Writing reflection papers
Staff members of the Technician play the "trough game" at fall retreat in Manteo, N.C.
As a part of their training requirement, all employees of Student Media must submit what we're loosely calling "reflection papers" with their time sheets. Basically, we're looking for you to reflect upon what you learned from the training session and how that will benefit your job within the Student Media or your general education. You are empowered to present that information in whatever medium you want. That means your options are wide open, but here are a few suggestions and guidelines:
- Essays are a good catch-all for explaining what you took from a training opportunity. No more than one page, but please type them up. Avoid including extraneous details about the event itself — just tell us what you learned and how you will benefit.
- If you're attending a session on creating quality visuals, why not take a photo demonstrating what you learned? Print it out with a caption explaining why this displays the lesson you learned.
- Hopefully, you're going to apply what you learn to your work in Student Media. Why not provide a critique as your reflection? Include the piece (design, story, photo, etc.) and use what you learned to explain how you could have done it better (or how you did it better).
- Think of something else! This is intentionally open-ended, so feel free to be creative.
- Don't turn something in on notebook paper. Please.
- Don't be content with a few sentences. Make it valuable!
- Don't write it off if you thought the training session wasn't good. What would you have done better? How could the session have been improved? What more did you want to learn?
Why bother?
We know your time is valuable and we want to make the most of it. That's why reflection papers are so important. Taking a few minutes to think about what you gained from each session is a critical step toward remembering it and applying it. That will ensure the time you spent in training won't go to waste. Aside from that, you're also passing along your the knowledge you gained so others can benefit from it. Student Media employs more than 100 students who will attend dozens of training sessions over six to seven months. Our goal is to take all that knowledge and compile it each year into a document anyone — from an entry-level staff to an editor-in-chief — can pick up and browse. That means you'll be choosing lessons from hundreds of hours of collective training, distilling them to their most valuable elements and sharing them with your successors. Not a bad way to spend 20 minutes.
More resources
Still stuck? Here are a few more tips to help you get started.
• Tips on writing a reflection paper | eHow.com
