Please review the Features of the Form of a profile, on page 111 in your textbook. You will use this resource to help you compose the first draft of your profile essay. By the end of this week and before 8 a.m. (Central Time) on Monday, you will submit your draft to the group Discussion Board so that others can provide you with feedback and help you make your essay stronger.
Content
This first draft should be at least 500 words long. Try to meet the requirements for the final draft as best as you can and submit an essay that you feel is as close to finished as possible so that the feedback you receive is more likely to be useful. However, do not be overly concerned with issues related to proofreading and editing at this point; you will have the opportunity to address these as you revise.
Be sure your primary focus is on just one day spent with the subject of your profile. You don’t have to organize this chronologically, from the start of the shift to the end. You can certainly do that, but you can also organize it around the questions you are seeking an answer to.
Be sure to let us see and hear the subject of your profile. We should feel as if we are in your shoes observing and interacting with the subject of your profile, so don’t hesitate to put yourself in the profile too, interacting with the subject of your profile.
Be sure to take time to craft an engaging introduction, one that draws the reader in by promising that the reader will discover something interesting about the job you’re profiling. Look on page 564 of our text for ideas about the different types of leads you could use for this essay. Leads are techniques for introducing this or any future essay.
Here is an introduction to a profile about our old friend, Larry, the Jimmy Johns driver, which I hope will give you some idea of what an effective introduction needs to have. The first two paragraphs are the introduction and then I move into the first paragraph of the body of the profile:
“So tell me the truth,” I said to Larry as we sat in a booth at the Jimmy Johns franchise off Blair High Road in Omaha, Nebraska, waiting for his first delivery of the day to be ready, “have you ever helped yourself to someone’s cookie or pickle, hoping they wouldn’t notice?” Larry, nearly 30-years-old with an oversized blonde mustache, laughed and assured me he had never in his five years of working as a Jimmy Johns driver stolen someone’s cookie or pickle. “But even if I had, I’m sure as shit not going to admit it on the record,” he added with another laugh, twisting the ends of his mustache, a habit of his, I discovered, whenever he was nervous.
I’m happy to report that during our day together, Larry was willing to share other secrets about being a Jimmy Johns driver—such as how to improve the chances of getting a bigger tip or ending up with a free sandwich by the end of the day. In the end, what I learned about earning a living as a Jimmy Johns driver was what I expected for the most part—that the worst part is dealing with traffic all day and getting lost at times and that the best part is getting to be on your own for most of the day. But what I didn’t expect to discover is just how rewarding the job can be at times.
As I anticipated, one of the worst parts of the job delivering for Jimmy Johns is being stuck in traffic for most of the day. “That’s why I make sure to start my day with a full tank,” explained Larry as we sat at yet another red light . . .
