Essential Reflective Writing at Evergreen

Writing About Your Evergreen Education

​This page is an overview of all of the writing you do about yourself as part of your Evergreen journey—from your Orientation Essay to your Final Academic Statement. 

Looking for something specific? 

• See our Handouts & Links page for tools to support you in your reflective writing at Evergreen.
• See our Academic Statement Guide page for a 70-page guide on everything Academic Statement. 
• See our requirements chart for all the important details (due dates, page lengths, and more) Essential Reflective Writing at Evergreen Chart (PDF)—image previow below

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Narratives: They Tell a Story

Evergreen is unique as a college in that it uses a narrative system to assess student learning and achievement rather than letter or numerical grades. “Narrative” is another word for story—a written account of events. 

Some parts of your academic story are published in your final transcript. So instead of having a GPA and a list of courses, you will have a list of course and program titles and a set of narrative evaluations to view and share with future employers and graduate schools. 

Benefits to Writing Narratives

• Telling your own story helps you gain self-awareness. 
• By writing about your academic interests, strengths, challenges, and triumphs—from your admissions process until you graduate—you will be able to document your evolution as a learner.
• While you build self-awareness through writing, your faculty will also be able to gain insight into how to best offer you mentorship through reading your reflective writing on my.evergreen.edu.  

Multiple Authors Tell your Academic Story

You and all of your faculty participate in generating these narrative assessments. In other words, you and the people who supported your learning get to tell your academic story through a series of essays.  

The essays include:

• Admissions Essay
• Orientation Essay 
• Self-Evaluations 
• Student Evaluations of Faculty
• Faculty Evaluation of Student Achievement
• Annual Academic Statement
• Final Academic Statement

All of the reflective writing you do at Evergreen is important, but not all of it ends up published in your transcript. 

The narratives that are published in your transcript are:

• Self-Evaluations that you have selected to put in your transcript on purpose
• Faculty Evaluations of Student Achievement for every course or program you took
• Final Academic Statement

See Hacking Your Transcript: How to Intentionally Shape Your Transcript So It Will Serve You by Caryn Dudley for a peer-tutor’s overview of what goes in your transcript. 

Important Information by Narrative Essay Type 

See our Handouts & Links page for more.