dog reflective essay

72 Dog Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

To find good research titles for your essay about dogs, you can look through science articles or trending pet blogs on the internet. Alternatively, you can check out this list of creative research topics about dogs compiled by our experts .

🐩 Dog Essays: Things to Consider

🏆 best dog titles for essays, 💡 most interesting dog topics to write about, ❓ questions about dog.

There are many different dog essays you can write, as mankind’s history with its best friends is rich and varied. Many people will name the creatures their favorite animals, citing their endearing and inspiring qualities such as loyalty, obedience, bravery, and others.

Others will discuss dog training and the variety of important roles the animals fulfill in our everyday life, working as shepherds, police members, guides to blind people, and more.

Some people will be more interested in dog breeding and the incredible variety of the animals show, ranging from decorative, small Yorkshire terriers to gigantic yet peaceful Newfoundland dogs. All of these topics are interesting and deserve covering, and you can incorporate all of them a general essay.

Dogs are excellent pet animals, as their popularity, rivaled only by cats, shows. Pack animals by nature, they are open to including members of other species into their groups and get along well with most people and animals.

They are loyal to the pack, and there are examples of dogs adopting orphaned kittens and saving other animals and children from harm.

This loyalty and readiness to face danger makes them favorite animals for many people, and the hundreds of millions of dogs worldwide show that humans appreciate their canine friends.

It also allows them to work many important jobs, guarding objects, saving people, and using their noses to sniff out various trails and substances.

However, dogs are descended from wolves, whose pack nature does not prevent them from attacking those outside the group. Some larger dogs are capable of killing an adult human alone, and most can at least inflict severe harm if they attack a child.

Dogs are trusted and loved because of their excellent trainability. They can be taught to be calm and avoid aggression or only attack once the order is given.

They can also learn a variety of other behaviors and tricks, such as not relieving themselves in the house and executing complex routines. This physical and mental capacity to perform a variety of tasks marks dogs as humanity’s best and most versatile helpers.

The variety of jobs dogs perform has led humans to try to develop distinct dog breeds for each occupation, which led to the emergence of numerous and different varieties of the same animal.

The observation of the evolution of a specific type of dog as time progressed and its purposes changed can be an interesting topic. You can also discuss dog competitions, which try to find the best dog based on various criteria and even have titles for the winners.

Comparisons between different varieties of the animal are also excellent dog argumentative essay topics. Overall, there are many interesting ideas that you can use to write a unique and excellent essay.

Regardless of what you ultimately choose to write about, you should adhere to the central points of essay writing. Make sure to describe sections of your paper with dog essay titles that identify what you will be talking about clearly.

Write an introduction that identifies the topic and provides a clear and concise thesis statement. Finish the paper with a dog essay conclusion that sums up your principal points. It will be easier and more interesting to read while also adhering to literature standards if you do this.

Below, we have provided a collection of great ideas that you can use when writing your essays, research papers, speeches, or dissertations. Take inspiration from our list of dog topics, and don’t forget to check out the samples written by other students!

• An Adventure with My Pet Pit-Bull Dog “Tiger” One look at Tiger and I knew that we were not going to leave the hapless couple to the mercies of the scary man.
• Dogs Playing Poker The use of dogs in the painting is humorous in that the writer showed them doing human things and it was used to attract the attention of the viewer to the picture.
• Debates on Whether Dog is the Best Pet or not The relationships between dogs and man have been improving over the years and this has made dogs to be the most preferable pets in the world. Other pets have limited abilities and can not match […]
• Dog Food: Pedigree Company’s Case The attractiveness of the dog food category is manifested through the intense competitive nature of the various stakeholders. The third and final phase of the segmentation is to label the category of dog food as […]
• Animal Cruelty: Inside the Dog Fighting In most cases the owner of the losing dog abandons the injured dog to die slowly from the injuries it obtained during the fight. The injuries inflicted to and obtained by the dogs participating in […]
• The Benefits of a Protection Dog Regardless of the fact that protection dogs are animals that can hurt people, they are loving and supportive family members that provide their owners with a wide range of benefits.
• Breed Specific Legislation: Dog Attacks As a result, the individuals that own several canines of the “banned” breeds are to pay a lot of money to keep their dogs.
• How to Conduct the Dog Training Properly At the same time, it is possible to work with the dog and train it to perform certain actions necessary for the owner. In the process of training, the trainer influences the behavior of the […]
• “Dog’s Life” by Charlie Chaplin Film Analysis In this film, the producer has used the comic effect to elaborate on the message he intends to deliver to the audience. The function of a dog is to serve the master.
• Border Collie Dog Breed Information So long as the movement of the Border Collies and the sheep is calm and steady, they can look for the stock as they graze in the field.
• Cats vs. Dogs: Are You a Cat or a Dog Person? Cats and dogs are two of the most common types of pets, and preferring one to another can arguably tell many things about a person.
• Cesar Millan as a Famous Dog Behaviorist Millan earned the nickname “the dog boy” because of his natural ability to interact with dogs. Consequently, the dog behaviorist became a celebrity in different parts of the country.
• Compare and Contrast Your First Dog vs. Your Current Dog Although she was very friendly and even tried to take care of me when I was growing up, my mother was the real owner.
• “Love That Dog” Verse Novel by Sharon Creech In this part of the play, it is clear that Jack is not ready to hide his feelings and is happy to share them with someone who, in his opinion, can understand him.
• “Marley: A Dog Like No Other” by John Grogan John Grogan’s international bestseller “Marley: A Dog Like No Other” is suited for children of all ages, and it tells the story of a young puppy, Marley, who quickly develops a big personality, boundless energy, […]
• Dog Training Techniques Step by Step The first step that will be taken in order to establish the performance of this trick is showing the newspaper to the dog, introducing the desired object and the term “take”.
• The Great Pyrenees Dog Breed as a Pet In the folklore of the French Pyrenees, there is a touching legend about the origin of the breed. The dog will not obey a person of weak character and nervous.
• Dog Food by Subscription: Service Design Project For the convenience and safety of customers and their dogs, customer support in the form of a call center and online chat is available.
• “Everyday” in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Haddon The novel presents Christopher who passes through many changes in his life, where he adapts to it and acclimatizes the complications that come with it.
• A Dog’s Life by Charles Chaplin The theme of friendship and love that is clear in the relationship between Tramp and Scraps. The main being that Chaplin makes it very comical thus; it is appealing to the audience, and captures the […]
• What Dog Are You? All of them possess individual traits that have to suit the profile and character of the owner for them to create a harmonious and beneficial union and to feel comfortable together first of all, every […]
• Why Does Your Dog Pretend to Like You? Children and the older generation can truly cherish and in the case of children can develop as individuals with the help of dogs.
• Caring for a Dog With Arthritis For Monty, the dog under study, the size, and disposition of the dog, the stage of the disease as also its specific symptoms and behaviour need to be observed and then a suitable choice of […]
• Dog House: Business Law Today Based on the definition of a shareholder’s derivative suit, it is possible to say that corporations can be expected to benefit from this type of litigation.
• “Traditional” Practice Exception in Dog Act One of those who wanted the word to remain in the clause was the president of the Beaufort Delta Dog Mushers and also an Inuvik welder.Mr.
• “How to Draw a Dog” Video Lecture Critique The video begins with an introduction to the character that the artist is going to draw. The artist provides a more detailed description of the process later when he begins to draw dog’s eyebrows and […]
• Small Dog Boarding Business: Strategic Plan Based on the first dimension of the competing values framework, the dog boarding business already has the advantage of a flexible business model, it is possible to adjust the size of the business or eliminate […]
• Small Dog Boarding Business: Balanced Scorecard Bragonier posits that SWOT analysis is essential in the running of the business because it helps the management to analyze the business at a glance.
• Non-Profit Dog Organization’s Mission Statement In terms of the value we are bringing, our team regards abandoned animals who just want to be loved by people, patients with special needs, volunteers working at pet shelters, and the American society in […]
• Dog’ Education in “The Culture Clash” by Jean Donaldson The second chapter comes under the title, Hard-Wiring: What the Dog comes with which tackles the characteristic innate behaviors that dogs possess naturally; that is, predation and socialization. This chapter sheds light on the behaviors […]
• Implementing Security Policy at Dog Parks To ensure that people take responsibility for their dogs while in the parks, the owners of the parks should ensure that they notify people who bring their dogs to the park of the various dangers […]
• Operant Conditioning in Dog Training In regards to negative enforcements, the puppy should be fitted with a collar and upon the command “sit”, the collar should be pulled up a bit to force the dog to sit down.
• First in Show Pet Foods, Inc and Dog Food Market Due to the number of competitors, it is clear that First in Show Pet Food, Inc.understands it has a low market share.
• Animal Assisted Therapy: Therapy Dogs First, the therapist must set the goals that are allied to the utilization of the therapy dog and this should be done for each client.
• The Tail Wagging the Dog: Emotions and Their Expression in Animals The fact that the experiment was conducted in real life, with a control group of dogs, a life-size dog model, a simultaneous observation of the dogs’ reaction and the immediate transcription of the results, is […]
• Moral Dilemma: Barking Dog and Neighborhood Since exuberant barking of Stella in the neighborhood disturbs many people, debarking is the appropriate measure according to the utilitarian perspective.
• The Feasibility Analysis for the Ropeless Dog Lead This is because it will have the ability to restrict the distance between the dog and the master control radio. The exploration of different sales models and prices for other devices indicates that the Rope-less […]
• Classical Conditioning: Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks According to Basford and Stein’s interpretation, classical conditioning is developed in a person or an animal when a neutral stimulus “is paired or occurs contingently with the unconditioned stimulus on a number of occasions”, which […]
• The Movements and Reactions of Dogs in Crates and Outside Yards This study discusses the types of movements and reactions exhibited by dogs in the two confinement areas, the crate and the outside yard.
• A Summary of “What The Dog Saw” Gladwell explores the encounters of Cesar Millan, the dog whisperer who non-verbally communicated with the dogs and mastered his expertise to tame the dogs.
• Evolution of Dogs from the Gray Wolf However, the combined results of vocalisation, morphological behavior and molecular biology of the domesticated dog now show that the wolf is the principle ancestor of the dog.
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time Haddon therefore manages to carry the reader into the world of the novel and holds the reader to the end of the novel.
• Attacking Dog Breeds: Truth or Exaggeration?
• Are Bad Dog Laws Unjustified?
• Are Dog Mouths Cleaner Than Humans?
• Can Age Affect How Fast a Dog Runs?
• Can Chew Treats Kill Your Dog?
• Can You Control Who the Alpha Dog Is When You Own Two Dogs?
• Does Drug Dog Sniff Outside Home Violate Privacy?
• Does the Pit Bull Deserve Its Reputation as a Vicious Dog?
• Does Your Dog Love You and What Does That Mean?
• Does Your Dog Need a Bed?
• How Can People Alleviate Dog Cruelty Problems?
• How Cooking With Dog Is a Culinary Show?
• How Can Be Inspiring Dog Tales?
• How Owning and Petting a Dog Can Improve Your Health?
• How the I-Dog Works: It’s All About Traveling Signals?
• What Can Andy Griffith Teach You About Dog Training?
• What Makes the Dog – Human Bond So Powerful?
• What the Dog Saw and the Rise of the Global Market?
• What Should You Know About Dog Adoption?
• When Dog Training Matters?
• When Drug Dog Sniff the Narcotic Outside Home?
• At What Age Is Dog Training Most Effective?
• Why Are People Choosing to Get Involved in Dog Fighting?
• Why Are Reported Cases of Dog-Fighting Rising in the United States?
• Why Dog Attacks Occur and Who Are the Main Culprits?
• Why Does Dog Make Better Pets Than Cats?
• Why Every Kid Needs a Dog?
• Why Should People Adopt Rather Than Buy a Dog?
• Why Could the Dog Have Bitten the Person?
• Will Dog Survive the Summer Sun?
• Animal Rights Research Ideas
• Inspiration Topics
• Animal Welfare Ideas
• Wildlife Ideas
• Emotional Development Questions
• Zoo Research Ideas
• Endangered Species Questions
• Human Behavior Research Topics
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• Writing Tips

How to Write a Reflective Essay

3-minute read

• 29th August 2018

If you think that a “reflective essay” is a college paper written on a mirror, this post is for you. That’s because we’re here to explain exactly what a reflective essay is and how to write one. And we can tell you from the outset that no mirrors are required to follow our advice.

What Is Reflective Writing?

The kind of “reflection” we’re talking about here is personal. It involves considering your own situation and analyzing it so you can learn from your experiences. To do this, you need to describe what happened, how you felt about it, and what you might be able to learn from it for the future.

This makes reflective writing a useful part of courses that involve work-based learning . For instance, a student nurse might be asked to write a reflective essay about a placement.

When writing a reflective essay, moreover, you may have to forget the rule about not using pronouns like “I” or “we” in academic writing. In reflective writing, using the first person is essential!

The Reflective Cycle

There are many approaches to reflective learning, but one of the most popular is Gibb’s Reflective Cycle . This was developed by Professor Graham Gibbs and can be applied to a huge range of situations. In all cases, though, it involves the following steps:

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• Description – You will need to describe your experiences in detail. This includes what happened, where and when it happened, who else was involved, and what you did.
• Feelings – How you felt before, during, and after the experience you describe.
• Evaluation and Analysis – Think about what went well and what could be improved upon based on your experience. Try to refer to ideas you’ve learned in class while thinking about this.
• Conclusions – Final thoughts on what you’ve learned from the experience.
• Action – How you will put what you’ve learned into practice.

If your reflective essay addresses the steps above, you are on the right track!

Structuring a Reflective Essay

While reflective essays vary depending upon topic and subject area, most share a basic overall structure. Unless you are told otherwise, then, your essay should include the following:

• Introduction – A brief outline of what your essay is about.
• Main Body – The main part of your essay will be a description of what happened and how it made you feel . This is also where you will evaluate and analyze your experiences, either as part of the description or as a separate section in the essay.
• Conclusion – The conclusion of your essay should sum up what you have learned from reflecting on your experiences and what you would do differently in the future.
• Reference List – If you have cited any sources in your essay, make sure to list them with full bibliographic information at the end of the document.

Finally, once you’ve written your essay, don’t forget to get it checked for spelling and grammar errors!

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How to Write a Reflective Essay?

07 August, 2020

17 minutes read

Author:  Elizabeth Brown

A reflective essay is a personal perspective on an issue or topic. This article will look at how to write an excellent reflexive account of your experience, provide you with reflexive essay framework to help you plan and organize your essay and give you a good grounding of what good reflective writing looks like.

What is a Reflective Essay?

A reflective essay requires the writer to examine his experiences and explore how these experiences have helped him develop and shaped him as a person.  It is essentially an analysis of your own experience focusing on what you’ve learned.

Don’t confuse reflexive analysis with the rhetorical one. If you need assistance figuring out how to write a rhetorical analysis , give our guide a read!

Based on the reflective essay definition, this paper will follow a logical and thought-through plan . It will be a discussion that centers around a topic or issue. The essay should strive to achieve a balance between description and personal feelings.

It requires a clear line of thought, evidence, and examples to help you discuss your reflections. Moreover, a proper paper requires an analytical approach . There are three main types of a reflective essay: theory-based, a case study or an essay based on one’s personal experience.

Unlike most academic forms of writing, this writing is based on personal experiences and thoughts. As such, first-person writing position where the writer can refer to his own thoughts and feelings is essential. If the writer talks about psychology or medicine, it is best to use the first-person reference as little as possible to keep the tone objective and science-backed.

To write this paper, you need to recollect and share personal experience . However, there is still a chance that you’ll be asked to talk about a more complex topic.

By the way, if you are looking for good ideas on how to choose a good argumentative essay topic , check out our latest guide to help you out!

The Criteria for a Good Reflective Essay

The convention of an academic reflective essay writing will vary slightly depending on your area of study. A good reflective essay will be written geared towards its intended audience. These are the general criteria that form the core of a well-written piece:

• A developed perspective and line of reasoning on the subject.
• A well-informed discussion that is based on literature and sources relevant to your reflection.
• An understanding of the complex nuance of situations and the tributary effects that prevent them from being simple and clear-cut.
• Ability to stand back and analyze your own decision-making process to see if there is a better solution to the problem.
• A clear understanding of h ow the experience has influenced you.
• A good understanding of the principles and theories of your subject area.
• Ability to frame a problem before implementing a solution.

These seven criteria form the principles of writing an excellent reflective essay.

Still need help with your essay? Handmade Writing is here to assist you!

What is the Purpose of Writing a Reflective Essay?

The purpose of a reflective essay is for a writer to reflect upon experience and learn from it . Reflection is a useful process that helps you make sense of things and gain valuable lessons from your experience. Reflective essay writing allows you to demonstrate that you can think critically about your own skills or practice strategies implementations to learn and improve without outside guidance.

Another purpose is to analyze the event or topic you are describing and emphasize how you’ll apply what you’ve learned.

How to Create a Reflective Essay Outline

• Analyze the task you’ve received
• Read through and understand the marking criteria
• Keep a reflective journal during the experience
• Use a reflective framework (Schon, Driscoll, Gibbs, and Kolb) to help you analyze the experience
• Create a referencing system to keep institutions and people anonymous to avoid breaking their confidentiality
• Set the scene by using the five W’s (What, Where, When, Who and Why) to describe it
• Choose the events or the experiences you’re going to reflect on
• Identify the issues of the event or experience you want to focus on
• Use literature and documents to help you discuss these issues in a wider context
• Reflect on how these issues changed your position regarding the issue
• Compare and contrast theory with practice
• Identify and discuss your learning needs both professionally and personally

Don’t forget to adjust the formatting of your essay. There are four main format styles of any academic piece. Discover all of them from our essay format guide!

Related Posts: Essay outline | Essay format Guide

Using Reflective Frameworks

A good way to develop a reflective essay plan is by using a framework that exists. A framework will let help you break the experience down logical and make the answer easier to organize. Popular frameworks include: Schon’s (1983) Reflection in action and reflection on action .

Schon wrote ‘The Reflective Practitioner’ in 1983 in which he describes reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action as tools for learning how to meet challenges that do not conform to formulas learned in school through improvisation.  He mentioned two types of reflection : one during and one after. By being aware of these processes while on a work-experience trail or clinical assignment you have to write a reflective account for, you get to understand the process better. So good questions to ask in a reflective journal could be:

<td “200”>Reflection-pre-action <td “200”>Reflection-in-action <td “200”>Reflection-on-Action<td “200”>What might happen? <td “200”>What is happening in the situation? <td “200”>What were your insights after?<td “200”>What possible challenges will you face? <td “200”>Is it working out as you expected? <td “200”>How did it go in retrospect?<td “200”>How will you prepare for the situation? <td “200”>What are the challenges you are dealing with? <td “200”>What did you value and why?<td “200”>  <td “200”>What can you do to make the experience a successful one? <td “200”>What would you do differently before or during a similar situation?<td “200”>  <td “200”>What are you learning? <td “200”>What have you learned?

This will give you a good frame for your paper and help you analyze your experience.

Kolb’s (1984) Learning Cycle

Kolb’s reflective framework works in four stages:

• Concrete experience. This is an event or experience
• Reflective observation. This is reflecting upon the experience. What you did and why.
• Abstract conceptualization. This is the process of drawing conclusions from the experience. Did it confirm a theory or falsify something? And if so, what can you conclude from that?
• Active experimentation. Planning and trying out the thing you have learned from this interaction.

Gibb’s (1988) Reflection Cycle

Gibbs model is an extension of Kolb’s. Gibb’s reflection cycle is a popular model used in reflective writing. There are six stages in the cycle.

• Description. What happened? Describe the experience you are reflecting on and who is involved.
• Feelings. What were you thinking and feeling at the time? What were your thoughts and feelings afterward?
• Evaluation. What was good and bad about the experience? How did you react to the situation? How did other people react? Was the situation resolved? Why and how was it resolved or why wasn’t it resolved? Could the resolution have been better?
• Analysis. What sense can you make of the situation? What helped or hindered during the event? How does this compare to the literature on the subject?
• Conclusion. What else could you have done? What have you learned from the experience? Could you have responded differently? How would improve or repeat success? How can you avoid failure?
• Action plan. If it arose again what would you do? How can you better prepare yourself for next time?

Driscoll’s Method (1994) and Rolfe et al (2001) Reflexive Learning

The Driscoll Method break the process down into three questions. What (Description), So What (Analysis) and Now What (Proposed action). Rolf et al 2001 extended the model further by giving more in-depth and reflexive questions.

• What is the problem/ difficulty/reason for being stuck/reason for feeling bad?
• What was my role in the situation?
• What was I trying to achieve?
• What actions did I take?
• What was the response of others?
• What were the consequences for the patient / for myself / for others?
• What feeling did it evoke in the patient / in myself / in others?
• What was good and bad about the experience?
• So, what were your feelings at the time?
• So, what are your feelings now? Are there any differences? Why?
• So, what were the effects of what you did or did not do?
• So, what good emerged from the situation for yourself and others? Does anything trouble you about the experience or event?
• So, what were your experiences like in comparison to colleagues, patients, visitors, and others?
• So, what are the main reasons for feeling differently from your colleagues?
• Now, what are the implications for you, your colleagues and the patients?
• Now, what needs to happen to alter the situation?
• Now, what are you going to do about the situation?
• Now, what happens if you decide not to alter anything?
• Now, what will you do differently if faced with a similar situation?
• Now, what information would you need to deal with the situation again?
• Now, what methods would you use to go about getting that information?

This model is mostly used for clinical experiences in degrees related to medicine such as nursing or genetic counseling. It helps to get students comfortable thinking over each experience and adapting to situations.

This is just a selection of basic models of this type of writing. And there are more in-depth models out there if you’re writing a very advanced reflective essay. These models are good for beginner level essays. Each model has its strengths and weaknesses. So, it is best to use one that allows you to answer the set question fully.

This written piece can follow many different structures depending on the subject area . So, check your assignment to make sure you don’t have a specifically assigned structural breakdown. For example, an essay that follows Gibbs plan directly with six labeled paragraphs is typical in nursing assignments. A more typical piece will follow a standard structure of an introduction, main body, and conclusion. Now, let’s look into details on how to craft each of these essay parts.

How to Write an Introduction?

There are several good ways to start a reflective essay . Remember that an introduction to a reflective essay differs depending on upon what kind of reflection is involved. A science-based introduction should be brief and direct introducing the issue you plan on discussing and its context.

Related post: How to write an Essay Introduction

For example, a nursing student might want to discuss the overreliance on medical journals in the industry and why peer-reviewed journals led to mistaken information. In this case, one good way how to start a reflective essay introduction is by introducing a thesis statement. Help the reader see the real value of your work.

Do you need help with your thesis statement? Take a look at our recent guide explaining what is a thesis statement .

Let’s look at some reflective essay examples.

‘During my first month working at Hospital X, I became aware just how many doctors treated peer-views journal articles as a gospel act. This is a dangerous practice that because of (a), (b) and (c) could impact patients negatively.’

The reflective essay on English class would begin differently. In fact, it should be more personal and sound less bookish .

How to Write the Main Body Paragraphs?

The main body of the essay should focus on specific examples of the issue in question. A short description should be used for the opener. Each paragraph of this piece should begin with an argument supporting the thesis statement.

The most part of each paragraph should be a reflexive analysis of the situation and evaluation . Each paragraph should end with a concluding sentence that caps the argument. In a science-based essay, it is important to use theories, other studies from journals and source-based material to argue and support your position in an objective manner.

How to Write the Conclusion?

A conclusion should provide a summary of the issues explored, remind the reader of the purpose of the essay and suggest an appropriate course of action in relation to the needs identified in the body of the essay.

This is mostly an action plan for the future. However, if appropriate a writer can call readers to action or ask questions. Make sure that the conclusion is powerful enough for readers to remember it. In most cases, an introduction and a conclusion is the only thing your audience will remember.

Reflective Essay Topics

Here are some good topics for a reflective essay. We’ve decided to categorize them to help you find good titles for reflective essays that fit your requirement.

Medicine-related topics:

• Write a reflective essay on leadership in nursing
• How did a disease of your loved ones (or your own) change you?
• Write a reflection essay on infection control
• How dealing with peer-reviewed journals interrupts medical procedures?
• Write a reflection essay about community service
• Write a reflective essay on leadership and management in nursing

Topics on teamwork:

• Write a reflective essay on the group presentation
• What makes you a good team player and what stays in the way of improvement?
• Write a reflective essay on the presentation
• Write about the last lesson you learned from working in a team
• A reflective essay on career development: How teamwork can help you succeed in your career?

Topics on personal experiences:

• Write a reflective essay on the pursuit of happiness: what it means to you and how you’re pursuing it?
• Write a reflective essay on human sexuality: it is overrated today? And are you a victim of stereotypes in this area?
• Write a reflective essay on growing up
• Reflective essay on death: How did losing a loved one change your world?
• Write a reflective essay about a choice you regret
• Write a reflective essay on the counseling session

Academic topics:

• A reflective essay on the writing process: How does writing help you process your emotions and learn from experiences?
• Write a reflective essay on language learning: How learning a new language changes your worldview
• A reflective essay about a choice I regret

Related Posts: Research Paper topics | Compare&Contrast Essay topics

Reflective Essay Example

Tips on writing a good reflective essay.

Some good general tips include the following:

As long as you use tips by HandMade Writing, you’ll end up having a great piece. Just stick to our recommendations. And should you need the help of a pro essay writer service, remember that we’re here to help!

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Ultimate guide to writing a reflective essay, carla johnson.

• June 14, 2023
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Writing about yourself is a powerful way to learn and grow as a person. It is a type of writing that makes you think about your thoughts, feelings, and experiences and how they have affected your personal and professional growth. A reflective essay is a type of writing that lets you talk about your own experiences, thoughts, and insights. In this article , we’ll tell you everything you need to know about writing a reflective essay, from how to define it and figure out what it’s for to how to do it well.

What You'll Learn

Definition of a Reflective Essay

A reflective essay is a type of writing in which you write about your own thoughts, feelings, and experiences. It is a type of personal writing that lets you talk about your own thoughts and experiences and share them with other people. Students are often asked to write reflective essays for school, but they can also be used for personal or professional growth.

Purpose of a Reflective Essay

The goal of a reflective essay is to get you to think about your life and how it has affected your personal and professional growth. Reflective essays can help you learn more about yourself and your experiences, as well as find places where you can grow and improve. They can also help you get better at writing and better at getting your ideas across.

Importance of Reflective Writing

Writing about yourself and your work is an important way to grow personally and professionally. It can help you learn more about yourself, figure out where you need to grow and change, and learn more about how you think and feel. Writing about yourself can also help you get better at critical thinking and analysis , and it can help you get your ideas across better. It is a useful tool for anyone who wants to grow personally and professionally, and it can be used in many different situations, from academic writing to keeping a personal journal.

Writing about yourself and your work is a powerful way to grow personally and professionally. Reflective essays give you a chance to think about your own life and how it has affected your personal and professional growth. By writing about your thoughts and feelings, you can learn more about them, find ways to grow and improve, and improve your writing and communication skills . In the next parts of this article, we’ll show you how to write a good reflective essay step by step, from choosing a topic and organizing your thoughts to writing and revising your essay.

Elements of a Reflective Essay

A reflective essay is a type of writing that allows you to reflect on your personal experiences, thoughts, and feelings. There are several essential elements that should be included in a reflective essay to ensure that it is effective in conveying your personal reflections and experiences.

Personal Reflection

The first essential element of a reflective essay is personal reflection. This involves exploring your own thoughts and feelings about the experience you are reflecting on. It is important to be honest and open about your thoughts and feelings, as this will make your essay more authentic and meaningful.

Description of the Experience

The second element of a reflective essay is a description of the experience that you are reflecting on. This includes providing details about the experience, such as where it took place, who was involved, and what happened. The description should be clear and concise, and should provide enough detail for the reader to understand the context of your reflection.

Analysis of the Experience

The third element of a reflective essay is analysis of the experience. This involves exploring the experience in more depth, and examining your thoughts and feelings about it. You should consider what you learned from the experience, and how it impacted your personal and professional growth .

Evaluation of the Experience

The fourth element of a reflective essay is evaluation of the experience. This involves examining the experience from different perspectives, and considering its strengths and weaknesses. You should reflect on what you would do differently if you were in the same situation again, and how you could improve your response or approach.

Identification of Key Learning

The fifth element of a reflective essay is identifying the key learning that you gained from the experience. This involves reflecting on the insights and lessons that you learned from the experience, and how these have impacted your personal and professional growth. This can include new skills, knowledge, or perspectives that you gained from the experience.

Planning for Future Action

The final element of a reflective essay is planning for future action. This involves considering how you can apply the lessons and insights gained from the experience to improve your future actions. You should reflect on how you can use what you learned to approach similar situations differently in the future.

How to Write a Reflective Essay

Writing a reflective essay can be a challenging task, but by following a few simple steps, you can write an effective and meaningful essay .

Steps for Writing a Reflective Essay:

1. Brainstorming and Selecting a Topic

Begin by brainstorming and selecting a topic for your reflective essay. Think about a personal experience or event that had a significant impact on your personal or professional growth.

2. Creating an Outline

Create an outline for your essay . This should include an introduction, body, and conclusion, as well as sections for each of the essential elements described above.

3. Writing the Introduction

Write the introduction for your essay . This should include a brief overview of the experience that you will be reflecting on, as well as the purpose and focus of your essay.

4. Writing the Body

Write the body of your essay, which should include the personal reflection, description of the experience, analysis of the experience, evaluation of the experience, identification of key learning, and planning for future action . Make sure to use specific examples and details to support your reflection.

5. Writing the Conclusion

Write the conclusion for your essay , which should summarize the key points of your reflection and provide closure for the reader. You can also include a final reflection on the experience and what it means to you.

6. Revising and Editing

Pay close attention to grammar, spelling, and sentence structure as you reread and edit your essay . Make sure your essay is easy to read and flows well. You might also want someone else to look over your essay and give you feedback and ideas.

If you follow these steps, you should be able to write a good reflective essay. Remember to be honest and open about your thoughts and feelings, and to support your reflection with specific examples and details. You can become a good reflective writer with practice , and you can use this skill to help your personal and professional growth.

Reflective Essay Topics

Reflective essays can be written on a wide range of topics, as they are based on personal experiences and reflections. Here are some common categories of reflective essay topics:

Personal Experiences

– A time when you overcame a personal challenge

– A difficult decision you had to make

– A significant event in your life that changed you

– A moment when you learned an important lesson

– A relationship that had a significant impact on you

Professional Experiences

– A challenging project or assignment at work

– A significant accomplishment or success in your career

– A time when you had to deal with a difficult colleague or boss

– A failure or setback in your career and what you learned from it

– A career change or transition that had a significant impact on you

Academic Experiences

– A challenging course or assignment in school

– A significant accomplishment or success in your academic career

– A time when you struggled with a particular subject or topic and how you overcame it

– A research project or paper that had a significant impact on you

– A teacher or mentor who had a significant impact on your academic career

Cultural Experiences

– A significant trip or travel experience

– A significant cultural event or celebration you participated in

– A time when you experienced culture shock

– A significant interaction with someone from a different culture

– A time when you learned something new about a different culture and how it impacted you

Social Issues

– A personal experience with discrimination or prejudice

– A time when you volunteered or worked for a social cause or organization

– A significant event or moment related to a social issue (e.g. protest, rally, community event)

– A time when you had to confront your own biases or privilege

– A social issue that you are passionate about and how it has impacted you personally

Reflective Essay Examples

Example 1: Reflecting on a Personal Challenge

In this reflective essay, the writer reflects on a personal challenge they faced and how they overcame it. They explore their thoughts, feelings, and actions during this time, and reflect on the lessons they learned from the experience.

Example 2: Reflecting on a Professional Experience

In this reflective essay, the writer reflects on a challenging project they worked on at work and how they overcame obstacles to successfully complete it. They explore their thoughts and feelings about the experience and reflect on the skills and knowledge they gained from it.

Example 3: Reflecting on an Academic Assignment

In this reflective essay, the writer reflects on a challenging academic assignment they completed and how they overcame difficulties to successfully complete it. They explore their thoughts and feelings about the experience and reflect on the skills and knowledge they gained from it.

Example 4: Reflecting on a Cultural Experience

In this reflective essay, the writer reflects on a significant cultural experience they had, such as traveling to a new country or participating in a cultural event. Theyexplore their thoughts and feelings about the experience, reflect on what they learned about the culture, and how it impacted them personally.

Example 5: Reflecting on a Social Issue

In this reflective essay, the writer reflects on their personal experiences with discrimination or prejudice and how it impacted them. They explore their thoughts and feelings about the experience, reflect on what they learned about themselves and the issue, and how they can take action to address it.

These examples demonstrate how reflective essays can be used to explore a wide range of personal experiences and reflections. By exploring your own thoughts and feelings about an experience, you can gain insights into your personal and professional growth and identify areas for further development . Reflective writing is a powerful tool for self-reflection and personal growth, and it can be used in many different contexts to help you gain a deeper understanding of yourself and the world around you.

Reflective Essay Outline

A reflective essay should follow a basic outline that includes an introduction, body, and conclusion. Here is a breakdown of each section:

Introduction: The introduction should provide an overview of the experience you will be reflecting on and a preview of the key points you will be discussing in your essay .

Body: The body of the essay should include several paragraphs that explore your personal reflection, description of the experience, analysis of the experience, evaluation of the experience, identification of key learning, and planning for future action.

Conclusion: The conclusion should summarize the key points of your reflection and provide closure for the reader.

Reflective Essay Thesis

A reflective essay thesis is a statement that summarizes the main points of your essay and provides a clear focus for your writing. A strong thesis statement is essential for a successful reflective essay, as it helps to guide your writing and ensure that your essay is focused and coherent.

Importance of a Strong Thesis Statement

A strong thesis statement is important for several reasons. First, it provides a clear focus for your writing, which helps to ensure that your essay is coherent and well-organized. Second, it helps to guide your writing and ensure that you stay on topic throughout your essay . Finally, it helps to engage your reader and provide them with a clear understanding of what your essay is about.

Tips for Writing a Thesis Statement

To write a strong thesis statement for your reflective essay, follow these tips:

– Be clear and concise: Yourthesis statement should clearly state the main focus and purpose of your essay in a concise manner.

– Use specific language: Use specific language to describe the experience you will be reflecting on and the key points you will be discussing in your essay .

– Make it arguable: A strong thesis statement should be arguable and provide some insight or perspective on the experience you are reflecting on.

– Reflect on the significance: Reflect on the significance of the experience you are reflecting on and why it is important to you.

Reflective Essay Structure

The structure of a reflective essay is important for ensuring that your essay is well-organized and easy to read. A clear structure helps to guide the reader through your thoughts and reflections, and it makes it easier for them to understand your main points.

The Importance of a Clear Structure

A clear structure is important for several reasons. First, it helps to ensure that your essay is well-organized and easy to read. Second, it helps to guide your writing and ensure that you stay on topic throughout your essay. Finally, it helps to engage your reader and provide them with a clear understanding of the key points you are making.

Tips for Structuring a Reflective Essay

To structure your reflective essay effectively, follow these tips:

– Start with an introduction that provides an overview of the experience you are reflecting on and a preview of the key points you will be discussing in your essay .

– Use body paragraphs to explore your personal reflection, description of the experience, analysisof the experience, evaluation of the experience, identification of key learning, and planning for future action. Ensure that each paragraph has a clear focus and supports your thesis statement .

– Use transition words and phrases to connect your paragraphs and make your essay flow smoothly.

– End your essay with a conclusion that summarizes the key points of your reflection and provides closure for the reader.

– Consider using subheadings to organize your essay and make it more structured and easy to read.

By following these tips, you can create a clear and well-structured reflective essay that effectively communicates your personal experiences and reflections. Remember to use specific examples and details to support your reflection, and to keep your focus on the main topic and thesis statement of your essay .

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. what is a reflective essay.

A reflective essay is a type of writing that allows you to reflect on your personal experiences, thoughts, and feelings. It involves exploring your own thoughts and feelings about an experience, and reflecting on what you learned from it.

2. What are the elements of a reflective essay?

The essential elements of a reflective essay include personal reflection, description of the experience, analysis of the experience, evaluation of the experience, identification of key learning, and planning for future action.

3. How do I choose a topic for a reflective essay?

To choose a topic for a reflective essay, think about a personal experience or event that had a significant impact on your personal or professional growth. You may also consider professional experiences, academic experiences, cultural experiences, or social issues that have impacted you personally.

Reflective writing is a powerful tool for personal and professional development. By exploring your own thoughts and feelings about an experience, you can gain insights into your personal and professional growth and identify areas for further development. To write an effective reflective essay, it is important to follow a clear structure, use specific examples and details to support your reflection, and stay focused on the main topic and thesis statement of your essay . By following these tips and guidelines, you can become a skilled reflective writer and use this tool to improve your personal and professional growth.

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8 Tips For Writing A Great Reflective Essay (With Examples)

Memories, hopes, disappointments, and curiosity run through your life.

By writing a reflective essay, you can capture some of these ephemeral emotions and make sense of who you are. Below, I share eight tips (and a few examples) that will help you do it in a better way. You may have to write a reflective essay as a part of an academic assignment or a college paper. Or perhaps you want to create it for yourself and never show it to anyone. Regardless of the reason, after reading this article, you will hopefully become better at it. They helped a lot of students over the years, so you may check them out.

Here’s how to write a great reflective essay:

1. first, what is a reflective essay.

A reflective essay is a piece of writing in which you analyze your personal experience, reflect on how it changed your life, and what conclusions for the future can you draw from what you’ve learned. It’s a “know thyself” type of essay. The goal here is getting self-knowledge, by stopping to think about your memories, your values, and where you want to go from the present moment onward. By writing your thoughts down, you pursue some kind of deeper truth, about yourself and the world.

2. The power of writing introspectively

Many great men and women (like Charles Darwin or Frida Kahlo ) had a habit of keeping a journal. This seems to be forgotten these days as we record everything through our mobile devices. But the habit of introspective writing and journaling helps you get in touch with your inner self and even improves your mental health. The reflective essay serves a similar purpose. It lets you search for meaning in your life and lets you discover the underlying causes of your actions.

“Life can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forwards.” – Søren Kierkegaard

3. How do you start your essay?

You may start with an introduction of experience, an event, or a memory on which you’ll reflect. If your topic is “a life-changing incident you had when you were a child,” you could start with: I used to live on a sunny farm with my parents and grandparents when I was young. A few days after I turned six, something happened that would alter the course of my life forever. I’m fifty-two as I’m writing this…

This beginning has certain elements that make it effective:

• Introducing the setting and putting the experience in context.
• Hooking the reader by building curiosity and a story.

Here’s another way to start (this excerpt is taken from Didion’s “ On self-respect ”): Once, in a dry season, I wrote in large letters across two pages of a notebook that innocence ends when one has stripped of the delusion that one likes oneself. In reflective writing, you don’t have to follow any strict guidelines or rules. Follow your heart, put some emotion into it, and you’ll create something of value for yourself and others. Start at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end – as long as it’s coherent, you’ll be fine.

“When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.” – Ralph Ellison

4. Learn how to structure your essay

In terms of length, it all depends on your assignment, but usually, the reflective essay has between 300 and 700 words . It has a rather informal structure and the use of language. After all, you’re drilling into your personal experiences, and often, this requires a poetic turn of the phrase. You’re more than welcome to use a wide range of advanced vocabulary .

Introduction

In this part, you set the tone for your reflection. You implicitly or explicitly say what will you reflect on, and what prompted you to do that. If you’re writing an academic paper , you’ll have to be more direct and for example, say: “What follows, are my reflections on what I’ve learned about life during the first year of college”.

In this part, you talk about your actual experiences, memories, and important events in your life. But the purpose is not just to say what happened – that’s a descriptive essay’s job. The true goal here is to ponder the significance of your experiences and think about how they changed you and what you’ve learned from them. Here you can share concrete examples of changes that took place in your life.

Here, you sum up your essay and leave your audience with a final thought. Look ahead into the future and write about how your experiences are going to affect your life from now on. What’s the direction you’re going to take? What is there to look ahead to? You may also look backward and see how different you were in the past, compared to now. “I think it’s good for a person to spend time alone. It allows them to discover who they are and to figure out why they are always alone.” – Amy Sedaris

5. Create an outline for your essay

As with most writing assignments , the work begins with ideation and then creating some sort of outline . Here’s a simple process you can use to get everything ready before you start writing: a) Scan your mind in search of powerful experiences, meaningful memories, and thoughts about your past. This will serve as a raw material from which you’ll sculpt a piece of prose. b) Consider the attractiveness of your topic from the reader’s point of view. You certainly don’t want to bore anyone, so pick something interesting, but important. c) Organize your essay and divide it into a couple of paragraphs. Each paragraph should contain one important idea. d) Decide in which sequence you would like to share your ideas. Put some logic and chronology behind it. e) Jot down any side notes included in the essay. It’s always better to have an overabundance of material.

“Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” – C.G. Jung

6. The essay-writing process

The best piece of advice on that is to avoid cliches. It might be hard to do this at first, but decide to speak your truth. Talk about things and feelings unique to you and your life. It’s easy to regurgitate what someone else had said before because it’s a safe territory. Your goal is to open doors to which only you have the keys.

Once you have the idea, you can follow a simple process:

• Write the first draft as quickly as you can (no editing or looking back here)
• Reorganize the first draft if necessary
• Edit for clarity (throw out everything unnecessary)
• Accept that it will not be perfect, and publish it (or keep it to yourself)

7. How to pick the right topic for your essay

If you’re writing an assignment, you’ll probably receive the prompt from your professor. If that’s the case, follow it diligently. This may be something like: a) Reflect on what you learned during your first year of high school. b) Think about your favorite book and how it changed your life . c) How did your writing skills change over the years? And why? Or it might be something really specific like Write a two-page reflection paper on the Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain. Here, it’s not only about your personal experience, but about your interaction with a specific text, event, play, or movie and the effect it had on you. But what if you want to write an essay on your own? Which topic would you choose then? First, pick something meaningful to you. Second, pick something that you know well. Third, pick something that you want to explore and get deep into.

Here’s some more inspiration in the area of topics:

Personal reflection:.

• What was the hardest thing you’ve ever done and how did it change you?
• How has your relationship with your parents changed over the years?
• What did you use to do a lot in the past, but aren’t doing now?
• What was the most creative act you’ve ever done?
• What was your favorite game or toy when you were a child?
• What did you want to become when you were small?
• How did you overcome your limits?
• What was your biggest failure and how did you come back on your feet?
• What are the things from the past that are still haunting you?
• What gives you the biggest sense of joy in life?
• What is your passion and how has it shaped your life?

Reflection on life and meaning:

• What is the meaning of friendship?
• What is to be done with the time you have in your life?
• What are the values that make up a good life?
• Is it possible to find the ultimate truth about anything?
• Can you know thyself?
• What should every human do during their lifetime?

Reflection on events:

• What was your most exciting trip and why?
• Have you ever had a mystical or psychedelic experience?
• How did World War 2 change the collective psyche of humanity?
• What was your favorite musical concert and why?
• Was there any rite of passage you went through? What was the meaning of it?

You may also consider other great essay topics submitted by the users of Quora.

“Reflect upon your present blessings — of which every man has many — not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.” – Charles Dickens

8. Learn from the masters

Montaigne was the father of the essay as a literary form. He was the first writer to use informal tone, colloquial language, and rather prosaic themes to get to the deeper truth about human nature.

I recommend you check his essays for inspiration, along with other masterworks:

• The Essays – by Montaigne
• Shooting an Elephant – by George Orwell
• On Self Respect – by Joan Didion
• Meditations – by Marcus Aurelius (it’s a philosophical work, rather than an essay, but the quality of “Meditations” is too high to be overlooked).
• Once more to the lake – EB White

And here are a few books filled with great reflective essays:

• A room of one’s own – Virginia Woolf
• Walden – Henry David Thoreau
• A collection of essays – George Orwell
• Arguably – Christopher Hitchens
• Consider the Lobster and Other Essays  – David Foster Wallace

And here you may find a huge list of 450+ essay books on Goodreads.

“Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.” – Albert Einstein

Example #1 of a reflective essay:

The misgivings about the high school football.

Football (soccer) was on the pedestal during my high school years in Poland. You were not judged by the color of your skin (because everyone was roughly the same color) nor by the contents of your character. The worth of a human being is measured by the ability to score goals. Each player had to find their niche in the dominant hierarchy of the pitch. It all started with the selection of players. The gym master would choose two captains at the beginning of the match, and they would choose their teammates. One by one, the best players got picked, and as we went down the line, we were left with the wretched souls, the worst, the smallest guys, or the fat ones, whose self-esteem was shattered from the beginning, simply because they were picked last. But there was a ladder within a ladder. Some players, perhaps in the lower echelons would be defenders, some would be proud midfielders, pushing the ball forward and creating “situations”. Some were the goalkeepers who were chosen for the job because they couldn’t play ball, or because they were specialists, sporting keeper gloves, and getting admired for their technical skills. But the true apex of the hierarchy was occupied by the attackers. The guys who could push through others and ram the ball through the goalkeeper were the true heroes of the field. This self-generated order of youthful self-worth and self-concept was brutal, as it was instructive. Each football match was a psychology class and a lesson in the ways of the world that outweighed math, history, or geography by orders of magnitude. We could witness the natural constellation of humanity based on their genetic makeup and their willingness to face their fears.

Here’s a second, shorter sample of a reflective essay:

The sources of love for instrumental music..

There’s a question I can’t quite answer. Why do I love instrumental music so much? And why, and I’m especially enamored with the music of the East? The Persian, the Indian, the Afghan, the Japanese, the Turkish, the Kurdish, the Arabic? Since I first discovered these musical notes, my life was never been the same. Recently I watched a great documentary about Quincy Jones where he said he touched his first piano at twelve, and these first few taps of fingers defined the rest of his life. Isn’t that strange, that in reality, we don’t choose things? The things choose us. Where do these natural inclinations come from? It must be our environment, our personality, our natural talent. But the other part seems mysterious, like some sort of cosmic accident. I first heard about the Oud when reading “My Name is Red” by Orhan Pamuk. I instantly went online to hear this instrument and from there on, I discovered dozens of beautiful instruments such as tar, setar, sitar, buzuq, sarod, tabla, rebab, shakuhachi, quin, biwa, to the goddamn gamelan drums. Hearing the esraj in a tower of the ancient Indian fort in Jodhpur melted my heart. It was as if this melody was constructed just for me like I’d heard it before. Perhaps in another life.

Looking backward, moving forward

There are certain milestones in your life: finishing high school, falling in love for the first time, your first journey abroad, the first kiss, the first psychedelic trip, graduating from the university, getting your first job, getting married, having children… Each of these brings something new and unexpected and makes you grow as an individual. But you can run through life and never reflect on how it all changed , how silly and incompetent you were just a few years ago. And how you’ll think the same thing about the present in a few years. Perhaps you should compose a reflective essay and think about all of this, and about what’s coming. Next up, you may want to explore a list of the best essays of all time .

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How to Write a Reflective Essay

What is a Reflective Essay: Purpose + Importance

Being present is a cornerstone of mindfulness and meditation. You must have often heard that staying in the moment helps you appreciate your surroundings, connects you with people and nature, and allows you to feel whatever emotions you must feel without anxiety. While this is helpful advice as you become more focused and avoid getting lost in thought, how can you truly appreciate the present without reflecting on your past experiences that have led you to the current moment?

We don't say that you should dwell on the past and get carried away with a constant thought process, but hey, hear us out - practice reflective thinking! Think back on your previous life events, paint a true picture of history, and make connections to your present self. This requires you to get a bit analytical and creative. So you might as well document your critical reflection on a piece of paper and give direction to your personal observations. That's when the need for reflective essays steps in!

In a reflective essay, you open up about your thoughts and emotions to uncover your mindset, personality, traits of character, and background. It should include a description of the experience/literature piece as well as explanations of your thoughts, feelings, and reactions. In this article, our essay writer service will share our ultimate guide on how to write a reflective essay with a clear format and  examples that will inspire you.

Reflective Essay Outline

To give you a clear idea of structuring a reflective essay, we broke down the essential steps below. Primarily, the organization is very similar to other types of papers. However, our custom writers got more specific with the outline to ease your writing process.

Reflective Essay Introduction

When wondering how to start a reflective essay, it is no surprise that you should begin writing your paper with an introductory paragraph. So, what's new and different with the reflection essay introduction? Let's dissect:

• Open your intro with an attention-seizing hook that engages your audience into reflective thinking with you. It can be something like: 'As I was sitting on my bed with my notebook placed on my shaky lap waiting for the letter of acceptance, I could not help but reflect, was enrolling in college the path I wanted to take in the future?'
• Provide context with a quick overview of the reflective essay topic. Don't reveal too much information at the start to prevent your audience from becoming discouraged to continue reading.
• Make a claim with a strong thesis statement. It should be a simple explanation of the essay's main point, in this example, a specific event that had a big impact on you.

Reflective Essay Body Paragraphs

The next step is to develop the body of your essay. This section of the paper may be the most challenging because it's simple to ramble and replicate yourself both in the outline and the actual writing. Planning the body properly requires a lot of time and work, and the following advice can assist you in doing this effectively:

• Consider using a sequential strategy. This entails reviewing everything you wish to discuss in the order it occurred. This method ensures that your work is structured and cohesive.
• Make sure the body paragraph is well-rounded and employs the right amount of analysis. The body should go into the effects of the event on your life and the insights you've gained as a consequence.
• Prioritize reflecting rather than summarizing your points. In addition to giving readers insight into your personal experience, a reflective stance will also show off your personality and demonstrate your ability to handle certain challenges.

Reflective Essay Conclusion

The goal of your conclusion should be to tie everything together by summarizing the key ideas raised throughout, as well as the lessons you were able to take away from experience.

• Don't forget to include the reasons for and the methods used to improve your beliefs and actions. Think about how your personality and skills have changed as well.
• What conclusions can you draw about your behavior in particular circumstances? What could you do differently if the conditions were the same in the future?

Remember that your instructor will be searching for clear signs of reflection.

Understanding a Reflection Paper Format

The format of reflective essay greatly differs from an argumentative or research paper. It is more of a well-structured story or a diary entry rife with insight and reflection. You might be required to arrange your essay using the APA style or the MLA format.

And the typical reflection paper length varies between 300 and 700 words, but ask your instructor about the word length if it was assigned to you. Even though this essay is about you, try to avoid too much informal language.

If your instructor asks you to use an APA or MLA style format for reflective essay, here are a few shortcuts:

Reflective Essay in MLA Format

• Times New Roman 12pt font double spaced;
• 1" margins;
• The top right includes the last name and page number on every page;
• Titles are centered;
• The header should include your name, your professor's name, course number, and the date (dd/mm/yy);
• The last page includes a Works Cited.

Reflective Essay in APA Style

• Include a page header on the top of every page;
• Insert page number on the right;
• It should be divided into four parts: Title Page, Abstract, Main Body, and References.

Writing Tips for Reflective Essay

You may think we've armed you with enough tips and pointers for reflective writing, but it doesn't stop here. Below we gathered some expert-approved tips for constructing uncontested reflection papers.

• Be as detailed as possible while writing. To make your writing come to life, you should employ several tactics such as symbolism, sentence patterns, etc.
• Keep your audience in mind. The reader will become frustrated if you continue writing in the first person without taking a moment to convey something more important, even though you will likely speak about something from your own perspective.
• Put forth the effort to allow the reader to feel the situation or emotion you are attempting to explain.
• Don't preach; demonstrate. Instead of just reporting what happened, use description appropriately to paint a clear picture of the event or sensation.
• Plan the wording and structure of your reflective essay around a central emotion or subject, such as joy, pleasure, fear, or grief.
• Avoid adding dull elements that can lessen the effect of your work. Why include it if it won't enhance the emotion or understanding you wish to convey?
• There must be a constant sense of progression. Consider whether the event has transformed you or others around you.
• Remember to double-check your grammar, syntax, and spelling.

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Reflective Essay Topic Ideas

As this essay should be about your own views and experiences, you generally can't use someone else's ideas. But to help you get started, here are some suggestions for writing topics:

• An experience you will never forget.
• The moment you overcame a fear.
• The most difficult choice you had to make.
• A time your beliefs were challenged.
• A time something changed your life.
• The happiest or most frightening moment of your life so far.
• Ways you think you or people can make the world a better place.
• A time you felt lost.
• An introspective look at your choices or a time you made the wrong choice.
• A moment in your life you would like to relive.

You may find it convenient to create a chart or table to keep track of your ideas. Split your chart into three parts:

• In the first column, write key experiences or your main points. You can arrange them from most important to least important.
• In the second column, list your response to the points you stated in the first column.
• In the third column, write what, from your response, you would like to share in the essay.

Meanwhile, if you're about to enroll in your dream university and your mind is constantly occupied with - 'how to write my college admissions essay?', order an academic essay on our platform to free you of unnecessary anxiety.

Reflective Essay Sample

Referring to reflective essay examples can help you a lot. A sample can provide you with useful insight into how your essay should look like. You can also buy an essay online if you need one customized to your specific requirements.

How to Conclude a Reflective Essay

As we come to an end, it's only logical to reflect on the main points discussed above in the article. By now, you should clearly understand what is a reflective essay and that the key to writing it is demonstrating what lessons you have taken away from your experiences and why and how these lessons have shaped you. It should also have a clear format, with an opening, development of ideas, and resolution.

Now that you have the tools to create a thorough and accurate reflective paper, you might want to hand over other tasks like writing definition essay examples to our experienced writers. In this case, feel free to buy an essay online on our platform and reflect on your past events without worrying about future assignments!

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Daniel Parker

is a seasoned educational writer focusing on scholarship guidance, research papers, and various forms of academic essays including reflective and narrative essays. His expertise also extends to detailed case studies. A scholar with a background in English Literature and Education, Daniel’s work on EssayPro blog aims to support students in achieving academic excellence and securing scholarships. His hobbies include reading classic literature and participating in academic forums.

is an expert in nursing and healthcare, with a strong background in history, law, and literature. Holding advanced degrees in nursing and public health, his analytical approach and comprehensive knowledge help students navigate complex topics. On EssayPro blog, Adam provides insightful articles on everything from historical analysis to the intricacies of healthcare policies. In his downtime, he enjoys historical documentaries and volunteering at local clinics.

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• Schools & departments

Reflective essays

Guidance and information on using reflective essays.

The reflective essay is one of the most common reflective assignments and is very frequently used for both formative and especially summative assessments. Reflective essays are about presenting reflections to an audience in a systematic and formal way.

Generally, all good academic practice for assignments applies when posing reflective essays.

Typical reflective essay questions

Reflective essays tend to deal with a reflective prompt that the essay needs to address. This also often means that the essay will have to draw on a range of experiences and theories to fully and satisfactorily answer the question.

The questions/prompts should not be too vague, for example ‘reflect on your learning’, but should define an area or an aspect relevant to your learning outcomes. This is most easily ensured with thorough guidelines, highlighting elements expected in the essay.

Questions could be something like (not exhaustive):

• reflect on learning in the course with regards to [choose an aspect]
• reflect on personal development across an experience with regards to certain skills
• reflect on development towards subject benchmarks statements and the extent to which these are achieved
• reflect on the progression towards the course’s defined learning outcomes or the school’s or the University’s Graduate Attributes
• reflect on some theory relevant to the course. (Remember that for this to be a reflective essay and not an academic/critical essay, the student must use that theory to explain/inform their own experiences, and use their own experiences to criticise and put the theory into context – that is, how theory and experience inform one another.)

Typical structure and language

Reflective essays will often require theoretical literature, but this is not always essential.  Reflective essays can be built around a single individual experience, but will often draw on a series of individual experiences – or one long experience, for example an internship, that is broken into individual experiences.

The typical language and structure is formal – for thorough descriptions on this, see ‘Academic reflections: tips, language and structure’ in the Reflectors’ Toolkit, which can be valuable to highlight to students.

Academic reflections: tips, language and structure (within the Reflectors’ Toolkit)

Length and assignment weight if assessed

There is no one length that a reflective essay must take. As with all written assignments, the main consideration is that the length is appropriate for evidencing learning, answering the question and meeting the criteria.

Similarly, there is no clear answer for what percentage of the overall mark is attached to the assignment. However, the choice should mirror the required workload for the reflector to complete it, how that fits into your initiative, and the amount of preparation the reflector has had.

For instance, if the student has received formative feedback on multiple pieces of work, a larger proportion of the course mark may be appropriate, compared to if the student had not had a chance to practice. It is important to keep in mind that many students will not have had many chances to practice reflective essays before university.

Back to ‘Components of reflective tasks’

Essay on Dog for Students and Children

500+ words essay on dog.

The dog is a pet animal. A dog has sharp teeth so that it can eat flesh very easily, it has four legs, two ears, two eyes, a tail, a mouth, and a nose. It is a very clever animal and is very useful in catching thieves. It runs very fast, barks loudly and attacks the strangers. A dog saves the life of the master from danger. One can find dogs everywhere in the world. Dogs are a very faithful animal. It has a sharp mind and a strong sense of hearing smelling the things. It also has many qualities like swimming in the water, jumping from anywhere, good smelling sense.

Importance of Dog

A dog has a strong power of smell . They are more liked by people because of their faithfulness. They are intelligent, they are watchfulness. The dogs have many colors such as grey, white, black, brown and red. They are of many kinds such as bloodhound, greyhound, german shepherd, Labrador, Rottweiler, bulldog poodle, etc.

Usually, the dog eats fish, meat, milk, rice, bread, etc. Dogs are sometimes called canines. Dogs are sometimes referred to as man’s best friend because they are kept as domestic pets and are usually loyal and like being around humans. They are also helpful in reducing stress, anxiety, and depression, loneliness, encourage exercise and playfulness and even improve your cardiovascular health. A dog also provides valuable companionship for older adults.

The dogs are so loyal to his master that nothing can induce him to leave his master. His master might be a poor man or even a beggar but still, the dog will not leave his master from far off. Dogs see their master coming home from work they rush to them and jump on them to show their love. Dogs are honest friends who are always ready to die to save a friend. It can bite a thief or stranger when they ignore its barking and try to mischief. Dogs always give security to the owner day and night.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Life Span 0f a Dog

The lifespan of a dog is very small however it can live around 12-15 years long which depend on their size such as smaller dogs lives a longer life. A female dog gives birth to a baby and feed milk that’s why dogs under the mammal category. The dog baby is called a puppy or pup and dog home is called kennel. Dogs are categorized according to their service to people such as guard dogs, herding dogs, hunting dogs, police dogs, guide dogs, sniffer dogs, etc. It has a strong power of smell with the assistance of police can arrest murderers, thieves, and dacoits. The Military trains the dogs to track and detect bombs.

Need for Dogs

Detection dogs can be employed at airports, police stations, borders, and schools. Tracking and Hunting dogs, hounds, terriers, and dachshund are the most popular types of hunting and tracking dogs. These dogs are trained to be the eyes, ears, and retrievers for their human companions.

Dogs are a very excellent swimmer. They are really a very helpful pet animal. He respects his owner from the heart and can easily guess his/ her presence through their smell. We should take good care of it and keep them in good condition.

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Teaching Matters blog

Promoting, discussing and celebrating teaching at the university of edinburgh, reflection and metacognition for veterinary students.

In this post on ongoing reflective practice at the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, Susan Rhind, Nina Tomlin, Jenna Richardson, Jessie Paterson, and Paul Wood outline the value placed on reflective ability in the veterinary profession. They consider the ways in which the School understands this, detailing how its courses are already implementing reflectivity at various levels of learning and teaching, from course material to assessment to professional development. This post is part of the Learning & Teaching Enhancement Series: Reflective Learning .

The importance of reflective ability to veterinary students is highlighted in the Day One Competences, defined by our regulatory body, the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS). The high level competency framework shown below highlights the importance of reflection to the veterinary professional, whether in the context of reflective relationships with others (including clients, fellow professionals, the public), or in terms of being able to reflect on ‘professional experience and other learning aimed at improving performance and competence’.

It is also relevant that once out in the profession, continuing professional development (CPD) is mandatory for maintaining membership of the RCVS. This requires reflection in order for the CPD to be counted as part of a mandatory 35-hour per year requirement. It is thus essential that we prepare our students not only for this aspect within our curriculum, but also to benefit our graduates in their ongoing professional lives.

Graphic taken from RCVS Day One Competences, 2021 . Reflection is explicitly emphasised in the high-level domains

Current approach

Given our professional context, the challenge is to translate this into meaningful activities and content in the core curriculum for our students. At the vet school, we have a well-embedded professional and clinical skills ‘thread’ running throughout the curriculum. Reflection is introduced in the first year of this course with learning objectives in the relevant introductory session:

• Outline the importance of reflective practice in the Vet Profession 2.  Appreciate the differences between reflection and critical reflection 3.  List some of the components that make up reflection 4.  Describe the Gibbs reflective model and how it relates to your professional development

Students are also required to reflect as part of their personal portfolio, which they develop across the Bachelor of Veterinary Medicine & Surgery curriculum. Specific exercises to emphasise reflection are included in year 1 and 2, and this also supports the students’ requirement to reflect on their extramural studies (EMS/workplace) placements, which are another RCVS requirement: students are required to complete a total of 38 weeks across the curriculum in animal establishments and veterinary practices. These EMS experiences are a rich source of material for such reflective activities, which we currently capture using PebblePad .

Making it real

Real life examples of reflection are provided including recorded videos of clinical staff demonstrating the usefulness of reflection by describing examples from their own careers. This is an area we are looking to expand to emphasise the crucial importance of this approach for ongoing learning and career development. By ‘familiar faces’ modelling the reflective process aligned to real-life scenarios, we aim to demystify the process, especially for those students who may be less comfortable in the reflective space.

Professional Development Course

One specific course that has an entire focus on reflection in assessment is our Professional Development Course. The aim of the course is to provide general support and advice on personal and professional development, including the opportunity for students to consider their own weaknesses and strengths. All students who are repeating a year or part-year are required to take this course and must pass in order to progress. By definition, this course only has small numbers of students on it with required attendance at monthly sessions (including reflection, stress and time management, and learning and study skills) followed by a short reflective exercise on which they get prompt individualised feedback.

What next for reflection?

It is fair to say that an individual student’s ability to reflect is highly variable and we are currently working on further curriculum developments to allow us to identify and support students who are less comfortable with the approach. For example, this year we are introducing an earlier reflective essay in year 1, which will be individually marked and supported by one-on-one feedback sessions where issues are identified. This will be followed by a second reflective exercise focusing on Veterinary Career routes. We are hoping this sequential approach will help us identify students most in need of guidance at an earlier point.

As part of these developments, we are also looking at designing an assessment rubric aligned to student reflections to help us identify some of the areas where individual students may be stronger or weaker in their reflections.

A final point to acknowledge is that, as individuals, everyone’s ‘reflective capacity’ differs and that includes staff as well as students! This surfaces, for example, when reviewing submissions for HEA fellowship applications – so as always, our curriculum evolution will need to be supported by aligned staff development opportunities.

Susan Rhind

Professor Susan Rhind is Chair of Veterinary Education, Deputy Head of School, and Director of Veterinary Teaching at the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies. Her research is currently mainly focussed on veterinary education including assessment and feedback, curriculum development, student wellbeing and transitions.

Nina Tomlin

Nina Tomlin is a lecturer in Professional & Clinical Skills and Competency-Based Veterinary Education and is also involved in final year assessment.

Jenna Richardson

Dr Jenna Richardson is a Senior Lecturer and Veterinary Clinician. Her interests are focused on undergraduate veterinary teaching of exotic animal veterinary medicine and the development of professional and clinical skills. She is also a RCVS and ECZM specialist in small mammal medicine and surgery.

Jessie Paterson

Dr Jessie Paterson is a Senior Lecturer in Student Learning at the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies. Jessie is involved in the Professional Skills teaching as well as student support. Her main focus is around academic support and leads the School’s Study Skills Team, but she also has a strong interest in student wellbeing. She also leads on the Schools VetPALs scheme and other student-led activities.

Paul Wood is currently Senior Lecturer in Farm Animal Practice and the Principal Clinician of the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies’s Farm Animal Practice and Hospital. His clinical interests are in obstetrics and surgery but his current research is focused on preparedness of undergraduates and graduates and transitions through the veterinary course. In January, he will be taking on a new role a Senior Lecturer in Animal Husbandry and Director of Animal Husbandry EMS.

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Dog — Dogs Are a Great Pet

Dogs Are a Great Pet

• Categories: Dog Pet

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Words: 447 |

Published: Mar 20, 2024

Words: 447 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Table of contents

Companionship, health benefits, unique qualities of different breeds.

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The Grief Project

10 Artists on Working, Living and Creating Through Loss

Jesmyn Ward, Bridget Everett, Sigrid Nunez and seven other writers, actors, musicians and filmmakers talk to us about grief — how they’ve experienced it and how it has changed them.

Supported by

By Dina Gachman

Photo Essay by Daniel Arnold

Dina Gachman is a writer based in Austin, Texas, and the author of an essay collection focused on grief. Daniel Arnold is a New York City-based photographer whose documentation of city life is informed by love and grief.

• May 25, 2024

Sigrid Nunez , author Conor Oberst , musician Bridget Everett , performer Ben Kweller , musician Jesmyn Ward , author Justin Hardiman , photographer Julie Otsuka , author Lila Avilés , filmmaker Richard E. Grant , actor Luke Lorentzen , filmmaker

When Jesmyn Ward was writing her 2013 book, “Men We Reaped,” she could feel the presence of her brother, who had been killed years earlier by a drunk driver. She still talks to him, as well as to her partner, who died in 2020.

“This may just be wishful thinking, but talking to them and being open to feeling them answer, that enables me to live in spite of their loss,” she told me.

While filming the HBO series “Somebody Somewhere,” Bridget Everett, playing a woman mourning the loss of her sister, was grieving the loss of her own. Working on the show was a way to still live with her, in a way, she said: “There’s something that’s less scary about sharing time with my sister when it’s through art or through making the show or through a song.”

One of the many things you learn after losing a loved one is that there are a lot of us grieving out there. Some people are not just living with loss but also trying to create or experience something meaningful, to counter the blunt force of the ache.

We talked to 10 artists across music, writing, photography, film and comedy about the ways their work, in the wake of personal loss, has deepened their understanding of what it means to grieve and to create.

In 2024, we are hardly the first generations to channel loss into art, but coming through the last few years shaped by a pandemic and cultural and political upheaval, it does seem like something is different. It doesn’t feel relevant to ask questions like, Why don’t we talk about loss? or, Why are we so grief avoidant? How could we come through these last few years together and not talk about it, write about it, make films, shows, paintings and songs about it? There are hundreds of podcasts devoted to the topic and Instagram accounts that exist solely to share poetry about loss. The questions now, for us, are how can we talk about death in a more meaningful way? What can we create or watch or listen to that will help us engage with grief as readily and as deeply as we do with love, or joy, or beauty?

The artists we spoke with have lost brothers or sisters, a child, spouses, parents, friends, pets, communities. They’ve moved through the last few years brokenhearted, as so many of us have, but with a deeper understanding of the ways that creating art, and talking openly, can get us through. These are edited excerpts from their interviews.

Sigrid Nunez

‘Life is a series of losses, so why would you not always be in some state of mourning?’

Sigrid Nunez won the National Book Award in 2018 for her novel “The Friend,” in which the narrator, after her friend dies, inherits his Great Dane. She is also the author of “What Are You Going Through,” about a woman whose friend is nearing death, and “The Vulnerables,” set during the coronavirus pandemic.

When I write about grief, I feel like I’m writing about something that everybody else experiences. I’m not actually aware of making any conscious choice. I just have characters and situations, and inevitably grief and mourning and mortality and illness and loss. They come in because that’s so much a part of life.

I’m dealing with grief in completely fictional characters, imagining what it would be like for a particular person to experience a loss. When I was writing “The Friend,” I said part of it is about suicide. At the time, I became aware of the fact that several people I knew had this idea in their head that suicide might be how their life would end at some point. One of those people did commit suicide. There are so many different forms of grief. In “The Friend,” I included a story about a dog and I had to think about the fact that dogs also experience grief, often intensely.

There’s the idea that since the narrator is grieving and the dog is grieving, that’s part of their bond, and they end up helping each other in that way and having that bond. When you introduce an animal into a work of fiction, you introduce a certain warmth into the story because animals bring that out in people — a little happiness and warmth. We tend to find animals funny — they are, we’re not crazy. I saw on YouTube somebody had a pet rat and they put it into a sink to take a shower. It was the most adorable thing you ever saw. That’s also why during the pandemic people sought these videos out. The warmth and the humor and the comfort.

I have a friend whose mother died totally unexpectedly, some unsuspected heart condition. There was my friend, just devastated. We were going to get together, and I asked what she wanted to do. She said, maybe we could go to the Central Park Zoo, because she thought it would be comforting to look at animals. And there you go. It’s not that people don’t also help you, but I was so intrigued by her idea of going to look at animals, and it seemed so right.

In the early days of the pandemic, I wasn’t able to write, as people weren’t able to do much of anything. It came into my head, that Virginia Woolf line: “It was an uncertain spring.” I don’t have to tell you why that came into my head. This was in April 2020. I started with that sentence and wrote kind of what’s going on, and the writer talks about taking these long walks. Then I thought I wanted to start another book, and I thought I could start from there. I did end up writing “The Vulnerables” during the pandemic. It’s not a chronicle of those times the way Elizabeth Strout’s “ Lucy by the Sea ” is. That particular subject matter turned out to be about the pandemic and lockdown because I was writing about what was happening right then. And then I started inventing a story.

We are a grief-avoiding culture, that’s certainly true. But I would think part of the problem is not people not wanting to talk about it, it’s not knowing how to talk about it and not having the language and feeling so uncomfortable about saying the wrong thing. You know perfectly well you don’t have anything good to say, so you’re just going to come up with the same clichés. I’m so uncomfortable saying, “I’m so sorry to hear.” It doesn’t feel good. Sometimes I say, “I wish I had something wise and comforting to say, but I don’t.” I don’t add the “but I don’t.” There’s this famous letter that Henry James wrote to someone who was grieving and he begins by saying, “I hardly know what to say.” Well, if Henry James didn’t know what to say, then how can you expect the rest of us to know?

There is a whole world that doesn’t exist anymore — that’s just what time does. It takes things away from you. Life is a series of losses, so you’re always in a state of mourning to some extent. That’s what nostalgia is, it’s a kind of mourning.

People seem to be forgetting what happened during the pandemic. It’s like this collective repression. That I don’t think bodes well. I don’t think people understand, things should have changed more. In “The Vulnerables,” in the very beginning, I have my narrator say she’s trying to answer a questionnaire, the kinds of surveys that writers get all the time and she’s trying to answer the question “Why do you write.” She then talks about that. She’d read a study of twins and in cases where a twin had died before being born, in some cases the living twin never got over the feeling that something was missing from their lives. I think that is connected to why I write. I want to know what I had been mourning my whole life. I don’t think I answer that in the book and I don’t think I needed to answer it, but it is connected to this idea that grief is so much a part of life, small griefs, huge griefs. Life is a series of losses, so why would you not always be in some state of mourning? That would be something that would make you want to write, to hold onto it, to understand.

Conor Oberst

‘It bums me out to hear, and I wrote it.’

Conor Oberst is a singer and songwriter best known for his work in Bright Eyes. He has also performed with the groups Desaparecidos, the Mystic Valley Band and the Monsters of Folk, as well as Better Oblivion Community Center, a partnership with Phoebe Bridgers. He has written songs about his older brother, who died suddenly in 2016 and who had inspired him to play music when they were younger.

When major tragic or dramatic things happen to me, my first impulse isn’t to sit down at the piano. I’m usually too depressed to do it, or I’m just numb. I’ve been writing a bunch of songs for the next Bright Eyes record, and I find myself writing about things that happened three or four years ago. The last Bright Eyes record was in 2020, and my brother Matty died in 2016, so it kind of tracks that there are references on that record four years after he died.

There were people that got a lot of work done during the pandemic, like: Now I’m in my home studio recording all the time or writing songs or doing performances via telephone. There was the other side that was just frozen. That’s where I was. I was in my house not going anywhere. It was so surreal and terrifying. I froze up. I was listening to music, but I think I wrote maybe one song that whole time.

Sometimes when I finish a song or a recording I’m like, “What am I putting out into the world? Do I want people to hear it?” It bums me out to hear, and I wrote it. I’m jealous of people like Stevie Wonder who can put joy into the world. Some stuff is just so sad, and some songs I just don’t perform because it’s too much to do it. Whenever I come out with a song that’s more upbeat or has some positive edge to it, I’m happy.

Every holiday since my brother died has been weird. I hate holidays anyway.

My brother taught me how to play guitar. I used to sit on the floor of our basement to watch his band practice. I thought it was so cool. His favorite band was the Replacements, so when I hear them, I think about him and sometimes I cover their songs and think about him. It’s little things, like random places in Omaha that will have a memory attached to our childhood, back when things were simpler. There’s always kind of melancholy in that.

Bridget Everett

‘Everybody is just an open wound right now and looking for a little ointment.’

Bridget Everett is a writer, executive producer and star of the HBO series “Somebody Somewhere,” which was a 2023 Peabody Award winner “for its combination of pathos and hilarity.” The show, which began in 2022, is about a character who, like Everett, struggles to accept the death of her sister, and finds community in the aftermath of losing her. Everett lost her mother in 2023.

My family and I don’t really talk about loss very much. We’re on our third one down in my immediate family right now, so I honestly think that the show has been a way to properly grieve and still live with my sister in a way. I’ve realized I can barely talk about it or say her name, and it’s the same with my mom. There’s a great comfort that comes with finding ways to honor her or keep her alive via the show. I’m very comforted when we’re filming because I feel like she’s with me. In day-to-day life I sometimes feel like she’s slipped away, so the show is very special to me on many levels for that reason.

There’s so many times while we’re filming where she is there or my mom is there. I also lost my dog during Season 1, the love of my life.

Music was such a common language in our household — it was when we were the most connected. It’s the only time in my life when I feel surrounded by love. Grief has so many different levels, and there’s something that’s less scary about sharing time with my sister when it’s through art or through making the show or through a song, instead of sitting in my apartment staring at my wall and waiting for her to come.

It got complicated in Season 2 because Mike Hagerty died, and he played my dad, and it was like, how are we going to handle this? We’ve tried to find ways to deal with our grief by keeping him alive in the show in small ways. You don’t want to keep rehashing the idea of grief, but you also want to stay true to how it happens in real life.

I agree 100 percent that there is a comfort in sharing grief with other people. It’s a new way to connect with people, and I have a hard time connecting with people. It’s a struggle for me. But I feel like it’s a universal language and not always easy to talk about, but you’re so grateful to have the outlet to share it with somebody.

I feel like, culturally, everybody is just an open wound right now and looking for a little ointment. I feel like my family and I are getting better about talking about it, and the show has helped that. My brothers will text me after the show. My brother recently lost his wife and we have had a lot of loss recently and for us that’s a big deal and it’s nice to have a way in. I wasn’t sure if it’s just this stage in life and I have a lot of friends going through a similar whatever but … the people I would never expect would come up to me and start talking to me about the fact that they lost a sister and I think specifically sibling grief, at least for me, I haven’t run into a lot of people that talk about it. Songs are about everything in the world, but maybe not about losing a brother or a sister. It’s like you’re soldiers together, someone that’s been on the battle lines with you. It’s a different kind of loss.

There was a scene about grief this year where we were making sure we were coming away with the right thing. It’s another stage of grief, and we wanted to fine tune it and make it about not just two people crying in a room, but what are we getting from the conversation. In terms of Midwesterners, it’s a little closer to the vest emotionally, but sometimes the emotions just pop out like a zit. So it’s about having a zit-popping moment about grief. This is The New York Times, what am I doing. …

I don’t know if this sounds bad or not, but I feel like because I had my sister, my mom and my dog — three of the greatest loves of my life — and because I loved them so much, and they opened me up so much, I feel like they gave me the capacity to do what I’m doing. I feel that’s important. It’s kind of heartbreaking that the people who love you the most and that you needed the most are gone. It’s also the best way to keep going. As long as I keep singing or writing about them, or writing music, they’re always going to be here, and that’s not so bad.

Ben Kweller

‘For me, creativity plays a huge healing role.’

Ben Kweller started his career as a teenager in the indie rock band Radish. He has released six solo albums and runs the Noise Company, a record label in Austin, Texas. He lost his teenage son, Dorian, in the winter of 2023, and he performed a series of tribute concerts that summer. Kweller is working on songs for his new album, some of which are inspired by his son.

Dorian died last February, so that month is forever changed. It’s just a different thing. I’m busy but I’m just trying to feel it. I’ve been doing a lot of crying.

There’s one song I’m writing that’s specifically about my grief. It’s called “Here Today, Gone Tonight.” I started the song when my friend Anton Yelchin died, and so now all of a sudden it’s about Dorian. It turned into something new. There’s one verse I’m really trying to mold, but the song is 90 percent finished and I’m trying to decide which way to go on it, but it’s definitely a heart wrencher.

It’s going to be an interesting album. There are quirky, fun, jubilant vibes, but then there are some extreme lows. It’s kind of got this up and down thing. That’s kind of what grief is, these ups and downs. The second year [without my son] is almost harder for me. The distance from the last time I held him and said bye, had dinner that night. It hurts even more. It’s hard to believe he had so much energy and such a light and where did that go, in an instant? Where is he? I lie in bed with my eyes closed like, Dorian, where are you? It’s harder in a lot of ways.

There’s one song Dorian was writing before he died, and he never finished it. It’s so good, and I’m thinking of finishing it, so it would be a Dorian and Ben co-write, which would be really cool.

I am a believer that you always have to work. It’s a combination of work and luck or whatever the hell you want to call it, the muse or whatever visits you. You still have to work and play an active role. There’s a romantic idea with art that’s like don’t think about it, let it flow. It’s like, yeah, that’ll get me a really cool guitar hook and that’ll get me a cool chorus, melody or line, but it ain’t going to give me a full song to the standards of what I want to put out there.

As far as losing Dorian, when I’m making music, it’s my happy place. I’m fulfilled every day I’m doing it, and it connects me to Dorian deeply.

For me, creativity plays a huge healing role when it comes to grief. It’s a way to get a lot of these thoughts out of me, and it’s like a cleansing ritual to write lyrics and sing melodies and channel the energy of those feelings deep inside. That’s the role for me in my life that music plays with grief now. It’s just this healing thing.

Jesmyn Ward

‘I don’t know if he speaks when I write fiction, but I do feel like he’s sort of there, observing.’

Jesmyn Ward has won two National Book Awards, for her novels “Salvage the Bones” and “Sing, Unburied, Sing.” Her memoir, “Men We Reaped,” is about the deaths of five men in her life, including her brother Joshua. Her 2020 Vanity Fair essay, “ On Witness and Repair ,” chronicled the unexpected death of her partner and the start of the pandemic.

I was trying to find a job when my brother died. He was killed by a drunk driver, and I was away when he died.

Having my brother die was the first time I had experienced death as a devastating interruption. Even though death is the most natural thing in the world, my brother’s death just seemed so unnatural. One thing that I realized that my brother’s death did was it upended the world. The world I thought I knew was not the world that existed, and at the same time everything I had thought was so important before, like going to law school and putting myself into a position where I could work a practical job and make a good living, suddenly that didn’t seem so important.

I remember being on this flight from New York to home and feeling in that moment like death was imminent. I could die tomorrow. So what am I going to do with this life that I have and this time that I have, that my brother wasn’t given? Immediately the thing that popped into my head was: writing. You’re going to be a writer. That was the moment for me where I committed.

When I think about it now, most of my novels are about young people. My brother died when he was 19, and so I think that’s part of the reason that I write young people over and over again, because I want to revisit that time in life with these characters who I think either have some of him in them, or there is another character around them that my brother sort of inhabits or speaks through. It was most obvious with my first novel because one of the characters is named Joshua, and there is a lot about that character, his physicality and the way he spoke and his temperament — he was very reflective of my brother. I don’t know if he speaks when I write fiction, but I do feel like he’s sort of there, observing.

When I wrote “Men We Reaped,” a memoir which was in large part about my brother, he was definitely right there. It’s one of the reasons people ask whether or not I’ll ever write another memoir, and I always say no because that was so difficult. Sitting with the grief and the pain that I felt and the longing that I still feel for him, writing about his life — in a strange way you’re in this liminal creative space where that person lives again. In the course of that memoir I basically wrote him to his death. That was super difficult.

Honestly I have been struggling a lot lately. I think that sometimes when I’m writing about the people who I love that I’ve lost, whether that’s my brother or my partner — my children’s father — sometimes that looks like just crying the whole time, but still doing it, pushing through it and still writing, but crying.

Sometimes it’s stepping away from the page for a moment and talking to them. I still talk to my brother. I talk to my beloved, my partner, my children’s dad, and that helps too. I may just be delusional and this may just be wishful thinking, but talking to them and being open to feeling them answer, that enables me to live in spite of their loss and live with their loss. I don’t know where I would be or how I would be functioning if I didn’t do that.

You never really know how your work is going to be received and the kind of impact it will have on people. I think I was surprised by people who would come to me in tears at events and say, “I feel like you’re writing my life.” It was strange for me. It took me a minute. It was sort of a shock to understand that what they meant was that they felt seen in their grief.

I teach creative writing and one of the things I’m always talking about in my classes is you make something feel universal by telling a specific story about a specific moment in time, and that’s how you can encourage a universal response in your readers.

That was one of the first times I understood that that could happen. It made me glad that I had done that work and told the story that I did. I thought back to when my brother first passed and how I just floundered. I was in my early 20s. I’m sure that there were books or fiction that dealt with grief, but I didn’t find those books. I was surrounded by other people in their early 20s, and the last thing friends or college boyfriends wanted to talk about was grief. That made me feel very alone. Getting that kind of response from readers, I was grateful that I was able to do the work and offer them a story and an experience that made them feel less alone in that experience of grief.

I think artists are wrestling with it in their work across so many different genres. It’s happening in places like social media. I follow this account on Instagram, Grief to Light . They post these really beautiful, evocative, amazing poems about grief by all kinds of poets. I don’t think I saw that 10 years ago. There was nothing happening like that on Twitter when I was on Twitter 10 years ago, but I feel like it’s happening now. I do think that we are wrestling with it, we’re engaging with it, which I’m grateful for. That’s the least that we can do considering the amount of people who have died in the pandemic. So many people have lost people they love. That’s the least that we can do.

Justin Hardiman

‘It helps me understand myself.’

Justin Hardiman is a photographer whose work amplifies the underrepresented side of his community in Jackson, Miss., including farmers, rodeo riders and artists. His continuing mixed media project “The Color of Grief” combines photography and audio to record how loss feels, specifically to underrepresented communities in the South.

“Color of Grief” came about from a group of friends. We’d talk about life and how you never really get over stuff, you just learn to make it to the next minute or the next hour or the next day. We noticed that in some of our artwork, grief was kind of recurring. You can’t get away from it. It’s sad, but it makes you creative, and grief is really a dynamic theme.

We also talked about therapy, and not everybody can afford therapy, so what do you do? I think art is like a therapy. We go into the studio or go outside and talk to people, and create. The grief is not going to get easier, but it helps to have somebody to help you make it through because there’s a lot to unpack.

I know in the Black community there is not a big thing on asking “Are you OK?” We really don’t have time to grieve. Grief can happen in a lot of ways — it’s not just death. You can lose a friendship. There are so many things you can be attached to.

I wanted to give people a space to talk through their grief. Nobody really asks how you’re doing. Or they ask, but they don’t really want you to unpack it all. I’m continuing the project because grief sticks with you. I wanted to let people do a vocal essay, or a vocal journal entry, something people’s kids could listen to or you could look back on and see your progress in life, and it’s important to immortalize those stories and to immortalize the person.

It’s hard to get people to talk about grief, so I had to find people who were comfortable with me. It helped me to think about what I’m going through or what people in my family are going through and don’t want to talk about. It helps me understand myself.

Julie Otsuka

‘I’m always surprised when people tell me my books are sad.’

Julie Otsuka is the author of three novels, including “The Buddha in the Attic,” which won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, and “The Swimmers,” about a group of people at a local pool who have to cope when a crack appears, shutting down the one place where they find community and comfort. It’s partly inspired by Otsuka’s experience watching her mother suffer from dementia, and it received a Carnegie Medal for Excellence in 2023.

I don’t think of myself as somebody who consciously is dealing with grief. I’m always surprised when people tell me my books are sad. I think I often start from a point of humor, which somehow allows me to get at something a little more subconscious, feelings of sadness and grief that are probably there in many Japanese American families, and any family, really.

There is just a lot of inherited trauma that has been kept below the surface and not really dealt with. I think that’s why I became a writer. There was a lot about my own family’s past that I sensed but didn’t actually know. You just know that something’s not quite right, something big has happened. In “The Swimmers,” I dealt with grief in a much more direct way, writing about a character like my mother. Grief and humor are flip sides of the same coin, really.

I’m a very slow writer, so I was writing “The Swimmers” for maybe eight years before the pandemic. Then I wrote the last chapter during the first year of the pandemic. It was the first time I’d worked that much at home. For 30 years, I was going to my neighborhood cafe and writing there. I really felt the loss of that community space the first year of lockdown.

I think that isolation seeped into the second chapter of the book. In the pool suddenly there’s a crack that develops and the crack could very clearly be the pandemic and then there’s the loss of this community space, which people are in some way addicted to, and that’s how I felt about the cafe. It’s a space where I’d seen these people every day sometimes for 20 years, so like everybody I was grieving the loss of a community. Writing was a way of keeping the awful news of the pandemic in the background. And then it was a way of being with my mother again.

It seems like everybody’s family has been touched by some form of dementia. So many people my age are dealing with parents who are aging and going through this. There is a lot of grief and sadness out there about watching our parents leave us in this very particular way.

I don’t write for catharsis. I write because I love sentences and thinking things through. I’m obsessed with the sound of language and rhythm. It’s not that I have a sad story to tell, so I’ll tell it, and I’ll feel better. If anything, I feel like telling that story opens you up to more grief — yours and other people’s. It’s never-ending in a way.

My father died in January 2021. He was almost 95. I couldn’t go out there before he died, because I would have had to quarantine for days, and the caregiver said don’t come out, we didn’t want to risk getting him sick. Like so many people who lost somebody during the pandemic who was far away, and they couldn’t see them before they died. It was a very unreal feeling, and I think some part of my brain thinks my father is still alive and out in California. I was with my mother when she died — it was very real and vivid in a lived way. With my father, it’s almost as if it didn’t happen, and I can’t really believe that he’s gone.

Lila Avilés

‘It was an exercise of going inward.’

Lila Avilés is a filmmaker in Mexico City whose 2018 debut feature, “The Chambermaid,” was Mexico’s selection for the Academy Award for best international feature film. Her second film, “Tótem,” is partly based on Avilés’s experiences with loss and takes place during a single day as a girl grapples with the imminent death of her father. It was a 2023 National Board of Review winner and a Gotham Awards and Independent Spirit Awards nominee.

For many years, I wanted to be a filmmaker. But I was always thinking it won’t happen. After my daughter’s father died, I realized life is short, and I needed to take that path. It didn’t happen fast. I didn’t study formally, I had a daughter, so it was not easy. I come from theater and opera and I wanted to be a filmmaker, and I didn’t know then that I would make “Tótem,” but there was a change that happened. In that moment of my life I was kind of a butterfly. I have friends that know the Lila that used to be, and they told me I changed. We change all the time, but that moment told me to follow your heart.

It was an exercise of going inward. I talked to one friend about the script, but that was it. When films are so personal, in the worst moments, sometimes you have to laugh. It’s like when there was the earthquake in Mexico, and obviously there was chaos, but the next day, kids were outside playing soccer with water bottles. Somehow life keeps going again and again, even in the worst chaos. That’s the value of living.

Grief is part of life. Even the small girls in “Tótem” were open, and that’s super important in filming, or in life. I think connection is beautiful, that I can hear you and take your hand and you can do the same. Living in Mexico with its chaos and things that aren’t good, I appreciate that we can talk about anything. Obviously there are times you need to close doors, but I think for films we need to be super open, especially with this film. With the little girls it was important for me to take care of them and talk about everything, even death. I think you shouldn’t put up a barrier, like, oh, these topics are hard. Let’s speak about them like we speak about everything. It’s part of life.

Nowadays with technology and A.I. and TikTok, everything is about going out of ourselves, everything. Everything tells you: go out, go out, go out. I think we need to go in, go in, go in.

For every art, you have to give it time. Grief evolves, and how can people return to their essence and return to who they are? It’s because of art. If you study history, how do people return to themselves? Even in war? By painting or watching or reading. There are moments that are hard and you think you can’t take it, but it’s a matter of time.

Richard E. Grant

‘You hope that your friends will talk about the person that’s died, because that’s all you can think about’

Richard E. Grant made his feature film debut in the 1987 comedy “Withnail and I,” and has gone on to star in “Gosford Park,” “The Iron Lady” and “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” for which he was nominated for a best supporting actor Oscar. His 2023 memoir, “A Pocketful of Happiness,” is about his marriage to his wife, Joan, and the experience of losing her to cancer.

During the Oscar season in 2019, I posted daily updates on what the whole showbiz circus felt like. Sharing the emotional journey following the death of my wife came from the same impulse — trying to make sense navigating the abyss of grief and buoyed up by the response of followers sharing their own experiences.

I had no fear about sharing my first posts, as I’d already established the habit of sharing the joyful moments of my life, so it seemed perfectly logical to express the reality of grief, in all its myriad variations. The very nature of being an actor requires you to be as vulnerable and open as possible to express the emotional life of a character, so social media posts felt akin to how I’ve earned my living.

Grief is so all-consuming and you hope that your friends will talk about the person that’s died, because that’s all you can think about. By ignoring it, it feels like the dead person has been canceled or never existed. Which feels incredibly hurtful. So I urge anyone to talk to the person who is bereaved.

The first dinner I was invited to, three weeks after my wife died, was revelatory. All 10 guests knew her well and each in turn quietly expressed their condolences, with one exception, who determinedly ignored the topic and blathered on about how Covid restrictions were impacting her summer holiday plans. I left before dessert was served and have never spoken to her again. Blocked her on social media and blanked her at a party recently. Cementing my conviction that it is imperative to acknowledge a bereavement, even if only hugging someone if words fail you. But never ignore it.

Acting has always been like tuning into a radio station where you can dare to air anything and everything you’re feeling via the role that you’re playing. It can be a direct conduit to grief or the opposite distraction, forcing you to think and feel outside of yourself. Every job has the possibility of new friendships. Stimulating, entertaining and distracting in the best possible way. I’m incredibly grateful that I’ve had so much work since my wife died, as it’s forced me out of the house and to re-engage with the world. I played a novelist in “The Lesson” whose son had committed suicide, and an aristocrat in “Saltburn” who finds his dead son in the garden, and accessing that profound sense of loss and grief was very visceral and cathartic. I count myself lucky to be in a profession where these emotions have legitimacy and value.

Luke Lorentzen

‘I’ve been with people who have lost others, but it’s not yet something I’ve confronted.’

Luke Lorentzen is a documentarian whose credits include the Emmy-nominated Netflix series “Last Chance U.” His most recent film, “A Still Small Voice,” follows a chaplain completing a yearlong hospital residency in end-of-life care at Mount Sinai Hospital during the pandemic. The film won the U.S. documentary best directing award at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.

The pandemic shutdown was a really confusing moment for all of us, but in terms of my creativity, I had just finished my last film, my first professional film, and it was a moment of unexpected success for a 25-year-old. I had been traveling all over the world showing that film, and it all came to an end right as the pandemic started.

I was in this moment of, “How do I follow this up, what do I do next, where do I go from here?” And it was sort of doubled down with the pandemic coming. I remember having a certain anxiousness about how to respond to this moment in a way that kept me working. I rely on myself to create my work and I remember in that moment needing to find something that could be made through this moment in time. I had a couple of ideas I needed to quickly put to the side and the approach was, ‘What can I make now that’s not ignoring what’s going on, but that’s engaging with it?’ That’s how “ A Still Small Voice ” got started.

My sister Claire was at the time going through a residency in spiritual care, so just being her little brother I heard about the work but also what the process was of learning to do that type of care. I remember her sharing these process groups where the residents share their feelings, and thinking as a filmmaker those seemed like spaces that I could immerse myself in and observe, and not need to interview or extract much but just sort of be there and arrive at a really deep place.

I reached out to maybe 100 hospitals around the country. This was around April, May of 2020, so trying to get in the door is almost impossible. I think it actually ended up opening the door to Mount Sinai. By the time I’d gotten in touch with them, it was summer, and the spiritual care team had sort of held the weight of this pandemic for the medical staff and patients in a way that few others had, and they were still this completely overlooked department in this windowless office. The project was an opportunity for their work to be seen.

I really needed to live the experience of being a chaplain to make this film, and I don’t think I knew that going into it. The more time I spent there, the more alive the material became. That resulted in me being on site for over 150 days, just immersing myself without training or a history of knowing how to do this work. I think that’s why I gravitated toward the residents. I could sort of learn this spiritual care alongside them and take these lessons and use them to care for myself but also to set up the film in a way that was aligned with these core principles.

One of the things I continually grappled with was wanting these to be tight, beautiful conversations, and they would so rarely unfold in a way that I expected them to. The process of making the film was a process of letting go of all of these expectations that I was looking for and letting the interactions be whatever they needed to be, and finding a certain clarity or meaning in the messiness of it all. In giving yourself over to this type of caregiving and in the filmmaking itself, there’s just a feeling of barely holding on. I’m not somebody who has experienced loss in a very personal way. I’ve lost grandparents, I’ve been with people who have lost others, but it’s not yet something I’ve confronted head on, so I think there’s something about not knowing that allowed me to dive into this.

My interests as a documentary filmmaker are in every nook and cranny of the human experience. There is a sort of deep excitement to engage with all aspects of life. Grief, loss, caregiving and witnessing are a huge part of that. In making the film, I was learning fundamental parts of how to connect to the people around me, and I think it’s through these very challenging moments that we’re asked to step up and figure out how to be, how to listen, how to pay attention.

From the photographer:

Since my brother died I make a point of bringing him along with me to places where I think he’d like to be. Not so much a spreading of ashes as a summoning of spirit, just in case spirits are real.

It can be as spontaneous as spotting his lucky bird on a walk or as intentional as traveling to conjure him in national parks, topless jeeps and wolf-flanked ayahuasca huts. Either way, I say his name out loud (sometimes three times in case Beetlejuice is real) and I invite him in.

We’ve shared a lot of dumb and stunning moments the past two years, but bringing him along to a New York Times article about his hero Conor Oberst’s grief easily tops them all. Thanks for that. Noah Arnold Noah Arnold Noah Arnold. —Daniel Arnold

Dina Gachman is an Austin-based writer. More about Dina Gachman

Coping With Grief and Loss

Living through the loss of a loved one is a universal experience. but the ways in which we experience and deal with the pain can largely differ..

What Experts Say:   Psychotherapists say that grief is not a problem to be solved , but a process to be lived through, in whatever form it may take.

How to Help: Experiencing a sudden loss can be particularly traumatic. Here are some ways to offer your support to someone grieving.

A New Diagnosis: Prolonged grief disorder, a new entry in the American Psychiatric Association’s diagnostic manual, applies to those who continue to struggle long after a loss .

The Biology of Grief: Grief isn’t only a psychological experience. It can affect the body too, but much about the effects remains a mystery .

Comforting Memories:  After a person dies, their digital scraps — text messages, emails, playlists and voicemails — are left behind. They can offer solace to their grieving families .

Grieving the Loss of a Pet:   Counseling. Grief-group sessions. The number of resources for coping with a pet’s death  has grown in recent years.

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