The Art of the Personal Essay: Weaving Reflection and Craft

• Week 1: Resources for writing a personal essay
  After exploring the personal essay as a genre that offers a personal perspective on a topic, we’ll introduce two main resources for writing in this genre: personal experience and research. We’ll jot down reasons for choosing to write personal essay during a class exercise and then select a topic for the essay to complete throughout the course. We’ll discuss where and how to find outside sources for our essays.
• Week 2: Reflections on personal experiences
  A personal essay captures reflections on a subject based on personal experiences. We’ll explore how to integrate the essay format with personal experiences and memories. We’ll engage in a class exercise where we’ll write about personal experiences related to the subject we’ve chosen for our essays. Narratives will be shared with peers in small groups, discussing how to use them to shape personal essays.
• Week 3: Collating personal narratives and others’ narratives
  We’ll discuss how to blend personal narratives with alternative narratives from creative and objective non-fiction sources. We will bring our personal narratives from last week, as well as alternative sources on our chosen subjects to be included in our essays. In small groups, we’ll discuss how to shape our essays by combining these two sources.
• Week 4: Reflections on the concepts of self, time and place
  Personal essays often explore questions about identity and the construction of self. Since narratives of the self are deeply rooted in specific times and places, reflecting on personal experiences also involves reflecting on the times and places that shaped our identities. We’ll consider the creation of self in our essays and the connections to times and places they describe. After sharing works-in-progress in small groups, we’ll reflect on how the self is constructed in our narratives and explore ways to refine our essays.
• Week 5: Reflections on relationships with others
  Personal essays not only convey the author’s point of view on their subject but also explore the relationship between the author’s personal experiences and the subject matter. They often reveal the dynamics between the self and other characters within the narrative. We’ll explore these relationships by reflecting on how they are portrayed in our personal essays. After writing up our reflections, we will share them in small groups and provide feedback to help each other enhance our essays.
• Week 6: Presentations and group reflections
  The final week is dedicated to group reflections on the topics discussed throughout the course, as well as individual presentations. We’ll present to the class our latest drafts of our personal essays we’ve worked on during the course and receive feedback from our peers.

By the end of the course, you should be able to:

• Practice writing personal narratives for use in your personal essays
• Collect other resources for writing personal essays
• Construct personal essays by blending personal narratives with alternative narratives
• Develop narrative, research and essay organization skills
• Provide constructive feedback to peers

• Short lectures
• Participating in class discussions
• Reading assigned personal essays
• In-class writing and providing peers with feedback
• Completing writing homework
• Reflective essay (applicable only to certificate students)

No textbook is required. We will provide all course materials online.