Before you Begin

Every college and university will have different criteria for writing a PLA essay. Be certain of the parameters your college or university has in place before you start. Discuss this with your mentor/advisor or designated student support person.

Make sure you agree on potential titles and the subject of your PLA. If you are planning to write more than one PLA it is very helpful to finish one and then, use it as a template for the remainder.

Experiential learning may be equivalent to, or closely resemble, a course that you might find in a college curriculum somewhere. Search online catalogues to find courses that match your experiential learning. You can mention these courses in your essay should they be closely aligned with your own experiential learning.

This may take some brainstorming

Begin by brainstorming ideas – jot everything down in point form or use a tape recorder to begin. As you move through subsequent drafts you will begin to refine ideas and add detail.

For instance, if you are requesting credits for your work in special effects makeup then you might investigate film departments of schools – like NYU – as well as special effects companies. You might reach out to people who are already working in the industry and ask where and how they learned their trade. In some cases, it may take some digging but making the connection between the learning you have acquired and how that learning augments your degree is essential.

Questions to ask

• How did I learn a particular procedure and how has that influenced how I work or carry out my job?
• How has that learning helped me to move forward in my career?
• How have I used what I’ve learned to support my goals?

Considerations

If you are requesting credits for a job, you currently hold then take a look at the original job description and your resume. See if they match up. Chances are your job has changed considerably if you’ve been at it for a long time.

• Think of what you would need to add to your resume now to make it current. Revise it to reflect all the things you do.
• Are there any specific duties that have evolved since you began employment? If so, explain exactly how this evolution occurred. For instance, how did you initiate a new course of action? What was the result?
• How did you accomplish the change and most importantly, what did you learn in the process?
• Can you break out your learning into sub-topics?
• Think about how you might teach your experiential learning – if you had to. What would be the 6 or 7 main subtopics you would have to include in order for your audience to learn and understand what you know. What would your syllabus look like?

Something Always Goes Wrong

A big part of learning is the fact that something always goes wrong. We like to call these anecdotes, “War Stories.” This is the perfect opportunity to explain how you overcame a problem or devised a new course of action that corrected some inefficiency or allowed you to side-step an obstacle. Always talk about the challenges and problems you’ve encountered in your PLA. Your explanation of how you overcame problems encompasses the perfect learning experience. Take the time to detail mistakes and/or challenges and tell us about the resolution you formulated, or what actions you took to overcome the challenge. What did you learn from this resolution? What you learned about the process and how you have been able to incorporate that learning into your progress, is the crux of the PLA journey.  

• Ask yourself the question: What was the lesson I learned when I overcame the obstacle in this sub-topic?

Specifics:

• Has what you’ve learned led to more employment or other types of work?
• What have you accomplished that was unexpected?
• What aspects contributed to your success?
• How does this learning contribute to your educational and/or career goals?

It may help to think of your experiential learning as if it were a syllabus that you had to teach to others. If that were the case, what points/topics would you need to focus on and explain in order for someone to understand it?

• In this essay you can use the term, “I learned” more than once.

Remember, this is a process. No one gets it right the first time and that’s okay! The nature of this essay is that you will make many revisions.