English 0950
Fall 2005
Essay 4

Background:

Over the course of the term, you have read and written about work from a variety of perspectives. You have reflected on your experiences in one workplace, examined a contemporary perspective of work by another writer, and studied the way that work is treated in fiction. Your last paper gives you an opportunity to explore through "field research" (interviews and site visits) and writing your sense of work, a worker, and a workplace in our society today.

Assignment:

For your fourth paper, I want you to write a "profile essay" of 3-4 pages about a worker, his/her work, and his/her workplace that interests you. Perhaps pick someone who is in a career field that you are thinking about entering yourself or that you are in college to prepare for. (You can pick someone that you already know, but this person cannot be a member of your family, a close friend, or a "significant other." You can also pick someone new that you meet specifically for this paper.)

Set up one or more interviews and/or site visits. Focus especially on the person, but also pay attention to the work s/he does and to the environment the person works in. (Do not write a "process essay" about what this person does and how s/he does it.) Observe your subject closely, and then present what you have learned in a way that both informs and engages readers.

The basic questions that your paper should answer are: (1) What work is this worker doing? (2) In what setting is this work being done? and (3) What does this worker have to say about this/her work to those both inside and outside this field of work? For this last question, it is OK to mention if s/he likes or dislikes what s/he does, but definitely go beyond that. Focus on their thoughts feelings, attitudes, and opinions about their job specifically and about work in general. Perhaps ask them: What is your philosophy about work? What is your work ethic? What advice do you have for new people entering this field of work?

Basic Information about Profile Essays:

Magazines and newspapers are filled with profiles. Unlike conventional news stories, which report current events, profiles tell about people, places, and activities. Some profiles take us behind the scenes of familiar places, giving us a glimpse of their inner workings. Others introduce us to the exotic -- peculiar hobbies, unusual professions, bizarre personalities. Still others probe the social, political, and moral significance of our institutions.

Profiles share many features with autobiography, such as narrative, anecdote, description, and dialogue. Yet profiles differ significantly from autobiography. Whereas an autobiographer reflects on a remembered personal experience, a profile writer synthesizes and presents newly acquired observations. In writing a profile, you practice the field research methods of observing, interviewing, and notetaking, which are commonly used by investigative reporters, social scientists, and naturalists. You also learn to analyze and synthesize the information you have collected.

A profile is a special kind of research project. Profiles always involve visits: meeting with a person or going to a place. Profile writers take notes from observations and interviews and may pick up reading materials at a place they are profiling. They may even need to conduct library research to gather information about the history and specialized aspects of a place or an activity.

Profile Essays:

Purpose and Audience Considerations for Profile Essays:

A profile writer’s primary purpose is to inform readers. Readers expect profiles to present information in an engaging way, however. Whether profiling people, places, or activities, the writer must meet these expectations. Although a reader might learn as much about a subject from an encyclopedia entry, reading the profile is sure to be more enjoyable.

Readers of profiles expect to be surprised by unusual subjects. If the subject is familiar, they expect it to be presented from an unusual perspective. When writing a profile, you will have an immediate advantage if your subject is a place, an activity, or a person that is likely to surprise and intrigue your readers. Even if your subject is very familiar, however, you can still engage your readers by presenting it in a way they had never before considered.

A profile writer has one further concern: to be sensitive to readers’ knowledge of a subject. Since readers must imagine the subject profiled and understand the new information offered about it, the writer must carefully assess what readers are likely to have seen and to know.

Profile writers must also consider whether readers are familiar with the terminology they want to use. Because profiles involve information, they inevitably require definitions and illustrations. Since profile writers are not writing technical manuals or textbooks, they can choose to define only terms that readers need to know to follow what is going on. Some concepts or activities will require extended illustrations.

Summary of Basic Features of Profile Essays:

1.  An Intriguing, Well-Focused Subject:

The subject of a profile is typically a specific person, place, or activity. And, although profiles focus on a person, a place, or an activity, they usually contain all three elements -- certain people performing a certain activity at a particular place.

Skilled profile writers make even the most mundane subjects interesting by presenting them in a new light. They many simply take a close look at a subject usually taken for granted, or they surprise readers with a subject they had never thought of. Whatever they examine, they bring attention to the uniqueness of the subject, showing what is remarkable about it.

2.  A Vivid Presentation:

Profiles particularize their subjects rather than generalize about them. Because profile writers are interested more in presenting individual cases than in making generalizations, they present their subjects vividly and in detail.

Successful profile writers master the writing strategies of description, often using sensory imagery and figurative language -- the senses of sight, touch, smell, taste, and hearing, and figures of speech such as simile and metaphor.

Profile writers often describe people in graphic detail. They reveal personal habits and characteristic poses. They also use dialogue to reveal character.

3.  A Dominant Impression (the "thesis" or central idea about the subject):

Readers expect profile writers to convey a particular impression or interpretation of the subject. They want to know the writer’s insights into the subject after having spent time observing the scene and talking to people. Indeed, this interpretation is what separates profiles from mere exercises in description and narration.

To convey a dominant impression, writers carefully select details of scene and people and put these details together in a particular way. They also express an attitude toward the subject, an attitude that can be implied through details or stated explicitly. For example, a writer may express admiration, concern, detachment, fascination, skepticism, amusement -- perhaps even two or three different feelings that complement or contradict one another.

Writers also offer interpretations of their subjects. An interpretation may be implied or stated directly. It can be announced at the beginning, woven into the ongoing observations, or presented as a conclusion. In combination with carefully orchestrated details and a clearly expressed attitude, these interpretations give readers a dominant impression of the subject being profiled. The effort to create a dominant impression guides all the writer’s decisions about how to select materials and how to organize and present them.

4.  An Engaging and Informative Plan:

Successful profile writers know that if they are to keep their readers’ attention, they must engage as well as inform. For this reason, they tell their stories dramatically and describe people and places vividly. They also control the flow of unfamiliar information carefully. Whether the overall plan is topical or chronological, writers give much thought to where unfamiliar information is introduced and how it is introduced.

Profiles present a great deal of factual detail about their subject. However, the information can be woven into the essay in bits and pieces -- conveyed in dialogue, interspersed throughout the narrative, given in description -- rather than presented in one large chunk.

Parceling out information in this way makes it easier to comprehend: Readers can master one part of the information before going on to the next. Perhaps even more important, such control injects a degree of surprise and thus makes readers curious to know what will come next. Controlling the information flow may, in fact, help to keep readers reading, especially when the essay is organized around topics or aspects of the information.

Narration may be even more important, for it is used by many profile writers to organize their essays. Some profiles even read like stories, with suspense building to a dramatic climax.  Writers can organize their narratives to develop and sustain suspense and drama.