Reflective essay

Writing a reflective essay is easy once you know the writing rubric. The basics are the following: the outline, format, structure, ideas and topics. An essay generally starts with the thesis statement, followed by an introduction, the body and conclusion.

A reflective essay is written to provide the author’s reflection on a particular event or personal experience. Unlike other types of essays, the reflective essay has to be based on author’s personal experience and reflection has to come from author’s own perspective. The essay reveals the experience as it is narrated by the author who provides the reflection on that particular experience to show its relevance and importance. The experience is highlighted based on its relation to society, culture and people in general. It is like the philosophical musings of the author on daily life experiences. The reflective essay allows the author to be creative and open minded when it comes to expressing personal ideas and perception of society, issues, life. It allows the author to be unique when it comes to writing his or her own thoughts.

The essence of this type of essay is reflection. The content has to be written in a way that the author’s personal perception of the experience is fully expressed. It should therefore have a personal character to it and it has to be philosophical in a way. This means that the essay does not have a particular way of being written. It is up to the author how to write it and how to express his or her unique perception of the experience being written about. For instance, the author can write about a general topic on love. The essay would include the author’s own reflections on love, his or her own experiences and perception of love. Basically, reflective essays are rhetorical and philosophical by nature and they require the author’s active participation in the production of the ideas and reflections on the topic.

Those writing a reflective essay need not follow a particular style or structure because the reflective essay is an exception to the standard essay format. Generally, essays have to have clear thesis statements and conclusions but the reflective essay tends to have open ended conclusions and often, confusing and unclear thesis statements. The introduction usually contains the author’s main perception on the topic and the rest of the paragraphs develop ideas of the author trying to explain them. Because of its reflective nature, this type of essay can be less vivid compared to other types of essays.
Reflective essays offer more freedom as to the style, approach and format but a challenge lies in the understanding and organization of the essay. The author needs to have deep understanding of the topic to be able to fully reflect on it. Otherwise, the essay won’t be any good. For more information on reflective essays, feel free to contact us anytime.