Reflection as a noun occurs in everyday life, however, it is seen less often as a verb.

Reflecting upon work you have done is important in being able to progress and improve. This is especially prevalent in the teaching profession, as reflection on a day’s lessons can help improve the lessons for the next day, and in turn improve the overall education of your pupils. In terms of academic writing, reflecting on an experience can often form the basis of a piece, however, reflecting on these pieces individually will also help to improve overall writing ability.

Reflecting is not simply pointing out what you did wrong. Reflection is about finding weak areas, realizing how to improve them, and making a conscious, motivated decision to make them better. It is not enough to know you are not good enough, you need to know how to change for the better and actually implement these changes.

Personally, I believe that I struggle with reflection. While I can identify where I feel I may have gone wrong, I struggle to improve this, even with great effort sometimes. I have seen this in my past experiences of academic writing at high school, where I saw myself as a writer who focused more on delivering the facts or theories than one who had an opinion about them. I rarely challenged what I saw, however, I know that I need to improve this at university level, and will hopefully improve this during my time at university.