The Retrospective Essay
The purpose of the retrospective is to frame your portfolio and to highlight your growth over time as a result of completing a number of courses and other experiences. The reader should be able to understand what changed in your thinking, what skills you developed, and what experiences were most impactful to you.
Creating your frames first and doing some of the reflective exercises on the tips and resources page should help you with your retrospective, as they help you to see themes and patterns, to see how your ideas have changed, and to set new goals for Division III.
The retrospective should NOT simply be a chronological account of what you did in Division II. It is best organized around pivotal experiences, changes in your thinking or skills, strengths you want to point out, etc. Look across your work, organize your work around important ideas (by creating pages to highlight different aspects of your learning - by content, process, progress, etc.), and re-read your self- and narrative-evaluations.
The retrospective highlights overarching issues. The individual pages allow you to show specific pieces of work and highlight what you learned and what skills you developed.
Revision makes a difference. Share an early draft with your chair or committee.
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Example reflective questions to help you write your retrospective (no one answers all of them):
Description of your concentration (try to do that in 300 words or fewer). What was your Div II about? What questions drove you? Did you make progress answering them? What changed in your thinking? Think about how you would describe your work to a friend, family member, etc. What are the major themes? How does your work cross courses and/or out-of-class experiences? Are there questions that held your attention?
Activities in Division II (one or two paragraphs). Briefly describe how you pursued your goals. Did you take classes? At Hampshire? In the Five Colleges? At other institutions that you transferred in? What about field study, independent studies/Special Projects?
Here you might note how well your Div II holds together, that is, was it a coherent study?
What would you say about the breadth and depth of your concentration?
Summary of your evaluations (try to do this in 250 words or less). After reading through your evaluations, summarize the major themes. Are the patterns that emerge? What are your strengths that professors note? Are there things they suggest you work on? Do you agree? How have you responded to the feedback you have received (or how do you plan to)?
What important experiences impacted your thinking? Were there specific moments or experiences that caused you to change direction or that solidified your direction (pivotal experiences)?
Did your work in the classroom connect to things you did outside of the classroom – in community engaged experiences, internships, or projects? How so?
What worked well? What do you wish you had added?
Some people include their reflections on Multiple Cultural Perspectives/Race and Power in the retrospective, others have a separate page for this.
Some include their reflections on Community Engagement and Learning in the retrospective, others have a separate page.
If you've already written on these topics in other parts of the ePortfolio, you don't need to reproduce it here. You can link back to the reflection that you've done across other pages, making a note in your essay about where you mentioned it.