Being Reflective

1. Being Reflective

2. General Plan Advice – Your voyage of Discovery Engage with the thing that you are reflecting on – music, fear, family, achievement and feelings of pride, fashion, school, lies, betrayal. Explain your musings about this thing and your reflections on it. Bring a moment when all of this was crystallised to life. Reflect on the reasons for your changing feelings about this thing. Explain the reasons why you came to this recollection. Explain the similarities/differences between your attitude to this thing compared to others and why. Return to ideas you opening with and give your closing reflections on it.

3. Content Driven Essay We sailed out to the depths of the ocean, unsure and nervous about what was beneath us. Everyone looked calm, as their sunglasses reflected the shimmering rhythmic ripples of the water below. I sat there frozen to the spot as I watched everyone else discard their bathing attire to apply a second skin that would enable them to move seamlessly through the water. “I’m just here to watch”, I repeated assuredly.

4. Reflective Essay Fear. It is inescapable. It is something that we all experience at one point in our lives. Many believe that it is a destructive and malevolent force with the sole purpose to obliterate its opponent, annihilate its adversary. Whether fear is self-inflicted; to experience a fission of something fast or an unwelcome guest that descends upon us when we least expect it, it is something that causes us to act in ways we didn’t imagine possible. We throw reason and rationality out of the window and plummet ourselves into the unknown. I have come to think upon fear as friend not foe, as it my fight with fear that led me to one of the most unrivalled experiences of my life.

5. Reflection on why I was holding back from being involved. Contrast in feelings that I felt (assumption that I would be panicked, sense of calm, tranquillity of being so small in such a vast space – sense of perspective) Realisation that I might regret this once in a lifetime opportunity.

6. The Stars Not So Far Out of Reach Write a introduction that shows that you are reflecting on the way that we perceive and view our idols. We admire them from afar, thinking that there are as unreachable as the stars and as infallible as the Saints themselves. I suppose before my brief and deleting encounter with the stars themselves I had no reason to wonder about such questions, I was too much in awe of their sheer brilliance.

7. What did you learn about what it is that they possess that makes us want to be like them? Has it made you realise that you want to be a football player or realise that this isn't your dream, why is this now the case. What did you realise that you and them or your dad etc had in common, in other words in what ways are they just like normal humans - paint a picture of comparisons (hate defeat/play different roles at different times... Conclusion on the effect that you would like to have on others in the future and if you have realised that there is anyone that you might actually have had this impact on (younger brother or sister)

8. Family: A Personal Definition Family. When attempting to find a suitable definitions for this word, I was happy to find out that I was not the only who had trouble defining this rather unique and somewhat weird phenomenon. Knowing what I know about the reputation of Oxford, I assumed this about as credible and convincing a denotation that I could find. So here goes. Family: All the descendants of a common ancestor, or A group of peoples from a common stock or slightly more alarmingly and informally A local organizational unit of the Mafia or other large criminal group. So, with all of these potentials I can't help but feel relieved that maybe mine aren't all that strange after all.

9. Discuss the physically similarities and dress sense of your family. Why do you think this is and have you realised that in fact you might have had that impact on someone else?

10. Deep Thinking How many times do we search and hope for a feeling of weightlessness, gravity defying release from the problems of life that weigh us down? How important and superior we think that we are as mankind as a thinking, reasoning mind. But surely it is this same mind that makes it difficult for us to find true freedom from the very things thoughts that burden us? I'm not too sure if it was this feelings of weightlessness, inferiority to something greater than myself or the willingness to face my fears head on that marked my journey into the vast, black unknown but I seem to know more now than I did before.

11. Use imagery to paint the picture of deep sea world and the transparent glass world that exists only one the other side of an impenetrable window and how on reflection there is so little and yet so much that separates our world for theirs. Are there any similarities? What things are put in perspective? What did it teach you about fears etc. Try to return to the image do the shark? Repeat or revisit what has been explored in opening and your conclusions on it eg. Do you still feel inferior to the shark and why? Etc.

12. With the swipe of a plastic card or the exchange of a few measly pieces of paper you are guaranteed one of the greatest highs I have ever known. Well maybe not so much of a high as a 30 minute love affair. There is nothing quite like it. The sudden overwhelming feeling. All you have to do is reach out and grab it and your dreams will come true. Life will mean something again. You can reach out and wrap your fingers around the handle and then comes the burst of ecstasy. You can’t do anything but drag the bag off the cold, hard shimmering counter and play victim to the addiction once more; shopping the drug and counter assistants the dealers.