Bonners are responsible for reflecting each semester. Reflecting helps you to process and understand the purpose, meaning, and effect of your service. Reflecting also helps you make connections between your service, academics, personal life and vocational goals. Furthermore, reflections are one important way of connecting with the Bonner Director and Coordinator and sharing of high and low moments that should be celebrated and/or addressed.
Reflections are due as determined by your issue team or cohort leader. (View Reflection Options).
Choose one of the following options to reflect on your service for the school year. All written reflections should be typed. Semester long reflection options are due to the Bonner Office before the end of the semester. Indicated in parenthesis is the maximum number of service hours you can count for each option.
Unless a Bonner Scholar is selected as a "Bonner Blogger" (in which case, he/she will have a separate agreement with the Bonner Office regarding reflection), Bonner Scholars are required to do a formal reflection every other month during the school year.
Reflections are intended as merely fly-on-the-wall reports of what happened at your site or anywhere else, they should demonstrate your understanding of issues, the community, the world and yourself.
Care should also be given to ensure that reflections demonstrate high standards of comprehension, grammar, spelling and professionalism, just as if they were academic papers or projects. The Director and Coordinator reserve the right to deem any submitted reflection unsatisfactory and request that a new reflection be submitted. The Director and the Coordinator will determine the new deadline and notify the student. Each completed, approved reflection shall count for 1 Bonner hour and its satisfactory completion (or lack thereof) will go into the Bonner Scholar's permanent record, which is reviewed each semester.
Bonner reflections may take one of two forms: