Guidelines for Writing a Reflective Essay
Content - A reflective essay is an essay that asks you to consider or think back upon an experience. In other words, you are "reflecting" or looking back on an incident or event and thinking about what you learned from it.
2 - Brainstorm a list of topics or ideas. A reflective essay must be about something that you can look back on or think about and comment on. This can be an experience that you learned from while taking this class. It can also be a new concept that you now perceive differently. The point is, you must "reflect back" or describe what occurred, and how that occurrence has made an impact on you.
3 - Select a topic from any of the lessons learned about which you can provide considerable evaluation or information. Unlike a narrative or informative essay, you are not simply telling a story about something that happened in your life. You ARE NOT recounting events or presenting an account of a past action. You are reflecting on or thinking about and evaluating lessons learned in the class. There may be something you want to learn more about. This difference is similar to the difference between a book report and an analytical paper--in a book report you simply tell what the book was about, while in a paper analyzing the book, you think about what it meant. Think about what each lesson represented or how you will use the lessons learned in your career. With a reflective essay, you are doing this same type of analysis, only you are analyzing and thinking the impact of the lesson instead of something that happened in a book.
4 - Outline your paper. Discuss what you want to talk about in each paragraph (minimum of five (5) paragraphs). Ensure that ideas flow together and that the paper has a thesis. The thesis should be your evaluation of the situation or the lessons learned from the experience. In other words, the thesis must show exactly what you are reflecting on. Each of the body paragraphs should support that main thesis and/or provide evidence or additional details about the situation and your reflections on it.
5 - Write your essay. Keep in mind all of the considerations you evaluated when selecting a topic and making an outline. Your paper should smoothly flow form an introduction, to a description of whatever you are reflecting about, to your thoughts, reflections and evaluations, etc., and a conclusion.