being tied to journals. So we're very loose with it.