How To Write A Reflective Essay?

Are you in a dilemma or confused about how to write a reflective essay for your College/University assignment? A Reflective Essay is typically not written like any other normal Essay assignment as you have to brainstorm and then relate the study from the subject to your learning.

What is a Reflective Essay?

Reflective essays describe an event or experience and then interpret its meaning and what can be learned from it. The writer of a reflective essay is going to analyze a past event from the present. Reflective essays require the writer to open up about their thoughts and emotions to design a true picture of their history, personality, and individual traits. It should include a vibrant summary and description of the experience so that the reader feels as if they were there as well. It should also include an explanation of your feelings, thoughts, and reactions.

Do and don’ts in a Reflective Essay

Steps for writing a Reflective Essay:

1.Select a Reflective essay topic

Selecting an interesting reflective essay topic is the first step in writing a reflective essay therefore, choose wisely. The topic should be clear and precise and on which you can get sufficient information to reflect upon.

2.Study your Subject

You may need to close your eyes and remember, read, watch, listen, or imagine depending on your topic. Spend a few minutes vividly thinking about or reliving your subject.

3.Brainstorm

Start a list of everything you can think of about your topic. You want to describe this subject as vividly as possible, so consider smells, tastes, noises, and tastes in addition to what you see. Try to jot down descriptive adjectives for these sensory experiences. Look up sense-descriptive words for assistance. These can be written in sentences or phrases. Just jot down as much as you can. You will later turn this into a paragraph.

4.Structure 

• Introduction

Your first paragraph of the reflective essay should be an introduction in which you identify the subject and provide the reader with a comprehensive overview of how it made an impression on you. Your introductory paragraph should also include a thesis statement that will serve as the paper's central focus.

• Body

Start by writing one impression that the subject or the topic made on you in the first body paragraph. Then, explain why. Since this is a reflective essay, you may speculate. In this type of essay, there are no correct or incorrect answers.

Write about the second reason your subject made an impression on you in the second body paragraph of the reflective essay. Then, explain why.

Write about the third reason your subject made an impression on you in the third body paragraph. Then, explain why.

• Conclusion

Restate your thesis statement as well as the reasons you gave in the body of your reflective essay. Finish your reflective essay with some closing reflections and final thoughts on your subject.

5.Proofreading Your Reflective Essay

Proofreading is the last step in the process which ensures your essay is the best it can be. But, before you start going over your essays, give yourself a break. You'll generally find sentences that need to be rewritten when you take a fresh look at your work.

Steps for writing a reflective essay 

Reflective essay topics 

• What is the best thing that happened to you this year?
• Name a time when you felt like an outsider at school. How did it make you feel?
• Do you have any regrets from high school? If so, what are they, and why do they bother you?
• A time when you made a mistake but learned from it
• The most challenging situation you’ve faced in life and how you overcame it
• A positive change you would like to see in the world
• How You’ve Changed as a Person Over Time
• Your Views on Love and Relationships
• What You Want to Accomplish in Life
• The Things That Make You Feel Happy and Satisfied With Yourself
• The Reasons Why You Make Certain Decisions in Life
• List three movies that changed your life, and describe how they did so.
• Describe an experience that made you appreciate the value of silence in a noisy world.
• Share a story about how your parents’ strict rules helped you mature.
• How do you think people will remember your time on this earth?
• What is one thing that has been weighing on your mind lately?

Tips for writing a reflective essay

Before you start writing a reflective essay, make a mind map regarding your experience. A mind map refers to a diagram that will help you organize your thoughts. It will become easy to make and can be done on both hands and a laptop computer. The major objective of creating a mind map before writing a reflective essay is that it helps in the identification of the important points and divides them into various subtopics for writing a reflective essay. The mind map is very significant as it helps in organizing your experiences and thoughts. The mind map also helps in identifying the gaps present in the reflective essay so that it can fulfilled later. 

For instance, if you writing about your first day in school, ( a very common topic), it is advisable to start your essay with a strong central line, “I didn’t make any friends.”. From this line, you can create different branches or subtopics “It was hard for me because I was shy and didn’t know anyone” or “I was scared because I didn’t know about my classroom”.

• Create an outline for your reflective essay

Although the reflective essays are not very much fictional, however, they require a plot to attract the readers. Therefore it becomes important to prepare an outline before starting a reflective essay. It is advisable to make a list of the most relevant information before starting to write a reflective essay.  This plays an important role in organizing the different thoughts in mind, which helps in making the decision more organic.  This is also valid for the experiences you want to incorporate in your reflective essay. 

This is evident from an interview of Samantha Irby regarding her writing process, that she generally outlines memories and ideas before the start of the writing. This was also evident in her essay “Lesbian Bed Death,” which carries the moments in a relationship and how it changed her perception regarding love. Similarly “Body negativity” provided information regarding how women maintain their appearance to meet societal expectations. Therefore it can be said that outlining before writing a reflective essay will help in structuring the essay in a way that conveys the story or the memory of the essay more clearly to the reader. 

• Take into different considerations  in a single piece in the reflective essay

Reflective essays generally require a small amount of meandering. This helps in exploring various topics in one single piece such as events, places,  and people.  In the essay written by Leslie Jamison, “Since I Became Symptomatic,” she describes the time when she and her daughter both became sick and quarantined. The experiences gained by her became the stepping stone to discussing parenthood and the healthcare system of America.  The reflective essays are not only limited to your memories rather they can also incorporate your thoughts and precautions regarding culture. The scribed document “Why Art Involves Experience”, provides importance regarding experience and arts. In the reflective essay, Full Diane Sino does not focus on a specific memory but rather provides more importance on the different ideas provided by various philosophers such as John Dewey. It may be very fascinating to read in case you have not confined the content of your reflective essay to one subjective tone. 

• Start your reflective essay with a strong paragraph

Starting the reflective essay with a strong paragraph or a solid first line is very important in making your reader take an interest in your essay. Virginia Woolf’s essay “Death of a Moth”, provides the best example of a storing opening statement. Virginia Woolf started her reflective essay by showcasing the moths with humanistic traits by stating that they are not interested in autumn nights or the contents of their lives. 

As the readers progress in the essay, the readers understand that the moths were a means for the writer to describe life and death.  The revelation became more evident when recalling the first paragraph. 

Similarly, Reshma Memon Yaquab stated, “I hadn’t planned to wash the corpse. These are some of the starting lines that make you caught up in that moment”. All these lines create natural curiosity regarding the traditional rituals of the Muslims such as washing the relative’s body before death. Taking these lines into consideration make sure that your opening statement contains more details regarding your experience. This helps in making the opening statement equipped with an emotional flavor to it. 

• Conclude your reflective essay with questions for the readers

It is advisable to conclude the reflective essay with a summary of the different experiences and thoughts deceived in the body of the essay. For instance, focus on the experiences you gained. What are the different things you learned from them? Also, it is considered more important to make the readers do the same. What are the different things they can receive from the ideas and moments you presented in your reflective essay?

However one of the most famous essayists “Hanif Abdurraqib”, generally offers its readers one last thought to chew it.  He ended his essay “Carly Rae Jepsen and the Kingdom of Desire” by asking a question of whether love and all the different things in between were genuinely fleeting. In his other essay “They Will Speak Loudest of You After You’ve Gone,” he left his readers thinking about the value of black people living in the media. This type of essay will help in catering long-lasting images in the mounds of the readers. 

Summary

Thus, if you keep these things in mind while writing, you'll eventually wind up with a straight-up reflective essay. If you still need help, you can get in touch with the expert from The Assignment Ninjas team. Many students request us to write a Reflective Essay for them. If you are also one of them, don't waste time and message our Customer Support Executive to get your assignment done before the deadline. Hope this blog will help you understand what is a reflective essay.