Writing a Reflective Essay

Look into a mirror. The first thing you probably see is yourself looking back at you. Keep looking though and youll also see whats behind you. Writing a reflective essay is similar to looking into a mirror except that instead of seeing objects reflected in the room behind you, you see reflections of a past experience. Reflective essays are usually written at the completion of a milestone. For instance, a scientist may write a reflective essay at the completion of an experiment or a student may be asked to write a reflective essay at the end of a course of study or the completion of an individual or class project. An essay on My Summer Vacation could be a reflective essay. However, a reflective essay is not to be confused with an informative essay. While an informative essay relates facts like where you went, what you did, and how much things cost, a reflective essay is an evaluation. Its a record of your feelings and findings from the beginning of your experience until the end. In addition to concluding with a summary of your subject, the conclusion to a reflective essay usually also includes what you learned from the experience. The essay format of introduction, body, and conclusion is at its strongest when used to write a reflective essay. Begin writing your essay by describing your subject, your feelings and/or expectations at the beginning of the project and by partly disclosing or hinting at your conclusion. Ex: I didnt want to go to South Dakota last summer, but by the end of our summer vacation I learned that the Black Hills are really more green than black and the Badlands really arent so bad at all. Your essay body would go on to describe your Black Hills vacation, examining not just the points of interest but also why you found them interesting. This particular essay might conclude with the trip's highlights and the reasons you came away feeling that, the Badlands really arent so bad at all. In most reflective essays, as well as describing what went right, youll also want to describe what went wrong or what could be improved and how. For instance, in the example you might describe attractions you didnt visit that you would like to see and/or side trips that disappointed you and why. Alternatively, you might describe things you packed that you didnt need and things you didnt pack that you wished you had brought with you. The most important factor to remember in writing a reflective essay is that your opinions and conclusions should directly relate to the experiences you examine in the essay body.
How to write a Reflective essay?

This type of essay is aimed to reflect a personal event or experience of the essay author. The main condition is that it has to be a certain personal experience on which the author has his very own perception. This experience or even is revealed in the essay in order to demonstrate its importance for understanding social relations and the essence of people. It may be said that a reflective essay possess the traits of a philosophical analysis of different experiences we face in

our everyday life. This type of essay reveals the creativity of the students and their ability to change standard perception to a unique one, to their own unique perception of social issues.
Writing a Reflective essay

In order to produce an excellent reflective essay it is vital to remember that the reflective is to have a personal character and to relate to certain philosophic categories. This implies a wide range of possible understanding of the topic of the essay. One of the widespread topics for a reflective essay is What is love? in which the author shares his own reflective of this term through the prism of his experience and the common attitude to this social phenomenon. The majority of the questions in such essays are rhetoric
Reflective essay Outline This rubric is a condensed treatment of the Reflective essay writing, this Outline is just a description of the main facts and rules about how to write this type of essay. One should practice as much as possible to become good in writing a Reflective essay. Reflective essay structure

Reflective essay do not have a certain structure because cannot be written according to a standard essay scheme. This is due to the fact that the thesis statements and the conclusions of reflective essays are often blurry. Here is a probable scheme of a reflective essay:

The aim of the opening paragraph is to get the reader involved in the authors story including interesting details, personal experiences. The style must be very vivid and therefore to appeal to the reader as if it was a tete-a-tete conversation on the meaning of life or love. The middle part reveals a good variety of the authors ideas on the topic. The concluding sentences summarize the main ideas and experiences of the essay. The author makes a reflective of his general perception of the given topic.

Reflective essays topics and ideas.

Reflective essays can be written on many different topics which base on the reflection of a personal event or experience of the essay author. Delicate approach to the choice of a topic or keen understanding of the one topic is the key element of good essay writing. If you hesitate either on choosing the essay topic or the idea for Reflective essay please feel free to contact us and we gladly help you any time you need assistance.
Reflective essay format This type of essay like all others could be formated in MLA, Chicago/Turabian, APA, AMA. That depends on your essay topic, subject area and the assignment requeirements. Please be consistent following the one style of format of all the essay elements: Title, headings, paragraphs Text pages, Fonts, Indents, Justifications, Spacing, Page numbers, Emphasis, Footnotes, reference list etc.

Sample Reflective Essays

Below we offer two examples of thoughtful reflective essays that effectively and substantively capture the author's growth over time at CSUCI. We suggest that you write your own essay before reading either of these models-then, having completed your first draft, read these over to consider areas in your own background that you have not yet addressed and which may be relevant to your growth as a reader, writer, or thinker. Any reference to either of these essays must be correctly cited and attributed; failure to do so constitutes plagiarism and will result in a failing grade on the portfolio and possible other serious consequences as stated in the CSUCI Code of Conduct. Sample Reflective Essay #1 Author: Prefers to remain anonymous As an English major I have learned to appreciate the peaceful, yet exhilarating moment when my mind engages with an author's thoughts on a page. As Toni Morrison says in The Dancing Mind , "[reading is] to experience one's own mind dancing with another's." In my early days as a college student, I wanted to know the "true" meaning of a work or what the author intended, however, I have now realized this would void literature of its most noteworthy complexities. Individual interpretations bring varied insights to a work and it is also interesting to point out messages the author may not have realized s/he included in the piece. I have always been a thinker, but throughout my coursework, I have greatly sharpened my critical analysis skills. Instead of focusing on proposed meanings or biographical background, I have learned to continuously ask "why" on many different levels. I challenge myself to dig into a text as deeply as possible and unpack every detail to develop a satisfying close read. Also, by reading multiple novels by the same author I have learned to identify different writing styles and make connections that weave texts together; this helped me develop a deeper understanding of the novels. When I look at one of my freshman level novels and see clean pages, I realize that I did not actively read the book. I guess you could say that I have learned to read with a pen, which has drastically taken my writing to a new level because I am able to connect back with my initial insights marked on the page. Writing had always been one of my strengths, but it was challenging to take that initial step past the high school, five-paragraph essay form that constricted my ideas for so long. Moving past this form, however, has greatly opened my mind. My thoughts are now able to be more complex because I have learned how to sustain a logical argument in an organized manner. My writing has become increasingly more concise and I no longer have room for added "fluff" or "padding." Another improvement is my ability to point out multiple complexities within a text, instead of sticking to one-sided arguments in my papers. Furthermore, learning how to find peer reviewed journal articles and order books through interlibrary loan has significantly widened the scope of my research, which has lead to more scholarly papers with credible references. My writing is so much more interesting than it used to be.

It is difficult to identify gaps in my knowledge as an English major, only because I feel like I have learned so much. I feel that I have largely expanded my literary analysis and writing skills, but I need to be prepared to teach high school students their required literature. I think it would be useful to identify commonly taught novels in our local high schools and study them myself. By studying the required literature and thinking about how to teach it, I will have a sturdy foundation to work from once I am in the classroom. Sample Reflective Essay #2 Author: Nekisa Mahzad I have been a student at California State University Channel Islands (CI) for 5 semesters, and over the course of my stay I have grown and learned more that I thought possible. I came to this school from Moorpark Community College already knowing that I wanted to be an English teacher; I had taken numerous English courses and though I knew exactly what I was headed forwas I ever wrong. Going through the English program has taught me so much more than stuff about literature and language, it has taught me how to be me. I have learned here how to write and express myself, how to think for myself, and how to find the answers to the things that I don't know. Most importantly I have learned how important literature and language are. When I started at CI, I thought I was going to spend the next 3 years reading classics, discussing them and then writing about them. That was what I did in community college English courses, so I didn't think it would be much different here. On the surface, to an outsider, I am sure that this is what it appears that C.I. English majors do. In most all my classes I did read, discuss, and write papers; however, I quickly found out that that there was so much more to it. One specific experience I had while at C.I. really shows how integrated this learning is. Instead of writing a paper for my final project in Perspectives of Multicultural Literature (ENGL 449), I decided with a friend to venture to an Indian reservation and compare it to a book we read by Sherman Alexie. We had a great time and we learned so much more that we ever could have done from writing a paper. The opportunity to do that showed me that there are so many ways that one can learn that are both fun and educational. The English courses also taught me how powerful the written word and language can be. Words tell so much more than a story. Stories tell about life and the human condition, they bring up the past and people and cultures that are long gone. Literature teaches about the self and the world surrounding the self. From these classes I learned about the world, its people and its history; through literature I learned how we as humans are all related. By writing about what we learn and/or what we believe, we are learning how to express ourselves. I know that my ability to write and express my ideas, thoughts and knowledge has grown stronger each semester. I have always struggled to put my thoughts on paper in a manner that is coherent and correct according to assignments. I can remember being told numerous times in community college to "organize your thoughts" or "provide more support and examples". These are the things that I have worked on and improved over the past couple of years and I feel that my work shows this. The papers I wrote when I first started here at C.I. were bland and short. In these early papers, I would just restate what we learned in class and what I had found in my research. I did not formulate my own ideas and support them with the works of others. The

classes I have taken the past couple semesters have really help me shed that bad habit and write better papers with better ideas. I have learned how to write various styles of papers in different forms and different fields. I feel confident that I could write a paper about most anything and know how to cite and format it properly. There are a couple of things that I do feel I lack the confidence and skill to perform, and that is what I hope to gain from participating in Capstone. I am scared to teach because I don't know how to share my knowledge with others-students who may have no idea what I am talking about. I hope to learn more about how teachers share their knowledge as part of my Capstone project.

Reflective essay
Writing a reflective essay is considered an easy task to complete for those people whose profession involves writing and creating pieces of work on the paper. However, students at colleges and universities are also asked to complete a reflective essay, though they are not taught and trained to fulfill such tasks. This page has been created to assist students with reflective essays in their academic assignments. Reflective essay supposes the use of all the knowledge gained in this course, as well as the use of materials and information presented by a professor at lectures and practical classes. At first, you may think that reflective writing is a hard task to do. However, good writing skills and your time organization will help you to organize your thoughts to compose a well-written paper. Therefore, read these essential steps to learn more about how to write a reflective essay: gather the information given by your professor; choose the topic for your paper; write down the main arguments for the topic; create an outline of your work; compose a thesis statement with central idea; write down main points of the paper; compose table of contents and bibliography; write your reflective essay; revise and proofread the final work. Besides, you should remember that reflective paper writing means expression of your ideas on the chosen topic. However, you should not use slang or too personal thoughts in your work. You should reflect on the issue giving evidence, statistical data, charts with your personal observation and analysis of the issue and information on the topic. Thus, in this work the most important part that will bring you good grade is your reflection. If you succeed in the purpose of presenting your thoughts, observations, which are supported with academic books, articles, reliable websites on the question, be sure that you will receive a good grade for this assignment.

The most important aspect of a reflective essay is your attitude to the issue, not the attitude of researchers, your friends, etc. Let the readers know your point of view and prove it with facts. Your task is to convince your readers that your viewpoint is right and you can prove your thesis statement supporting it with strong arguments. If you have some reference to the issue, tell the readers that your viewpoint is supported not only with theoretical information, but also with your experience and impact the issue has had on you. Your thesis statement may be backed up with interviews of people who are directly involved in the issue, those people whose profession or other necessity has given them an opportunity to experience it. Moreover, you should focus on your reflection without giving too many examples and unnecessary details. Your interpretation of actions, facts, statistical information is the main task in composing a reflective essay. We have a team of professional writers and editors who have written many papers. They are ready to assist you in your academic career and will create a good reflective essay for you according to your requirements.

Reflective Essay
A reflective essay is one that a pupil writes in order to share his or her opinion or insight on a certain matter. Reflective essays are first-person essays in most cases, in which the student uses "I" statements and personal experiences to share his or her view. An "I" statement is a statement that a student makes based on his or her own opinion or viewpoint, such as, "I think this works this way." Reflective essays are common writing assignments for English classes. However, they are not very common for other courses, such as science or history. There are several reasons that a student may be required to write a reflective article. In many cases, teachers want to challenge students to relate their experiences to one that they have read about in a book or learned about through a classroom project. For example, if a student reads The Great Gatsby, professors may ask the students to write reflective articles that relate their own experiences with delusion or being stuck on a particular subject to Gatsby's attraction to Daisy and delusion about his experiences. Teachers are hoping to help students identify with characters emotively through a reflective essay of that nature. Reflective essays are very popular writing assignments for middle and high school English classes as well because they help students learn to write. When a student is required to write a

reflective essay, the student is literally writing about himself or herself. The student usually does not have to research a topic, so the report can be easier for the student to write. Teachers are helping their students develop their thinking and writing skills when they assign reflective essays in lower level courses. They are also helping students to be self-aware by identifying their own needs and opinions. In order to write a reflective essay, learners should follow the same basic format as any similar type of article. The student should begin with an introduction into the subject matter. In the introduction, students need to write about background information and include an essay thesis. A thesis is a one-sentence statement that the learner will prove to be true throughout the document. The report should also contain body paragraphs that support the thesis. Reflective essays will contain information or facts that relate to the student's own feelings about a particular subject or fact in these body paragraphs. After the body paragraphs, the student needs to include a conclusion, which recaps the student's opinions or information and ties it all together with a conclusion that the student invents on his or her own. Reflective essays are like any other type of essay in terms of format and style. However, a reflective essay is not the same as a research article. Research essays need to be written in third person style and should contain facts that help the student draw a conclusion. A reflective essay is often a first-person essay and contains facts that help the student express his or her own opinion or viewpoint.

Reflective Essay
The reflective essay is the primary component of the Personal Development Portfolio. Think of it as your opportunity to describe and document your growth as a person during these four years of your life. Thought of this way, the essay should ultimately reflect the person who wrote it, and it should demonstrate the maturity and development it intends to describe. It should be creative. It should have a clear and authentic voice -- your voice. It should allow its readers a candid view of the person you are becoming during your college experience. Students sometimes confuse reflection with "reaction" or "response." To document your reaction or response to an experience would be to document how you feel about it or to describe the emotional or practical impact the experience had on you. Reflection, as we're using the term here, is something more than this. To reflect on your experiences is really to engage in an intellectual exercise whereby you review in detail what you know (what you've read, or learned, or observed, or felt, or experienced) and then draw some conclusions about the experience's significance in relation to the context of your life as a whole. The process involves your actions and emotions, certainly, but true reflection occurs as a result of thoroughly considering and understanding the significance of those thoughts, emotions, and experiences rather than merely charting or labeling them.

As you reflect on your experiences during these years, you should try to imagine the person you were when you first arrived here. Think about the many ways your life has changed since then. Ask yourself how much you have learned over the time you've been here, both in and out of the classroom. Ask yourself how much you have matured emotionally. Ask yourself how you have grown spiritually or ethically. Ask yourself how you have come to understand your place in society, your social roles and responsibilities. You are a very different person from the one who first arrived here -- older, more experienced, less nave and uncertain--and the reflective essay gives you an opportunity to describe the journey, to document the story, of the metamorphosis you have experienced up to this point in your life. And remember that what we are discussing here is not merely a listing of activities or a cataloging of experiences. Growth and maturity are not simply the result of doing activities and checking items off a list. Growth and maturity result from changes in perception. And it is these changes in perception that should guide the writing of your essay. Your Range of Experience As you think about what sorts of things to say in your reflective essay, think of the many aspects of your educational experience. There are the courses you took, obviously, as well as the books you read, the lectures you heard, the programs you attended. These are all good places to begin. What are the key ideas, both in your major as well as your general education courses, that have shaped and reshaped your thinking over the past four years? What are the key ideas that you suspect will continue to shape your life and thought in the future? What are some of the fundamental concepts and beliefs that inform the sensibility, or the values, you have developed up to this point in your life? Also, as you reflect on your past four years, remember there are many experiences beyond academic examples: experiences in extra-curricular organizations and activities; experiences while thinking and planning for life after college; and experiences while engaging in service learning. In fact, some portion of your essay should be devoted exclusively to reflection on your service learning experiences, with the emphasis of course on learning. It isn't just about the benefits you receive from the experience, after all. It's also about the many ways in which service learning opens your eyes to the larger community around you and to the people in that community. Another portion of your essay should focus on your short-term and long-term planning for the future, which might include preparations for attending graduate school, or preparations for a possible career -- or really anything that demonstrates your thinking about the next stages of your life. Special Emphasis for Freshmen: Reflection At the end of your freshman year, the personal essay you compose should emphasize and demonstrate your understanding of the importance of reflection, including service learning reflection, and its value to you as a tool for understanding and documenting your development as a person. Having experiences and doing activities are important aspects of your life, but it is the thought you give to those experiences that helps you learn and grow as a person. Putting things into perspective, fitting your experiences, as well as the ideas you encounter, into the larger

context of your life, is what your education is all about. The personal essay you compose at the end of your freshman year should be a discussion of the overall nature of the college experience and the impact that it is having on you. You may discuss the importance of goal setting and planning as a key element in your ongoing development. You may discuss ideas you encountered, in or outside the classroom, and your reaction to those ideas. You may discuss your interaction with people (in either a private or public sphere) and the lessons you learned from the interaction. Whatever you choose to discuss, make sure you spend time thinking about the experience and trying to make sense of it in the larger context of who you are. In the same way, you should also consider the nature of reflection in terms of its relationship to the four dimensions of the Personal Development Program itself. How would you reflect differently on the issue of your ethical awareness and development versus, say, the issue of your intellectual growth and maturity? How does reflection as a process differ from one dimension of your life to another and what may those differences suggest? Special Emphasis for Sophomores: Integration The personal reflective essay you write as a sophomore should build on the essay you wrote as a freshman. Your discussion of the importance of reflection, your assessment of the impact of your college experience, your exploration of the four dimensions -- all of these things still pertain and should be expanded on in your sophomore essay. However, the sophomore reflective essay should also emphasize and demonstrate your understanding of the process of integration in your educational experiences. This process includes both integration of your coursework from one course to another and integration of your educational experiences -- including extra-curricular experiences, service learning experiences, etc. -- with your life as a whole. By your sophomore year, you should begin to see that even though information often comes to you in discrete packets (coursework, texts, lectures) and that experiences often seem unrelated (service learning, leadership, extra-curricular, leisure activities), each new activity and each new idea help to make up the overall picture that your college experiences are trying to bring into focus for you. You begin to understand that on some level everything you learn and everything you do have intrinsic connections to everything else in your life. In the same way, your sophomore essay should also begin to reflect a more integrated approach to the four dimensions themselves, seeing them as interrelating aspects of a person's overall development instead of discrete categories with no relationship to each other. Special Emphasis for Juniors: Planning The personal reflective essay you write as a junior should build on the essays you wrote as a freshman and as a sophomore. Your discussion about the importance of reflection, your discussion about integration in your educational experience, your discussion of service learning - all of this still pertains and should be expanded on in your junior essay.

However, the junior reflective essay should also emphasize and demonstrate your thinking about the future and planning for the future, whether that means career planning, planning for graduate school, or simply exploring the many alternatives that await you as a college graduate with a promising, exciting life ahead. What are some of the many options for your life after college? Have you considered further education? Have you planned at all for a career? By your junior year, you should begin to see that education, broadly considered, is very different from technical training, although it may include technical training. As you think about the future, reflect on more than simply the job you hope to find. What sort of roles will you likely have in the larger community? What sort of responsibilities will you have? How has your education helped prepare you for those roles and responsibilities? What, overall, is the relationship between your education and your future as you conceive of it now? In the same way, your junior essay should also begin to reflect a more forward-looking approach to the four dimensions themselves, seeing them as pathways to development beyond college and into your adult years instead of static categories that speak to your life now with no relationship to the growth and changes your future might bring in these areas of your life. Special Emphasis for Seniors: Synthesis During your freshman year, the personal essay you composed emphasized the importance of reflection. As a sophomore, you emphasized integration, and as a junior, your essay emphasized your thinking about the future and planning for the future. But for your senior reflective essay, the emphasis should be on synthesis, that is, the pulling together of all these elements and more into a single, coherent vision of the person you have become, are in the process of becoming, and eventually hope to become. Remember as you write that the senior essay will not reflect a finished product. The growth and maturity you discuss in your reflective essay is only an indication of where you are at this point in your life. Recognize that the processes you describe will still be at work as you move beyond college and into your adult years. As you pull together the various aspects of your experiences and thoughts, reflect a bit on the directions of that future growth -- where do you expect this journey to take you and how do you imagine your education will help shape the person you eventually hope to be? Supporting Materials and Documentation As you organize your discussion, think about illuminating your text with outside material, outside documentation. If you think of the reflective essay as an "argument" for who you are becoming, then it seems appropriate to have some evidence to support your position, to add dimension to the text you are creating. This might take the form of footnotes describing some event in your life or explaining or highlighting a specific idea you discuss in your essay. It might take the form of photographs, or certificates, or physical items. It might take the form of written documentation such as forms, or letters, or charts and tables. It might take a more creative form and include artwork or poetry or music. Whatever it is you gather as supporting material for your reflective essay, make sure that you discuss this material in your essay itself and that these items have some special meaning to you. If it is something that would likely be thrown away, then you

probably shouldn't include it. A ticket stub or a playbill is unlikely to have the significance to you that a photograph of friends and co-workers or a certificate of achievement might. Let your memory be the measure. If the material were something you would ordinarily keep as a memento or keepsake, then it would probably work well as supporting material for your reflective essay. What the Reflective Essay Isn't The reflective essay isn't an empty exercise to fulfill a final PDP requirement. The program's goal isn't simply to make extra work for students. No, the reflective essay is your opportunity to actually reflect on your experiences, to try and make some clear, unified sense of the many experiences you have had in college. This reflection on who you are, on who you have become, should be enormously valuable to you as you leave here and go forward into your future. The reflective essay isn't a cover letter for potential employers. That is not to say that future employers couldn't read it or wouldn't want to read it. It is just to say that the reflective essay is intended as a document for you to explore your own growth and development as you come to the end of your college experience. It is not merely a place to promote your skills or to highlight your resume. Of course, when you do, at some point, write a cover letter for your resume, the reflective essay will likely become an invaluable tool since it documents the most important aspects of your education and experience. It could also be a useful tool as you prepare for professional interviews, helping you remember and articulate various facets of your life. The reflective essay isn't merely a listing of activities and growth in four discrete areas. Instead, the reflective essay should be a unified and coherent vision of the person you have become. Yes, you will discuss your development in the four distinctive areas of your life that have been identified in the PDP program -- intellectual growth, emotional maturity and physical health, ethical and spiritual growth, and citizenship and community responsibility. But you shouldn't discuss these areas in some kind of mechanical, checklist fashion. Remember that growth and maturity aren't the result of doing activities in discrete categories and checking items off a list. Growth and maturity result from changes in perception, and it's these changes in perception that you are trying to document. The reflective essay isn't a personal confessional. While it is true that the document you write is personal, it need not be overly confidential. The expectation is that you will write something that describes your maturity and growth -- and sometimes that may mean saying things that are not intended to be common knowledge. That's fine. It is even expected to some degree. But the essay should also reflect enough maturity to understand basic social boundaries when discussing your own life in a public forum such as this. Some Ideas and Strategies for Discussion in the Various Dimensions Below are several suggestions for writing about each of the PDP dimensions to prompt your thinking as you decide the sorts of things to include in your essay. Remember, however, that your essay will be evaluated as a coherent and unified vision of how you've grown and who you've become. Answering these prompts in a rote fashion will not be sufficient in developing

your essay:

Identify the two most meaningful courses you took at Bridgewater and explore how they prompted you to think in new ways, excited you, or "opened your eyes" to unfamiliar aspects of the world around you. Examine any two courses you took at Bridgewater and discuss how ideas presented in one course applied to or were useful in the second. Discuss what you think it means to be graduating from a "liberal arts" college. Discuss how your coursework connected to the co-curricular activities you engaged in, or to your service learning experiences, or to other aspects of your life. Discuss how your growth and development has been influenced by your own self-initiated inquiries through such activities as leisure reading, cross-cultural or travel experiences, visits to museums or historical sites, or attendance at concerts and theatrical or operatic performances. Respond directly to a specific idea that troubles or intrigues you, or respond directly to a work of art or a novel or a scientific concept which had an influence on your thinking. Respond to a specific public figure who troubles or intrigues you, examining the qualities that you admire or qualities that you find abhorrent, and discuss how your judgment relates to your overall education. Examine the relationship of your education to your intended or desired career path, looking at such issues as preparation and suitability to the job. Explain in what ways you hope your education will enhance your performance on the job. Discuss the methods you used to examine and evaluate your emotional and physical health over the past four years. Discuss the various aspects of your education which facilitated growth in terms of emotional or physical maturity and health. Identify any areas of your behavior which needed modification and discuss how you achieved or did not achieve the desired behavior. Describe your sensibility as a person -- what are your feelings about things and what role do those feelings play in your decision-making and thought? Examine and discuss how you've changed over the past four years in terms of handling situations involving other people, either personally or socially. Examine and discuss the way you've changed over the past four years in terms of how you relate to the larger community, looking at the adult role you hope to play in that community. Examine how your spiritual beliefs and attitudes changed during your college years. Ask yourself

whether the changes surprised you, discomforted you, or satisfied you.

Discuss the most significant ethical challenge or dilemma you confronted during the last four years. Explain what you learned about yourself and others from this experience. Discuss which curricular and co-curricular activities most contributed to your ethical and spiritual awareness and development. Examine how attending a worship service outside of your own faith or reading the sacred texts of another religion influenced your ethical and spiritual growth. Describe your sensibility as a person in terms of your values. Examine how your values have changed in the past four years, looking at the ways your education has facilitated or prompted that change. Examine how your values have been shaped in ways other than those we associate with religion. For example, discuss your political values or your thoughts about human rights and examine how your education has helped to shape those values. Discuss the courses you took which contributed most to your efforts to become a more aware, involved, and effective citizen. Identify at least two courses that contributed to these efforts and specify how they were meaningful. Discuss any co-curricular activities that contributed to your efforts to become a more aware, involved, and effective citizen. Identify at least two activities that contributed to these efforts and specify how they were meaningful. Discuss how you spent your 40 hours of service learning. In what ways were those experiences meaningful to you? Discuss how your leadership experiences benefited the group or groups in which you developed and exercised leadership abilities. Discuss what you learned about yourself and others from these leadership experiences that will help you become a more responsible citizen and community leader beyond graduation. Discuss the ways (beyond service learning) that you participated in community action and the political process, for example, by voting, participating in an election campaign, engaging in organized protest, attending political rallies or information sessions, attending a meeting of a governmental body, or working with relief or civic organizations. Examine how these activities have influenced your understanding of citizenship, leadership, community, and community responsibility.

Writing a Reflective Essay

Look into a mirror. The first thing you probably see is yourself looking back at you. Keep looking though and youll also see whats behind you. Writing a reflective essay is similar to looking into a mirror except that instead of seeing objects reflected in the room behind you, you see reflections of a past experience. Reflective essays are usually written at the completion of a milestone. For instance, a scientist may write a reflective essay at the completion of an experiment or a student may be asked to write a reflective essay at the end of a course of study or the completion of an individual or class project. An essay on My Summer Vacation could be a reflective essay. However, a reflective essay is not to be confused with an informative essay. While an informative essay relates facts like where you went, what you did, and how much things cost, a reflective essay is an evaluation. Its a record of your feelings and findings from the beginning of your experience until the end. In addition to concluding with a summary of your subject, the conclusion to a reflective essay usually also includes what you learned from the experience.

The essay format of introduction, body, and conclusion is at its strongest when used to write a reflective essay. Begin writing your essay by describing your subject, your feelings and/or expectations at the beginning of the project and by partly disclosing or hinting at your conclusion.
Ex: I didnt want to go to South Dakota last summer, but by the end of our summer vacation I learned that the Black Hills are really more green than black and the Badlands really arent so bad at all. Your essay body would go on to describe your Black Hills vacation, examining not just the points of interest but also why you found them interesting. This particular essay might conclude with the trip's highlights and the reasons you came away feeling that, the Badlands really arent so bad at all.

In most reflective essays, as well as describing what went right, youll also want to describe what went wrong or what could be improved and how. For instance, in the example you might describe attractions you didnt visit that you would like to see and/or side trips that disappointed you and why. Alternatively, you might describe things you packed that you didnt need and things you didnt pack that you wished you had brought with you. The most important factor to remember in writing a reflective essay is that your opinions and conclusions should directly