A Reflective Essay?
In this essay, you will examine how you became aware of your affiliation with a group, or if you do not want to be “personal,” how you have observed the behaviors, attitudes, and modes of expression that distinguish a group. This essay is meant to be less analytical and more exploratory and observational than the seminar paper. You may decide that you want to argue a position, or you may work with more of a narrative line of development. You may work from a personal point of reference, or you may set out your observationsfrom a more distanced standpoint. In either case, you will need to provide a sense of the modes of expression and response that made you aware of the identity of this group. In either case, the emphasis will be on showing and not simply telling, for even if you do not adopt a narrative line of development, you will need to provide a richly detailed sense of experiences, events, and feelings related to the topic.
Your line of inquiry may or may not center on your own personal experience, but you must include a strong sense of a “we”—a group that is larger than a family and smaller than such broad and ill-defined categories as liberal, women, or Hispanic. Such categories may figure into your inquiry, but you should qualify and specify them with modifiers such as 20something, straight, or urban. You may consider quite varied groups, including groups such as gamers or English majors
The essay will be assessed largely on style, including broader considerations such as how well suited the point of view is to the effect that you are trying to elicit. Your essay will be assessed on the mechanics and punctuation issues that have been emphasized in previous essays, and we will also consider how engaging your lead is, how effectively you set up the context for your inquiry, and how well defined your inquiry is. However, you will not likely want to set out a simple thesis to be proved up front. You may want to set out a clear sense of the topic in the introduction, but this assignment calls for an attention to nuance, complication, even contradiction. Attending to such complexities will almost inevitably mean that you will need to engage your reader in a process of inquiry that surprises as well as informs.