Consider the places you’ve been aggravated, surprised, challenged, and/or engaged. What are you most proud of concerning your efforts? Where might you have done things better or differently?

Reflect on the work you’ve done in this course and what you’ve learned…. Instructions: Write a thoughtful, well-supported, reflective essay of depth and detail that assesses this semester, your work and your growth. Look back at the work you’ve done throughout the term and provide support for your discussion [the assigned texts you’ve read and annotated; the feedback you’ve given and received; forum posts; peer responses; professor feedback; additional research you’ve done, and even outside conversations that have kept you thinking]. Look internally for things that have changed and things that have remained the same (abilities, ideas, understanding, scholarly interests, personal commitments, etc). Consider as well any goals you set for yourself at the start of the term.

Consider the places you’ve been aggravated, surprised, challenged, and/or engaged.

What are you most proud of concerning your efforts? Where might you have done things better or differently? What will be your key “take aways”?

Where will you continue to strive to learn more? How has your thinking/attitude changed (or not changed)? Where have you reconsidered — anything? How have you changed (or not changed) as a writer, as a reader, as a student of culture, philosophy, and ethics, and as a person? Where have you contributed?

What do you feel especially proud of now as you close out the semester? Is there some essay (either your own or one you’ve read this term), some discussion, some example, word, or phrase which has provided a “light-bulb” moment or an epiphany for you? Why? How?

The questions above are starting points to get you thinking and to generate ideas. You are free to organize this essay in any way that makes sense to the content you wish to include. You do not need to move through the questions above one by one. Instead, explain with detail, drawing on course text(s) and on concrete illustrations to show HOW that what you say is true. For example, if you claim that your understanding of the significance of end of life issues in shaping culture has deepened, draw on direct quotations from texts, research, real life, and colleagues and point to concrete examples that demonstrate what got you thinking in a new direction and why and that further illustrate what shapes your thinking now.

Explore the implications of this attitude for your scholarship and for your life.

Essays should be 3-5 pages in length with Works Cited on a separate page, following MLA Style.