ENG 205 Profile Essay

ENG 205 Profile Essay

Overview and Requirements
Being able to see a person beyond a diagnosis, a role (such as a patient, friend, parent, or supervisor), or a physical attribute enables nurses to see each patient as an individual with unique experiences, hopes, fears, and needs.
Assignment Prompt
1.) For the profile essay:
• you will closely examine a person whom you personally know, such as a patient, family member, educator, co-worker, or friend
• you will focus on a short period of time, such as a single day, several months, or even a significant moment that takes place over an hour
2.) IMPORTANT:
• the goal of the profile essay is to show readers who this person is. For example, the profile may highlight a patient’s strength that carried him through his battle with cancer, a parent’s dedication to always putting his children’s needs above his own, or a friend’s always positive attitude despite the challenges that she faces.
• the essay is not about you
• the focus should be on the individual who is profiled
3.) Your essay must do the following:
• Create a vivid depiction of the individual
• Focus on a short period of time that highlights the trait(s) that you wish to focus on
• Incorporate strong vivid descriptions and examples, including dialogue
• Show instead of tell
4.) Your essay must include the following:
• An introduction with a hook and strong thesis statement
• Developed body paragraphs with strong topic sentences and concluding sentences
• A word count of 1,000 words, at a minimum (excludes cover page

You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.