What is a Writer’s Profile? A Writer’s Profile is a professional genre. It requi

What is a Writer’s Profile?
A Writer’s Profile is a professional genre. It requires thinking and writing skills that you have practiced throughout the first-year writing curriculum, including reflection and argumentation. This genre requires you to first reflect on your growth as a writer and then “package” this information in a persuasive way for your readers.
This document can serve various purposes. For example, individuals applying to writing-intensive jobs or internships will often include a Writer’s Profile as part of their digital portfolio of work in order to introduce themselves and their writing to potential employers/internship sites. We can also see the Writer’s Profile as part of a larger academic portfolio where a student nearing graduation explores the ways in which writing has informed their academic career. In this context, the Writer’s Profile offers a space for the writer to reflect on their growth and learning as a writer and researcher. For example, see this Engineering student’s “Personal Overview” (SEE SCREENSHOTS ATTACHED) You’ll see that this student is focused on selling his strengths as a writer and explaining how these skills are related to his future career. He uses evidence (including specific details and hyperlinks for more information) to support his claims. In another example (SEE SCREENSHOTS ATTACHED), an employee discusses his growth as a writer in an evaluation. Whether or not you will have to use a Writer’s Profile as part of an application, the practice of reflecting on your growth and learning as a writer and researcher will be beneficial, as you will definitely continue to use both writing and research skills throughout your college career.
What is the context of my Writer’s Profile?
For this assignment, you will imagine that you are applying for a position as a student-mentor at FIU. The position offers attractive pay and internship opportunities in exchange for mentoring other students. You’ve been asked to include a Writer’s Profile as part of your application packet. Therefore, you should submit a Writer’s Profile that convinces the hiring committee that you’ve thought carefully about the skills that you now have after taking ENC 1102 and convinces them that you would be able to articulate your strengths as a writer and researcher to your potential future mentees. See these guiding questions.
The best Writer’s Profiles will have a clear theme or point–focusing on a skill or lesson you learned, or a way your thinking changed, or on a major takeaway from the course, etc–and then each paragraph will build on that theme or point.
Who is the audience for my Writer’s Profile?
The audience for this Writer’s Profile is a hiring committee who is deciding whether or not to hire you as a student-mentor. In some ways, this is like writing for a public audience, because you don’t know much about the people on this committee–but you do know you are writing for an audience beyond your instructor and peers.
We can assume that this audience knows quite a bit about ENC 1102, since they are responsible for hiring mentors for ENC 1102, but they don’t know the details of what was assigned by your individual instructor or what was discussed in your specific classroom. You’ll need to provide context and explanation throughout your Writer’s Profile so that your audience understands the significance of the claims you are making.
What can my Writer’s Profile look like and what should it discuss?
As in the example linked above, the structure of your Writer’s Profile will resemble an essay, and you will organize your writing into paragraphs according to the main idea(s) of your profile.
Have a Thesis: There should be a controlling idea (or ideas)–that is, a theme, a thesis–pulling what you say together. If you can summarize the main idea of your profile in one sentence, what would it be? After viewing your Writer’s Profile, your audience should have a good understanding of what you have learned about writing, research, and information literacy and how that informs the ways in which you see yourself as a writer and rhetorician at this point in your college career. Reflect on what you learned, then repackage that as a persuasive document for your readers. You want the reader to be able to summarize your profile in one sentence when they weigh it against the others in the pile:
this is the applicant who….
Make it personal: You want to avoid generalizations about what ENC 1102 aims to teach all students; instead, reflect on what you learned and what assignments and ideas meant the most to you in the class.
Make claims and provide evidence: In the body of your Writer’s Profile, you want to make claims to support your thesis. In each paragraph, you must draw on specific examples from your ENC experiences. Whatever your overall focus is, make sure that every paragraph in the document supports that focus and that every paragraph provides specific evidence.
– Evidence can be references to specific assignments you did in the class, discussions we had, readings we did, ways you applied the ideas to your research, or even ways you applied the ideas to your real life. Again, this is your reflection, not just a generic reflection about what ENC 1102 covers–so use details to connect it to what you most valued and connected to in the course.
– Pay attention to your audience, genre, purpose: The use of evidence is important in documents such as these, because they help your reader understand your claims about what you’ve learned. Specific details are also a key part of persuasion: if you are claiming that you learned ____ in the course, then citing an assignment, reading, class discussion where that idea came to life for you will help persuade the audience that you do, in fact, have that knowledge.
> It’s hard to give examples of this assignment without having students want to parrot the same ideas as the example provided, but here’s a document (SEE SCREENSHOTS ATTACHED) with two example paragraphs: one from a good reflection, one from a bad reflection. I think it will help.
A few notes:
If you feel inspired, you may include relevant visuals (photos, graphics, etc), hyperlinks and stylistic elements. However, these items should be intentional (include them only if they help make your points), not merely decorative.
You’ll write your profile in Word (or similar) and then save the document as a PDF.
Writer’s Profiles usually are between 500-700 words long. Wherever yours falls within this word count, the key is to ensure that your content is developed enough for the document to accomplish its rhetorical purpose. The profile should be dense–not filled with meaningless “fluff”. Try to use a lot of specific language and a lot of meaningful examples, rather than vague generalizations that don’t really say much.
Guiding Questions:
Don’t forget to see the guiding questions! (SEE SCREENSHOTS ATTACHED)