reflection

Model Student-Written Self Reflective Essay

Writing for Business Professionals, Section #99027

Author Sonya Tecla once said, “Self-reflection is a humbling process. It’s essential to

find out why you think, say, and do certain things…then better yourself.” Once you become self

aware, you are in a better position to make the changes that you need to make to improve your

life and the lives of the people around you. Self-reflection helps you steer your own thoughts,

emotions, and behaviors in a healthy direction. This course really helped me improve my

research skills, my group project skills, and my overall writing skills.

When writing a paper that requires a lot of facts and information, you need research. It

is maybe the most important step when you’re writing a paper. I used to find good research that

seemed relevant to the topic of the paper, but I never really analyzed the sources as much as I

should have. I would just fine a source that seemed to be reliable and relevant, and I wouldn’t

really read the entire source. I would skim the article and if I saw at least one thing that I could

use in the paper, then I would use that source. When I saw that one of the assignments was to

analyze each source and explain why it was relevant to the paper and why we wanted to use it, I

realized that it was a great opportunity to improve my research skills and methods. I was

surprised to find that it was one of the most useful assignments throughout the entire quarter. I

was able to continuously go back to that assignment and use it in the later assignments. It really

made the whole writing process easier because I knew what I was writing about, and I really

understood what each source could bring to the paper. One of the biggest things that I learned in

this class was that if you spend a significant amount of time researching in a productive way,

then the whole writing process will be a lot easier.

Working in a group for an online class seemed daunting at first, but I found it to be very

helpful and it ended up being a great experience. In the past, I haven’t had the best group

experiences. I’ve only had two or three group projects where each group member equally

contributed and the project itself was successful, and the rest were very trying and very

unsuccessful. In the past, I’ve usually been the one who had to pick up the slack and basically

finish a project on my own and that made me very closed-minded to group projects. But this

quarter, I teamed up with really great people. I volunteered to be the group leader because I am a

very organized person, and it would be easier if we had one person who could put everyone’s

parts together and make sure everything was cohesive. Each person was responsible for one

section of the paper, and each person did their work on time and in a successful manner. Our

group got along really well, and we worked well together. I learned that not all group projects

will be the same, and that I shouldn’t be so doubtful of other people. I now know that there won’t

always be people who are committed as I am, but I know that there will be a lot of people that

are. I think organizing the project in a fair and easy way made the project and the group

teamwork successful.

Overall, this course was designed to help each student develop their writing skills and to

show how to write a paper for business and professional purposes. In the past, I haven’t hated

writing papers but it definitely was not my favorite thing to do. I have had some teachers that

didn’t seem to care about the content, and they were more focused on word count or length or

grammar and mechanical errors. I have also had teachers that cared so much more about the

content, and they were more concerned about if the student actually understood the content.

Those teachers never gave a minimum length, but I always ended up writing longer and better

papers because I was motivated to focus on the content of the essay. I felt that this class was

equally balanced, but was very focused on the content. I focused on the quality of my writing

instead of the length and it really pushed me to write a paper that I felt was successful.

Overall, I learned a lot in this class based on the content and I learned a lot about myself

as well. I learned that writing quality content is more important than quantity writing. I also

learned that you can change past habits, and the more that I practice writing, the better I get at

writing successful pieces and essays.