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The Reflective Essay

Published by abjohnson on August 19, 2023

For EL 498: Senior Portfolio

What’s This Essay? – Required Documents for the Portfolio – What Exactly Goes in the Essay? – How to Talk to Your Advisor

What Is This Reflective Essay?

In an essay of at least 3,000 words, you”ll reflect on the work you’ve done so far as an English major, on the trajectory of your future learning, and on the ways you anticipate your skills and talents becoming a part of your life and work in the years ahead. It’s meant to be an interesting and clear-eyed look-back on your college education, with special attention to your experiences as an English major. Woven into your essays will be your analysis of several of your own compositions–the portfolio part of senior portfolio. See below for an explanation of the portfolio contents, and always glance back at this opening paragraph if you’re reminding yourself about the central purpose of the essay.

You are all writers, you senior English majors, and the faculty hope to see you writing with verve and voice–shaping your thoughts by making savvy choices about structure, content, and language. That means there is no precisely prescribed format; these essays could come in as many different forms as there are students in the course. Write like writers, you ink-stained scholars. Deploy words with aplomb.

To help you get going, we’ve developed a list (below). A typical reflective essay will include some heady mixture of these elements, though not necessarily in this order, and perhaps not separately but well-blended, as you get the job done in the most writerly way you can. If you’re stuck, you could just try brainstorming to one of these bullet points, as a way into all of the points. They’re related–all these points. One will lead to another, in different ways for each of you.

Required Documents for the Portfolio

Your assigned portfolio advisor (not necessarily the same person as your regular academic advisor!) will help you shape your portfolio in ways that make most sense for you. The documents you collect are not meant to be your best work, necessarily, but instead should be representative of your growth over time. So probably some of the very best things you’ve written here at Whitworth will end up in your portfolios. But maybe (likely!) you’ll also choose to include something that really didn’t work, or that shows you floundering a bit as you work your way toward better writing. As a whole, the set of documents should give you great raw material for conversations with your portfolio advisor and for the reflections you’re baking into your essays.

Every portfolio includes:

  • A Reflective Essay (3,000 words)
  • Representative Pieces of Student Writing (See Below)
  • A Resume
  • A Cover Letter for a Job Application or (by arrangement with your advisor) a Statement of Purpose for Graduate School

Below are lists of required documents for the different “Tracks” in English. If you’re not sure you fit any of these categories, please speak with your EL 498 professor(s) right away.

LINKS for Tracks: Portfolio Elements: Track I (Literature) – Portfolio Elements: Track II (Writing Studies) – Portfolio Elements for Students Who Arrived in Fall ’22 or Later

Track I (Literature Track) (Arrived Before Fall ’22)

Literature Track students should include the following:

  • Req. ONE: A short literature analysis from a lower-division literature course (100- or 200-level). These tend to be short (2-4 pages).
  • Req. TWO: A sustained literature analysis from an upper-division literature course (300- or 400-level) (8-20 pages).
  • Req. THREE: A paper representing your best or most interesting engagement with rhetorical, literary, or cultural theory. If ONE or TWO already does that, you and your advisor may instead decide to add a third composition representative of your additional analytical work in literature, your engagement with creative writing, or your work in composition and rhetoric.
  • Req. FOUR: Additional work that rounds out the picture of who you are and what you’ve done here at Whitworth. This might be something drawn from your efforts toward a minor or toward an additional major. For example, a creative writing minor might include a craft essay or a collection/selection of creative work. A film minor might include a film completed at the LA Film Studies Center. An Editing and Publishing minor might include a designed manuscript of some kind. Some English majors may want to put together a set of works for immediate submission to a literary journal. The key thing here is: Add one more thing that will be especially interesting to discuss in your reflective essay.

Track II (Writing Studies Track) (Arrived Before Fall ’22)

Writing Studies students should aim to include at least four kinds of work, including:

  • Req. ONE: A literary or craft analysis paper.
  • Req. TWO: One or a selection of creative/multi-modal work(s) of between 10–20 pages,
  • Req. THREE: Work from rhetoric/composition or literary editing/publishing.
  • Req. FOUR: Additional work that rounds out the picture of who you are and what you’ve done here at Whitworth. This might be something drawn from your efforts toward a minor or toward an additional major. For example, a film minor might include a film completed at the LA Film Studies Center. An Editing and Publishing minor might include a designed manuscript of some kind. The key thing here is: Add one more thing that will be especially interesting to discuss in your reflective essay.

For items TWO and THREE, work with your advisor to choose a representative sample of your work. Some of you may choose fewer but longer works. Some may choose many shorter pieces. All of you should keep in mind that multimodal / nontraditional works are fair game for the portfolio and that a greater diversity of work will likely lend itself to a more interesting reflective essay.

BA in English or English-Language Arts (Arrived Fall ’22 or Later)

If you arrived at Whitworth in or after Fall 2022, you are on either the new English BA or English-Language Arts BA track. The notes below cover both.

Special Note for Language Arts: Language Arts folks are often able to bypass this course but sometimes choose it as their best option; please check in with your advisor (or your EL 498 professor) if you’re on the Language Arts track and are uncertain about whether to complete EL 498.

Special Note for Transfer Students: If you transferred into Whitworth, we hope you’ll choose some work you did with us here at Whitworth, but it will be absolutely legitimate for you to include some work you completed pre-Whitworth.

Requirements for Everyone Who Arrived Fall ’22 or Later: In conversation with your portfolio advisor, compile a set of compositions that includes the following:

  • Req. ONE: A short literature analysis from a lower-division literature course (100- or 200-level). These tend to be short (2-4 pages).
  • Req. TWO: A sustained literature analysis from an upper-division literature course (300- or 400-level) (typically 8-20 pages).
  • Req. THREE: A paper representing your best or most interesting engagement with rhetorical, literary, or cultural theory. If Req. ONE or Req. TWO already does that, more or less, you and your advisor should choose a third composition representative of your additional analytical work in literature, your engagement with creative writing, or your work in composition and rhetoric. Choose something substantially different from Req. ONE and Req. TWO, if possible, to give yourself more to talk about in your reflection.
  • Req. FOUR: At least two significant pieces from Creative Writing (EL 245) and/or an upper division writing workshop. These may be traditional or multimodal in format. Choose pieces either that were very successful or that represent important learning and development for you. Remember that for this portfolio these pieces need to be interesting and worth talking about, rather than perfect. Imperfect can go a long, long way here.
  • Req. FIVE: Additional work that rounds out the picture of who you are and what you’ve done here at Whitworth. This might be something drawn from your efforts toward a minor or toward an additional major. For example, a creative writing minor might include a craft essay or a more full-bodied collection of creative work. An English-Language Arts major should include work related to teaching preparation. A film minor might include a film completed at the LA Film Studies Center. An Editing and Publishing minor might include a designed manuscript of some kind. Some English majors may want to put together a set of works for immediate submission to a literary journal. The key thing here is: Add one more thing that will be especially interesting to discuss in your reflective essay.

A List of Elements to Include in Your Essay

  • An assessment of your development as a reader, writer, and thinker since you began your undergraduate education. What’s happened to you and your skills during that time? (Addressing this bullet point could lead you to write a small section of the essay, but it could really also be a mission statement for the whole thing. There are many, many ways to hit this mark. There are many ways to hit all of these marks.)
  • An interesting answer to this question: As clearly and succinctly as possible, how would you describe the skills you have cultivated as an English major? (This answer is pretty likely to help with cover letters and other job application materials, not to mention with your job-interview banter. Find these words.)
  • Discussion of some of your best or most meaningful moments of learning in the English major and as an English major. What classes, readings, viewings, assignments, or instructors have been particularly formative for you, and why? Get specific here. Tell stories. Remember that you’re writing an essay and that you know something at this point about what makes a good essay tick. (Related: If there other aspects of your curricular or co-curricular life that have been especially important for shaping you as a thinker and doer who loves writing, you might choose to include and unpack some of those, too.)
  • Commentary on the ways you’re still improving and developing as a reader, writer, and thinker (and all three at once). This is the fourth bullet point, but it feels like it probably would come later in the essay, doesn’t it? As a conclusion? Maybe? Or maybe this could be your way into the whole essay–a framing device for the whole thing, appearing in the opening. Point: Don’t let the ordering of this bullet-pointed list hoodwink you into an arrangement of your ideas that doesn’t suit you! Choose for yourself; aim for excellence.
  • Commentary on each of the compositions in your portfolio, noting what strike you as the strengths of the work, where you see room for improvement, and how each piece fit into your ongoing journey toward excellence and even more excellence as a reader, writer, and thinker. Notice that sometimes you might comment on shared qualities (for better or worse) that you discover in different essays; commenting on each essay does not have to mean addressing each essay one at a time. Aim to be vivid here, highlighting specific moments in or aspects of your writing and what they reveal about you and your journey. Where you highlight areas for continuing improvement, comment on how you’ll reach for that improvement in the months and years ahead.
  • Consideration of the various kinds of work you have done and of how trying out different approaches to writing has contributed to the growth of your skills and the cultivation of your talents. (Here, you might also track common threads that connect up all of the different subjects you’ve addressed and approaches you’ve taken during your undergraduate education.)
  • Your reflection on the shape of your own writing process, the value of revising and refining a piece of writing, and the experience of looking back on your old work. This is big. Make sure you do this.
  • Notes and speculation related to how, in the coming years, you hope to keep developing as a writer, reader, and thinker, but also–if it makes sense for your essay–as a leader, colleague, professional, and/or community member who brings a very particular set of liberal arts skills with you into the world.
  • At least 3,000 words.

Talking to Your Portfolio Advisor

You and your advisor will be having a number of conversations about the work going into your portfolio, so it’s important that you agree early on about what that work will be. These conversations should feed into the reflective essay; we hope they will give you some verbal “rough draft” moments.

As you meet during the semester, you might also schedule time to talk about other “next step” life issues like submitting work to creative writing journals; graduate school applications (and what graduate work can and can’t do for you); resumes and cover letters and the job hunt; making alumni connections; or other post-graduation topics that are on your mind.

This is a great moment to have those kinds of conversations, or to at least figure out where to go next as you pursue your answers.

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