A reflective essay is an essay that conveys the personal opinion of the author. This essay is about the personal beliefs, experiences, and opinions of the writer. It allows you to explain your thoughts and feelings about a certain subject, instead of just laying out the facts. The sole purpose of a reflective essay is to convince the reader of your viewpoint. Make sure the readers understand your personal experience clearly. Ignore what other people think about the topic and write what you truly believe without fear of persecution. If you are thinking, “how will I ?”, then do not worry as you have come to the right place.
Reflective essays are common in disciplines such as English, social sciences, social work, psychology, and humanities. Some graduate schools may also want you to write a reflective essay as an admission application. At some point in your university career, you will be asked to write a reflective essay. Reflective essays will commonly cover topics such as a deeply personal experience, a story, your imagination, a place, a possession very important to the , something you have read, and something you have seen. Some reflective essay topics are as follows:
- Visit your favorite vacation spot
- First trip outside the country
- First hiking trip
- Favorite hangout spot
- Your first voting experience
- Visit to another school
- Visit to a museum
- Visit to a zoo
- Most memorable college experiences
- Relocating to a new city
- Relationship with your favorite family member
- First love experience
- Most embarrassing moment
- Relationship with your siblings
- Experiencing a beautiful sunset
- Experience of a national disaster
- ocean diving experience
- mountain climbing experience
- Swimming in the ocean
- Favorite TV program
- Favorite subject in school
- favorite professor
- Memories of your first house
- Favorite move experience
- How did you spend a holiday
- First time you drove a car
- First time you drove a bike
- Favorite childhood memories
- Favorite personality
- The best speech you have ever heard
- Experience of helping a stranger
- Favorite sports
- Favorite novel
- Funniest incident that happened to you
- Unpleasant visit to a doctor
- Unpleasant interview
- Your favorite restraint
- Visit to a garden
- The scariest nightmare
- A family trip
A reflective essay includes the description of an experience and how the experience made you feel. What were the feelings before, during, and after the experience? You can evaluate when it went well or did not go well during the experience. What were the positive and negative aspects of the experience and how would you analyze the experience? If you are writing a reflection about something you read then you can think about what you learned from the reading and how it will change the way you look at things in the future. The writer can use first-person statements such as “I believe” or “it is my opinion”. This helps the reader understand that what they are reading is the writer's perspective and opinion and should not be considered a fact. It can be accepted as an educated opinion. .
Gibbs reflective cycle can be used to examine the experiences you had in a structured manner. It has six steps; the first three steps focus on what happened and the last three steps focus on how you can improve in the future. The first step is the description step. In this phase, you can describe the experience or the event. Describe the place, people, the actions of the people, and the result of the situation.
The second step of the cycle is to write about your feelings. Describe how the situation made you feel, and the change in feelings before, during, and after the event. The third step of the cycle is evaluation in which you can evaluate the positive and negative aspects of the event. The fourth step is the analysis in which you find the reasons for your evaluation step. The fifth step is the conclusion in which you describe what you have learned. The final step is the development of an action plan which describes how you will do things differently in the future.
The structure of the reflective essay is like any other essay. The first paragraph is the introduction with the thesis statement. The next paragraphs are the body paragraphs which should start with a topic sentence and the text supporting the thesis. After three or four body paragraphs come to the conclusion which may restate the thesis and may provide recommendations and suggestions
The introduction can describe expectations before reading based on the title abstract or introduction. State in the introduction what you are reflecting upon. Is it a passage, a lecture, or an academic article? Briefly summarize the main points of the reading. Add a thesis statement in the last sentence that contains your conclusion or learning from the reading. A thesis can start with phrases like “from this reading I learned or concluded that”. A thesis can also tell how the reading affected you.
All of the content in the body paragraphs of the essay should support and reflect the thesis statement given in the introductory paragraph. The body paragraph should explain how you arrive at the conclusion using the reading or the experience. Every body paragraph should have one conclusion clear in the topic sentence. In the conclusion, restate your thesis and summarize the conclusions you came to while reading. The conclusion should describe the overall lesson. However, as I said, if you need help you can always approach a credible . Reflective essays are very common in academic writing as you can be asked to reflect on various sources and these are used by the professors to judge your point of view or opinion. Therefore, polish your skills so you can make a good impression on your professor.