Reflection Essay Health Care Divide
Watch this link on the Healthcare divide (Full Documentary) on PBS Frontline
What is a “Reflection Essay”:
Reflective Background and Context
The first part of your reflection paper should briefly provide background and context in relation to the content or experiences that stood out to you. Highlight the settings, summarize the key readings, or narrate the experiences in relation to the assigned content.
Reflective Interpretation
Drawing from your reflective analysis, this is where you can be personal, critical, and creative in expressing how you felt about the assigned content and how it influenced or altered your feelings, beliefs, assumptions, or biases about the subject of the material and/or the course. This section also explores the meaning of these experiences and how you gained an awareness of the connections between these moments and your prior knowledge.
It is important to include specific examples drawn from the assigned material and placed within the context of your assumptions, thoughts, opinions, and feelings. A reflective narrative without specific examples does not provide an effective way for the reader to understand the relationship between the course content and how you grew as a learner.
Reflective Conclusions
The conclusion of your reflective paper should summarize your thoughts, feelings, or opinions regarding what you learned about yourself as a result of reading the course materials, assigned chapters, lectures, etc.
Problems to Avoid
A reflective paper is not a “mind dump”. Reflective papers document your personal and emotional experiences and, therefore, they do not conform to rigid structures, or schema, to organize information. However, the paper should not be a disjointed, stream-of-consciousness narrative. Reflective papers are still academic pieces of writing that require organized thought, that use academic language and tone (https://libguides.usc.edu/writingguide/academicwriting Links to an external site.,) and that apply intellectually-driven critical thinking to the course content and your learning experiences and their significance.
A reflective paper is not a research paper. Therefore, unlike research papers, you are expected to write from a first-person point of view which includes an introspective examination of your own opinions, feelings, and personal assumptions.
A reflective paper is not an all-inclusive meditation. Do not try to cover everything. The scope of your paper should be well-defined and limited to your specific opinions, feelings, and beliefs about what you determine to be the most significant content of the assigned material and in relation to the learning that took place. Reflections should be detailed enough to convey what you think is important, but your thoughts should be expressed concisely and coherently [as is true for any academic writing assignment].
