To continue my practice of drafting sample assignment responses for my students, I am working to follow the pattern my first-semester composition students are asked to follow and work through a series of writing assignments ostensibly meant to introduce them to the processes and demands of academic writing. Unlike ENGL 135, ENGL 112 does not ask students to address a single project, but instead calls for them to address different writing tasks throughout the term, working in small pieces to foster a skill-set that will, hopefully, serve them well in their future coursework and in their continuing lives outside the classroom.

The first piece of writing students are asked to do is a profile essay; in the first week of class, they are asked to prepare for it, reflecting writing as an ongoing process. Specifically, that preparation asks students to conduct an initial rhetorical situational analysis, examining their prospective profile topic, their angle of approach to it, their purpose for treating their topic as they do, characteristics and needs of their audience, and their own authorial perspectives and biases. It seems a good exercise to have students do, certainly, and one that would be helpful to have repeated with more detail in successive writing classes. (That it is not part of the standard assignment sequence in those classes, I know–I teach said classes.)

As with my efforts in the previous session (here, here, here, here, here, here, and here), I eschewed the University-provided template as I began my work on the exercise. Setting my Word document to 12-point, single-spaced Times New Roman with one-inch margins on letter-size paper sufficed. And, given the exercise’s constraints, I did not set up a title page or running head for the document of my response; I did, however, insert page numbers, and I offered something of a heading and title, following my practice in assignment documentation given to students. (Students will please note that this is not APA format.)

With my document’s layout set up, I proceeded to address issues of content. I started by copying the relevant questions over from the University template. That done, I began to address them, answering openly and honestly as best as I could. Given my predilections and associations, as well as the exercise’s guidelines, I opted to focus on an event–and a particularly nerdy one, at that, which can be found here: http://shadowsovernaishou.com/paintedcity/index.php. Answers to the several questions emerged easily from that decision, and I addressed the prompts of the exercise with little difficulty.

The content made ready, I reviewed my document for style and mechanics. After making the adjustments that needed making, I rendered the document into an accessible format, which I present here: G. Elliott Sample Profile Process Planning Sheet November 2018. I hope it will be useful for my students and others in the days to come.

Help me help students do better better? (Parse it; it works.)