Reflection is an important part of any learning we do. You’ll often be asked to reflect in your college career and in the professional workplace. Reflections are a space where you can think about what you learned, what you did, and what you’d do differently. For example, if you play sports, you know that teams often meet to discuss how a game went, what you learned from the experience, and what needs to be done differently next time. In the work place, you may be asked to explain the work you’ve done in the last month to your boss, what challenges you faced, what solutions you found, and what you recommend going forward. In the school setting, reflections not only help you, the student, consider what you learned, but they help the teacher understand the unseen work that you did.

You’ve worked hard to learn new concepts, understand a new genre, write and revise your review–and I want to know how it went. I’d like you to write a short 250-300 word reflection about this paper and the revision process.

Importantly, I want you to organize this reflection to paragraphs, and have each paragraph focus on ideas you want to share.

Here are some questions your reflection might address:

• Comment on the process of writing the first draft. What was the most challenging part of writing this paper? Was there a part of your identity or experience that was hard to name? What concepts or ideas were hardest to wrestle with? What part of the paper or project did you find easiest or most rewarding?
• Comment on the revision process and your attempts to improve your paper. What did you work hardest on to revise in this paper? For example, was there a comment readers gave you that you worked especially hard to address? What comment or feedback did you get (and from whom) that helped you understand something about this paper or your own writing? What did you change as a result of the feedback? Was it helpful to see what your peers were writing in their mini-reviews? Why or why not?
• Comment on the final product or the unit as a whole. What do you hope I will notice about your review? Is there a section or element that you want to point my attention to? What would you have changed if you had more time to work on this? What skills do you think you learned most during this unit? (This can be something new you learned or a skill you improved.) How did the mini-reviews impact your writing and/or thought processes? For example, did they help you to think about your text(s) in a new/different way? Did they help you to identify aspects of the text you might discuss in your Rhetorical Review?