Essay Two: The Profile

Important Dates:

2/24 Due: Topic Proposal
3/3 Due: Rough Draft (3 copies to group).
3/3 Due: Interview/Observation notes (to Instructor)
3/5 In-Class Workshop Due; End Comments to group (2 copies of each)
3/10 DUE: Profile Essay (Revised. Manila folder with: Final, workshop

Assignment Description:
Write an essay about an intriguing person, place, or activity in your community. Observe your subject closely, and then present what you have learned in a way that both informs and engages readers.

From Axelrod and Cooper, “A profile is an informative and entertaining report based on a writer’s firsthand observations and interviews…It asks students to rely not on their memories or books they’ve read, but on their abilities to attend to what they see and hear” (bedfordstmartins.com). Profiles take the familiar and show its unique and exotic character. Profiles take the exotic and introduce it to us in a manner that makes it more familiar.

For the Narrative Essay, you relied on your memories of events and your ability to narrate those memories so that the reader lived through them with you and was thus allowed to consider something larger (at your bequest) from this experience. In the Profile Essay, however, you won’t use memory, but your own primary research to compile the necessary information to present an essay that invites the reader to see your subject in a new way. A good profile reveals feelings, exposes attitudes, and captures habits and mannerisms. The finished story should be as entertaining as it is informative.

To this end, this assignment will require that you perform at least one (probably more like two) detailed observation/interview (or both).

Seek out unusual/interesting activities, people, or places and AVOID topics with which you are overly familiar (e.g., the summer job they you had for the last four years, your apartment, etc.). Unless otherwise approved by me, relatives, your house, your dog, your boyfr./girlfr., your workplace, etc. are off limits. If you have limited transportation please consider choosing a subject from the campus community (ie an organization, the cleaning personnel, etc.). Two problems with selecting a profile topic are those of accessibility and security. Subjects that may sound exciting in theory may not be possible or appropriate in practice: A doctor or scientist may not be available for interviews; a military installation or a nuclear power plant may be off-limits to the general public. Similarly, you should only explore topics that will NOT jeopardize your safety.

In summary, for this project you will:
A) Conduct an interview/observation (Ch. 20) of a person, place, group, etc.
B) From that observation/interview prepare a cleanly written, two-to-five page, interesting profile of your subject.

Ideas:
A hospital waiting room, an American Legion hall, a great/quirky restaurant, someone who lived through the Great Depression, a midnight basketball league, a soup kitchen, an online “reality” like Second Life, something interesting in your community, someone interesting in your community.

NOTE: DUE TO TIME CONSTRAINTS OF THIS CLASS it is imperative that you chose a subject for this essay as soon as possible and schedule an interview or observation.

Requirements:
2-5 pages, Typed, MLA format, Work’s Cited (if necessary).