Essay

Assignment: Write a four-page essay that carefully and specifically explains how your education has shaped or informed your professional and personal goals and prepared you to pursue and fulfill those goals.  To develop your paper, offer detailed examples which connect your education to those goals.

Strategies. To do well on this assignment you need to take it seriously. This is a chance for you to define your values and goals in relation to concrete choices you will be making in the near future.

Further, you might well find yourself in interviews where you’ll be asked pointed questions about your education, values, and goals; you will have a great advantage if you have thought through this carefully and can articulate the relationships between your education, your overall values, and your practical goals with insight, verve, and precision.

The key to making this essay work is getting beyond cliché, e.g. “I love to read,” or “I’m great with people.” Provide the concrete examples and precise language that make such sentiments persuasive. You want to link concrete aspects of your education to your values and goals. For instance, how did a particular class prompt you towards a goal? While this might have to do with a practical skill, like editing, it might also be a powerful influence on your worldview and your values. For instance, seeking employment writing grants for humanitarian organizations might be deeply connected with the literature you have read even more than your skills as technical writer. Then again, it might be more purely practical. If you apply for a job as a Narrative Consultant for a video game company, those courses in the novel, the short story, and film will have a real impact. However, even in such a case, might your larger philosophical view about narrative and the role of imagination in everyday life be the real reasons you want that job? Communicating clearly and with passion will make you a stronger candidate. The key is connecting your vision of the future to the challenging and transformative aspects of your education with concrete examples. What specific courses, concepts, ideas, texts, assignments, skills, and encounters shape and inform the choices you are making about your future?

Presentation: Like all writing, presentation counts! Avoid slips of grammar, typos, and awkward sentences. Polish your prose. Make it beautiful.

Format: Your assignment must be four to five double-spaced pages, neatly typed with one-inch margins and an 11 or 12 point font. Follow MLA style throughout.

Due Dates: This essay is part of your final portfolio for 376.