On Tuesday 8th, we talked about our new assignment. The assignment was to write an essay based on a specific personal event, memory, or experience that could deliver a substantial amount of introspection on us.

Back in my dorm room, I though: "What exactly is introspection to me and how can it help me portray an event in my life?" With this question, I started thinking what introspection really meant to me.

During that Tuesday, I heard some of my fellow classmates state that introspection was "a way to see your true self", or a "way to analyze how you feel". However, all these answers to me did not make sense. Even though I understood them, I would have counter-argued that introspection cannot mean that because one could equally state how one feels without even describing either emotions or actions in the event itself.

So, when I got to my dorm, I looked the word up in the dictionary. The meaning was “the examination or observation of one’s own mental and emotional process (Macintosh dictionary)”. However, I still felt that, even though it was accurate, it could expand even more. I dwelled on this image of the real meaning (to me of course, not necessarily to others) of the word introspection and how I could come to comprehend it in order to write my personal essay. I remembered how Barbara stated "introspection was not necessarily an old memory that one reflected in the present", as long as it was in the past (i.e. an hour ago) it could be introspective. When I remembered this, I agreed with it until I questioned; "what if I want to reflect about how I feel in the future, even if it’s unknown?" I believed that if introspection were something of the past, then the word would only identify with events that have already occurred. But, are not the mistakes or experiences of the past a way to foreshadow or prepare for the future? Is not introspection part of the future and present as well?

With this said, I came to a moderate conclusion (moderate because I still haven’t figured out how to integrate the fact that the future counts too) about the word by my own knowledge and the dictionaries:

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• My definition…or at least what I added to the dictionaries definition: It is the collection of self-knowledge over time that lets us compare and contrast our present state with our past state.

It is very probable that a lot of you will disagree, but that is why I decided to post this up, to understand the concept the best I can.