Personal Reflective Essay

Overall, my experience on writing my personal essay covering the topic of feminism has been surprisingly pleasant and easy flowing. I’ve learned through the process that a personal essay is something you can make your own. Further, a personal essay is a “free-wheeling device” of self expression. It is not supposed to be structured in a certain way, but structured loosely. Boy or Girl was an essay that was specific to who I was. The main idea of Boy or Girl described an event that was meaningless at the time, but made me the person who I am today. The first step of the process for making my personal essay was reading other personal essays. I thought of themes that the personal essays represented and how they related back to the author’s life.

I got some inspiration and immediately wanted to start writing about events that were important to me. After finishing reading examples of personal essays, I moved on to coming up with ideas of my own. This was the hardest part for me because although I had a lot of ideas, I wanted to write about something original and a topic that impacted me the most. I had ideas such as my favorite day, my favorite place, how I met my best friend, a hard choice, my favorite color, etc. But, those topics have all been done before and none of them really changed my life. I was still the same person after all of those events. I was having trouble thinking of an event that meant a lot to me. I was thinking about how I acted, what adjectives describe me, and how people identify me as. Soon I thought about how many individuals saw me as - opinionated and outspoken. I thought about how most people saw me as a strong and proud female and

I soon reminisced on how I became that person because I know it didn’t happen overnight. I remembered how important that event was. I couldn’t forget that day. That day I became a feminist. I became a feminist because of a simpleminded and ignorant comment. Most people would see that comment as stupid and meaningless, but I didn’t. After I came up with my topic, I started writing my outline. This was the easiest part for me because all I had to do was write about an event that I felt strongly about. I was very passionate about the topic, which made it hard for me stop writing. I started with my introduction. I wanted to “set the scene”. I wanted to provide the reader with information so they could better understand the story. I wanted to describe the setting and event that was taking place. After, I came up with a thesis that described the main idea of the essay. I wanted the thesis statement to state the theme. After, I worked on the body paragraphs or the “meat” of the essay. The structure of my paragraphs described how I felt before the event on feminism, the actual event, and how the event changed my perspective on